Cleopatra

1963’s Cleopatra was the film that nearly bankrupted Twentieth Century Fox thanks in large part to the film’s leading lady herself, Elizabeth Taylor. Her record breaking salary coupled with multiple delays due to her crippling health issues and an adultery scandal meant that the film would need to be a huge hit just to break even. While it ended up being a critical success in the United States it wasn’t well received in Europe. Initially it was a box office failure thanks to the budget overruns and expensive marketing costing about $438 million dollars adjusted for inflation. Watching it today all that money can be seen on screen with elaborate sets, thousands of extras, and plenty of A-list stars filling key roles. All of that coupled with a more than four hour runtime creates an epic that needed to be seen on the biggest screens available. People flocked to the theater making it the highest grossing film of the year but the large price tag meant that even with all that it still lost money.

The story is based on several elements, most notably The Life and Times of Cleopatra by Carlo Maria Franzero. It details the rise of Cleopatra’s reign over Egypt with the assistance of Julius Caesar (Rex Harrison) who exiled Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII after a failed attempt on her life. This exile meant almost certain death to the pharaoh in the eastern desert as he and his men were greatly outnumbered by opposing forces. Julius Caesar, despite being already married, takes Cleopatra for his bride and they soon have a son. After being granted the position of Dictator for Life over Rome, he brings the two to the city where her grand entrance wins the adulation of the Roman people. But her presence, coupled with his ego and ambition to rule alongside her over all the known world, leads to him being assassinated by a group of conspirators. Caesar’s will names Octavian (Roddy McDowall), Julius Caesar’s adoptive son, as the official heir, rather than the child born of Cleopatra so, angered, she returns to Egypt. A rebellion in Rome ends with an alliance between Octavian, Mark Antony (Richard Burton), and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, successfully splitting the republic.

Mark Antony soon discovers that to successfully complete a campaign against Parthia he will need money and resources only available to him from Egypt. He petitions Cleopatra to visit him in Tarsus to discuss an alliance but she refuses to leave Egyptian soil. Eventually she relents, on her own terms, sailing for Tarsus on a giant royal barge that she will refuse to step off of, considering it to be an extension of Egypt soil. There the two begin a love affair that will signal the beginning of the end for both of them. With her encouragement, Mark Antony will wage war with Octavian, a war that he can’t win even with the assistance of Egypt’s soldiers and armaments. This war will bring about the downfall of Mark Antony, the death of Cleopatra’s son with Julius Caesar, and finally the Queen herself.

To say that production on Cleopatra was troubled would be an understatement.  Producer Walter Wanger, while in early development of the idea that would become the film, was sentenced to four months in prison for the attempted murder of his wife’s lover. After his release it took several more years before he found the actress he envisioned as the strong willed Queen of Egypt. Elizabeth Taylor was a sought after commodity at the time and, thinking it would never get accepted, demanded a million dollars plus a percentage of the profits. She got that, making her the highest paid actress of the time. With the roles of Caesar and Antony cast production began only to be shut down almost immediately when Taylor shot a nude scene in near freezing temperatures and became sick. This sickness turned into a fever and meningitis rendering her unable to work and postponing production indefinitely. With the delays, the two leading actors were forced to drop out and the script had to be scrapped. Sixteen weeks and $7 in expenses yielded just ten minutes of usable film. Blame was thrown around and director Rouben Mamoulian resigned.

Replacing Mamoulian as director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz took over by recommendation of Elizabeth Taylor who had worked with him before in Suddenly, Last Summer. After some initial misgivings he accepted the offer and took over rewrites of the script. Then Elizabeth Taylor got sick again, this time with pneumonia, leading to rumors of her death. Production was once again suspended and sets struck down. During this second delay Rex Harrison and Richard Burton were brought on to replace the original cast for Caesar and Antony. Production was relocated to the studio’s backlot in California while Mankiewicz scouted locations in Rome and Egypt. Other key roles behind the camera also stepped down and had to be replaced. In the fall of 1961 production finally got underway again after nearly a year or delays.

