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Shakespeare
Online
The Hollywood
Bard
Julius
Caesar
I've seen two filmed versions of this play. The first
is the classic 1953
Joseph Mankiewicz version, with James Masion as Brutus, Marlon
Brando as Marc Antony and John Gielgud as Cassius. Also of note
is the fact that John Houseman (The Paper Chase, Smith Barney
ads) produced it. I liked this version a lot, and apparently
a lot of other people did too: it won an Oscar for Best Art Direction,
and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best
Score, and Brando received a nod for Best Actor for his performance.
In Dead Poets' Society,
Robin Williams does a funny, if somewhat inaccurate, impression
of Brando doing Shakespeare. Actually, it was more of an impression
of Brando doing Terry Malloy doing Shakespeare. (Terry Malloy
was Brando's character in On
the Waterfront.)
The BBC-TV version,
on the other hand, was a tad bit annoying, especially the voice-overs.
Basically all of Brutus' soliloquies are done as voice overs,
and it just looks ridiculous: the actor furrowing and raising
his eyebrows while the speech plays on the soundtrack. I mean,
that looks less realistic than just having the actor speak
the soliloquy. Other than that, this version is alright, but
the voice-overs are really enough to ruin it for me.
The Internet Movie Database
lists eight theatrical releases, eight made-for-television versions,
one straight-to-video release, and one TV series for this title,
with the earliest going back to two separate versions filmed
in 1908. There are a couple of versions that look interesting:
 The
1970 theatrical
release was directed by Stuart Burge, who also directed the
1965 version of
Othello with Laurence Olivier. This movie is pretty star-studded:
Charlton Heston as Mark Antony, John Gielgud (Cassius in the
Mankiewicz version) as Caesar, and Jason Robards as Brutus; Christopher
Lee, Diana Rigg, and Michael Gough (who played Cassius in a 1959 TV version,
also directed by Burge) are also among the cast. It apparently
didn't do as well as the Mankiewicz version, though, at least
not critically. The IMDB doesn't list any awards for this version,
and the user rating is an embarassing 4.9 out of 10.
Another interesting version is the 1979
made-for-video version with a cast that includes Morgan Freeman,
Earle Hyman, and Sonny Jim Gaines. Unfortunately, there doesn't
appear to be much information about this version: if you have
seen it, or know anything about it, please e-mail
me, and put "Julius Caesar" in the subject line. |
