jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Friends, Bloggers, Countrymen: I come to praise Brando, not to link to a YouTube clip of his posthumous performance in Superman Returns. This star-studded 1953 production–directed, like Cleopatra, by Joseph L. Mankiewicz–provides everything you’re looking for in a Shakespeare adaptation: statues, togas, striking profiles, and superhuman eloquence.

James Mason plays moody Brutus, John Gielgud his fellow republican conspirator Cassius, Louis Calhern the doomed tyrant Caesar, and Deborah Kerr has a scene as Brutus’ wife Portia. Brutus is the play’s central character, but it is Marlon Brando, in the role of Marc Antony, who rules supreme. He’s introduced with his shirt off, looks impossibly regal in a robe, and ends up smiting his enemies in full armor–and when he opens his mouth, he spouts some of Shakespeare’s best speeches.

The merits and problems of this adaptation are so obvious that even ol’ Bosley Crowther got it right: “The vibrant illusion of mighty doings flows strongly from the screen” but:

Breathes there a high school junior who doesn’t know that the high point of the play is Mark Antony’s stirring oration over the body of his friend? With Mr. Brando delivering this oration in a brilliant, electrifying splurge of bitter and passionate invective about two-thirds of the way through the film, the remaining decline and fall of Brutus and Cassius seem spiritless and drab. If ever there was an anti-climax in a film (or a play), it is here.

Julius Caesar. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1953. ***

• Julius Caesar (Movie) on Wikipedia
• Julius Caesar (Play) on Wikipedia
• Cleopatra
• HBO’s Rome
• Just in time for the Shakespeare Blogathon!
  

Prompted by the grand finale of Rome, we took another look at Cleopatra, which is one of those movies I can rewatch every few years. Compare-and-contrast is a fun enough game, and Marcy, who was never entirely sure which of the HBO characters were fictional, was entertained by noting differences in motivation and plot. Every frame of Cleopatra must have cost more than an entire episode of Rome, but the storytelling is much more contemporary on HBO. The movie nearly bankrupted Fox because it was designed to trump TV by outspending it. Forty years later, it has been shown up by… a TV show. But the images are still twice as wide, and the characters twice as grand.

Here’s what fascinated me, though: the palatial sets, outlandish backdrops, and outsized drama of Cleopatra resemble another, much more recent epic about larger-than-life figures. Along with forties serials, The Hidden Fortress, Ray Harryhausen and all the other usual suspects, there is no doubt that the Cinemascope epics of the fifties and sixties, and specifically Cleopatra, served as a blueprint for the Star Wars films. Archetypes in ever-morphing hairdos and caped costumes acting out eternal tragedies and reciting awkward, overwritten lines of dialogue — especially Revenge of the Sith, the episode in which the galactic shit hits the fan, is the spiritual and cinematic heir of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s four-and-a-half-hour epic.

Read on for more about Star Wars, Grindhouse, and why Jar-Jar Binks is cooler than Stuntman Mike. Also, lots more screenshots.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s rare that a TV show ends before it has outstayed its welcome. Rome, which offered equal parts history, soap opera intrigue, gore, and soft porn, has run its course now, and the adventures of Vorenus and Pullo will be missed. The series covered the events of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’ Cleopatra — one half per season — and, with the ascent of Augustus, segues nicely into I, Claudius. The vibe of Rome, of course, was often more Caligula than Robert Graves. I’m sad it’s over. ****

Previously.

From Cleopatra, Liz Taylor’s arrival in Rome:

From Rome, Mark Antony’s arrival in Egypt:

From Caligula, Helen Mirren’s dance: