Monday | August 29, 2011 7:00 pm

Julius Caesar

Screening on Film

Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
With Marlon Brando, James Mason, John Gielgud.
US, 1953, 35mm, black & white, 120 min.

Featuring an impressive all-star cast, Julius Caesar is often cited as the most authentic and faithful Shakespeare adaptations, among the very few to retain virtually all of the Bard's original dialogue. Shakespeare's Caesarian Rome offers Mankiewicz another intricately theatrical realm to explore his perennial fascination with deceitful role playing and betrayal, with Caesar's assassination and martyrdom resonating as a powerful political allegory of Red Scare Hollywood. A showcase of Mankiewicz's great talent with actors, Julius Caesar is enlivened by its intermingling of the Method school brooding of Marlon Brando's Mark Antony with the more classically polished bravura performances of James Mason's Brutus and John Gielgud's Casius.