Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears (or, you know, eyes in this case). I stand before you to bear witness that the thespian might of Sir John Gielgud and James Mason did battle with the American upstart over the words of that fine gentleman William Shakespeare. Some say that it changed the course of Hollywood forever.
Method actor heartthrob Marlon Brando had set the screen alight with his muscular intensity in 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire, but there were snooty scoffs two years later that he would be tackling The Bard as Mark Anthony is the great tragedy Julius Caesar.
The film industry back then had generally accepted that such roles were the plummy purview of Laurence Olivier and the like, as much on stage as on the screen.
Just watch the electrifying clip below to see how that was all blown away by Brando’s magnificent, magnetic presence. His legs weren’t bad, either.
The cast was truly stellar. Gielgud and Mason played Cassius and Brutus, the architects of Caesar’s assassination, with Broadway star Louis Calhern as the doomed dictator.
Hollywood beauties Greer Garson and Deborah Kerr were Calpurnia and Portia, the wives of Caesar and Brutus, but Brando, with the help of dialect coach Florence O’Neill, outshone them all.
Gielgud and Brando took home BAFTAS for their performances, while the American star received his third consecutive Oscar nomination, before he finally bagged his first of two the following year for On The Waterfront.
TIME magazine called the film “The best Shakespeare that Hollywood has yet produced.” The praise for Brando was even more glowing, with many singling out the climactic scene below.
The New Yorker said: “Over Caesar’s corpse Brando begins to mix grief, rage, cunning, and ferocity; his reading of the funeral oration is so quakingly angry you understand why it would rouse the rabble.”
Another critic added: “Brando became a legend in gritty Elia Kazan productions, but it was his naturalistic approach in nonrealistic Mankiewicz fare like this and 1955’s Guys and Dolls that helped transform all acting.”
Sadly, the star wouldn’t return to Shakespeare again, but you can watch this legendary film, which has just been added to BBC iPlayer, for free now.
