1950 David Bradley Production

This early independent film, directed by David Bradley, starred Charlton Heston as Antony; Grosvenor Glenn as Cassius; Harold Tasker as Julius Caesar; David Bradley as Brutus; and Bob Holt as Octavius Caesar.

Samuel Crowl, in a 1994 essay titled “A World Elsewhere: The Roman Plays on Film and Television,” wrote that “Bradley’s film is a remarkable student work made with a group of friends who met at Northwestern University. The film is interesting on three accounts: its clever use of some of Chicago’s famous neo-classical architecture for location shooting; its introduction to the screen of Charlton Heston who plays Mark Antony; and Bradley’s highly imaginative way with his camera.” He thought that “[v]iewing the film is like watching an experimental, fringe theatre company performance of Shakespeare where our pleasure derives more from the radical inspiration of individual moments than from the coherence and polish of the entire production” (147).

In his 2009 overview of Julius Caesar (125–26), David Carnegie reported that although Bradley’s adaptation was “[s]hot in black and white on 16mm and with a budget of just $15,000, it was nevertheless an ambitious feature-length film.” He noted that the “actors are often deliberately dwarfed by colonnades and buildings, and the black and white cinematography makes expressive use of light and shadow” (125). He concluded, however, that the “undistinguished acting, the heavy cutting, including all of the conspiracy in the Orchard scene (II.i), and the desperate shortage of actors to fill the vast architectural spaces, mean that the film is more significant as an essay in Shakespearean film-making than as a satisfying version of the play” (126).

In his superb 2014 book on the play (112–15), Andrew Hartley wrote that “[m]uch of the movie feels amateurish, and some of the acting is very poor. Nevertheless, it wears its limited resources on its sleeve and, as is often the case with necessity, a certain invention is engendered.” He admired the almost “expressionist” use of “light and shade” (112), saying although the black-and-white tones help create “a starkly contrasted world,” this “is not played for moral effect, or at least not in terms of simple binaries,” but that some faces benefit from being shot in darkness (113). Regretting the use of “mannered faux English accents veering towards gangster” and other vocal flaws (such as voices dubbed in after shooting was complete [114]), Hartley called Heston’s Antony “the stand-out performance,” saying “he brings a refreshing sense of character to the film” although “[e]lsewhere he is a little too reliant on his sonorous vocal style and lantern-jawed good looks” (114). Hartley noted several ways in which Heston’s performance here anticipates his 1970 performance of the same role in a film directed by Stuart Burge, saying his Antony is not a “scheming politician or manipulator so much as a straight-from-the-shoulder private man driven to oratory by passionate conviction, though his obvious capacity for heroism is tainted by a casual pragmatism in which ends—however bloody and painful—justify means” (115).

1953 Joseph L. Mankiewicz Production

This famous and highly regarded production, directed for MGM by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, starred Marlon Brando as Mark Antony; James Mason as Brutus; John Gielgud as Cassius; Louis Calhern as Julius Caesar; Edmond O’Brien as Casca; Greer Garson as Calpurnia; and Deborah Kerr as Portia.

In a review of this production from 1953, Alice Venezky Griffin wrote in the Shakespeare Quarterly that Mankiewicz had “used the camera to provide an underlying rhythm which gives a good continuity from scene to scene, mounts in tension and suspense through the conspiracy and assassination, the funeral orations, the battle and finally the deaths of Cassius and Brutus” (331). She called the camera sometimes “restless” (332); said this production was even better than Olivier’s Hamlet for its “clarity and integration”; called Gielgud “brilliant”; and especially admired scenes between Gielgud and James Mason. She said that Calhern as Julius Caesar “underplays too much”; said Brando’s speech is “clear but lacking in range and modulation” (332); considered the women’s role’s “adequately played”; admired Douglass Watson’s Octavius; and praised the use of black and white and the sets (333).

Also commenting on the film in 1953 was producer John Houseman, who wrote in The Quarterly of Film, Radio, and Television that in “planning this movie version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar—from its initial conception through its casting, direction, scoring and editing to its final assemblage—we had one dominant artistic aim: to bring to motion-picture audiences in all its clarity, energy and beauty the direct dramatic impact of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Nowhere was this concern more urgently shown than in Joseph Mankiewicz’ preparation of the shooting script. Unlike so many screenwriters,” Houseman continued, “Mankiewicz has no need to compensate in his scripts for his directorial frustrations. He does not clutter up his pages with elaborate directions or gratuitous camera angles. What he does is to prepare a plain, functional shooting script in which, besides the text to be spoken, he indicates to his own satisfaction—and to that of his actors and production staff—the physical scope and the dramatic form of the film he is going to direct” (109).

