CLEOPATRA
US, 1963, 192 minutes, Colour.
Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy McDowell?, Robert Stephens, Andrew Keir, George Cole, Martin Landau, Hume Cronyn, Pamela Brown.
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
Cleopatra was designed as the spectacle to end all spectacles, and the stories about its budget, its lavishness, its temperamental stars and their scandals were all publicised during 1962-3. The finished product turned out to be better than expected. Some of the scenes are excellent; others pseudo-literate. The spectacular scenes, especially Cleopatra's entry into Rome, are stupendous, especially in terms of machinery, costumes and extras filling the screen.
Unfortunately the film is lop-sided, the first part being better constructed and much more interesting than the second part. One of the reasons for this is a characteristic performance by Rex Harrison as Caesar. His valour, diplomacy, cunning, ambition and longing for a son are all conveyed in a cleverly comic performance which ends in tragedy - the artificially cut sequence of his assassination is absorbing and shocking.
Elizabeth Taylor is good and bad over the three hour screening time. Richard Burton's Antony is his usual portrayal. The love scenes are not excessive in the second part, but Antony fades in comparison with Caesar and the film limps. However, as an extravagantly mounted picture of the times, it would be hard to beat and communicates something of the issues of this epoch.
1. The character of Caesar - diplomacy, cunning, ambition, epilepsy, desire for a son, assassination?
2. Cleopatra - did Elizabeth Taylor convey the reality and the legend? Her ambitions, love, pride, death?
3. Antony ~ his loyalty to Caesar, as a Roman, infatuation with Cleopatra, loss of his grip on ambition and his army, his death?
4. The presentation of Egypt as weak and on the verge of collapse. The Romans' conquest of Egypt?
5. The effectiveness of the spectacular scenes in the film?
- the market of Alexandria;
- the Egyptian court;
- the Roman armies;
- the entry of Cleopatra to Rome;
- Caesar's assassination;
- the banquet for Antony;
- Cleopatra's barge, etc.
6. Considering the human effort, the time and money put into the film, was it worth it?
7. Is Cleopatra just a spectacular film? A cinema work of art? Or something of both?
