Julius Caesar

Plot synopsis:
The play opens with the commoners of Rome celebrating Caesar's triumphant return from defeating Pompey's sons at the battle of Munda. Two tribunes, Flavius and Marrullus, discover the commoners celebrating, insult them for their change in loyalty from Pompey to Caesar, and break up the crowd. There are some jokes made by the commoners, who insult them back. They also plan on removing all decorations from Caesar's statues and ending any other festivities. In the next scene, during Caesar's parade on the feast of Lupercal, a soothsayer warns Caesar, "Beware the ides of March." This warning he disregards. The action then turns to the discussion between Brutus and Cassius. In this conversation, Cassius attempts to influence Brutus's opinions into believing Caesar should be killed, preparing to have Brutus join his conspiracy to kill Caesar. They then hear from Casca that Mark Antony has offered Caesar the crown of Rome three times and that each time Caesar refused it, fainting after the last refusal. Later, in act two, Brutus joins the conspiracy, although after much moral debate, eventually deciding that Caesar, although his friend and never having done anything against the people of Rome, should be killed to prevent him from doing anything against the people of Rome if he were ever to be crowned. He compares Caesar to "A serpents egg/ which hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mischievous,/ and kill him in the shell." He then decides to join Cassius in killing Caesar.
Caesar's assassination is one of the most famous scenes of the play, occurring in Act 3, scene 1. After ignoring the soothsayer, as well as his wife's own premonitions, Caesar comes to the Senate. The conspirators create a superficial motive for coming close enough to assassinate Caesar by means of a petition brought by Metellus Cimber, pleading on behalf of his banished brother. As Caesar, predictably, rejects the petition, Casca grazes Caesar in the back of his neck, and the others follow in stabbing him; Brutus is last. At this point, Shakespeare makes Caesar utter the famous line "Et tu, Brute?" ("And you, Brutus?", i.e. "You too, Brutus?") Shakespeare has him add, "Then fall, Caesar!" This suggests that such treachery destroyed Caesar's will to live.
The conspirators make clear that they committed this act for Rome, not for their own purposes, and do not attempt to flee the scene. After Caesar is killed, Brutus delivers an oration defending his actions, and for the moment, the crowd is on his side. However, Mark Antony makes a subtle and eloquent speech over Caesar's corpse, beginning with the much-quoted "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!" In this way, he deftly turns public opinion against the assassins by manipulating the emotions of the common people, in contrast to the rational tone of Brutus's speech, yet there is method in his rhetorical speech and gestures: he reminds them of the good Caesar had done for Rome, his sympathy with the poor, and his refusal of the crown at the Lupercal, thus questioning Brutus's claim of Caesar's ambition; he shows Caesar's bloody, lifeless body to the crowd to have them shed tears and gain sympathy for their fallen hero; and he reads Caesar's will, in which every Roman citizen would receive 75 drachmas. Antony, even as he states his intentions against it, rouses the mob to drive the conspirators from Rome. Amid the violence, an innocent poet, Cinna, is confused with the conspirator Lucius Cinna and is taken by the mob, which kills him by tearing him to pieces for such "offenses" as his bad verses.
The beginning of Act Four is marked by the quarrel scene, where Brutus attacks Cassius for supposedly soiling the noble act of regicide by having accepted bribes. ("Did not great Julius bleed for justice' sake? / What villain touch'd his body, that did stab, / And not for justice?") The two are reconciled, especially after Brutus reveals that his beloved wife Portia had committed suicide under the stress of his absence from Rome; they prepare for a war against Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son, Octavius. That night, Caesar's ghost appears to Brutus with a warning of defeat. (He informs Brutus, "Thou shalt see me at Philippi.")
At the battle, Cassius and Brutus, knowing that they will probably both die, smile their last smiles to each other and hold hands. During the battle, Cassius has his servant Pindarus kill him after hearing of the capture of his best friend, Titinius. After Titinius, who was not really captured, sees Cassius's corpse, he commits suicide. However, Brutus wins that stage of the battle--but his victory is not conclusive. With a heavy heart, Brutus battles again the next day. He loses and commits suicide by running on his own sword, which is held by a soldier named Strato.
