CLEOPATRA: Blu-ray (2oth Century-Fox, 1963) Fox Home Video

In honor of the Walt Disney Corporation’s most recent public announcement that, after decades of sitting on their own goldmine of Uncle Walt’s live-action film legacy, as well as to have since annexed the asset management catalog of the now-defunct 2oth Century-Fox (inexplicably rechristened 2oth Century Studios by Disney Inc.), Walt’s successors have reached a distribution deal with Grover Crisp and Sony Home Entertainment (whose home video model is decidedly more progressive and aggressive), we at Nix Pix have decided to revisit several Fox catalog releases, decidedly, that require some immediate love and attention. For decades, the infamy of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra (1963) has effectively obscured the virtues in its storytelling. By design, it was a celebration of the aspirations of its production designer, ‘master builder,’ John DeCuir (whose Roman forum set was actually one and a half times grander in scope and scale, because DeCuir felt the real forum was just not all that impressive). But Cleopatra also spoke to Mankiewicz’s determination to make a damn fine film. The director toiled night and day, exhausting his physical resources as well as the finances of 2oth Century-Fox, the latter nearly bankrupted by the time it reached theaters. A $40 million colossus, even before cameras began rolling in Rome, Cleopatra had already become an epic three times more expensive than William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959). Rounded up for today’s inflation, Cleopatra cost Fox roughly $440 million of which less than half was earned back during its theatrical engagement.

Even if the final cut had not veered so wildly off course from Mankiewicz’s original desire to create a two-movie anthology, Cleopatra quickly acquired a reputation in the press for the perversity of its expenditures. Cast and crew remained on salary even when they were not working. Chauffeur-driven cars were supplied to virtually all the main players. The mineral water bill alone could have bankrolled a third-world revolution. Add to this the insanity of daily balance sheets left quietly unchecked, and, an utter lack of budgetary supervision countered in costly delays due to weather, Elizabeth Taylor’s failing health (and near-death experience in London), the restructuring of the shooting schedule in Rome to satisfy crabby cameraman, Leon Shamroy…etc., etc.  Still, it might have all worked out had Mankiewicz been allowed to release two separate movies, following the model of playwright, George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Caesar and Cleopatra’, followed by ‘Anthony and Cleopatra’. At just a little under eight hours there was certainly enough usable footage to achieve this directorial vision. Alas, Fox president, Spyros P. Skouras had grown leery of Mankiewicz’s high concept for several reasons, not the least, the studio’s desperate need for a hit movie in theaters ‘yesterday’ to rebuild Fox’s depleted coffers.

The torrid extramarital affair between costars, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor had been tabloid fodder for months and had helped to counter the negative press heaped upon the picture. So, Skouras was eager to capitalize on the public fascination with this scandalous infidelity before it cooled. However, two books chronicling the turbulent behind-the-scenes chaos, The Cleopatra Papers and My Life with Cleopatra, released just prior to the world premiere did much to dampen spirits. Cleopatra became an easy target for pop camp and rank parody on television. But even these embarrassments paled to Taylor’s own outspoken condemnation of the movie, openly admitting to the press that “the final humiliation was having to go and see it.”  Taylor, who had initially refused to do the movie, had profited handsomely by it, reaping an overdraft salary in the hundreds of thousands in addition to her already agreed upon million dollars (the highest ever then paid to a star for a single picture).

Regrettably, Cleopatra had been an arduous affair for all concerned. Production Chief Johnny Johnston – a main staple in Mankiewicz’s employ, died from a heart attack just as production at Rome’s Cinecitta Studios was getting underway. During the movie’s prior false start at Pinewood Studios in England, Elizabeth Taylor had almost succumbed to a virulent bout of pneumonia and had to have an emergency tracheotomy to save her life. In transitioning from England to Italy the production gave up its Edie Plan tax breaks, jettisoned most of its original cast and crew, and, had to begin anew constructing sets on the back lot in Rome. Under such duress, Mankiewicz cobbled together his masterpiece, only to see much of it truncated in the aftermath of the studio’s short-sighted, if essential cost-cutting in the eleventh hour to survive the debacle and financial ruin. Yet, even at 320 min. Cleopatra occasionally seems bloated and meandering. Variety’s snap assessment of the film as “a series of coming attractions for something that will never come” did little to quell the initial giddy anxiety inside Fox’s corporate boardroom, a nervous friction easily rivaled by the film’s catastrophic box office returns.

Mankiewicz had committed body and soul to the point of physical collapse to see Cleopatra through. The strain of it all had taken everything out of him. