Julius Caesar (1971)

Watching a period film means watching an age unfold in front of your eyes; it's something that brings back the past alive, either in an entertaining or offbeat manner. JULIUS CAESAR, which was shown to me and my classmates in school by our history teacher, turned out to be nothing but just a heavily boring and stage-dramatic period drama which has only its performances as the plus points.Drama doesn't necessarily mean it has to be boring. It can be entertaining as well. JC delivers on the performance front, but fails to serve its purpose in any possible way. Technically too, the film is just average, and with fairly decent yet average battle scenes, the film doesn't hold its ground. Efforts by the actors and makers are appreciable, but as a whole, the film's quite unimpressive.Honestly, the film started well but as it proceeded, it turned out to be a completely disappointing affair which felt too long and overdone at 117 minutes.

"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.

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.

One of the things that I always thought about Julius Caesar is that in the life of one of the great movers and shakers of the ancient world, he's merely a figure in which all kinds of people at the end are busy weaving their schemes around, be it his death or his conferred immortality. Antony and Brutus are each worried about their place in Caesar's affections and Brutus figures he's lost out to Antony. It makes him an easy mark for Cassius's plots. 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. That's not what you get in Jason Robards, Jr. For a man who in his time was considered the greatest interpreter of Eugene O'Neill, when it comes to Shakespeare the man was out of his league. No reflection on him, everyone has casting limitations.A real good interpreter of the Bard who played Cassius back in 1954 plays Caesar here. John Gielgud is equally fine in both versions. And Richard Johnson and Robert Vaughn are superb as conspirators Cassius and Casca. 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. Oddly enough in that earlier version James Mason as Brutus was the best one in the film.