Another response to the film in 1953 came from James E. Phillips, whose article “‘Julius Caesar’: Shakespeare as a Screen Writer” reported that in “adapting Shakespeare’s original text to the screen, … John Houseman and Joseph L. Mankiewicz appear to have faithfully preserved the main outlines of his action, his characters, and his theme. Consequently, while Shakespeare may claim much of the credit for the screen version’s over-all effectiveness, he must also bear responsibility for some of its basic faults” (127). Phillips commented that “if the strengths of Shakespeare’s play are thus faithfully preserved, so, it must be said, are its original weaknesses. Chief among these is the laborious and generally static exposition—the dramatist’s effort at the outset to provide his audience with the information about the situation and the characters necessary to an understanding of the dramatic conflict that follows. In his later tragedies,” Phillips continued, “Shakespeare came to master this technical problem with a skill that remains the envy of playwrights” (128). But Phillips also thought that the film’s “[f]aithful adherence to Shakespeare’s original also results in another difficulty that the play itself presents. Which character, in the final analysis, is the center of interest? Shakespeare himself confused the issue by entitling the play Julius Caesar—possibly because in Elizabethan England the name of Caesar had a box-office appeal that Brutus, Cassius, and Antony (without Cleopatra) could not command” (129). Phillips suggested that in “Caesar, the strengths that [Shakespeare] was to develop and the weaknesses that he was to overcome are both apparent. And in faithfully heeding Hamlet’s admonition to ‘speak the speech as I pronounc’d it,’ the film version is characterized by strengths and weaknesses alike” (130).

In his 1971 book Shakespeare and the Film (86–93), Roger Manvell argued that the film was relevant to the recent rise and fall of Nazi Germany and other totalitarian states and that it depicted Brutus “as a rational democrat unwillingly caught up in the need to resist” not only Caesar’s authoritarianism but the later threatened “rule of the generals led by Antony.” Although Manvell did not discuss the film itself very extensively, he did provide much helpful information, especially about the film’s genesis, financing, actors, director, filming locations, and so on (86–92).

Jack Jorgens, in his 1977 book Shakespeare on Film (91–105), helpfully assessed the performances of many of the main actors, suggesting that “Louis Calhern portrays Caesar’s weaknesses more than his strengths,” such as his deafness, his epilepsy, and his fear of Cassius, even though his political power is emphasized by a recurring musical theme, many symbolic images of eagles, and various images of Caesar himself, as in various massive statues of him, some of them visible even as he is about to be assassinated (96). Jorgens saw James Mason’s Brutus as “a man who means well, has integrity, inspires loyalty in everyone, and loves both Caesar and Rome” but who nonetheless “betrays and murders his friend and plunges Rome into civil war.” Jorgens wrote that “Mason stresses the slow, almost mechanical way [Brutus] thinks, moves, and speaks” about principles more often than about gritty political realities (97). Admiring John Gielgud’s performance of Cassius as “narrow but intense,” Jorgens defended Gielgud against critics who disliked the idea of Cassius being motivated mainly by envy (98), commenting that this “scowling Cassius is cool and shrewd when not pressed” (99).

Jorgens argued that “[o]ur attitudes toward Antony change radically as the film progresses” as he quickly moves from a minor to major character, so that, when alone with Caesar’s body, “Brando’s animal ferocity is unleashed, and Antony attracts us to him as he sets out to revenge the death of his friend” (99), although we soon begin to have our doubts when he stirs the passions of the crowd (100). Nevertheless, Jorgens felt that sometimes “in Mankiewicz’s film the action is not powerfully seen. There are memorable dramatic moments, but no memorable images. In seeking restraint and a distancing effect, Mankiewicz often succeeded only in making scenes bland and visually dull,” mostly because of flaws in “the design, lighting, and framing of the images” (103). He missed, in this film, some of the extraordinary graphic power found in early Shakespeare films directed by (and starring) Orson Welles (105).

Discussing the Mankiewicz film in his 1994 essay titled “A World Elsewhere: The Roman Plays on Film and Television,” Samuel Crowl suggested that rather than looking back to the Nazism and Fascism that led to World War II (1939–45), the 1953 film of Julius Caesar might as easily be seen as a reflection on “post-war America,” when the United States “was left, by war’s end, as the inheritor of the power and problems associated with European imperialism.” Moreover, “[b]y the early 1950s the country was being internally consumed by the communist witch-hunts sponsored by the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy” (149).

In his 1999 History of Shakespeare on Screen (44–48), Kenneth Rothwell recounted the genesis of the film, its large budget, and its “set design of steep inclines, platforms, and balconies that serve as metaphors for the ups and downs of power in Rome itself” (44). He called it “an actors’ film, an unusual decision having been made to give priority to actors over technicians by filming the virtually uncut play in its original sequence and by eliminating distracting reaction shots” (45). He remarked that “James Mason’s Brutus strikes exactly the right note”; saw both pre-war (Nazi) and post-war (McCarthyite) implications in the film’s political subtexts; asserted that “Brando radiates power with or without words” (46–47); and reported that “Mankiewicz insisted on the actors’ completing their lengthy speeches while the cameras were rolling, even if it meant paying the crew overtime. He feared that ‘looping,’ or having actors dub in speeches in a post-filming session, could maim Shakespeare’s blank verse” (48).

