The great irony of Cesare deve morire is that, while the conspirators who assassinated Julius Caesar ostensibly did so in hopes of freedom and found only death, the prisoners who stage a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in this film are able to set themselves free through the liberating power of storytelling – at least until the curtain falls.
The movie certainly takes its own liberties, shot documentary-style in a “high-security prison” where the guards are invariably conspicuous by their absence – though one of the best scenes has a trio of them materializing briefly to debate whether Antony is “obliging” or “a son of a bitch” –, and the inmates get along famously except for a quick quarrel which is resolved off-screen (once again without the guards’ intervention).
And yet Cesare was filmed in Rome's Rebibbia prison – which at one time counted the guy who tried to kill Pope JP2 among its tenants –, and stars actual prisoners serving long sentences for murder, drug trafficking, and other offenses (the one who plays the title role actually looks like a real-life Tony Soprano); this is the soft underbelly of hardened criminals.
The film’s secondary irony is that the black-and-white, ‘behind-the-scenes’ rehearsals provide a richer background setting – the highlight being the funeral oration scene delivered from the prison courtyard – than the mostly bare stage where the play proper takes place (although the Battle of Philippi – that is, what we see of it – is quite the spectacle); accordingly, the former is devoted the bulk of the economical 75-minute running time.