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How difficult it is to transpose a text like the Shakespearean Julius Caesar is demonstrated by the very few films that have revisited the work, compared to Hamlet and Othello, not to mention Romeo and Juliet, which, in addition to a very high number of reinterpretations, has provided the material for most love stories following the Elizabethan era.
This 1953 version, directed by Mankiewicz with the participation of very well-known actors and with a considerable starting budget, represents everything that should be avoided when deciding to bring a literary work to the screen. But let's proceed in order.
The tragedy narrates the final hours of Julius Caesar, fresh victor in the civil war against Pompey: the action is therefore spread over a few hours, less than a day in the first part (the most well-known one), where the speeches of the protagonists seem to float in an almost dreamlike dimension, twisting and falling back on themselves. It is set against a city animated by dark presences, its sky torn by divine signs, comets, eclipses, its streets populated by unreal beings, unsettling presences, nightly processions... The tension increases with each scene, infiltrating the deceitful speeches of Cassius, the prudent verses of Brutus, and the proud words tinged with doubt of Caesar until the assassination scene: here we have the Catastrophe, the moment in which the tragedy is resolved, the tension soars from the mind it once clouded. The second part of the tragedy sees the various leaders of the competing factions alternate on the pulpit, in a dispute that is first verbal and then, moved outside of Rome, martial.
Thus far the tragedy of William Shakespeare. But the film by Mankiewicz tells quite another tale, not so much in the choice of scenes (the fidelity is total), but in the approach to the material, in the awareness of the environment surrounding the characters, in the soul. It's thought-provoking (but perhaps not too much if one considers it's Hollywood) to know that the movie won the Oscar in 1953 for the set design, when these are diametrically opposed to the spirit of the original work: the murky and confused Rome of the English poet now becomes a sunny and spacious fashionable capital, adorned with imperial statues and oriental jewelry in a play of anachronisms that finds a parallel in the contemporary costume epic productions.
The characters move through these open and sunny settings in a forced and childish manner, but they do so undoubtedly due to a director bewildered: the film is permeated by the palpable hurry of someone who must compress a five-act tragedy into two hours without cutting anything from the original.
The original dimension of the tragedy is therefore distorted; Julius Caesar is a drama saturated with tension, in which the characters continuously dialogue with each other, but do so disinterestedly. It is a tragedy of individuality, where the characters, from the best to the most abject, seem more interested in their inner dimension than in actual exchanges of dialogue: before Cassius speaks, Brutus is already convinced of the crime he must commit, and before his wife communicates her turmoil, it is Caesar himself who laments inwardly. None of this complexity remains in Mankiewicz's adaptation, which speeds up the pacing by eliminating every pause, every silence, every void. If we add to this deliberately theatrical acting (against which, ironically, Hamlet himself railed in his drama) it becomes apparent how very little can be salvaged.
The little that does bring to mind the classical greatness is once again offered by Marlon Brando's superb interpretation. In the role of Mark Antony, he stands on the pulpit to remember the father/friend/protector Caesar: and then it's a fire, in the eyes, in the veins, ignited at every word, every silence (here indeed the director does his work well by dictating the timing): never over the top, never understated, this Mark Antony we see before our eyes possesses the greatness not only of the Shakespearean character, but also of the Plutarchan, the Ciceronian... the REAL one.
For the rest, even in the finale (with the sole exception of Antony's parts) the film returns to its extremely low standards: when the original text closely approaches the director's declamatory and theatrical style, then the result is grandiose, but every time it returns to more reflective and calm moments, the most insipid banality breaks through once again.
A pity.
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