Word: brutus
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...between 1899 and 1929, there are ten versions of Caesar, the first being a French effort of 1907. In the half century since 1929, about 50 sound films have been made, including three of Caesar, all American. The straightforward 1953 version, directed by Joseph Mankiewicz--with James Mason's Brutus, John Gielgud's Cassius. Marlon Brando's Antony, and the late Louis Calhern's Caesar--remains the only excellent Shakespearean film ever done in our country (and few people know that its off-camera crowd roars in the stadium were specially recorded by a huge throng at a baseball game...
...Marcus Brutus, the play's longest role, is in the hands of Kenneth Haigh. In 1956 Haigh burst on the scene as the original Angry Young Man in Osborne's Look Back in Anger. Now, in 1979 (the year he turns 47, 49 or 50, depending on what source you credit), Haigh is the Stoic Middle-Aged Man. Clearly at home in Shakespeare's language, Haigh speaks with cool conviction and command, and a feeling for the verse rhythms...
...That Brutus keeps misgivings bottled up inside is apparent from the way Haigh rubs his forehead in private as though suffering a headache. It is characteristic of his distaste for panache that, when committed to war, he alone among the commanders wears unadorned fatigues--no ribbons, no insignia of rank...
...second-longest role of Cassius, Brutus' brother-in-law who originates the murder plot, a bearded Harris Yulin makes his position more plausible and less villainous than we usually see--and perhaps it should be said that there are no thorough villains in this play, except for the gang that lynches a poor poet merely for having the same name as one of the conspirators...
...when he at last appears we see a most ordinary man (dressed up, to be sure), lacking all force of personality. By no stretch of the imagination could Cassius say that this Caesar " doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus." In the brief colloquy between Caesar and Decius Brutus, the latter exhibits much more magnetism, as played by James Harper, and I wish the two actors had exchanged roles...