Word: caesarize
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...bidders tried to buy the paper, including one who was a close friend of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. But the British were choosy. Last week they found a buyer who suited them. For an estimated $1,000,000 the High Commissioner recommended sale of Die Welt to Axel C. (for Caesar) Springer, who would thereby become the biggest publisher on the continent with control of about 15% of the circulation of West Germany's press...
...Julius Caesar (MGM) is the best Shakespeare that Hollywood has yet produced.* For one thing, Julius Caesar is a play that lends itself fairly easily to filming. Melodramatic rather than introspective, it is a sort of gangster picture with an ancient (44 B.C.) Roman setting. Its political-thriller plot-a bloody conspiracy, and the tyranny that is bred by lust for power-has obvious modern parallels...
This Julius Caesar falls considerably short of the grandeur of Sir Laurence Olivier's Henry V and the overpowering sense of tragedy of his Hamlet. Nor does it have the visual imagination of Orson Welles's Macbeth. But it is satisfying moviemaking, and, as an honest Hollywood try at Shakespeare, it deserves three rousing cheers...
Produced by John Houseman (who in 1937 put on a striking, modern-dress stage version of Julius Caesar with Orson Welles) and directed by Joseph (All About Eve) Mankiewicz, this is a polished and lavish production. But, dedicated to the theory that the play's the thing, it does not stress pageantry for its own sake. Faithful in letter and spirit to the play, the movie has no "additional dialogue," and the cuts are mainly in the last third of the play, traditionally considered expendable on the stage...
...star-spangled cast, recruited from both stage and screen, exhibits a wide variety of acting styles, but the individual performances are expert. Most unusual casting: Marlon Brando giving a flamboyant performance in the showy role of Mark Antony, Caesar's ruthless avenger. Cinemagoers who saw Brando in The Men and A Streetcar Named Desire may be surprised to hear him, minus his slurring Stanley Kowalski speech mannerisms, clearly enunciating the famous, rabble-rousing funeral oration. Less clear in his performance is that mercurial combination of demagogue and patriot, of force and "quick spirit" that is Antony's character...