Shakespeare Through the Camera's Eye--Julius Caesar in Motion Pictures; Hamlet and Othello on Television

Abstract

HREE recent presentations of Shakespeare on the motionpicture and television screens reveal that many of the qualities of a Shakespeare play can be preserved in these media, which, if used with art and integrity, can bring out new meanings and relationships in noteworthy and stimulating productions. Their obvious advantage is that they can bring acted Shakespeare to a much wider audience than ever before possible. The new MGM film, Julius Caesar, and the recent television productions of Hamlet by the National Broadcasting Company and Othello presented in Canada by the Canadian Broadcasting Company, are productions that utilize the advantages of the camera in telling a story and revealing character in a visual medium. The two-hour Caesar marks a definite advance for Hollywood over its earlier Shakespearian films like A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet, which were not so much Shakespeare as they were Hollywood's elaboration of a plot from Shakespeare. Julius Caesar is the best Shakespeare film Hollywood has made, and in the opinion of at least one viewer, is superior to Olivier's film Hamlet, though not his Henry V. A good deal of the credit probably should go to John Houseman, producer of the film, and a man familiar with Shakespeare productions, having codirected the Mercury Theatre, which put on Julius Caesar and Shakespeare's chronicle plays, and more recently he directed King Lear on Broadway. Working with director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Houseman has produced a suspenseful and dramatic film Caesar, true to the text, beautifully spoken, and generally well acted. Director Mankiewicz has used the camera to provide an underlying rhythm which gives a good continuity from scene to scene, mounts in tension and suspense through the conspiracy and assassination, the funeral orations, the battle and finally the deaths of Cassius and Brutus. The opening scenes exemplify this fluidity and rhythm, with the camera focusing upon certain key objects, like the bust of Caesar in the opening frame, and then as Flavius and Marullus are arrested by the armed guards, upon the staff of the blind, Teiresias-like soothsayer, as the triumphal procession of Caesar bursts onto the scene. After the procession has passed, the camera moves in on the faces of Cassius, played by John Gielgud, and Brutus, by James Mason. It