BAROMETER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 765, 19 March 1954, Page 20

BAROMETER

FINE: "Julius Caesar." nhs » Seas "Beneath the 12-Mile Reef." ;

the character. However Shakespeare viewed him, Brutus to modern eyes is a lightweight compared with his great ancestor — susceptible to gross flattery, eternally blethering about his sacred honour. That is the picture Mason gives us, but I feel it was involuntary. I fully expected to be impressed by Gielgud and he was certainly superb, both in the lucidity of his lines and in the practised artistry of his voice. His Cassius fairly crackled with envy, spite and spleen. Yet it is Brando that I will remember most clearly. I can’t quite explain this to my own satisfaction. His diction is not as good as Gielgud’ssometimes he almost chews his wordsbut he is (I can really find no other word) more dramatic. I suspect that Mankiewicz directed him more firmly than he did Gielgud and the latter has carried over to the screen some of the larger, the more extravagant movements of the theatre. Brando's effects come often from small causes-a bloody hand furtively rubbed against his toga, a quick sideways glance under lowered brows. These things are small and insignificant on the stage, but Mankiewicz knows well their potency in closeup. Brando’s impact, however, comes mainly from the man himself. He is a centre of excitement-a charged battery -and he has only to appear on the scene to capture one’s attention. If you love Shakespeare, or if (in Orson Welles’s words) you simply sit through it in order to recognise the quotations, I commend Julius Caesar to you. You may think, as I did once or twice, that it could have been better done, but no-one can deny that it has been well done and honestly done. I raise my hat gratefully to .the studio that produced it and hope that they will gain more than grace for their pains,