In an essay from 2000 titled “Julius Caesar in the Cold War: The Houseman-Mankiewicz Film,” Anthony Miller wrote that “[l]ike the film’s Romans, the citizens of 1950s liberal democracy express opinions and vote for candidates, but they only react to the choices offered them; they do not initiate political action. The film may intend to condemn this quiescence,” Miller continued, “but its many political ambivalences tend to justify it. When every political judgment is cancelled by an equally valid opposing one, it is all too baffling: the fault is not in ourselves but in our stars. For all its array of political reference, the Houseman-Mankiewicz Julius Caesar is fundamentally antipolitical.” According to Miller, the film suggests that anything that “is truly valuable, [including] people’s full humanity, manifests only in private and domestic scenes. One of the disturbing things about Antony is that even in the private scene invented for him by the film, when he takes the dead Caesar’s seat, he is still preoccupied by power. Antony is not given a private self to which he and the audience can thankfully retire. On the other hand,” Miller felt, “Cassius redeems himself in the quarrel scene, when he speaks the language of friendship; Brutus proves his nobility because the first thing he thinks of, on entering the orchard after the storm has passed, is Portia; Caesar at home reveals himself as amiable, capable of fear, and solicitous for Calpurnia.” Miller argued that the “objects of this affection, the play’s Roman matrons, are transformed into Hollywood wives. Brutus finds Portia, who is sleeping peacefully and chastely through the storm, behind a gauzy veil that creates a femininized space of gentle allure and tenuous safety. When Caesar agrees to attend the Senate, Calpurnia disappears from the film, retiring into a chamber whose door she shuts, emphatically but also powerlessly, on the public world” (99).

In his 2000 book titled Shakespeare on Screen (54–57), Daniel Rosenthal wrote that Brando “let the language carry every ounce of Mark Antony’s emotion, particularly in the forum scene which would become the high point in one of the most gripping performances in any Shakespeare film.” But he also thought that it is “in the assassination scene that Mankiewicz’s direction, taut and assured throughout, is shown to greatest effect. As Calhern is stabbed, there are no shouts from the killers, nor screams from the victim. The silence is as shocking as the sight of these civilized men’s pristine white togas suddenly stained with blood” (54).

“It’s the perfect prelude,” Rosenthal asserted, “to the moment when Brando wrests the plot—and the film—from the conspirators’ hands.” Reporting that “Mankiewicz refused to ‘distort Shakespeare’s text with cinematic devices,’” Rosenthal discussed how this refusal affected omissions in the script, restraint in the camera work, and similar restraint in the score, so that the music never distracts from the speeches. Rosenthal considered the film’s “stark black-and-white photography … perfect for Julius Caesar, echoing the way in which Shakespeare makes it impossible for audiences to identify the ‘good guys’” (54).

Commenting on the film in his 2000 book titled Shakespeare in Hollywood, 1929–1956, Robert F. Willson offered mostly a production history before turning to some assessments of the film itself. Thus, although commenting on its prominent use of “busts and statues” (149), he agreed with Jack Jorgens that Mankiewicz’s movie “is generally lacking in cinematic elements of the kind that distinguish the work of Welles or Kozintsev,” adding that “staples of cinematic ‘realism’—reaction or point-of-view shots—are strikingly absent from this production, which relies on frontal shots of actors delivering their primarily public speeches designed to move” audiences of various sizes, “from one to a few to many” (152). He admired Brando’s forum speech, attributing its success not only to Brando’s acting but also to “Mankiewicz’s direction of the crowd’s reaction” (152).

In his 2000 book on Shakespeare in the Movies, Douglas Brode asserted that the Mankiewicz film “accentuated the Bard’s artistry while playing down the cinema’s rich potential for expanding Shakespeare’s showmanship,” calling it “respectable, polite, and noncontroversial, resembling upper-middle-brow Hallmark Hall of Fame TV presentations” (104). Brode thought that “[d]espite his supposed genius, Marlon Brando appeared intimidated by Shakespeare and came across as stiff, seemingly frozen with fear that he might make a wrong move.” Surprisingly, he thought this was especially evident in the usually much-praised forum speech, where Brando allegedly offered “a one-note recitation,” with “the entire speech tense, angry, shrill” so that “there’s no variety to his half-dozen deliveries of [the references to] ‘honorable men’” (106). Brode did admire the scene showing Brutus at home, feeling increasingly trapped as he is filmed “through branches of a tree which appear ready to close in on him.” He also praised Brando’s smirk at the end of this forum speech (106). In general, however, he considered the makers of this film “too often in awe of Shakespeare” and his words, saying “Since this is a movie, we ought to see more and hear less” (106).

Discussing the film in his 2002 book Shakespeare in the Cinema (134–38), Stephen M. Buhler, reporting that Mankiewicz made his film on a limited budget, wrote that nevertheless he “was able to make a literate and involving interpretation” in which talented actors “deliver the kind of character studies one might expect.” But Buhler thought Mankiewicz also defiantly used the play “to comment on the chilling combination of demagoguery and conformism then shaping U. S. politics” while “pull[ing] very few punches in the process, thanks in part to the assumption that Shakespeare’s works were apolitical and thus unlikely to be suspected of having any contemporary political relevance” (135).

