New Picture

Julius Caesar (MGM) is the best Shakespeare that Hollywood has yet produced.* For one thing, Julius Caesar is a play that lends itself fairly easily to filming. Melodramatic rather than introspective, it is a sort of gangster picture with an ancient (44 B.C.) Roman setting. Its political-thriller plot--a bloody conspiracy, and the tyranny that is bred by lust for power--has obvious modern parallels.

This Julius Caesar falls considerably short of the grandeur of Sir Laurence Olivier's Henry V and the overpowering sense of tragedy of his Hamlet. Nor does it have the visual imagination of Orson Welles's Macbeth. But it is satisfying moviemaking, and, as an honest Hollywood try at Shakespeare, it deserves three rousing cheers.

Produced by John Houseman (who in 1937 put on a striking, modern-dress stage version of Julius Caesar with Orson Welles) and directed by Joseph (All About Eve) Mankiewicz, this is a polished and lavish production. But, dedicated to the theory that the play's the thing, it does not stress pageantry for its own sake. Faithful in letter and spirit to the play, the movie has no "additional dialogue," and the cuts are mainly in the last third of the play, traditionally considered expendable on the stage.

The star-spangled cast, recruited from both stage and screen, exhibits a wide variety of acting styles, but the individual performances are expert. Most unusual casting: Marlon Brando giving a flamboyant performance in the showy role of Mark Antony, Caesar's ruthless avenger. Cinemagoers who saw Brando in The Men and A Streetcar Named Desire may be surprised to hear him, minus his slurring Stanley Kowalski speech mannerisms, clearly enunciating the famous, rabble-rousing funeral oration. Less clear in his performance is that mercurial combination of demagogue and patriot, of force and "quick spirit" that is Antony's character. But Brando's characterization is more than competent, and his smouldering, sullen personality adds excitement to a crucial role.

The other performances, in a mixture of British and American accents, range most of the way from the formal to the folksy. In his Hollywood debut, veteran Shakespearean Actor John Gielgud gives the part of Cassius, leader of the conspirators, his meticulous diction, classic profile, and a lean and hungry look. Less traditional in their delivery are Louis Calhern, as a rather tired-looking Caesar, and Edmond O'Brien, in a departure from his usual cops & robbers roles, as Casca, the conspiracy's hatchet man. In the vital role of Brutus, James Mason gives an intense, brooding performance that effectively combines the poetic and the prosaic. Greer Garson and Deborah Kerr, as Caesar's wife Calpurnia and Brutus's wife Portia, are decoratively patrician, but have little to do in roles that are virtually bits.

To his friends--a good many of them bebop-talking actors, waitresses and artists--Marlon Brando, 29, is "the most," a "cool cat" off stage or on. If he has a reputation for being a "character," it is only because he dislikes conformity, either in his professional or private life.

Brando objects, for instance, to the pressures of movie acting: "You have to get up in front of a camera and say the same lines all day long. It's like saying: 'Pass the salad, pass the salad, pass the salad,' until it gets as dull to your ear as water dripping from a faucet." He also dislikes some of the character-diluting cutting that moviemakers do. One final unkind cut in Caesar: "During the battle--I've forgotten the lines--where Octavius says something like 'Man, what's happening?' and I say 'Cool, Dick.' "

A good Hollywood movie, Brando thinks, is practically impossible to produce because U.S. moviemakers are primarily businessmen: "The Europeans are businessmen too, but they can handle art because their culture permits it. They're not in such a hurry--people take their time. They examine little things. A director will show you a guy going out his door, down a long hall, down the stairs, across the street, into a bar and into the men's room, just to let you know he's going to the men's room. Here, everything has to move fast or people won't like the movie, so it won't make any money."

He feels that most moviegoers do not even want stimulation. "Take the average guy. He looks at a Giorgione, or a Bernini, or a Masaccio, and he says, 'Ehh!' He doesn't have anything in his own life to identify it with. The same with the movies; the guys only want the rubber-stamp product. Why, what happened when you got a picture done with true sensitivity, like The Quiet One [TIME, Jan. 31,1949]? That film died, Dick, it died . . . The moviegoers just don't want to have to reach."

Brando himself is the reaching kind. Having recently finished a Stanley Kramer picture called The Wild One, he plans to "nob around" Manhattan for a few weeks digging the art galleries. Then he sails for a three-month tour of Europe. When he gets back, he hopes to direct an off-Broadway play or two, and study voice and diction on the side. That, he thinks, will be the most.

*The two previous major attempts: Warner's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) with Mickey Rooney, Joe E. Brown and James Cagney; MGM's Romeo and Juliet (1936) with Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer. Financially and artistically disastrous, these productions convinced Hollywood that Shakespeare was "boxoffice poison."

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