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They say this one brought home five Academy Awards and that it is a "sweeping
tale of power and betrayal". Cleopatra seduces "two of Rome's greatest
soldiers" and changes history. They also compare this movie
to "epic romantic adventures like Braveheart and Titanic" and say that it is "the greatest spectacle of all". 1963, 243 minutes, Widescreen DVD
Holy crap, that was long! Such was my reaction after finishing this one about
two days after I started it. Lumbering, plodding, crawling, rumbling,
stumbling, and finally bumbling into the endzone after an eternity, this movie
(and really, that's probably too charitable a term for something more akin to
second job) will sorely test the patience of even the hardiest of historical
epic fans. To put this in some kind of perspective ( a word rarely used
anywhere near Cleopatra, I'd wager), you might recall the monumental dullness that was Hawaii . Casting aside the fact that there probably isn't any epic other than Cleopatra that actually attempted to shoot without a script (more on that in a moment),
all you need to know is that it is a full hour longer than Hawaii ! Reputed to be a really expensive movie (it was) that was a bit of a flop
(pretty much), you get the idea from watching it that Twentieth Century Fox must
have been commanded by the late queen of Egypt herself to keep the cameras and
the cash rolling in spite of nasty little details like Liz Taylor trying to
die, tearing up all the sets in England and rebuilding everything in Italy so
Liz could be in warmer weather, and firing one director and replacing him with
another who decided to rewrite the script from scratch, even as he was shooting
the picture. I don't think you'd be surprised if I mentioned that after
everything was shot and director Joseph L. Mankiewicz showed Fox chief Darryl F.
Zanuck his five hour and twenty minute cut (Cut? What did you cut? The
bathroom breaks?), Zanuck got rid of him. Cleopatra being the movie equivalent of the Alamo, Hindenburg, Titanic, and Waco all
rolled into one, it goes without saying that Zanuck rehired him later.  The DVD release of this movie is probably structured in such a way that may
come as close to Mankiewicz's vision of the project as we'll ever likely see.
Well, except the the third disc in the three-disc set that contains the
fascinating two-hour long documentary about what a debacle his movie is, that
is. The other two discs though pretty much play like two separate movies. Two
separate, boring movies filled with stilted, unbelievable performances (I love
Rex Harrison as much as anyone - he is the definitive white Dr. Doolittle, but
his "daddy Caesar" routine that he played out with Cleopatra borders on the
icky) and a disjointed story that takes forever to develop, yet seems to
leave out chunks of important narrative, giving viewers the feeling that
they're coming in at the middle of a conversation, repeatedly stuns the audience
into a deep coma. At various points, I was wondering who these people were,
why were these things happening, and with all the money they poured into this
thing, why did Rex periodically wander around in these leather vests that
looked like they were stolen from The Planet Of The Apes set? You see, Mankiewicz's plan was to release two different three hour
movies from this morass of history, fancy sets, and guys with British accents
playing Romans. The first movie would be about Cleo and Julius Caesar and the
second movie would be about Cleo and Antony. Zanuck, who was nominated for a
Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to keep this movie from not only being more
than four hours long, but actually evolving into multiple films, objected and
basically said, "who wants to see Doolittle and Liz Taylor in a movie when
you've got Richard Burton sailing up her Nile?" I couldn't agree more, but you
are still left with the first half of this movie where the inane bickering of
Cleo and Doolittle somehow tries to bring to mind one of those Tracy and
Hepburn comedies, but only manages to bring to mind how old Rex is and just
what dirty birds those English guys are. At least this Burton guy was like a
Russell Crowe type, except I don't recall Russ being so dang whipped in Gladiator.  The first two hours of the movie were pretty forgettable. Burton doesn't make
an appearance as Marc Antony until near the end and is only in about five
minutes of the first disc. Caesar wasn't that interesting and I don't recall
much about what he was up to during this time except for the fact that he had
epilepsy. Once I saw him flopping around on the floor of some Egyptian palace,
it didn't take a genius to see that I was going to be calling him Julius
Seizure for the rest of the movie (as I'm sure guys like Flavius did). Somehow
or other, Cleo decides she likes Caesar when he's on some sort of pit stop in
her country and decides to take it over while he's in the neighborhood. She
gets herself preggers, has a kid, Seizure claims it as his (he may have been a
conqueror, but he always paid his child support) and the movie then stages this
gigantic sequence where Cleo makes her gaudy arrival in Rome. This is one of
those deals where they have these huge sets of ancient Rome built and every
unemployed Italian is hired on as an extra and you've got dancers and elephants
and a really big Sphinx that Cleo is riding around on like she was in the
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I was thinking that the last time I had seen
such an overblown entrance was at a Prince Naseem Hamed fight. The documentary
said that they were all ready to shoot this, but the cinematographer (who is
described as "crabby") didn't like the way the sunlight was filling the set, so
they had to wait six months before they could shoot all the stuff again with
the proper lighting. You also get an adorable story about an extra who fell off
an elephant and lost all the skin off of her ass because she scraped against
the elephant's hide on the way down. Great story! It ranks up there with how
Burton's first day on the set was marked by him having such a bad hangover that
he had the shakes and Liz had to hold the cup of coffee to his lips for him.
