Cinema: Just One of Those Things

Cleopatra. In scarlet letters volted with excitement the notorious name hung throbbing and enormous in the night sky over Broadway. Beneath it 10,000 rubberneckers milled on the macadam and roared at the famous faces in the glare. One by one, smiles popping like flashbulbs, they disappeared in the direction of the screen. What did it hold for them? Surely no Shavian conversation piece could conceivably have cost all that money. Surely no noble Shakespearean poem could possibly be recited by Elizabeth Taylor. No, Cleopatra was bound to be one of those colossal Things that periodically come charging out of the acetate jungle and gobble up millions of dollars. It was bound to be a superspectacle. But as such might it not prove as memorable as Gone With the Wind? Or, at a minimum, as competent as Ben-Hurl Might it not tell a grand tale in the grand manner and illuminate old legend with new art?

Such was clearly the intention of Director Joseph Mankiewicz. Story, he insisted, must dominate spectacle, and with that in mind he constructed not one drama but two—both broadly true to Plutarch, each about two hours long.

The first, which tells the story of Caesar and Cleopatra, begins with the battle of Pharsalia, which breaks the power of the republic and makes Caesar (Rex Harrison) master of the Roman world. Having ordered his affairs in Europe, Caesar marches into Egypt, where civil war is raging between King Ptolemy and his seductive sister, Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor). “Overcome by the charm of her society,” as Plutarch discreetly puts it, Caesar gives Egypt to the fascinating bitch and seems inclined to crown her the first empress of Rome. But the Ides of March intervene, and Cleopatra sadly says goodbye to all that.

The second, which tells the story of Antony and Cleopatra, begins with the battle of Philippi, which once more breaks the power of the republic and this time makes a triumvirate (Antony, Octavian, Lepidus) master of the Roman world. Antony (Richard Burton) is allotted the East, and Cleopatra’s reveries of empire revive. She amorously regales him on her gilded barge, and the charms that captivated a cerebral Caesar enslave the sensual Antony the old war dog degenerates into a lap dog.

A few years later, when Cleopatra flees the battle of Actium, Antony runs after her. He abandons his legions, abandons his empire at a woman’s whim. Back in Egypt, he falls on his sword as Octavian (Roddy McDowall) approaches, and Cleopatra receives from an indifferent asp the famous kiss of death.

Physically, Cleopatra is as magnificent as money and the tremendous Todd-AO screen can make it. The De Luxe Color is perfection; the sets, for the most part, are harmonious modules of the Golden Section to which all good classical architecture answered; and a capital ship for an ocean trip is Cleopatra’s barge—250 ft. from prow to poop and covered with gilt linoleum.

Sad to say, however, the deep-revolving, witty Mankiewicz fails most where most he hoped to succeed. As drama and as cinema, Cleopatra is raddled with flaws. It lacks style both in image and in action. Never for an instant does it whirl along on wings of epic elan; generally it just bumps from scene to ponderous scene on the square wheels of exposition. Part of what is wrong went wrong in the cutting room, and for that Darryl Zanuck, boss of 20th Century-Fox, is possibly to blame. But much of what is wrong was wrong in the script, and for that Chief Scenarist Mankiewicz must wear the ears. Part One seems on the whole a competent and entertaining picture, but in Part Two, Mankiewicz goes wildly wrong.

Antony and Cleopatra, as Shakespeare conceived them, were superhuman symbols: Mars and Aphrodite, Rome and Egypt, hero and serpent twined in the grand passion that compels the universe itself. “The nobleness of life,” they cried, “is to do thus,” and as they “kiss’d away kingdoms” they ecstatically proclaimed the world well lost for love.

Antony and Cleopatra, as Mankiewicz conceives them, are all too human. He is an aging politician, she is his ambitious mistress. The script says they are in love but they obviously aren’t. Nothing suggests that the most famous lovers of all time felt anything better than lust. What the hero calls love is a Freudian fixation, what the heroine calls love is a power complex. The motives of the central characters are confused and ultimately mean, and as a result their tragedy is befuddled and ultimately petty.

The confusions of the scenario inevitably confound the actors. Burton staggers around looking ghastly and spouting irrelevance, like a man who suddenly realizes that he has lost his script and is really reading some old sides from King of Kings. And in the big love scenes “the ne’er-lust-wearied Antony” seems strangely bored—as if perhaps he had rehearsed too much.

As for Taylor, she does her dead-level best to portray the most woman in world history. To look at, she is every inch “a morsel for a monarch.” Indeed, her 50 gorgeous costumes are designed to suggest that she is a couple of morsels for a monarch. But the “infinite variety” of the superb Egyptian is beyond her, and when she plays Cleopatra as a political animal she screeches like a ward heeler’s wife at a block party.

Harrison alone deserves the laurel. He makes a charming and surprisingly impressive Caesar—though some may doubt that the most prodigious public energy in human history can be portrayed as the Acheson of antiquity.

Still and all, as spectacles go, Cleopatra goes reasonably well, and may safely be seen by those who can afford it. But customers will be well advised to do what the wife of Senator Jacob Javits did on opening night. She brought a little pillow to use in a pinch.