Masterclass Marlon Brandon film with 96% score is now on BBC iPlayer | Films | Entertainment | EUROtoday

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears (or, you realize, eyes on this case). I stand earlier than you to bear witness that the thespian may of Sir John Gielgud and James Mason did battle with the American upstart over the phrases of that superb gentleman William Shakespeare. Some say that it modified the course of Hollywood ceaselessly.

Method actor heartthrob Marlon Brando had set the display screen alight together with his muscular depth in 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire, however there have been snooty scoffs two years later that he can be tackling The Bard as Mark Anthony is the good tragedy Julius Caesar.

The movie trade again then had usually accepted that such roles have been the plummy purview of Laurence Olivier and the like, as a lot on stage as on the display screen.

Just watch the electrifying clip under to see how that was all blown away by Brando’s magnificent, magnetic presence. His legs weren’t dangerous, both.

The solid was actually stellar. Gielgud and Mason performed Cassius and Brutus, the architects of Caesar’s assassination, with Broadway star Louis Calhern because the doomed dictator.

Hollywood beauties Greer Garson and Deborah Kerr have been Calpurnia and Portia, the wives of Caesar and Brutus, however Brando, with the assistance of dialect coach Florence O’Neill, outshone all of them.

Gielgud and Brando took dwelling BAFTAS for his or her performances, whereas the American star obtained his third consecutive Oscar nomination, earlier than he lastly bagged his first of two the next 12 months for On The Waterfront.

TIME journal known as the movie “The best Shakespeare that Hollywood has yet produced.” The reward for Brando was much more glowing, with many singling out the climactic scene under.

The New Yorker stated: “Over Caesar’s corpse Brando begins to mix grief, rage, cunning, and ferocity; his reading of the funeral oration is so quakingly angry you understand why it would rouse the rabble.”

Another critic added: “Brando became a legend in gritty Elia Kazan productions, but it was his naturalistic approach in nonrealistic Mankiewicz fare like this and 1955’s Guys and Dolls that helped transform all acting.”

Sadly, the star would not return to Shakespeare once more, however you may watch this legendary movie, which has simply been added to BBC iPlayer, without cost now.

WATCH MARLON BRANDO IN JULIUS CAESAR ON BBC IPLAYER