Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1953 film exploring the life and death of larger than life Julius Caesar wastes no time engaging the audience. With Louis Calhern in the titular role and Marlon Brando as his faithful friend Mark Antony, the film goes into great detail about what gets Caesar killed by associates of his, and even greater detail of the thirst for power after his death. Julius Caesar, the film, goes down a dark road proving Nietzsche's Will to Power lives within even the most trusted of our allies. Caesar is enjoying more praise than ever when he returns to Rome after defeating Pompey. During a victory celebration Caesar attends with his most trusted allies Cassius (John Gielgud) and Brutus (James Mason) he is warned by a Soothsayer to beware the Ides of March. Caesar ignores the warning and goes about the celebration unknowing that conversations are taking place regarding his rise to power. They believe Caesar to be untrustworthy and think he will become a tyrant. Fueled by lies and anger, a plot is masterminded to murder Caesar. On the 15th day of March, Caesar prepares to go to the senate, his wife Calpurnia (Greer Garson) begs him not to go due to a vivid dream she had in which Caesar was murdered. Caesar scoffs and goes anyway, being warned by another Soothsayer along the way. Ignoring this second warning, Caesar makes his way to the senate where the conspirators circle him and begin to stab him one by one. Upon seeing his dear friend Brutus among the murderers, Caesar succumbs to his wounds and dies. Mark Antony (Marlon Brando), who was led away from Caesar on the fateful day under false pretenses, joins with Caesar's adopted son and successor, Octavius (Douglass Watson) to avenge his death. They achieve their goal with Cassius and Titinius (John Parrish) being killed in the war that ensues, leaving only Brutus left alive of the conspirators. Seeing death as inevitable, Brutus kills himself and is pardoned by Octavius as acting, in what he believed, to be the best course of action for Rome. Audiences are immediately engaged in the film from the very beginning. A gripping speech in the opening scene catapults the audience to ancient Rome, bringing it alive through the production design mimicking Roman architecture and language. For one, Caesar dies at almost exactly halfway through the film. I personally love a movie that will throw the audience for a loop by killing off its main character. Of course, being familiar with the play Julius Caesar, I knew he would be killed, but I did not know he would be killed so early on, leaving half the film to deal with the aftermath of his murder. Likewise, Marlon Brando's Mark Antony was hardly in the first half of the movie; being a fan of Brando's I was initially disappointed about this, however, he more than makes up for his absence with a strong second act. The costumes and production designs were an absolute treat, recreating ancient Rome, and making me feel like I had gladiator sandals on. The film was more than deserving of the Oscar it received that year for Art Direction (encompassing set decoration). I am shocked however that it wasn't even nominated for a statuette in the Costume Design category. The ghost Caesar that haunted Brutus was a directorial feat considering the time in which the picture was filmed. Its looming presence agonized Brutus, leading him to believe that Caesar was not at rest. The film was a stunning achievement of its time and one that I recommend be enjoyed by all. Personally, I have a yearly tradition of watching this film every year on the Ides of March and it has yet to get old.

In contrast to the last two Shakespearean films that I watched, namely the 1968 versions of "Romeo and Juliet" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream", this is an adaptation of a play with which I was already familiar, though not to the same extent as some of his other works. A brilliant psychological drama which is very well adapted for the silver screen, the play explores the themes of honour, loyalty and patriotic necessity and the conflict between them through the characters of Brutus and Mark Antony. Caesar himself is only a supporting character but the entire play pivots around him. The direction of Joseph L. Mankiewicz is superb. Incidentally, he later directed "Cleopatra", in which Caesar and Mark Antony are likewise important characters.Brutus is one of the most complex characters that I have come across in a Shakespearean play. He is played wonderfully by James Mason, who reprised the role from a 1940s production at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Brutus is a tragic hero who reluctantly agrees to participate in the plot to assassinate Caesar. This leads Mark Antony to describe him as "the noblest Roman of them all" as he genuinely believed that he was doing the right thing while his co-conspirators "did that they did in envy of great Caesar." He is a patriot who tells the plebeians that he loved Caesar but loves Rome more. However, Brutus is too noble for his own good as his idealism causes him to insist that the conspirators spare Antony's life. In allowing Antony to deliver the funeral oration after the murder, he gives his rival the opportunity to turn the plebeians to his side, damning himself in the process. I think that Brutus is an essentially good but misguided man who is so idealistic that it blinds him to Antony's machinations until it is too late. Mason plays the role with a great sense of quiet dignity. We also see the warmer sides of the character. He is a loving husband to his wife Portia, played extremely well in her one scene by Deborah Kerr, and a kind master to his young slave Lucius. I think that Mason deserved a Best Actor nomination for the role.Without a doubt, however, the best performance of the film comes from Marlon Brando as Mark Antony in his only on screen Shakespearean role. I have to admit that I have never been a huge fan of Brando and, like some people at the time, I was a little apprehensive before watching the film as his mumbling style of acting certainly would not fit into the world of Shakespeare. However, I need not have worried as not only does he enunciate his lines as clearly as possible but he is never less than absolutely engrossing and compelling. He truly excels in the extremely long funeral oration scene. I have never seen him give a better performance, to be honest. In spite of the fact that he has only about 30 to 35 minutes screen time, he was nominated for Best Actor for the third of four consecutive times. As strong as his performance was, he should probably have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Mark Antony is a fascinating character: willful, impulsive, fiercely intelligent, shrewd and ruthless. Unswervingly loyal to Caesar both before and after his assassination, he is nevertheless not as honourable as Brutus as he manages to persuade the conspirators that he is on their side. With the exception of Brando and Mason, the strongest performer is the great Sir John Gielgud - who later played Caesar himself in the 1970 version - as Cassius, another extremely compelling character. Like Mason, Gielgud was reprising his role from a stage production. Cassius' motives for plotting against Caesar are far less idealistic than those of Brutus as he is extremely envious of the fact that the Roman people are treating the dictator as if he were a god. Deceitful, ambitious and totally lacking in integrity, he is the consummate politician. Louis Calhern is very strong as Caesar, who is just as ambitious as the conspirators claimed that he was. His extreme arrogance and his refusal to heed the supernatural omens surrounding the Ides of March prove to his undoing. Greer Garson - no longer the box office draw that she once was by 1953 - is good as Caesar's wife Calpurnia but she's nowhere near as natural as in some of her earlier films, particularly "Goodbye, Mr. Chips". The film has a very strong cast overall, though some of them only have small roles: Edmond O'Brien as Casca, Alan Napier (later the Alfred to Adam West's Batman) as Cicero, George Macready as Marullus, John Hoyt as Decius Brutus, Richard Hale as the Soothsayer, Ian Wolfe as Ligarius and a young Michael Ansara - with that fantastic voice of his - as Pindarus. Funnily enough, many of those actors turned up in the original "Star Trek" years later. The only real weak link is William Cottrell as Cinna but his role is small too.Overall, this is an excellent adaptation of one of Shakespeare's best tragedies.