After screening a rough cut of the final film it was posited to split the over four hour long epic into two films. In the final edit, divided in half by an intermission, it feels like two films spliced together. The first half details Cleopatra’s romance with Julius Caesar and in the second half it it the same with Mark Antony. The studio heads feared those audience members favoring Burton over Harrison might skip the one film in favor of the other and vise versa and insisted it remain a single film. The final result is an overlong movie that, while never boring, begins to feel its length by the time Mark Antony’s war with Octavian starts ramping up. Surprisingly, the romance and drama between Cleopatra, Caesar and Antony are the more interesting moments of the film. When the battles are on screen it loses energy and becomes more of a slog. Roddy McDowall makes a fascinating antagonist on screen and when he’s delivering speeches to his men he radiates him power and command, but when he’s dealing with Cleopatra in her final moments, even though he is the conquerer, she is the one who commands attention. 

Cleopatra is a product of its time, something that is evident in the way it is filmed. There are many epic moments on screen, especially during the several scenes of powerful people showing off. Cleopatra’s entrance into Rome in front of a giant black sphinx is a jaw dropping spectacle in and of itself even without all the lavish dance numbers and award winning costumes. Likewise the performance on her royal barge, a performance that is not only meant to impress Mark Antony but also mock him, is elaborate and filled with visual spectacle. Where the film falters is in how it handles all the other moments. While the scenes themselves hold our interest, the way it was filmed does not. The camera blocking is poor, utilizing just wide shots and flat closeups. There is little to no flare in the camera work giving the proceedings a musty stagnant feel that a cinematographer with a better visual style could have overcome.

Elizabeth Taylor is nearly perfect in her portrayal of Cleopatra. The Queen of Egypt is shown to be both vulnerable and greedy for power and authority. When Mark Antony sends a messenger to summon her to Tarsus, she speaks to him through a thin divider while bathing in a large tub mere feet from him, demonstrating how little regard she has for Mark Antony’s messenger or his summons. She refuses to leave Egyptian soil yet later relents without conceding that she has relented, submitting to Antony’s desires for her to come to him rather than him to her. She relents, but she ingeniously makes it look like she hasn’t and even arranges for a performance designed to humiliate the Antony.

This is an epic in nearly every way. When it was screened complaints were made about the battle scenes and those complaints are justified. They are easily the least interesting moments in an otherwise riveting film. Better staging and production of those scenes, coupled with some tighter editing in the final hour, would have solidified Cleopatra as one of the greatest epics of all time. It’s still an amazing sight to behold but stumbles a little in the naval battles. Once Mark Anthony loses all of his supporters and finds himself alone the film finally recovers again and ends on a strong note. It’s a very long movie that is quite a commitment to sit through but the studio was right in not cutting it into two films. The epic nature of the production would have been somewhat lost in two shorter films. Tighten up the battles, trim some of the excess fat elsewhere and this could have been an even bigger critical hit than it ended up being. 

Academy Award Nominations: 

Best Picture: Walter Wanger

Best Actor: Rex Harrison

Best Art/Set Decoration - Color: 

Art - John DeCuir, Jack Martin Smith, Hilyard M. Brown, Herman A. Blumenthal, Elven Webb, Maurice Pelling and Boris Juraga. 

Set - Walter M. Scott, Paul S. Fox and Ray Moyer (won)

Best Cinematography - Color: Leon Shamroy (won)

Best Costume Design - Color: Irene Sharaff, Vittorio Nino Novarese, and Renié (won) 

Best Film Editing: Dorothy Spencer

Best Music Score - Substantially Original: Alex North

Best Sound: James Corcoran and Fred Hynes

Best Special Effects: Emil Kosa Jr. (won)

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Release Date: June 12, 1963

Running Time: 251 Minutes

Rated G

Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Pamela Brown, George Cole, Hume Cronyn, Cesare Danova, Kenneth Haigh and Roddy McDowall

Directed By: Joseph L. Mankiewicz