Caesar Must Die (12A.)
Directed by Paulo and Vittorio Taviani.
Starring Salvatore Striani, Cosimo Rega, Giovanni Arcuri, Antonio Frasca and Vincenzo Gallo. Mostly in Black and White. Italian with subtitles. 76 mins
It starts with the final scenes of a stage performance of Julius Caesar. The audience applaud rapturously at its conclusion but while they are filing out the cast are put back into uniform and returned to their cells at Rome’s maximum security Rebibbia prison.
At this point the film slips from colour into black and white and the dividing line between on and off stage becomes blurred. The film is a slightly fanciful extension of the theatre project that the prison runs. The Tavianis chose the play and rather than simply document the rehearsal process they turned it into the performance. All the prison is a stage – even the warders are involved.
The English subtitles read like translations of the Italian translation of Shakespeare, rather than the original text. Mark Anthony’s speech is as you’d expect but much of the rest of it seemed far more colloquial and direct than you get at the RSC. (In fact the inmates had all translated their lines into their own dialects.)
I think this does the Bard a big favour. You lose the linguistic flourishes the English thespians love but it really cuts you straight to the drama. It is good to have a Shakespeare where the uninitiated can follow what is happening and it actually elucidates the poetry and beauty of the language. Just as the prisoners are being let into something they always dismissed as boring, I imagine someone who had always been put off by Shakespeare would find this a revelation.
The film also supports the notion that the mafia is really a branch of Italian showbiz. Though it is never made explicit all of these prisoners, lifers or on long stretches, are in for gangster related offenses and they are all natural performers.
Directed by Paulo and Vittorio Taviani.
Starring Salvatore Striani, Cosimo Rega, Giovanni Arcuri, Antonio Frasca and Vincenzo Gallo. Mostly in Black and White. Italian with subtitles. 76 mins
It starts with the final scenes of a stage performance of Julius Caesar. The audience applaud rapturously at its conclusion but while they are filing out the cast are put back into uniform and returned to their cells at Rome’s maximum security Rebibbia prison.
At this point the film slips from colour into black and white and the dividing line between on and off stage becomes blurred. The film is a slightly fanciful extension of the theatre project that the prison runs. The Tavianis chose the play and rather than simply document the rehearsal process they turned it into the performance. All the prison is a stage – even the warders are involved.
The English subtitles read like translations of the Italian translation of Shakespeare, rather than the original text. Mark Anthony’s speech is as you’d expect but much of the rest of it seemed far more colloquial and direct than you get at the RSC. (In fact the inmates had all translated their lines into their own dialects.)
I think this does the Bard a big favour. You lose the linguistic flourishes the English thespians love but it really cuts you straight to the drama. It is good to have a Shakespeare where the uninitiated can follow what is happening and it actually elucidates the poetry and beauty of the language. Just as the prisoners are being let into something they always dismissed as boring, I imagine someone who had always been put off by Shakespeare would find this a revelation.
The film also supports the notion that the mafia is really a branch of Italian showbiz. Though it is never made explicit all of these prisoners, lifers or on long stretches, are in for gangster related offenses and they are all natural performers.
