|
|
Rating:  - Cleopatra, Queen of Denial
This epic blockbuster was interesting and entertaining on many levels, though I wonder if when it was released it was considered either a box office or a critical success. It obviously had a huge budget, so I wonder if it was able to make enough at the box office to pay for itself. Lavish costumes and sets, battle scenes with hundreds of extras, not to mention the big stars: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy McDowell, and Martin Landau. It was long--it took me three nights spread out over a few months to wade through it. I can imagine the theaters complaining, since they could have fewer showings per day, and the audiences must have also been complaining about the length, too. It was undoubtedly ballyhooed with massive hype, making it even harder to live up to the expectations.
There are two ways to look at it. First, as an epic telling of an historical tale of wars, conquest, the Roman Empire and the dynasty of Egypt and the pharaohs, not to mention Cleopatra. The lavish costumes, sets, and battles certainly contributed to the success of this way of looking at it. Richard Burton was very believable as Mark Antony, a warrior with two fatal weaknesses--women and wine. Perhaps that wasn't too much of a stretch for him. Though Burton came first, I was reminded of Russell Crowe's Oscar winning performance in Gladiator. Both actors were able to convince that they were warriors, yet there was something deeper than that in there as well. Elizabeth Taylor was great at the thrust and parry of seduction and court intrigue, but I couldn't picture her as Cleopatra, she was just too pale to be Egyptian. Besides, she is an Icon of Beauty in her own right, and I found it hard to suspend disbelief. No matter how well she acted, I was always aware that it was Elizabeth Taylor; no matter how much mascara she wore, Liz Taylor, baby. Rex Harrison, even more so. What was Henry Higgins doing pretending to be Julius Caesar? I half expected Dr. Doolittle to talk to the animals. Strangely though, Roddy McDowell was much more successful at portraying Octavian, but I will get to that later, as it pertains to the second way of looking at Cleopatra, the epic blockbuster.
The second way of looking at it was just to enjoy the spectacle, and as much as possible speculate on the drama backstage. Draw parallels with the way Cleopatra uses theatrical techniques to make the most of her power as queen of the Nile. She always seems to be bathing when conducting her diplomatic negotiations. There is one scene where she entertains Mark Antony with a Cleopatra look-alike, and another where she makes her entrance wrapped in a carpet. At other times she is presented as the Queen of the Nile, making another dramatic entrance on the royal barge, and the hype and ballyhoo very much comments ironically on the hype and ballyhoo surrounding Elizabeth Taylor: Big Fat Movie Star. At times I couldn't help imagining Britney Spears or J. Lo in the role, but I digress.
Backstage drama galore, as there was a budding romance between Taylor and Burton, which must have driven the tabloids wild. I think it might have contributed to the bad reviews as there was a lot of wagging of fingers and tsk-tsking over the fact that Liz was still married to Eddie Fisher. But that added a lot of spice to the mix, making the scenes between the two an intriguing guessing game, looking for clues to their infidelity, tracking the precise moment when they fell in love. You could follow this trail from The Sandpiper, all the way through Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?
Finally, Roddy McDowell. His portrayal of Octavian was very well played, especially in the way he used the withering remark, stealth, guile, cunning, and even a well-placed hissy fit or two, while debating in the Roman Senate. Contrast him with Mark Anthony, who may have been a drunk and besmitten with Cleopatra, but he was a strong warrior who fought his battles bravely. McDowell's Octavian was the man you loved to hate, as he achieved his power not through battle, at least not personally, but by manipulating the emotions of the Senate and the masses. He was a perfect demagogue, working the crowd into a fever pitch, getting them to beg him to start a war with Egypt. He gave one of his best performances as the villain, making the fall of Anthony & Cleopatra all the more tragic.
So, I will give this a thumb up, just as Siskel and Ebert might have, or possibly a Roman Emperor would give to a gladiator who had fought bravely. It is entertaining on many levels, though some of the levels aren't the ones intended.
The Sandpiper [DVD] (1965) Authentic Region 1 Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton & Eva Marie Saint
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Antony and Cleopatra (Arden Shakespeare: Third Series)
The Yale Shakespeare the Tragedy of Julius Ceasar
National Velvet
A Place in the Sun
Gladiator (Widescreen Edition)
The Night of the Iguana
Doctor Dolittle
My Fair Lady (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Rating:  - THE MOST UNAPPRECIATED EPIC EVER MADE
Cleopatra It didn't do well at the box office, originally. At least, not as well as it needed to. But audiences have come to appreciate it in the years since. For it is tied not only to the famous romance of Antony and Cleopatra, but to the equally famous romance of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor---two of the greatest talents of their time. Their love story, like that of Antony and Cleopatra (and Bogart and Bacall) has become the stuff of legend.