She really brought out the mother in him, they said. Yeah, along with the
hoochie in her as well. Co-star Martin Landau fondly recalls that he found
out they were hot and heavy when Richard gave her a big kiss in the make up
room while he was there. I think I speak for Marty when I say, "get a room!"  Once we get Caesar knocked off by all his buddies (Did you know that Archie
Bunker was one of the killers? Probably thought it was Meathead or
something.) and we can move on to disc number two, things get a little more
entertaining, but not necessarily any better. Antony promises Cleo that he'll
do
what he can to get her kid put on the throne and somehow ends up as her lover.
This transition from "guy who was on screen for five minutes" to "guy who
becomes Cleo's other great love, but is filled with self-doubts due to the long
shadow cast by Caesar" is handled very poorly and never explained, but if
leaving all of that character development out kept this movie under the five
hour mark, then I won't argue too vehemently for its inclusion (after all, if
that was put in, we would have had to cut some other, no doubt vital scene,
such as when Cleo and Julius Seizure are laying in bed and reviewing some book
that he wrote). Of course having that in would have helped to explain
everything that Antony did in the rest of the movie, such as deferring to
Cleo's dubious military strategy of attacking the Roman forces of Octavian from
the sea, even though Antony is the world champion of land battles and has a few
hundred thousand crack land troops and several competent generals that would go
to hell and back for him. Basically, the movie tells us that the only person
in the world who thought it was a good idea to go in by sea was Cleopatra and
that Antony knew he was screwed by doing it, but did it anyway. All you guys
in a relationship will surely understand this, but you wouldn't have expected
this sort of wimp behavior from Antony. After all, he was the kind of guy
to mope around about how Alexander the Great had already conquered the world
when he was Antony's age and doggone it, Antony was falling behind! By far, the
greatest moment in the movie occurs when Antony is getting his ass whipped by
the Romans and has been trickified by Octavian and Antony looks out across the
sea, only to notice that Cleopatra's ship has turned tailed and is sailing back
to Egypt! This movie is so true to life! Later, Cleo tries to justify her
traitorous ways by saying "but I thought you were dead, baby!" Quick, someone
get me the domestic abuse hotline! There's gonna be a new resident at the
safehouse tonight! Antony spends most of the rest of the movie pouting since he basically
humiliated
himself by bailing out on his warriors and took off in a lifeboat to chase
after that Egyptian booty that got him into this jam in the first place,
instead of going down with the ship and dying an honorable death. Antony
babbles about how he's already dead and periodically moans about Julius Caesar
and how she probably liked him better and stuff. All the while Octavian and
his army are taking I-95 straight to Alexandria. Antony refuses to rouse
himself for battle until he gets some big pep talk from Cleopatra and is
rejuvenated to not go out like someone's beotch. Naturally after he goes off
to battle, Cleo admits to someone that Antony is basically screwed since no one
will fight for him anymore, but at least she got him to change out of his
pajamas and leave the house. All of this leads to the climatic battle scene
where Antony rides off against Octavian's army of several thousand by
himself! Wading into the enemy troops (the Romans who used to idolize him) he
repeatedly tries to whack them with his sword, but everyone refuses to engage
him in battle. "Is there no one that will grant me an honorable death?" he
shouts at the them. Uh, no. But why don't you go on back to Cleopatra's
house, drink
a bunch of whiskey, crank up the Ozzy real loud and take the easy way out?
Done and done! This is followed up by Cleo's close encounter with an asp and
all that's left is Roddy McDowell as Octavian fuming over being cheated out of
humiliating both Antony and Cleopatra. You how they say that anything written
well can be compelling? Well, the inverse is true in this case. A spectacular
waste of talent and resources (though I think we could have found someone a bit
more convincing as Cleopatra than Liz Taylor, even though she acted like a
queen on the set by all accounts), the documentary that accompanies the movie
expertly dissects the witch's brew of circumstances that coalesced around it to
doom this film to failure. Keep in mind that this was the movie that was
supposed to save Twentieth Century Fox from going under and that they kept
pouring money into it, first because they thought the more they spent, the
bigger return they would get, then because it was simply too costly to shut
down, and finally because it was the only movie they were making and they had
nowhere else to put their money. What's up on the screen manages to be the
most expensive sword and sandal movie ever made, complete with the
migraine-inducing dialogue and questionable performances you would expect from
any movie of its ilk, only all dressed up with honest-to-gosh movie stars and
sets that would probably make the real Cleopatra envious. As is usually the
case, it's the story behind the film that's the stuff of legend and it's the
documentary, Cleopatra: The Film That Changed Hollywood, that makes this DVD set worth owning. Just consider the movie itself to be
a necessary evil to maximize enjoyment of the documentary.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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