In an article from 2003 titled “Julius Caesar in Interesting Times,” Jean Chothia, reacting skeptically to “progressive” interpretations of this film, instead saw it as a bid for acceptance during a time when many American filmmakers were under political attack: “In 1950s Hollywood a Shakespeare play ‘done straight,’ including notable Shakespearean actors and answering audience expectations of costume, set and verse speaking, could provide a gratifying sense of respectability for the studio and, indeed, for [scriptwriter John] Houseman. … Only Hollywood’s fourth ‘full-scale studio feature-length Shakespeare’ since the beginning of cinema, the MGM Julius Caesar had its own claims to make—principally, perhaps, that Hollywood was open to the products of high culture and could handle them responsibly” (127).

Michael Anderegg, in his 2004 book titled Cinematic Shakespeare, noted the film’s “contrasting styles of performance,” often involving “an emphasis on the extremes each character exhibits.” Thus, Louis Calhern’s Caesar is both “vainglorious and vulnerable, arrogant and avuncular, while John Gielgud’s Cassius, neurotically intense, projects a deep cynicism not unmixed with touching sincerity and emotional need.” Likewise, “James Mason as Brutus combines a powerful sense of duty with a too easy reliance on his own judgment and integrity,” while “Brando’s Antony provides us with perhaps the sharpest sense of contrast. He employs his trademark coiled indolence in the early scenes, adding passionate intensity and manipulative cynicism for the forum speech.” Anderegg called Brando’s Antony “ultimately the true fascist: cold, ruthless, and unsentimental” (90). He thought the film showed the rising influence of television by employing “relatively long takes, [a] heavy reliance on close-ups, [an] employment of what appears to be a unit set, and even the black-and-white photography,” saying “all are associated with the style and the ‘look’ of live television drama” (92). He admired the Mankiewicz film, saying it “complicates our response to the play rather than determines it” (95) and concluding that if “MGM’s Julius Caesar seldom seems as cinematically exciting as one would hope, it remains a powerful if low-key interpretation of Shakespeare’s play: straightforward, well crafted, and at times a bit dull.” He thought it “successfully employs charismatic performers who, in spite of very different backgrounds and training, work together convincingly as an ensemble” in a film offering “an ultimately pessimistic take on the inevitable corruption of political action” (97).

Samuel Crowl, in his 2008 Norton Guide (121–22, 138–40) briefly discussed Brando’s acting and the ways it is filmed (121–22) while also commenting on the film’s relationship to Cold War politics (139).

In his 2009 book on the play (126–28), David Carnegie wrote that the film benefits from the spectacle and large cast that a big budget allowed and that the deliberate use of black and white perhaps alluded to the use of such film in recent wartime newsreels (126). He considered Gielgud and Brando effective choices for their roles (127); admired Mankiewicz’s general avoidance of delaying “reaction shots”; and even asserted that “the editing of Julius Caesar marks a breakthrough in film interpretation of Shakespeare.” Noting allusions to recent European fascism (partly through an emphasis on the kind of eagle imagery favored by the Nazis [127]), Carnegie also asserted that the film stresses “a balance of strength and complexity in each of the four main characters” and also sometimes employs the black-and-white photograph “expressionistically,” as in the scenes featuring threatening storms (128).

Assessing the film briefly in his 2013 study titled Small-Screen Shakespeare (175–77), Peter Cochran called it almost “too good to be true.” He admired the sets, the crowds, and the general realism (175); commended the cast (except for Greer Garson); and praised the preplanning and direction, saying that the film succeeds in ways not possible for a theater production (176–77). He did, however, note a few unfortunate cuts; found the final battle less than fully impressive; and considered the scenes between Mason and Gielgud a bit tedious (177).

Andrew Hartley, in his valuable 2014 study of performances of the play (56–80), wrote that although from “a twenty-first century perspective, the film may seem ponderous, talky, and limited in its visual scope,” it nonetheless “positively crackles with great performances.” He was particularly interested in the ways it had been shaped by the McCarthyism of its era, which was motivated by “fear of mob rule, fear of communists, but also a fear of informants and the eyes of the thought-police.” Hartley argued that the Mankiewicz film used Shakespeare “to give authority and cultural force to a subversive position” by attacking fascism, with “James Mason’s Brutus and John Gielgud’s Cassius” resembling “foreign communist intellectuals, while Marlon Brando’s Antony—who styles himself the home-grown, plain-dealing patriot—is the new face of McCarthyist Fascism” (57). Although finding Mason’s and Gielgud’s acting styles sometimes in conflict with one another (60), Hartley wrote that “both British actors are functioning at the top of their respective traditions, and both give compelling performances full of nuance and ease,” whereas their American counterparts, who had trained mostly in film, contemporary theater and the modern “Method,” were less comfortable with Shakespeare’s language (61), whose subtleties actors such as Gielgud could better grasp and better perform, whereas an actor such as Brando tended to speak in a naturalistic style and emphasize verbs (62).

