Epic Watch: Cleopatra (1963)

Watched:  08/14/2024

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  Joseph L Mankiewicz

Selection:  Jamie

Well, I thought about the Roman Empire a lot the past few days, so there's one meme based in fact.  And, I had to flex some brain cells from my two semesters of Roman History, taken circa 1996 that I don't use all that often.

I had pitched watching something else, but when we opened Max, Cleopatra (1963) came up, and Jamie was curious - and I am not one to say "no, no.  No Liz Taylor" and so we embarked on a two-night journey with a four hour movie.  Yeah.  Four hours.

Cleopatra is famed for a few things.  

• The film was infamously expensive, and, I suspect, part of why the studios stopped rolling the dice on gigantic films with casts of thousands, massive sets, elaborate costumes, etc...  It made a ton of money, but it cost a ton of money + x.  This was partially because they shot in England for a bit, fired the director, moved locations and started over.  Also, my god...  you can just feel the cost in every shot.
• Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor's romance seems to have started here while cameras were rolling.  I don't know what's legend, and what's fact.  Some actors I care about their personal lives, but, frankly, Taylor's romantic history is so bumpy, I don't bother.  But their affair was a public event and tied to the movie forever after.
• Taylor's health was at issue during the filming and caused disruption, during which time the director (pre-Mankiewicz) was canned and the production moved to Italy.
• For all the cost and off-screen drama, it's not all that great a film.  The four-hour timeline is due in part to a snail's crawl pacing at times.  I, personally, was confused by some of the story which felt trimmed out, which is nuts in a movie that takes the length of two movies to watch. 
• There was an edit that was so baffling, I felt like I was losing my marbles.  I'm pretty sure it jumped directly from Mark Anthony speaking to Cleopatra in her under-construction tomb and, with a cut, moved the conversation to the boudoir.  
• I was not at all clear as to why Mark Anthony attacked the Romans at sea instead of on land.  Historically accurate or not, and whether it was because what Cleopatra wanted or not, no reason is given.  But, similarly, no reason is give for why Mark Anthony and Cleopatra are in love other than that the movie says "now they're in love".   And that seems like a very, very big deal.
• I think, of all things, Taylor's performance is off.  Occasionally you see glimpses of someone who seems like a royal, able to stand toe-to-toe with Rex Harrison's Julius Caesar.  But most of the time, she seems like one of her melodrama characters from the era, someone from a more conventional background, not an imperious queen or mastermind.

For something so well documented, Roman history is a slippery beast.  Everyone seems to share a variation on about ten names, and changes their name over time and as their stations rise.  For me, that generates a challenge when trying to remember who did what when and to whom.  Like most pre-20th Century non-US-based history, the culture is one of glory-thru-victory-in-battle.  In Rome, this was largely formalized into the structure of how one sought fame and fortune in the upper class and guaranteed upward mobility.  It was also how a turnip farmer in Gaul became a Roman citizen - by becoming a Legionnaire.  

This movie does a remarkably good job of at least stating the political maneuvering of Rome in fairly plain terms, and how the same guys would be pals and then meet each other on the battlefield while still harboring affection, but the preservation of the concept of "Rome" was at stake, one way or another.

Hollywood had been pushing Cleopatra on the public since Theda Bara put on some eye make-up.  I've seen Claudette Colbert's version.  There's a Vivian Leigh take.  And a few dozen other uses of the name and likeness scattered over Hollywood history.  And, of course, Bill Shakespeare gave the concept a whirl.  So in our era of "pre-awareness", this actually qualified in its way back in Mid-Century America.

In my studies, Cleopatra barely figured, but that could have been my admittedly cynical prof just wanting to blow past something he didn't think was all that important or distracting to the points he was making.  I was vaguely aware of Caesar having a brief sexual relationship with Cleopatra, but aware she was part of the breakdown of the Triumvirate via her romance with Mark Anthony.  And that was about all I recalled.  

But this movie is a fantasy, not a history.  And that's okay.  The histories themselves were not written free from warping of fact and fiction to suit the often political ends of the writers.  

As spectacle, it's hard to beat.  Cleopatra's arrival in Rome is simply mind-boggling.  The scope of some shots, which would now be CGI, is astounding as, say Mark Anthony speaks to an ally on the steps of the Senate and we can see hundreds of Romans going about their business in the streets.  Or great ships built just for the film, and sea battles, etc...  What is set and what is Italian marble and what is matte painting, I can't say.  But the worlds inhabited by the characters is massive and convincing.  

Despite what I think is a deeply uneven performance, Taylor is stunning throughout the film.  She's at the height of her fame and powers as a Hollywood star.  Burton is Burton, a positive - although he seems to presage Oliver Reed here and there.  Harrison is the best I've seen him, utterly convincing as Caesar.  

But my favorite was Roddy McDowall as Octavian.  Man was born to play that role.  Absolutely vital, Octavian isn't on screen that much, but every time he is, it's some of the best stuff in the movie.  His speech for Mark Anthony is absolutely riveting.  I had to check to see if they'd gone to Shakepeare's Antony and Cleopatra for MacDowall's dialog, but it appears only inspired by a portion of the speech Caesar delivers upon news of Antony's death.

It was also a reminder that the two halves of this movie are in Shakespeare's histories, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra. And, I assume, there may have been some belief that even the middle-brow audiences might have familiarity with those texts.  Possibly?  But they don't use them.  And I'm hardly a Shakespeare expert.

I think I liked it better than Jamie, and maybe more than I figured based on what had been a reputation of "it's not that good".  Nothing like lowering the bar.  

For a big, studio film from 1963, it's bluntly sexy, sexual and candid about adult matters, but couched in flowery dialog to get it past the censors.  Taylor makes Egyptian styling seem like a phenomenal idea, and I think mixing in fashion of 1961 or so with Egyptian concepts.  It's wild.  They unpack some complex Roman history is a digestible format, and make their melodrama basically work.  These days, we get CGI spectacle blasted in our eyeballs non-stop in 2024, but seeing actual boats cruising around on teal waters in the background of shots of Alexandria is stunning to behold.

That said, there's a distinctly 1950's formality to the film, that it wants to desperately to be taken seriously while using the techniques in play since the 1930's, that you can't imagine this same movie being made or released a decade later.  Five years later we have 2001 and Once Upon a Time in the West, and histories look like Zeffirilli's Romeo and Juliet or The Lion in Winter  Those, along with a host of other great movies which pushed the boundaries toward the film language that would take root through the rest of the century and beyond.

Will I watch it again..?  Eh, lemme get through Suddenly Last Summer and Butterfield 8 first, and then get back to you.