As for the film itself, it is simply one of the greatest epics ever filmed when epic meant the size of the production, the talent of the cast and crew--- and not the amount of Computer Generated Effects. If you've never seen this rent it here. You will buy it soon after. No respectable filom library should be without this one. There are hints of Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw here, as well as the historical texts that were drawn on to produce so wonderful a screenplay and so beautiful a film. Elizabeth Taylor (she of the violet eyes) is at her best here. As are Burton, Rex Harrison, Martin Landau, Roddy MacDowell, Francesca Annis (forever known to me as "Tuppence Beresford" from the BBC Agatha Christie series shot some years ago---and all the rest.
The IMDB will tell you of goofs and so forth but, as usual, they have most of their facts wrong. For instance, the "Italian child (complete with accent)" who plays the son of Caesar and Cleopatra is, in fact, French. Watch and enjoy...this is movie magic of the kind you just can't get anymore.
Rating:  - Awesomely Bad
Despite the lavish sets and really good acting from Rex Harrison, Richard Burton, Martin Landau (was he ever so young????), and many others, this is a wretched film.
Its wretchedness stems entirely from Liz Taylor.
She manages an astonishing feat. She simultaneously overacts and is wooden.
I don't know how she achieves such opposite things. She is breathtakingly bad, thrillingly terrible, awesomely awful.
Apparently she was raised on a different planet, and then plunked down on the set. She has no idea what a human acts like, or what a real emotion is.
This explains Michael Jackson's fascination with her: birds (?) of a feather.
In a grotesque way, she is fun to watch, if you like watching bloody and terrible car wrecks over and over.
Just ghastly. She would have to improve (A LOT) to suck.
There aren't adjectives enough in the thesaurus to say how vomitrocious her performance (?) is.
Rating: - JOSEPH L. MANKIEWICZ, OPUS 17
***** 1963. Written for the screen and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, CLEOPATRA is an adaptation of Plutarch's Life Stories of Men Who Shaped History From Plutarch's Lives (A Mentor Book), Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars (Penguin Classics), Appian's The Roman History Of Appian Of Alexandria V2: The Civil Wars and of Charles Marie Franzero's The life and times of Cleopatra, (Women who made history). Four Academy Awards. First seen on a small TV set, then several times in theaters and finally on DVD. CLEOPATRA is not your usual peplum, it's a geyser of sublime scenes bound to stay in our collective unconscious. Indispensable.
Rating: - Two movies in one
With more than $25m in advance bookings in the kitty before it even opened, 20th Century Fox's notoriously out-of-control nightmarish production of Cleopatra is far from the biggest flop of all time but is certainly the most notorious. Indeed, it only has one major problem. Unfortunately, it's Elizabeth Taylor. When she's off the screen and Joseph L. Mankiewicz concentrates on Harrison's Caesar (the screen performance of his lifetime) and the events surrounding the death of the Republic, it becomes a different class of film altogether: intriguing, witty and absolutely riveting. And then the Queen of Hollywood comes on speaking Americanese ("I've done nothing but rub you up the wrong way.") and ruins it all.
Burton's Marc Antony is also a major problem. We have to take his greatness entirely on trust - we see him win no battles, nor does Mankiewicz attempt his own take on his famous oration at Julius Caesar's funeral. What we do see is Burton at his hammiest, flagon of wine constantly in hand, giving us a petulant drunken schoolboy much given to breathy intonations and snorts of outrage. His love scenes with Taylor, the odd well-written exchange aside, strike no sparks but all too-often come across as a camp rehearsal for Virginia Woolf. Still, he does at least get better as he goes along. The same cannot be said for Hume Cronyn, who is simply inept beyond belief here.
Unfortunately, when Harrison dies, so does the film, or very nearly, only showing signs of recovery in the last half hour as Roddy McDowall's superbly realised Octavian takes centre stage. There's still much to admire - the sombre opening, some beautiful writing, North's score, the lavish production design and some fine supporting performances from the likes of Martin Landau and George Cole (yes, George Cole) - but it is definitely a case of taking the rough with the smooth.
This is the uncut four-hour roadshow version, and the restored sequences, among the best in the film, really do make a difference. However, be sure to get the three-disc edition for the excellent two-hour documentary on the making of the film not included on the two-disc set.
|
|