Cleopatra

When people talk about big movies from the past, they are mostly biblical epics like Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments, but one that arguably left an even bigger imprint on cinematic history was the 1963 film, Cleopatra. While all three films are still considered cinematic classics, Cleopatra was a different animal during its creation and its eventual release. While Ben Hur and Ten Commandments were incredibly successful at the box office, Cleopatra flopped hard due to its extensively high budget and multiple different changes and issues surrounding its production, which almost resulted in 20th Century Fox going bankrupt. With this in mind, was the final result worth all this mayhem? Set during 48BC, the film follows two men, Roman general Julius Caesar (played by Rex Harrison) and fellow Roman solider Mark Antony (played by Richard Burton), and the relationship that they had with the Pharaoh of Egypt, Cleopatra (played by Elizabeth Taylor). Starting off with Caesar as she tries and succeeds in reclaiming her crown and title of Egypt, the affair is cut short after Caesar’s betrayed and murdered within a Roman council meeting, leaving her without her love and finding new attraction in Antony, who has taken on Caesar’s role and desires for a similar adoration from the people and from Cleopatra. As this is going on, Caesar’s new heir and his adoptive son Octavian (played by Roddy McDowall) gains the attention and admiration of the people of Rome and starts to feel threatened by Cleopatra and Antony’s willingness to throw customs away to her will, so starts to plan an attack that will remove Antony from the picture and put Egypt under Romanian custody. With Antony’s men outclassed, what chances are there for their survival? Being somewhat of a biopic on the famous last pharaoh of Egypt, Cleopatra is a film that is big in almost every aspect of itself. This presentation comes with its own set of pros and cons, as by looking at the movie with a modern perspective, the film falters on certain elements while trying its best to keep the epic quality at the centre.

The production behind this movie sounded like an absolute mess and would have made creating the film feel almost impossible. From several rewrites, changes in actors and a completely new director, sets being dismantled and going over-budget with only ten minutes of usable footage, it would have made for an uncomfortable experience for every player and equally as taxing considering the length and magnitude of the story they were telling. Director Joseph L Mankiewicz as well as screenwriters Ranald MacDougall and Sidney Buchman manage to squeeze in two big scale events that Cleopatra played a part in and despite what it feels like from the length, it doesn’t come across as laboriously as you would expect (mainly because its gracious enough to have intermission points to separate the two sections of the film). As these sections go, the first part is honestly pretty well done; with good pacing, quality acting, decent scale and presence, and a lot of unfolding of story and plot points that never feel crammed in or hard to follow, its pretty well condensed and makes for a engaging first act. The second act is where things get a little messy as it becomes a lot more uninteresting, slow, and not as intriguing as the film initially started out as. Its ironic to claim that history isn’t very interesting, but the mindset for this film doesn’t feel like its trying to authentically capture the history as realistically as possible, but rather as epic as possible. It’s a movie that adores being flashy, grandiose, and able to flaunt its style and visuals in a manner that feels like it can go further because of the subject matter and time period, but because of this mindset, it feels like it’s going through the motions with the story as opposed to actively dissecting them or allowing them to feel like impactful, historical or even ”epic” moments in history. It’s almost like a play in how it brushes past so many plot elements and how it feels like it needs to gloss over certain facts in order to reach specific components. Overall, for the amount of story it has and how long the film is, it doesn’t tell its story poorly, its just in a manner that is more impressive visually than it is from a narrative structure.

From looking at the synopsis, a distinct issue should pop up. For a film about Cleopatra, she doesn’t seem to play much of a role, and that is one of the worst aspects of this film. Cleopatra isn’t about Cleopatra, it’s about Mark Antony and Julius Caesar and their relationship with her. While these two are important parts of her life, the story isn’t about how she connected with them, but rather how THEY interacted with HER. She is the tool and plot device in the film, not the character of focus and it’s annoying how much of a wasted opportunity this is, how much time is wasted on other characters that shouldn’t get as much focus, and how the only contribution she has is being the baby-maker for one and a lustful urge for another. The real Cleopatra sounded like a person of complications; seemingly being an intelligent and effective ruler who could be kind and sympathetic to the lower class, but also cruel and calculating when she needed to be. There was this dark side that she had where she was willing to kill her own siblings to get the throne, but showcased enough competence in her rule and enough positive qualities to make her a complicated human being, one that was and still is, ripe for cinematic portrayal. Here, there’s nothing complex or interesting about her, she barely feels like a fleshed-out role, she bounces between being a steely cold ruler into a screeching sitcom wife waiting for her man to come home. Elizabeth Taylor’s portrayal gets portions of the role correct; whenever she’s quiet and has to whisper her lines, it feels effective, but whenever she shouts or talks louder, there’s no conviction or strength in her words, she doesn’t feel like a true Pharaoh. Rex Harrison as Caesar is honestly pretty decent for his short screen time; his quick wit and fast talking make him feel smarter and above everybody else in this movie and it even leads to some decent scenes with Taylor where their banter works well off each other and actually provides for some decent chemistry. Richard Burton, on the other hand, is awful in this film. Even ignoring the fact that his character is simply despicable without any redeeming factor and how there is absolutely zero chemistry between him and Taylor, his performance ranges from incredibly dull, shaky, and bland, to annoyingly shouty and over-the-top stage-like acting.

From a production level, you can tell how much this movie would have cost and clearly how much the people wanted to make it look as good as possible. If there are moments that are given time to play out without interruption, its in these moments that truly show off the spectacle and feel of the film. It doesn’t quite rely much on the epic quality of battle sequences and flashy fight scenes (even though there are some used in the final act), rather it focuses on the spectacle or the beauty of several locations and set pieces. There are moments in this film where the environments and sets decorated by Paul S. Fox, Ray Moyer and Walter M. Scott really shine and have a great feel of authenticity to them even though none if any was actually filmed in Egypt. It is a very visually pleasing movie and its one of the few times where it doesn’t feel like the movie is trying to overplay itself in a bad way in either being obnoxiously loud and pompous or epic in fight sequences that have no weight. It allows for moments that need to be big and let them feel actually big, where a moment of capturing the entrance of a famed Egyptian Queen holds a lot more weight and passion than any other moment in this film. From the production design by John DeCuir and costume design by Vittorio Nino Novarese and Renié , the film does hold a strong memorable factor to it, and its easily the part of the film where the high-budget is not only felt, but warranted, as a movie of this caliber about a person this historically important, needs an  appropriate scale to make it memorable.

Cleopatra is an important enough figurehead to have lasted the test of time in history and in Egyptian culture. She’s such a big name to the world that her legacy has survived through various works of art, the subject of many operas and performances, and even became a pop culture icon in the Victorian era (known as Egyptomania). Despite this, she apparently wasn’t strong enough to hold her own movie without the need for two other guys to run it for her, effectively neutering this so-called goddess like figure into being an object of affection. It’s a shame that despite the length and what the film promises, it doesn’t feel like anything is truly learnt from watching this movie. It feels like a style-over-substance type of film where it has great spectacle and feel, but lacks any weight or intrigue in what its talking about that it honestly feels more beneficial to just google search about the real life person, who is extremely different to her portrayal in this. The movie isn’t even that bad as a whole, but it is definitely a product of its time and is more interested in looking nice and big than actually being interesting and complex. With a remake on the way starring Gal Gadot, it feels like there’s room for that to exist and it will be nice to see a film that actually talks about the life of Cleopatra from her own perspective. Until then, this movie is a nice enough sit if you really don’t care about the real-life history.