The play ends with a tribute to Brutus by Antony, who proclaims that Brutus has remained "the noblest Roman of them all" because he was the only conspirator who acted, in his mind, for the good of Rome. There is then a small hint at the friction between Mark Antony and Octavius which characterizes another of Shakespeare's Roman plays, Antony and Cleopatra.

Tags: tragedy, revenge, murder, violence

Review:
The film starts in battle of Munda where Julius Caesar(100-40 b.c.) vanquished Pompeyo and terminates in battle of Filipos where the second triumvirate(Marco Antonio, Lepido and Octavius Augustus: Richard Chamberlain) vanquish Brutus and Cassio.
Aristocrat party prepares a conspiracy and March 15, 44 b.c -Idus of March- Julius Caesar was assassinated in senate .Remains surprisingly true to Shakespeare's adaptation and working directly from the original, unlike many other historical movies of the same era.
The Caesar killing is originally staged including unexpected frames of the murderous washing their hands in the blood of Julius and below of Pompeyo sculpture.There are magnificent acting from a memorable Charlton Heston as Marco Antonio, an electrifying John Gielgud as Caesar, a sneaky Robert Vaughn as Casca and a splendid Richard Johnson as Cassius, among them.
Directed with imagination and professionalism by Stuart Burge and well produced by Peter Snell who followed with a sequel also little known 'Marco Antonio and Cleopatra' starred and directed by Charlton Heston.This gripping flick will like to Shakespeare devotees but its spirit is intact in spite of are taken some liberties.
Despite this one turns out to be inferior than classic film 'Julius Caesar(1953)' considered definitely the best version available directed by Joseph L Mankiewicz and starred by top American players as Marlon Brando( similar role Charlton Heston-Marco Antonio), Louis Calhern(John Gielgud-Caesar), Greer Garson(Jill Bennet-Calpurnia),James Mason(Jason Robards-Brutus), Edmond O'Brien(Robert Vaughn-Casca role) among others..
Jill Bennet is sympathetic as the prophetic wife of Caesar but in the role of Brutus' wife the well-born Portia, Diana Rigg at age thirty-two looks luscious and is simply superb--Shakespeare in the finest style.
Another veteran Shakespearian, Richard Johnson, is nearly as good as the jealous, manipulative Cassius.Jason Robards plays Brutus like a wooden Indian for the first two acts.
After the dirty deed of assassination is done, it's Antony and Octavius though they are teaming up against the conspirators, you can tell both in this version and in the better Fifties version that MGM put out that they will soon be at odds.Charlton Heston is a strong Antony here, but unfortunately for the play to succeed you need an equally strong Brutus.
And Richard Chamberlain who was trying very hard to shed his Dr. Kildare image is fine as the cunning Octavian who Antony ultimately underestimates.Charlton Heston in his memoirs takes blame for casting Robards and Robards himself realized he was miscast.
I shall not cavil: Julius Caesar is my favourite Shakespearean play and i can bore anyone to tears by reciting great chunks of it.
My dear wife may love Hamlet, but for me it is Caesar; I have loved this play since I was in elementary school, and had the great joy of seeing it in 1966 at Stratford Ontario with a brilliant young Bruno Gerussi as Antony: there was a lively Antony to make Brando's look somnambulant.
Given my love for the play, I await the day that some computer genius releases this version having excised poor Jason Robarts and inserted James Mason from the Brando movie.
Much better than the earlier Julius Caesar, which starred Marlon Brando as Mark Antony and James Mason as Brutus.
The delivery of Antony's funeral oration by Charlton Heston is brilliant, powerful, well-paced, the dramatic high point of the movie.
Richard Johnson as Cassius, John Gielgud as Caesar, Robert Vaughn as Casca and Diana Rigg as Portia are fine actors, with full dramatic presence, at home in Shakespeare's language.
Richard Johnson plays Cassius, the leader of a group of high-ranking Romans who seek to assassinate Julius while Jason Robards appears as reluctant accomplice, Brutus.
Charlton Heston plays Mark Antony, a sympathizer of Caesar who condemns the murder.
