Page 122 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

A Tide in Men's Lives / 111

Another scene, approached in an original manner, features the
cynical Antony, the crafty Octavius, and the good soldier Lepidus
deciding (after their coup) who is to live and who is to die. Heston
offered the ingenious idea of having the men discuss their hit list
while hedonistically reclining in a Roman bath attended by nubile
slave girls rather than stiffly sitting around the conventional table.
This produced a sense of "chilling detachment" via an ironic con-
trast between men enjoying superficial creature comforts while casu-
ally dismissing comrades. It's "a meeting of Mafia capos," according
to Heston in his 1995 autobiography In the Arena, "with Antony as
godfather."
No actor could erase the memory of Gielgud's Cassius (which in
itself makes the M-G-M film worthwhile); still, Richard Johnson
offers an alternative that is unique yet satisfying, playing down the
Machiavellian interpretation that Gielgud emphasized. Gielgud's
Cassius was haughty, self-important, and epicene, while Johnson's
Cassius comes across as ruggedly masculine, a man made bitter by
experience and harboring legitimate complaints. Gielgud's Cassius,
angrily questioning why he hadn't achieved Caesar's status, seems
superficial and self-pitying. Johnson rails against the unfairness of
life because he is one of those qualified people who get lost in the
shuffle.
The production emphasizes how Cassius's every decision, such as
standing against Brutus's ill-guided notion of sparing Antony or the
awful decision to let Antony speak, is right on the money. Toward
the end, Burge includes a sequence Mankiewicz trimmed away in
which Brutus, misguided as ever, sends word to Cassius to reinforce
him at Phillippi. Cassius knows that it is ill advised to risk all the
troops in a single fight. Yet his love of Brutus, whom he initially
hoped to exploit, has now expanded and is quite genuine. He has
arced completely and can only sadly shrug, then ride into the valley
of death. The dignity of this self-sacrifice, missing from Mankiewicz's
film, alters the audience's reaction, so that, at least in part, because of
Robards's incompetence, this Julius Caesar threatens to become "The
Tragedy of Noble Cassius."
Also included is the full role of Octavius, played by Chamberlain
as an effeminate Hotspur. Whereas the 1953 production all but elim-
inated Octavius, Burge's version comes closer to Shakespeare's.
Octavius and Antony at first appear well matched; by the end, they
bridle at one another because Octavius is a little boy, jealous of