Taylor brings a brashness and carnality to the proceedings, without ever downplaying Cleopatra’s intelligence. After being carried down to Caesar on the backs of more men, she calmly approaches him, playfully bows and then gives him a wink. Encased in a gown and cape of gold feathers (except for a few areas left strategically bare), she looks like a superwoman who has dripped down from the sun. With poor Calpurnia (Gwen Watford), Caesar’s wife, in the audience, an elaborate, nine-minute parade of dancers, soldiers and musicians passes by, culminating in Cleopatra’s entrance on a towering replica of a sphinx, being pulled by some 100 bare-chested men. There are battle sequences at sea, as well, yet the showstopper - appropriately - has nothing to do with the men and their war machines but with Cleopatra’s arrival into Rome, as Caesar’s welcomed mistress. The movie opens with Caesar overlooking a vast Roman battlefield littered with bodies, and if you look closely you can see countless extras writhing on the ground for miles. Unlike contemporary extravaganzas, the money is on the screen, not in the computer code. (Although, as we’ll eventually learn, she’s the one grooming him.)Īs a spectacle, though, let’s give Cleopatra its due. There is romance, yes, but also the sense that Caesar, an amiable but strategic statesman, is grooming her for political purposes. This is especially true of the first half, in which Rex Harrison’s Julius Caesar arrives in Alexandria with an authorial panache, serving as a lightly comic foil for Taylor’s upstart, ambitious Cleopatra. Mankiewicz, who took over for Rouben Mamoulian, is a wordsmith first (see All About Eve), and it was something of a shock to discover that Cleopatra runs on a steady stream of sharp dialogue and smart repartee. In fact, even the four-hour version is anything but turgid. I don’t know if you can say that Cleopatra is worth every penny, but I do think it’s something special, and not just as a bloated Hollywood novelty item. Cleopatra is so loaded with its own legend - the cost and production overruns the shifting of cast, crew and locations the notorious affair between costars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton - that the movie itself, despite being gargantuan, gets overlooked.
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