In the 1953 film Brutus is played by James Mason, who seems abstracted in this scene, human, vulnerable, like any reader who may have lost his place. Looking ahead to next week’s Bryn Mawr-Wellesley book sale, I’m thinking of the scene in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that comes near the end of Act IV, after the deed has been done, it’s night, and Brutus is in his tent reading a book while trying to find his place: “let me see, is not the leaf turn’d down where I left reading? Here it is, I think.” You’ll have plenty of trips.” In that moment he’s like a deeply corrupt, world-weary sage of cinema sending a star to her fate. Patting her shoulder, he says, “Don’t worry, baby. As he walks off with the cops, she looks up, asking “Uncle Lon” if they can still have their trip to Florida. The last time he says it is after she fails to give him the alibi he needed. “Some sweet kid,” he says to himself about his mistress, thoughtfully savoring each word. Although he gives one of his most nuanced performances as Alonzo Emmerich, the double-crossing lawyer in The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Calhern is probably best remembered for the reflected glory of a few brief scenes with a then relatively unknown Marilyn Monroe. Given the enduring popularity of the Marx Brothers, longtime moviegoers may remember Calhern (if at all) as ambassador Trentino of Sylvania trading slaps and insults with Groucho Marx’s Rufus T. With the Oscars in my rear-view mirror, I’m thinking of Louis Calhern (1895-1956), who played the title role in Julius Caesar the same year he won a Best Actor nomination for his performance as Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Magnificent Yankee (1953). And in Living, Nighy sings! The film would be worth seeing if only for the moment the terminally ill character he plays comes to life singing the Scottish folk song, “The Rowan Tree.” Close your eyes and listen and these are two of the rare actors in film you can hear, so distinctive are their voices and ways of speaking. Nighy’s one of those actors who is always worth watching and listening to, like James Mason, whose only Best Actor nomination was for his role in A Star Is Born (1955), two years after he played Brutus in MGM’s Julius Caesar. S ince Bill Nighy’s Oscar-nominated performance in Living is fresh in my mind, I’m beginning with him instead of Julius Caesar, who was assassinated on this day, the Ides of March, 44 BC. Brutus is Shakespeare’s first intellectual, and the enigmas of his nature are multiform.
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