Page 112 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

A Tide in Men's Lives / 101

would don garb befitting British nobility. Though Will remained
essentially true to Plutarch's conception, he freely shaded characters
and events for his own purpose.
Although Caesar is the title character, he is hardly the leading
one. Brutus and Cassius, as they flowed from Shakespeare's quill,
emerged not merely as coconspirators but dramatic foils. Brutus is
the idealist who kills Caesar to save the republic when Caesar's
ambition threatens its limited democracy. Cassius is a cynic, embit-
tered by his own inability to achieve greatness and hungry to taste
power. The Machiavellian Cassius works his wiles on Brutus. This
aspect of the plot is influenced as much by the medieval morality
play and The Prince as Plutarch, since Shakespeare shaped a Brutus
who, Faust-like, sells his soul to Cassius's devil in the flesh. Brutus
emerges as a tragic hero; his appealing naivete ironically brings him
down.
Which explains why Shakespeare's Antony could, at the end, gaze
down at the body of Brutus, the man who murdered his beloved
mentor, proclaiming, "This was the noblest Roman of them all,"
and meaning it. Shakespeare also invented the play's most memo-
rable moment, Antony's funeral address over Caesar's body, which
appears neither in Plutarch nor any earlier stage renderings. No
matter that Antony's words were created by an Englishman fifteen
hundred years after the fact. For the following four centuries, politi-
cians the world over would crib from that speech, adapting strategies
for manipulating the masses to their own ends. The abstract truths
this play offers about the world of politics and distinct types of
people who inhabit it transcend specifics of Rome, 44 B.C., due to
Shakespeare's ability to dramatize universal situations through a spe-
cific setting; the tale rang true for Elizabethans and does for us today.
Which explains why Julius Caesar works well when performed in
modern dress or rehearsal clothes.

Early Efforts
The first film version of Julius Caesar (1907) was not an abbreviated
adaptation but a five-minute portrayal of Shakespeare sitting in a
garret and penning the piece as characters leap to life from his imag-
ination. The director was France's Georges Melies; one year later,
American producers Stuart J. Blackton and Sigmund Lubin fashioned
competing one-reel (ten-minute) shorts, focusing on the play's
exploitive elements, particularly the murder in the senate. Also in