Since the dawn of the talkies Hollywood had been searching for ways to do justice to the words of William Shakespeare. Now that Laurence Olivier had made his mark with Henry V and Hamlet, the game had been raised considerably. The dilemma of the US film industry was over whether to muster as much English Shakespearean authenticity as they could, or to throw decorum to the winds and make the bard go Hollywood. But this 1953 version of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar brings together experienced and prestigious actors from both sides of the Atlantic with the young, iconic and caustically modern rebel Marlon Brando. How could such a vibrant mismatch work? To find the answer, we have to go back to bard basics. Shakespeare works on a number of levels, and as a result his plays are accessible today despite the archaic and complex wording in them. While few things in a Shakespeare play are stated directly, his lines convey both literal meaning and, through a poetic use of language give the appropriate tone and an impression of what is meant. Characters will often go the long way round to get a point across (for example Casca describing individually each of the three times Caesar put the crown aside, each time exaggerating Caesar's supposed reluctance), in which double meanings and loaded terminology tease clarity out of the flowing speech.Bringing clarity to the meaning of Shakespeare's words is also the job of a creative director, and this applies to both stage and film directors. Doing the job here is one of the best of his day – Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Mankiewicz relies upon professional actors to make an impact, while he himself concentrates on background detail to frame and augment their performance. When he shows Caesar standing before a crowd, the extras in the background are unnaturally still, giving Louis Calhern even more stature and presence. When Cassius and Brutus go to plot Caesar's downfall, the sudden enclosure of the set gives an impression of the privacy of the space, but Mankiewicz still throws in little meaningful additions to the shot that comment on the goings-on. The statues of famous Romans act as surrogates for the presence of the real thing. The billowing cloak of a guard at the end of the corridor gives a bit of dynamic character to certain points in their conversation. During Cassius's powerful soliloquy the moving camera appears to make the ominous, windswept set grow around him.So after the genius of Shakespeare and the craftsmanship of Mankiewicz, it is all down to the talents of the cast. We really do have a delightful line-up here. The thing about all these professionals like Calhern, James Mason, John Gielgud, Greer Garson and Deborah Kerr, is that they all know how Shakespeare is "supposed" to be done. They are able to competently and effectively string the bard's words together into one flowing tapestry. They bring out all the aesthetic beauty in the prose, and this no small or worthless task, and not one of them fails or falters here. Still, it is yet possible to get more from Shakespeare than this.The part of Mark Anthony, while not the largest in the play, is certainly at its moral centre. He is, for want of a better word, the hero; a restorer of justice and the voice of a more just future. It is appropriate then the he be played a little differently. Brando had not done Shakespeare before, and he appears to have taken a fresh approach to the material, viewing Mark Anthony not as a character in the works of the most renowned literary figure the world has ever known, but as an individual to inhabit like anyone else he might play. What Brando really brings to the part is a sense of earnestness. When he delivers his great speech to the masses, his tone is not only commanding – it is decidedly indignant. When he yells the immortal line "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me yours ears" he reads it as nothing more or less than a man crying for the attention of the crowd. What Brando does is bring heart and humanity to the pure aestheticism of the play as it exists on paper.Is it sacrilegious to have some hip, method-acting poster boy take on one of the mightiest roles in theatre's grand tradition? There are those who think so – the stage remains to some extent a haven for snobs, but it is their attitudes who are doing Shakespeare a disservice, not the forward-thinking or creative ones. We shall leave the last words to the immortal bard himself, those that he put into the mouth of his antagonist Cassius upon Caesar's murder: "How many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over, in states unborn and accents yet unknown?"

I have not read the Shakespeare play, or seen it performed, though I would like to. This adds the epic scope of a big motion picture production, but keeps the focus on the people and dialog, merely adding larger sets(that do not distract the viewer), grand groups of extras and incredible production values. The plot is interesting and compelling, and develops nicely throughout. Every acting performance is excellent, particularly those of Brando, Mason and Gielgud. The writing is marvelous, and as is the common practice for William's scripts, the "old English" language is kept intact, and from what I know, a lot of the original lines are, as well. They're all perfectly delivered, too. This is exciting when it means to be, and dramatic and engaging from start to finish. The two hours pass by swiftly, and the pacing is great. Music is a broad, sweeping orchestral score that fits well, and sound tends to be good. There is violence and disturbing content in this, and that's about it for what might bother some audience members. I recommend this to any and all fans of the famous source material and/or those who made it. 8/10