Julius Caesar (1970)

I recall seeing Charlton Heston on stage at the height of his "Man For All Seasons" theatrical pomp, and he wasn't half bad. In this, however, made much earlier - he is still very much honing his theatrical skills. He portrays Mark Anthony, and the rest of an admittedly acclaimed cast stick pretty closely to the narrative of the bard's telling of the rise and fall of Caesar. That role falls to Sir John Gielgud, the only established thespian amongst this rather odd assembly of talent that deliver, with varying degrees of conviction, some of the best lines in English literature. Jason Robards makes a decent fist of Brutus as does Diana Rigg (Portia) but Richard Chamberlain (Octavius), Robert Vaughn (Casca) and Richard Johnson (Cassius) really fall well short of the mark with their over-dramatised emphasis on the language and the gestures. The costumes and photography in general look fine, but somehow that seems to add to this effort's problems - it lacks the intensity and intimacy of a stage performance. Indeed, I wonder if the same cast were to have done this in a theatre, might it not have been more distinguished? It is certainly worth a watch, there is a suitably rousing score from Michael J. Lewis, but I think the end product is not equal to the sum of it's parts.