It is virtually impossible to separate Cleopatra the movie from Cleopatra the spectacle and that’s because they are truly and rarely intertwined.
A legend of Hollywood, the 1963 production of Cleopatra has so much curiosity surrounding it I hardly know where to start. It was budgeted at $2 million and eventually cost (up to) $44 million to produce close to $300 million in today’s dollars. Liz Taylor almost died during the filming and was given a tracheotomy to keep her alive.
The production was forced to move from Rome to London and back to Rome again. Two of its stars fell in love (Taylor and Burton) on the set, ruining both of their marriages. 20th Century Fox essentially went bankrupt, leading to the ousting of its chief. The first director was fired after burning $7 million with nothing to show for it.
The second director (Mankiewicz) was fired during editing, only to be rehired when no one else could finish the picture. Taylor threw up the first time she saw the finished product. Producer Walter Wanger never worked in Hollywood again. And the original six-hour epic was cut to a little over three.
But enough of the gossip the movie itself is hardly the best film ever made. Its first half, tracing Cleopatra’s dealings with Julius Caesar (Rex Harrison), dealings which ultimately lead to his downfall, is a great bit of cinema. It’s a tight 1:50 and tells a powerful tale of greed for power and duplicity in politics. On the famed Ides of March, Caesar gets his comeuppance, and Mark Antony (Richart Burton) becomes the focus of the film. His love affair with Cleo is a sick monstrosity, an inexplicable mess of gluttony and gaudiness that would make Tammy Faye Baker look underdressed amidst its splendor.
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