Page 119 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

108 I Shakespeare in the Movies

with a hollow feeling; absolute power has corrupted Antony
absolutely. He will be an effective leader, though a ruthless one. A
truly great prince must, like Henry V, project humility and human-
ity as well as hauteur; Antony, like Cassius before him, has devel-
oped a lean and hungry look, setting up his highly ambiguous
character in Shakespeare's sequel, Antony and Cleopatra.

Savage Spectacle
Julius Caesar

Commonwealth United, 1970; Stuart Burge

Ever since getting a taste of the Antony role while still a recent col-
lege graduate, Charlton Heston had been hungering to play the part
in a big-scale film. After achieving superstardom following DeMille's
Ten Commandments, and then receiving the Best Actor Oscar for
William Wyler's Ben-Hur, Heston let it be known that he would
accept a considerable cut in salary if anyone was willing to mount
an alternative interpretation of M-G-M's highly regarded (some
would say overpraised) film. During the early sixties, Orson Welles
(who had directed and costarred with Heston in the film-noir classic
Touch of Evil) called one night, enthusiastically explaining that CBS
wanted him to direct a filmed Julius Caesar for a network broadcast.
Richard Burton was supposedly set to do Brutus, although negotia-
tions with the network broke down and the project was eventually
discarded.
Heston's offer to take a salary cut remained open. As it happened,
a young Canadian producer, Peter Snell, needed to sign a major name
before assembling his first feature film. The moment an A-list actor
agreed to play Antony (for $100,000, a fraction of his normal pay-
check), Snell had little trouble raising a modest $1.6 million to shoot
Julius Caesar on a tight budget. Heston's name also made it easy to
attract other talent. John Gielgud had done Brutus onstage, Cassius
on film, and was happy to now play the title character. Orson
Welles, a onetime stage Brutus, was anxious to do that role. There
was only one problem. The character of Brutus, young and innocent,
wasn't right for a middle-aged, overweight man; "He's too fat!"
exclaimed Gielgud, though admitting that Orson would have been a
wonderful choice, actingwise. Welles might have made a fine Cas-