In general, Orson Welles and Lord Laurence Olivier (but call him Larry) are the two men most identified with successes at the Bard's work, on both sides of the camera; then there's Franco Zeffirelli (especially with his classic 1968 film version of ROMEO AND JULIET), and the later adaptations of Kenneth Branagh.
And much more controversially, there is director Roman Polanski's extremely violent 1971 take on MACBETH, which was as close as The Bard came to outright horror.And then there's the political/historical tragedy that is JULIUS CAESAR.The 1953 version, adapted for the screen and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz, was and still is considered one of the best of the Bard's adaptations ever to make it to the screen.
The result was, by all accounts, one that arguably fell into the shadow of Mankiewicz's version, which after all had Marlon Brando as Marc Antony; Louis Calhern as Caesar; and Sir John Gielgud as Cassisus, one of the conspirators.
Still, the play is the thing, as the old saying goes.For this go-around at JULIUS CAESAR, the film is helmed by English director Stuart Burge, who did a yeoman adaptation of the Bard's OTHELLO in 1965, with Robert Furnival faithfully adapting the play to good effect.
The film also benefits from the turns given by Richard Chamberlain (as Octavius Caesar), Robert Vaughn (as Casca), Christopher Lee (as Artemidorus), Richard Johnson (as Cassius), Diana Rigg (as Portia), and Jill Bennett (as Calpurnia).The thing, though, is that a lot of the focus of the play, and subsequently the film, is not so much on Caesar as much as it is on Marcus Brutus, the man torn between his allegiance to Caesar and a need to save the Roman Republic from Caesar's machinations.
It takes a solid performance to pull it off really well; and if the actor doing Brutus isn't well versed in Shakespeare, the film will invariably suffer.
He is simply a great actor in a great role, but it was not one that he could have ever showed his best at—though over the course of the film, he does improve.That having been said, the stellar performances of Heston, Gielgud, Vaughn, and the others make up for Robards' inadequacies; and Burge's direction, while not really on a par with Welles, Olivier, or Zefirelli, is solid enough.
Jason Robards is a fine actor, but not as Brutus, unless Stuart Burge intended to experiment with this role as a Spaghetti Western.
Heston swaggers and bellows as Antony, Robards is out of place in shakespeare, and the usually exceptional Richard Johnson is woefully miscast as Cassius.
John Gielgud in his second Julius Caesar film role, this time as Caesar himself, is studied and brilliant.
Surprisingly, Heston plays a brilliant Antony, strong and resilient, as Antony should be played, and showing a serious command of the language and supernatural world of Shakespeare's Caesar.
The rest of the cast was pretty good, however, especially Richard Johnson as Cassius (why wasn't HE Brutus), Diana Rigg as Portia and Charlton Heston as Antony.
Like another reviewer stated, this is a respectable but highly flawed film adaptation of the play "The Tragedy of Julius Caesar".
Charlton Heston does a great job, but Robards performance as Brutus doesn't weigh in until about half way through the drama, and seems to be a little undirected for the first half of the play.
I can only guess that this was done because the director liked the style (which was common for this period in film making for Hollywood to take such atrocious liberties with history).It's worth it for seeing Chuck Heston's Marc Antony, but the version with Marlon Brando some yhears earlier (shot in black and white) is the one to see.For all it's flaws, and there are many, this 1970 version staring Heston is worth a look.
Still, there are worse ways to pass the time than to listen to great actors like Jason Robards, John Gielgud and Charlton Heston (among others) reciting great stage lines.
Having said this, one looks at the Bard's depiction of Caeser's assassination and his portrayal of Caeser as something different from History.Sir John Gielgud was always stately in whatever role he played.
But, we're in it for Shakespeare, not a shoot'em or garish cast of thousands recreating bloody battle scenes.I prefer the 1955 version with the Ham of hams, Brando as Mark Antony and Louis Calhern as Caesar.
There, the great Gielgud and a competent James Mason made the respective roles of the conspirators, Cassius and Brutus sparkle..
good adaptation/performance of Shakespeare's great play.
And yes, Charlton Heston did a fine job as Mark Antony, even though he may have been somewhat too old for the role.Nice costumes, sets, locations and exteriors..