Hartley commented on such other matters as the difficulty of determining the sincerity of Brando’s Antony (63); the film’s apparent avoidance of explicit political stances (67); the possibly subtle ways in which contemporary politics may nonetheless be implied (68); Mankiewicz’s own run-ins with McCarthyism (73); and the ways Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus resemble persons in the 1940s and 1950s who were willing to destroy other people’s lives to protect themselves (74). Discussing the film as an example of the American film industry competing successfully with England on a prestige project, and perhaps also as an example of an American actor (Brando) making English actors look suspicious (75), Hartley additionally compared Brando’s Antony to the order-giving, self-interested Hollywood mogul Cecil B. DeMille, who was willing to thwart others’ careers to advance his own (75). According to this interpretation, “If Antony is an entertainer-ideologue, a DeMille pedaling bread and circus in the form of his crowd-pleasing epics and underhand political manipulation, the film can be seen finally as an anxious reflection on the industry itself.” Thus, the “liberal, rational and even-handed tactical approach of a Brutus or, for that matter, of a Mankiewicz, are easily swept aside by those prepared to act more cynically” (80).

In an essay from 2022 titled “The 1953 Film of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: A Survey of Reviews,” McKenna Odom wrote that “[e]nthusiasm for the film was nearly unanimous among the earliest reviewers, including reviewers in the ‘popular press,’ who often get overlooked when scholars are assessing the reception of a Shakespeare film.” According to Odom, “The Mankiewicz movie was praised by reviewers writing not only from places such as New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco but also by reviewers writing for readers in places such as Des Moines, Pensacola, and Shreveport, Louisiana. Hardly a negative word about the film was written, at least by the many reviewers surveyed here” (247–48). She continued that the “fact that Marlon Brando was willing to star in the Mankiewicz Caesar undoubtedly helped [its reception]. He was, at the time, one of the most intriguing actors in the United States, and half the interest the production evoked came from people wondering if Brando could really succeed in a Shakespeare play. Succeed he did, but his success was just part of the larger success of the film as a whole” (256).

1970 Stuart Burge Production

Directed by Stuart Burge, another large-budget film, released in 1970, starred Charlton Heston as Mark Antony; Jason Robards as Brutus; John Gielgud as Julius Caesar; Richard Johnson as Cassius; Robert Vaughn as Casca; Richard Chamberlain as Octavius Caesar; Diana Rigg as Portia; Christopher Lee as Artemidorus; and Jill Bennett as Calpurnia.

Assessing the production in his 1971 book Shakespeare and the Film, Roger Manvell wrote that “Heston wanted to play Antony as a sensual, power-seeking opportunist,” while Gielgud played Caesar as an “urbane, and even witty,” ruler who has risen to power “due to a natural feeling of social and intellectual superiority to the lesser men about him in the Senate.”

Manvell reported that “Gielgud insisted on retaining many lines originally cut in the script; they must be kept for the sake of rhythm, he claimed, and won his point.” Various actors wanted to play Brutus, but ultimately the role went to Jason Robards, “who had never even seen Julius Caesar performed” (!) and whose performance has been almost universally mocked, perhaps in part because he refused to rehearse. Commenting in detail on the qualities necessary to play Brutus successfully (93) Manvell next explained many ways in which Robards failed at his task, leaving the film to depend instead on such other episodes as “Charlton Heston’s splendid Forum scenes” or “the excellently choreographed assassination of Caesar, in the Senate, with man after man going in for the kill until, when Brutus (still looking worried) has stopped, they all descend on the dying man and cut him to pieces to louder chords of music. It is a holocaust, and the rest of the Senate huddle together terrified at the spectacle” (94). Although Manvell wrote that “[t]here is much to be said in favour of many aspects of this film,” he concluded that “it lacks its real heart”—that is, a successful performance by Robards as Brutus (95).

Samuel Crowl, in a 1994 article titled “A World Elsewhere: The Roman Plays on Film and Television,” wrote that Burge’s “film struggles towards presenting the play from a post-imperialist, postmodern perspective. Its elements consist of a garish collection of details which jangle and jar with one another in an attempt to make the play speak to a time clearly out of joint” (151), while Daniel Rosenthal, in his 2000 book on Shakespeare on Screen (58–59), called the 1970 adaptation “[l]oud and garish where the 1953 version was thoughtful and restrained,” saying “it transforms the play into a weak hybrid that fails as both sophisticated political thriller and straightforward historical epic.” For Rosenthal as for so many others, “Jason Robards’s Brutus scuppers the entire picture” by “being dull and inept at speaking verse,” but Rosenthal considered even Heston’s Antony “not beyond criticism” because the actor chose to play the role “in an excessively relaxed, languid style.” Rosenthal also disliked the film’s final battle (“an overlong, messy sequence”), its “absurd costume parade,” and Burge’s direction, calling the latter “as crude as the outfits.” He disliked the ways the film failed to focus on Shakespeare’s words (instead propping them up with “superfluous images or actions”) and even called Gielgud’s “vain, pliant dictator” the “least impressive of his screen Shakespeare performances,” additionally condemning the score for good measure (59).

