In this Hollywood film of the play, James Mason stars as Brutus, but this version is most certainly best known for the actor who steals the show from under Mason's nose, because for some reason they went and cast Marlon Fucking Brando as Mark Fucking Antony. To the surprise of nobody, John Gielgud is also in this, playing Cassius. The title role is played by Louis Calhern, though I had to keep reminding myself he wasn't Basil "Crown Court judge Mr Justice Poynter" Dignam because the resemblance is uncanny.
The play is abridged to get it down to two hours, but is a pretty faithful adaptation for that, including retaining the play's unfortunate structural issues whereby after the famous "Friends, Romans, Countrymannys..." speech it makes several skips in time, with battles and other events occurring off-stage between scenes. The film manages to include a battle scene, but it is perfunctory and small-scale compared to later filmed Shakespearean battles, even the battle of Bosworth from the Richard iii made only two years later, never mind the truly ambitious such as Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight ten years after.
The film therefore loses a lot of momentum in the last half-hour, and its main point of interest is found in the middle, consisting of the murder scene and the funereal speeches that sway the Roman crowds first to Brutus and then to Antony. Here is where Mason and Brando shine, though never quite to the point that you can forget the Hollywood stars and see them only as their characters. Brando's finest moment might actually come just before this bit, in the "Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war" soliloquy (at almost exactly the halfway point in the movie), where he holds the scene alone.
He's no James Purefoy (purr) though, despite having the haircut.
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