Why is it that the actors portraying Julius Caesar and Brutus look so similar?
I really enjoy the classic William Shakespeare play, and feel like this film honours it to a very high degree.
There was a few characters that I quite enjoyed in the play that I felt were underused in this film, particularly Christopher Lee as Artemidorus, who only has about two minutes of screen time for a character that could have been stretched much further, and particularly, Richard Chamberlain as Octavius Caesar.
The character is not a massive part in the play, but his scenes are significant, and to have cut some of them was an injustice to the film.The performances all shine, and it is clear that these actors understood every word of their dialogue and had a deep understanding of what their character is going through.
While he was never my favourite character when having seen and read the play, the undeniable screen presence of the great Charlton Heston made him the character I was most drawn to in this film.
Brutus and Cassius plot to kill Roman Emperor Julius Caesar as a result of his growing arrogance of power.
The dialogues are precise, the cast is outstanding, with great performances by Heston, Gielgud and Richard Johnson.I think this film could be reprogrammed in all the theathers around the world to give a chance to the new generation appreciate a fine work based upon a play of one of the most important writers of the history..
This is really a marvelous screen adaptation of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar."  The acting is outstanding, as is everything about it.
When I was in Hollywood, I had watched another Shakespearean film adaptation from the same director  OTHELLO (1965), with Laurence Olivier; I recall being somewhat underwhelmed by it  coming across as excessively stagy and, therefore, uninventive compared to Orson Welles' highly cinematic rendition from 1952 (though it may also have been due to the massive length, 166 minutes, of Burge's take on that celebrated play).
At 116 minutes, JULIUS CAESAR is a more manageable enterprise and, as I said, at least it 'opens up' towards the end; besides, its gripping narrative of political machinations is among Shakespeare's more compelling.Which brings us to a comparison of the 1953 and 1970 versions: if there's one thing that could be leveled against the former is that it flaunts the trademark MGM gloss  plus the fact that it was determined to have a star in even the rather negligible female roles (Greer Garson as Calpurnia and Deborah Kerr as Portia), not so much because they were right for the part but because it would have added to the marquee/prestige value or, more crudely, the budget could afford it!
Otherwise, that film is distinguished by Marlon Brando's fiery Mark Antony, James Mason's thoughtful Brutus and John Gielgud's wily Cassius  not to mention Miklos Rozsa's typically grandiose score.
Charlton Heston is decent as Antony: he had already played the character in a 1950 TV adaptation and would do so again in the 1972 ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA  based on another Shakespeare play and which he personally directed (I know this latter film was shown a couple of times in my childhood, including a Sunday matinée' broadcast on local TV but I'm damned if I recall whether I had sat throughout its entire 170-minute running-time, or even if the print was that long to begin with; inexplicably, the film seems to have vanished off the face of the earth since then!).
Richard Johnson, on the other hand, is a fine Cassius: ironically, the fury displayed by him at Brutus' decision to allow Antony to speak on behalf of Caesar in front of the people is that more palpable here in the wake of Robards' ineffectual Brutus!
Robert Vaughn is a surprisingly good Casca, perhaps Cassius' closest supporter; Richard Chamberlain is Octavian, Antony's ally in routing the conspirators  he only turns up in the last third, with his best moment coming during the confrontation on horseback (flanked by Antony himself) with Cassius and Brutus at Philippi.
Christopher Lee, who receives fairly prominent billing, has only a very negligible role  as a citizen (mystic?) whose advice to Caesar to be wary of his flatterers goes tragically unheeded  but it was nonetheless nice to see him in this company; Michael Gough, a horror icon in his own right, is another of Caesar's envious senators determined to bring him down for the good of the Empire; Andre' Morell plays Cicero  his character is often mentioned but the actor's silent contribution is completely redundant, since he only appears in a couple of brief shots!
Charlton Heston chews up the screen as Marc Antony while Jason Robards ends up being wasted as Brutus.
Stuart Burge directed one other Shakespearean play for film (Olivier's 1965 "Othello", which brilliantly used the limited scope of the budget to convey Othello's claustrophobic view of his own world as the play progressed), but this one seriously suffered from his minimal experience with medium, as the use of cheap effects (e.g., Caesar's 1970s-style appearance during at the end of the tent scene) clearly shows.The acting is truly disappointing.
