Julius Caesar (1953 film)

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Julius Caesar
Original cinema poster for Julius Caesar
Directed by	Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Produced by	John Houseman
Written by	William Shakespeare (play) Joseph L. Mankiewicz (screenplay)
Starring	Marlon Brando James Mason John Gielgud Louis Calhern Edmond O'Brien Greer Garson Deborah Kerr
Music by	Miklós Rózsa
Cinematography	Joseph Ruttenberg
Editing by	John Dunning
Distributed by	MGM
Release date(s)	June 4, 1953 (USA)
Running time	121 min.
Country	USA
Language	English
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

For other adaptations of the play, see Shakespeare_on_screen#Julius_Caesar.

Julius Caesar is a 1953 film adaptation of the Shakespeare play Julius Caesar. It was made by MGM, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who also wrote the uncredited screenplay, and produced by John Houseman. The original music score was by Miklós Rózsa.

It stars Marlon Brando as Mark Antony, James Mason as Brutus, John Gielgud as Cassius, Louis Calhern as Julius Caesar, Edmond O'Brien as Casca, Greer Garson as Calpurnia, and Deborah Kerr as Portia.

[edit] Awards and nominations

The film won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction, and was nominated for the Best Actor in a Leading Role (Marlon Brando), Best Cinematography, Black-and-White, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture and Best Picture. Brando's nomination was the third time in three consecutive years that he was nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award. He was nominated in 1951 for A Streetcar Named Desire and in 1952 for Viva Zapata!.

It also won two BAFTA awards for Best British Actor (John Gielgud) and Best Foreign Actor (Marlon Brando). It was also nominated in the Best Film category. Brando won the BAFTA Best Actor award in three consecutive years for Viva Zapata! (1952), Julius Caesar (1953), and On the Waterfront (1954).

It won the Best Film and Best Actor Award for James Mason from The National Board of Review.

[edit] Casting

Many of the actors connected with this film had previous experience with the play. John Gielgud had played Marc Antony at the Old Vic Theatre in 1930 and Cassius at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-on-Avon in 1950, James Mason had played Brutus at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in the 1940s, and John Hoyt, who plays Decius Brutus, also played him in the 1937 stage version. Gielgud later played the title role in the 1970 film with Charlton Heston, Jason Robards and Richard Johnson (as Cassius) and in a stage production directed by John Schlesinger at the Royal National Theatre. John Houseman, who had produced the famous 1937 Broadway version of the play starring Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre, also produced the MGM film. By this time, however, Welles and Houseman had had a falling out, and Welles had nothing to do with the 1953 film. P. M. Pasinetti, Italian-American writer, scholar, and teacher at UCLA served as a technical advisor.

Brando's casting was met with some scepticism when it was announced, as he had acquired the nickname of "The Mumbler" following his performance in A Streetcar Named Desire. Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz even considered Paul Scofield for the role of Marc Antony if Brando's screen test was unsuccesful, but he was so dedicated in his performance during shooting that John Gielgud offered to direct him in a stage production of Hamlet, a proposition that Brando turned down.