In his book from 2000 titled Shakespeare in the Movies, Douglas Brode wrote that “Robards’s work resembles a satiric send-up of bad Shakespearean acting: all elocution, no emotion, with the words slowly spoken in a numbing monotone” but becoming even worse when he later “rants and raves.” Although calling the budget too cheap to produce impressive spectacle and the film handicapped by Burge’s lack of talent, Brode did admire a few aspects of the production (including the assassination scene and the final battle) and ultimately called the film “more interesting, worthwhile, and venturesome than anyone has previously noted” (113). Meanwhile, in his 2009 book on the play (128–29), David Carnegie noted that the Burge adaptation has been “widely regarded as a failure despite all it had going for it” (128).

Commenting on this adaptation in his 2013 book titled Small-Screen Shakespeare (178–79), Peter Cochran mocked Robard’s performance; praised the rest of the cast; noted the untraditional costumes and number of bearded characters; found flaws in the assassination scene; praised Heston’s oration (178); but faulted the later quarrel episode. He concluded by calling this adaptation not bad but definitely preferred the 1953 production (179).

Discussing the Burge production in his 2014 book on the play in performance, Andrew Hartley largely praised (with reservations) the way the text was pruned; generally admired Diana Rigg’s performance as Portia (119); but accused Burge of “offer[ing] nothing but remnants of cinematic forms which are shop-worn and out of fashion” while remarking that “it is Heston’s Antony that renders the film worthy of consideration at all” (120). Hartley concluded that “[w]hatever problems Burge’s film suffered because of budget issues (including those bed sheet togas), the final problem with the film is that its only compellingly interesting dimension is in Heston’s conception of Antony. Beyond that, the film won’t take a position, won’t explore or innovate, but relies instead on the familiarity of the story, the weight of its language, and the glow of its cast. Such things are not, finally, enough” (123).

In an essay from 2022 titled “The 1970 Film of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: A Survey of Reviews,” Eric J. Sterling reported that the “reviews of the Stuart Burge-directed Julius Caesar were mixed. Some critics preferred the 1953 version with Marlon Brando, while others championed the 1970 remake. Interestingly, reviewers who panned the movie wrote sarcastic and snide comments mocking the film, seemingly taking glee in their attacks. Unquestionably,” Sterling continued, “the main target of their diatribes and disdain was Jason Robards, who, most critics agreed, gave a lackluster and uninspired performance. No reviewer [Sterling cited], in fact, ever actually praised Robards’s performance, although a couple tried to explain it. The most-liked performances,” he noted, “were those of Charlton Heston and Richard Johnson, with some reviewers ambivalent regarding the acting of John Gielgud and many wishing that Diana Rigg had played a larger role onscreen. Most reviewers found the sets to be flimsy and inauthentic, but while some considered this a major flaw, others were willing to focus instead on compensating strengths” (269).

1979 BBC Shakespeare Production

Directed by Herbert Wise, the 1979 BBC adaptation starred Richard Pasco as Marcus Brutus; Charles Gray as Julius Caesar; Keith Michell as Marc Antony; David Collings as Cassius; Virginia McKenna as Portia; Elizabeth Spriggs as Calpurnia; and Sam Dastor as Casca.

Discussing “The Production” in a valuable BBC booklet issued to accompany the play (19–27), Henry Fenwick reported that although Herbert Wise, the director, was chosen partly because of his experience in directing other filmed works about Rome (19–20), Wise himself commented that such experience was not especially helpful since Shakespeare’s play is an Elizabethan work, noting its anachronisms and saying it is a Tudor work rather than a Roman one. Wise suggested that Shakespeare’s works might not be most effective on television, adding that above all he sought clarity (22) and that he tried to employ “stylised naturalism,” without trying to be too naturalistic or realistic in the play’s first half but instead trying to focus on the main characters. Nevertheless, this production uses strict Roman costuming (20), with Odette Barrow, the costume designer, observing that this play is often incorrectly costumed, especially in the armor presented, since different kinds of armor were used for different occasions and for people of different ranks (22). Tony Abbott, the set designer, explained that “each arrangement of scenery is made up of small units of architecture, capable of being realigned, reversed or added to” (23), adding that although he sought to create a sense of Roman grandeur, doing so is difficult on television (24). Abbott commented that “We didn’t want to make the scenes too realistic: filling up the picture with details would be a distraction. We swept all that away. A lot of Shakespeare is self-explanatory and you don’t need a lot of clutter. We wanted something crisper, something clear, something a lot of people can understand. The action relies on dialogue rather than a lot of movement …” (24).

Wise discussed the kinds of cuts he made in the play’s language, such as cutting language that explained what was already obvious from the action depicted, and remarking that “the main task was to soften the rhetoric and make it more immediate. The soliloquies are both voice-over and spoken—some lines are said, some are thought …. But I have tried something else—when the lines are only thought I have tried to get the effect that they are thought much faster than you could speak them” (25).

Keith Michell, this production’s Antony, who had often played that role previously and at various stages of his career, suggested that Antony operates by instinct rather than design (26), while David Collings, as Cassius, saw that character as a kind of foreshadowing of Shakespeare’s Iago but stressed that Cassius is not completely evil and argued that he actually becomes more appealing as the play goes on (26). Richard Pasco, playing Brutus, saw this character as a good man who inadvertently unleashes chaos (26), while Wise called Brutus “‘immensely human,’” saying he “does a terrible thing but he does it with the best possible motives as distinct from all the other conspirators, and he fails because he is just not shrewd enough, not clever enough. … Although he is a prig and … a fool, the spectacle of a man attempting to do good and achieving nothing but the holocaust I find extremely moving” (27).

