aramis-112-804880 "Julius Caesar" is perhaps the most accessible of Shakespeare's plays. Short, direct, pithy. It's a cautionary play about the error of assassination. 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. Richard Chamberlain is a feisty Octavian. Diana Rigg is perhaps the loveliest ever Portia; and talented as she was as the "Avengers" action star, she does Shakespeare like she was born to it. The real prize of this flick, however, was Robert Vaughn's sly, humorous Casca. 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. It's Brutus, the man who tries to usher in a republic but who, assassinating an old friend who looks to become a tyrant, inadvertently brings forth the Roman Empire.Robards is TERRIBLE. He walks zombie-like through the early part of the flick. An actor known for his greatness in Eugene O'Neill, Robards seems to have never heard of Shakespeare. His leaden delivery (if one can call it that) of lines shows no distinction between one word and the next. It's not like he thinks every word is as important as the next, but that none of them matter a whit. He might be a foreign actor reading the words phonetically off cue cards.Toward the end Robards shows a bit of life, but by that time we're all asleep. And he's still giving the lines like he never considered what they meant. 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. A good actor in normal circumstances, Johnson was probably a poor choice as he was not well known to American audiences. The scenes between Cassius and Brutus should be subtle, often delivered with a wry wit. But with Robards seeming to feel he's done his bit by showing up at all, in their mutual scenes Johnson gives the feeling he's a lone reindeer dragging the sleigh by main force.Johnson should have studied Diana Rigg, who gives a subtle and touching performance as Portia, apparently deciding it was best to pretend Robards wasn't in the room.I don't know if this was a period when Robards was hitting the bottle, but he sunk what might have been a masterpiece. One wonders, where was the director? Director Stuart Burge is not well-known. His work consisted mostly of television stuff; but he had done great plays before, juggling temperamental actors like Olivier, Redgrave, Michael Hordern and Jeremy Brett, amongst others. Why was he MIA, instead of telling Robards to snap out of it or he'd hire a real actor? Since Brutus is the central character of the play (which should have been called "The Tragedy of Brutus" . . . well, Robards alone turns the whole enterprise into a disaster. It's like watching a train wreck. You can see the tragedy coming but there's not a darn thing you can do to stop it.It's not a total waste of talent. Johnson and Chamberlain try to take too much upon themselves, but some of the stars are worth watching, including Heston, Vaughn and Rigg. If you must watch this sluggish mess, keep your thumb on the fast forward.

virek213 When it comes to cinematically pulling anything off that has its basis in the world of William Shakespeare, the task can frequently be enormous. 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. And then in 1969, an enterprising and young Canadian producer named Peter Snell decided to mount a new adaptation of this work. 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. Indeed, many consider this film wildly erratic for various reasons, including one quixotic bit of casting that didn't come off. 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. And you have, in the main, a great cast. Gielgud appears here in the title role, and he does a superlative job. Charlton Heston does a solid turn as Marc Antony (although in his journals he admits that's not such a big trick, since, in his view, if you can't do Marc Antony, you probably shouldn't be doing The Bard in the first place). 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. This is what happens here, with Jason Robards having accepted a role he just wasn't cut out for, when the oft-elusive Orson Welles was unavailable.. What worked in the plays of Eugene O'Neill, and on screen in films like ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE, and MAGNOLIA doesn't really work well here. 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. Clearly, this isn't the most successful adaptation of The Bard. But given how hard it is to pull Shakespeare off cinematically, it is worth a 7 (out of 10).

david-sarkies While the play is good, this particular movie, unfortunately, does not do it justice. 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. Personally, this is not Heston's best movie, and the only actor that actually does a decent job is John Geilgud (as one would expect from such a man). Another thing that just didn't seem to work is when Heston speaks the line 'friend's, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears'. He does it softly, and looking down, when I imagine it being said, as Mark Antony takes the stage after Brutus, and as the crowd beings to move off, loudly so as to immediately catch everybody's attention. A quick glance over the internet seems to suggest that I am not alone in this assessment of this movie.Julius Ceaser is a tragedy, but Ceaser is not the tragic hero, Brutus is. In fact, Brutus is the central character in this play, alongside Ceaser, and while the character of Ceaser bestrides the play as a colossus, and that every aspect of this play looks to Ceaser, with his death being the centerpiece upon which all of the action turns, it is to Brutus that our sympathy's lie, so let me talk a bit about the character of Brutus.First, while I may have said that Robard's accent undermines the movie, the way that he plays Brutus doesn't. He plays a character that moves through the entire play with a burden on his shoulder, and a deep sense of guilt at having to betray the man he loves. In fact, Mark Antony, the one who takes it on his shoulders to avenge Ceaser's murder, does not say one bad word against Brutus. I think Shakespeare does this on purpose, because Brutus has gone down in history, alongside Judas Iscariot, as the quintessential traitor. I don't think Shakespeare wants to demonise Brutus, not in the same sense that he demonises Richard III, or paints Cassius as the villain. Brutus is torn between his loyalty to his friend and his loyalty to the Republic. Therefore, in a sense, he is the reluctant conspirator.One can tell that this play is not going to be simple. While we are all familiar with how Ceaser was stabbed to death in the Roman Senate to protect the republic, the reasons behind his murder are complex. Cassius claims that Ceaser's ambition is his downfall, but Antony responds by saying not true. Three times Ceaser was handed the crown, and three times Ceaser refused to take it. However, when Ceaser is approached to be led to the senate, and he decides to stay with his wife, it is the crown that the conspirators use to lure him away.Then there is the triumph when Ceaser enters the play. A triumph was a celebration and festival to a man who had done great things for Rome, usually by defeating an enemy or adding territory to the empire. Ceaser had had a few of these. However, it is this latest one that raises the ire of Cassius because it is not a foreign enemy that Ceaser defeated, but one of their own – Pompey. Ceaser has ended the civil war and brought peace to Rome, but it is a peace that will not last as very quickly the empire is plunged back into war as the new triumvirate (Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus) march out to bring the conspirators to justice. Still, even when Antony stands over the corpse of Brutus, he does not have a bad thing to say about the man.

Chuck Rothman (crothman) The cast is great, but the movie is completely lacking in drama. Most of the problem is with Jason Robards's performance. He practically sleepwalks through the role of Brutus -- no emotion, no life, no nothing. The play trudges along with only a few flashes of quality. Major disappointment.