Gielgud is all right as Caesar, as is Robert Vaughn as Casca, but Richard Chamberlain is outright embarrassing as Octavius, conveying a sort of pinup idea of the character, with little indication of how dangerous he truly is.
Diana Rigg (Portia) and Jill Bennett (Calphuania) are all right, though their parts are edited beyond recognition (e.g., Portia is never given the opportunity to show her self-inflicted wound to Brutus, which really demonstrates who devoted she is to him).The only performance that really emerges unscathed is Richard Johnson, as Cassius, as only he seems to have a real idea for how to subvert his ego to the text and character -- the editing of the film clearly shows that much of his best work is badly edited, cutting off in the middle of key speeches (e.g., "Well, Brutus, thou art noble...") and embarrassing speeding his death scene to the point it looks like a Benny Hill spoof.
Notwithstanding this, he still manages to project his role as a man who truly believes he is being marginalized by the hero worship of Caesar.Having directed this play myself, and being a great fan of several of its leads (Robards, Johnson, Rigg, Gielgud), I can't help but wonder what might have emerged from a different director and either different actors or actors at different points in their careers (e.g., Robards and Gielgud).
"Julius Caesar" is perhaps the most accessible of Shakespeare's plays.
With a cast of wonderful actors down to the smallest roles, this should have been a classic for the ages.Charlton Heston is a great Marc Antony.
It's a shame Shakespeare didn't give him more screen time.Not only is the major cast full of headline stars, aficionados of English actors will recognize the names Preston Lockwood, Andrew Morell, Ron Pember, Michael Gough and others in very minor parts.Unfortunately, what sinks this movie like the Titanic is possibly the worse casting decision in human history, Jason Robards as Brutus.
In case you don't know, the star of "Julius Caesar" isn't John Gielgud's Caesar or Heston's powerful Antony.
Robards makes the whole thing look like a high school production put on for extra credit.Another bad casting decision is Richard Johnson as Cassius.
More than anything else, the poor performance by Jason Robards as Brutus ruined this movie.
Also, Robert Vaughn did a poor job as Casca.However, some of the other cast members such as John Gielgud and Charlton Heston performed well.
Diana Rigg was perfect as Portia, and Richard Johnson gave the best Cassius performance I've ever seen.
When I first watched it I was put off by Jason Robard's all too noticeable American accent, but then, upon watching it a second time, unfortunately, so does Charlton Heston's accent.
This American International production of Shakespeare's play is an O.K. adaption of the Roman tragedy with John Gielgud as the title character giving an authoritative but compassionate performance as the ambitious Roman General.
Diana Rigg is very good as Brutus's wife with Jill Bennett the only other female as Caesar's wife.
The first of Shakespeare's plays dealing with Roman history, this is quite a good adaptation but it could have been considerably better.
When it comes to directing Shakespeare, Burge lacks the flair of Laurence Olivier or Kenneth Branagh.Brutus is one of the most complex characters that I have come across in a Shakespearean play and this version does not do him justice, to put it mildly.
The fault, dear Brutus, was in the star this time.The best performance certainly comes from the great John Gielgud, who played Cassius in the 1953 version, who is brilliant as the title character.
Charlton Heston, reprising his role from an obscure 1950 version, is very good as Mark Antony but I certainly preferred Marlon Brando's take on the character.
Heston's Mark Antony seems much more openly cynical than Brando's and I would have preferred it if Heston had taken the more subtle approach.Richard Johnson, a highly experienced Shakespearean actor, is excellent as Cassius.
The film also features nice small appearances from Michael Gough (who played Cassius in a 1959 TV version directed by Burge) as Metellus Cimber, Derek Godfrey as Decius Brutus, David Neal as Cinna and Thomas Heathcote as Flavius as well as not one but two future "Blake's 7" stars, namely Steven Pacey and Michael Keating.Overall, this film has a great deal of unfulfilled potential but there is plenty of good acting on display, notwithstanding Robards' performance (for lack of a better word).