In their valuable 1988 anthology Shakespeare on Television, J. C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen summarized and quoted from various early reviews of the film. One reviewer called this Julius Caesar a “glorious” and a “magnificent start” to the whole BBC series, showing “how powerful television can be” and praising its “spellbinding immediacy and urgency. … Only television could make this great tragedy as accessible as it is eloquent.” Another writer, however, termed it a “scholarly, peculiarly bloodless rendition of a passionate play,” saying it “lacks bravura sweep” and relied on “lots of tight close-ups, featuring superb enunciation without declamation.” Yet another commentator hailed Charles Gray’s Caesar, calling the murder “shockingly intense” but finding Michell “too old and fleshy to be a vigorous and virile Antony,” while a fourth critic declared, “Never have I seen [the assassination scene] more movingly played,” adding that “Pasco endows [Brutus] with enormous complexity” and that the “play comes through splendidly.” But another reviewer, writing in an academic journal, wished that the battle scenes had been filmed outside rather than in a studio (250).

Janet Maslin, writing for the New York Times, commented that “the camera does a great deal of tracking, moving after the actors with very few cuts, to give the program a momentum that compensates for its small scope. Instead of pausing for reaction shots or close-ups of individual players, the camera swoops in upon them, or remains fixed on an actor who’s listening while the actor who’s speaking strides in and out of the frame.” Maslin found this technique “exhilarating, introducing an element of visual suspense and holding the viewer at close dangerous range” and added that the “performances are geared to television, too. The actors work in a slightly exaggerated manner” and their “[s]oliloquies are delivered as voiceovers, which tones them down somewhat but also makes them plausible, considering the proximity of the camera.” Writing that Richard Pasco, “as Brutus, has a heavy-lidded look and grave demeanor that makes his performance a success even before he speaks,” Maslin on the other hand thought that “Mr. Michell’s stolid Antony is this production’s principal disappointment” and that “Virginia McKenna as Portia is so tremulous and hysterical to begin with that the camera can only magnify her excesses. But David Collings as Cassius,” according to Maslin, “is ideally shifty-eyed and spiky. And Mr. Gray so expertly typifies the politician as performer that his scenes, as Caesar, are the most affecting portion of this production” (250).

Jack Jorgens, a pioneering scholar of Shakespeare on film also quoted in the Bulman-Coursen anthology, condemned the performances in this Julius Caesar as “silly, affected, awkward, wooden, or misguided,” finding in the whole production “a curious mixture of the grimly conservative and the eccentric.” He wrote that “[d]espite some ingenious and complicated shot-making, this Julius Caesar is a mediocre piece of television, full of disorganized, banal, ugly images” and plagued by times when the “camera fails to keep up with the action, moves pointlessly, or has an uncanny knack for being in the wrong place” (250).

Meanwhile, Robert E. Knoll, reviewing the production for the Shakespeare on Film Newsletter, asserted that the “quality of the acting is uniformly high. One is not likely to see a more subtle Cassius than David Collings, a slower-witted Brutus than Richard Pasco, or a more eloquent Antony than Keith Michell,” nor are we “likely ever to see a better television version of this play” (1). Knoll wrote that “[c]onstantly the cameras give us close-ups of the conspirators, and we look into their eyes with an intimacy not possible on the stage or in the cinema. Still, we rarely if ever hear one person talking without seeing the reactions of others. We constantly peer over the shoulder to perceive social relationships” (1–2). Thus, “we are drawn into intimacy with these characters. We get involved in their motives and responses. Aesthetic distance is minimized” and the “play becomes very intense. The viewer is exhausted by all this insistent, fascinating, uninterrupted eavesdropping.” Knoll thought it “important that Brutus and Cassius and the others all talk as though they were on soap boxes, even in their private dialogues. They have no private lives,” but he also thought that although “the center of the play is not psychology but stagecraft, the television production takes us into psychology” because it “can give subtle variations of individual personality.” But he thought it “cannot as easily give the sweep of history. And when this play calls for the sweep of history, as in Act Five, the play falls off. The battles of Philippi are not clearly presented nor is Cassius’ relationship to them as lucid as it needs to be. This television camera is not set for heroic shots.” And of Antony’s famous speech in the forum, he wrote that this “production breaks this wonderful scene into its component elements. Nobody minds because Michell so cleverly suggests Antony’s multiple purposes and develops them right before our eyes. But this is not the Roman spectacle that the text seems to call for and against which the quarrel scene (Act IV) develops. This,” he concluded, “is an intimate production of a public play” (2). Meanwhile, Susan Willis, in her 1991 book on the BBC series, wrote that “[m]uch of Julius Caesar remained wooden despite the efforts of Richard Pasco” (223).

