Julius Caesar (1953)

 "Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life cuts off so many years of fearing death."

I'm utterly knackered today after a long, difficult drive and the emotional drop after dropping Little Miss Llamastrangler back at her mum's after a wonderful half term week, so I wanted to watch something undemanding and... yeah, it's Shakespeare. But I've seen this version before in my youth and was curious to see it again, and this is the play I've seen on screen the most for some reason.

This is, of course, sublime cinematic Shakespeare. James Mason excels as Brutus who is, I suppose, the closest we come to a main protagonist: it was certainly the part later played by Charlton Heston in his later version, not comparable to this but fascinating in its own way. The direction, the sets, all is at once suitably cinematic yet at the same time appropriately intimate in ways that suits Shakespeare who, writing for the Elizabethan stage, focused by necessity on dialogue rather than complex spectacle.

Yet there are two obvious stand-out performances by two truly great actors who, incidentally, both exemplify different schools of acting, both done to perfection- the traditional stage approack of John Gielgud and the method, er, method of Marlon Brando. Gielgud is the perfect Cassius. Yet Brando as Mark Antony steals the show. Antony doesn't have as much prominence in the play as one might think, but he certainly has the big soliloquys. And Brando performs them in a way that may never be surpassed, perhaps showing once and for all that the best of Hollywood can approach Shakespeare with utter confidence. Making no attempt to pointlessly do a fake British accent, Brando brings an intensity to the part that makes the words come alive. It is, perhaps, the single greatest Shakespeare performance ever committed to film.

So, yeah, this is a truly great film. It also shows how the same Shakespeare play can speak to you in different ways each time you see it, perhaps shaped by the differences in direction, performance, version of the text. Here I was struck by the many references to the inevitability of death and how one must manage one's fear and existential dread that we are all mortal. Death is the only certainty in life.

Yet the one line that struck me most this time came not from one of the characters but from the Roman crowd as Brutus makes his speech: "Let him be Caesar!". Brutus and the conspirators do their bloody deed, ostensibly for liberty and so that the Roman Republic may not know another Tarquin, yet the masses utterly miss the point, thereby showing that such scruples are futile in the long run... and, of course, young Octavian waits in the wings, he and Antony dissing poor Lepidus behind his back...

So, yeah. Nice simple film for knackered old me.

Julius Caesar (1970)

 "This was the noblest Romam of them all."

Obviously, I know this play. I also know the 1953 film with Marlon Brando, and with John Gielgud in a less exalted, but more electrifying part. I mean, is the superlative Sir John Gielgud... phoning it in? I do believe he is.

Not that this film is crap. It's just not the 1953 film, probably. I mean, I saw it probably twenty-five years ago, long before this blog. Memory is an imperfect intrument. But it- and Brando, especially- made a deep impression on me. Any subsequent Mark Antony has big boots to fill. And those big soliloquys must be approached with trepidation. An actor lives or dies by them.

So how does this compare? Well, the standard British characters actors are very RSC. Robert Vaughn impresses with Casca, giving a daring yet pleaasingly arch performance. Diana Rigg shines during her one big scene.

But what of Charlton Heston? Well, this was brave of him. He's no Brando, not even close, but he's good enough. His "Pardon me, thou bleeding piece of Earth" is so so, but his funerary speech for Caesar is fascinating. Not as passionate as many, but great facial acting and restraint, which really, really works.

The entire production is fascinating. We begin with a bird of prey, circling. The battle is visceral, as is the bloody murder. There is no honour in war here, only bloodshed. Shades of Vietnam, and Oh, What a Lovely War?, the 1970 zeitgeist. This is not the best version, being quite flat. But hey, it's Shakespeare.

Julius Caesar (Gregory Doran, 2012)

"How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over / In states unborn and accents yet unknown?"

There's a lot of Shakespeare on BBC4 at the moment, and it's all piling up, unwatched, rebuking me. I did a degree in English, many years ago, and yet it's possible that I haven't read or seen any Shakespeare since. I've only read around twelve of the forty-and-counting plays, which is sort of pathetic. My degree certificate is staring sternly at me as I write this: something must be done, and so it shall.

So here's the first of many of these reviews. Generally they'll be looking at the BBC4 productions, which are essentially filmed versions of recent stage productions but with some concessions to the medium of television, although that won't always be so, as in the case of the forthcoming history plays. There'll also be films and whatnot.

This particular production is very topical indeed, being that it's currently running in Stratford upon Avon. There's a contemporary African aesthetic, with everything about the play's look and directorial style strongly suggesting the slow slide from liberty to authoritarianism, driven by one charismatic figure, that seems to be happening in places like Uganda and Ethiopia. There's also, of course, a hint of the Arab Spring. The cast is led by the outstanding Patterson Joseph as Brutus, a slightly subdued Cyril Nri as Cassius and Ray Fearon as Mark Antony.

Lots of people don't like the idea of Shakespeare in modern or non-contemporary dress. I do. For one thing, certain plays (including this one) are very common, and it's nice to have a little variation in the visuals. For another, the anachronisms are already there. These are Romans who hear clocks chiming and allude often, and eloquently, to the effects of the four humours. Realism has its place, but to be shackled to it would be dull indeed. And the setting serves to emphasise certain of the plays themes, and remind us of their universalism. There's nothing exclusively Roman about the power relationships we see here. The only unfortunate side to modern dress is that it renders awkward those features of Shakespeare that reflect the style or technical limitations of the time, with battles always taking place out of shot and wives dying off-screen

It's hard to judge the full effect of the setting, though; it's devised for the stage and, although the crowd scenes (including Mark Antony's speech) are essentially just a camera pointed at the stage, the rest of the play was filmed on location, hence the plotting between Cassius, Brutus and Casca takes place in a urinal, complete with mimed peeing(!), while the "ambitious" Caesar is killed, symbolically, on a broken escalator. I'm almost tempted to go hunting for symbolism in the peeing, too…

The only version I'd previously seen was the 1953 film version, in which the most prominent and foregrounded performers were Marlon Brando as Mark Antony and John Gielgud as Cassius. So I was a little surprised, at first, to see the superb Patterson Joseph cast as a surprisingly wily Brutus, whereas Cassius might have been a more natural part for him. But I came to appreciate this more intelligent Brutus, calculating but never cynical. Nri's Cassius, meanwhile, was far more fallible, and less Machiavellian, than I'd expected. Fearon's performance was strong, but there were too similarities to Brando's iconic portrayal to fully escape from its shadow.

I love this play, and there are always new things to be seen. I love Shakespeare's cynical yet true depictions of the fickleness and murderousness of the mob, who are easy prey to demagoguery and mistake Cinna the poet for Cinna the conspirator as easily as they mistake paediatricians for paedophiles. There's a universal human truth right there. And Mark Antony's speeches, cynical and practical deployments of rhetoric though they are, are things of such beauty.

It would be wrong, I think, to judge the production too much by its camerawork, as it has only one foot in the televisual medium, at best. But the scene in which Antony and Octavian (a Laurent Kabila-like Ivanno Jeremiah) casually discuss their proscriptions is nicely punctuated by short, sharp cuts to hooded figures being shot in the back of the head, which I found very powerful.

Perhaps the production is let down slightly by the sometimes overly restrained performance of Cyril Nri, but the use of the African setting works well, and Patterson Joseph is outstanding.