Synopsis
Julius Caesar (1953) is a film you can watch online on iFILM — MGM's black-and-white Shakespeare adaptation directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, with a cast that puts two acting traditions in the same room deliberately.
Rome, 44 BC. Brutus (James Mason) and Cassius (John Gielgud) see themselves as principled men acting for the republic. They carry out the plan. Then Mark Antony steps forward. Marlon Brando delivers the funeral speech to the crowd almost without inflection, and that restraint is exactly what makes it deadly. The conspirators had calculated everything except him.
Gielgud arrived as a revered figure of classical British theatre with decades of stage Shakespeare behind him. Brando was still riding A Streetcar Named Desire, using method techniques that puzzled most people on set. Mankiewicz cast them together on purpose. The film picked up the Oscar for Best Art Direction and was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2014. Watch Julius Caesar (1953) online on iFILM.
Starring
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