In his 1994 essay titled “A World Elsewhere: The Roman Plays on Film and Television,” Samuel Crowl wrote that “[e]very aspect of the [BBC] production is musty,” including “the studio sets with their painted backdrops” and “the unimaginative and stilted camera work where five or six actors are jammed in front of a camera to suggest a crowd or another camera lingers for a puzzlingly long time on the back of an actor’s head just so he can make an unnatural pivot to speak directly into the lens,” and “the pompous poses struck by many of the actors and their failure to find an effective means of delivering very public oratory over a very private medium.” Asserting that “[b]ecause Wise’s production lacks both style and vision it is the least interesting” of the four adaptations he discussed, he nonetheless thought that “it does … provide an example from the conservative end of the interpretative spectrum” (152).

Assessing the film briefly in his 2009 book on the play (129–31), David Carnegie claimed that although the BBC “Julius Caesar lacks the kind of visual excitement offered by most feature films made for cinema release, Shakespeare scholars and others familiar with the play have often praised it for its uncomplicated presentation of an almost full-text version of the play,” adding that “[a]ll other screen versions have made significant cuts.” He said the adaptation’s admirers also “respond to the clarity of the speech, and to the intelligence of the acting. What the production lacks in spectacle and visual excitement,” Carnegie concluded, “it makes up for by exploring in private close-up the actors of this most public of stories. The choice to watch this TV version, therefore, may hinge on how serious the viewer is about pondering the meaning of the play, and how willing to make serious comparisons with other productions” (129), with Carnegie himself comparing and contrasting it with the 1953 film.

In his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (179–81), Peter Cochran suggested that the BBC’s “camp” Cassius and Casca diminished the whole production. He considered David Collings ill-equipped to play Cassius (179); found the conspiracy unimpressive; mocked the Soothsayer; and thought Brutus’s stabbing of Caesar was badly filmed (180). Cochran found the fourth and fifth acts tedious; regarded “male bonding” as one of the production’s major themes (181).

Discussing this production in his 2014 study of performances of the play (123–31), Andrew Hartley called it “extremely tame” and said it exhibited many flaws typical of the BBC series as a whole, such as “flat, rhetorical acting, constrained sound-stage interiors and implausible exteriors, over-tight camera angles making for visually dull ‘talking heads’ theatre, a failure to embrace a filmic medium in terms of scale and scope, and a refusal to deviate from a ‘straight’ interpretation which makes for timid direction and the pretence of ‘concept free’ performance” (125). In the case of this play, Hartley thought such flaws meant “stock Roman sets and costumes,” “an uncomfortable mid-point between theatre and film,” “long takes of stagily blocked actors in mid- or close-up shot,” “the absence of filmic sound and visual effect,” “acting which is too big for the medium,” and uncertainties and inconsistencies about how to deal with soliloquys (125–26), including a reluctance to involve the audience by having the actors directly address the camera (127). Hartley thought the soliloquies here simplified and dehumanized the characters, although he did commend the performances of Charles Gray, David Collings, and Richard Pasco (127), and especially Keith Michell, although finding some faults even with some of these (127–28). He considered the costumes sometimes flawed and sometimes even “slightly silly” (129) and suggested that students would have found little to interest them in this production (131).

In an essay from 2022 titled “The 1979 BBC Production of Julius Caesar: A Survey of Reviews,” Mikia Holloway examined fourteen different assessments published in the American popular press, in newspapers both large and small. She reported that most reviews “were generally positive,” noting that “One very positive, if brief, assessment was written by Mike Silverman for the Associated Press and was thus published all over the country. Silverman especially praised the various performances, quoting actor Richard Pasco (as Brutus) who ‘said his greatest challenge came in the assassination scene,’ especially when trying ‘to make it seem convincing that Brutus can actually stand there and thrust that steel into another human being.’” According to Holloway, “Silverman thought Pasco met this challenge, praising this moment’s ‘chilling effect.’ Another very positive review, by Mary Rita Kurycki for Rochester, New York’s Democrat and Chronicle, similarly praised the actors’ performances, saying the ‘characters live,’ especially when ‘close-ups show the conspirators plotting the murder of Caesar. Actors mutter, whisper their words of treachery. Intimacy, intrigue is established more easily than it could be in a stage production.’” Kurycki continued that the characters’ “‘emotions are real and quickly discernible,’ partly because ‘television has added intimacy and clarity of plot,’ so that ‘when the actors scheme in their minds or struggle with conscience, they are not shown muttering their thoughts aloud. The words they are thinking are played while the camera rests on a sly or pensive face’” (275).

2012 Gregory Doran Production

This adaptation, set in Africa and featuring black actors in its major roles, was directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company. It starred Ray Fearon as Mark Antony; Paterson Joseph as Brutus; Jeffery Kissoon as Julius Caesar; and Joseph Mydell as Casca

In his 2013 book titled Small-Screen Shakespeare (181–83), Peter Cochran noted the production’s emphasis on two different basic settings—public and private (181)—but found them generally unimpressive (182). He thought the African accents sounded “quaint”; considered relations between the characters “well-defined” (182); but called the final battle low-budget (183).

Bibliography