Julius Caesar (1908) Online

There had been attempts to put Shakespeare on film at least since 1898's MACBETH. At first they showed brief excerpts of celebrated stage actors, like Johnston Forbes-Robertson as the Thane of Cawdor or Herbert Beerbohm-Tree as King John. These were never more than merest indications of what the stage performances looked like. The short length of films, the perceived superiority of the stage and, of course, the severe limitation on dialogue due to the movies' silence made a mockery of any attempt to film Shakespeare -- or indeed, any major work of stage or literature.

That is the problem with this version of JULIUS CAESAR. For most of this film, what you get is people in togas waving their arms about on a severely bound stage, with occasional titles. If you knew what was going on, you could tell what was happening; otherwise, not.

It does open up at the end, when Caesar's ghost pops into existence in Brutus' tent before the battle; and the battle, shot outdoors, opens up the screen and offers a cinematic vision.

For most of this movie, though, the work is too stagebound, too worshipful and far too short to make this more than a failed bid for respectability. It would take people like Percy Stowe, with his playfulness with stage and film grammars in THE TEMPEST -- produced the same year -- to start to offer a worthwhile vision of Shakespeare for movies.

A historical film of some interest. The action is weak, Caesar especially, but the staging seems to be as nearly correct as possible. Tt is. however, marred in some instances by weak photography and an attempt to tone the film some color other than black and white. It would have been much better if it had been left black and white. From the first scene to the death of Brutus the film is watched with eagerness, proving beyond question that almost any audience can be interested in this class of films. The Vitagraph Company are aiming high, and that alone is commendable. -- The Moving Picture World, December 5, 1908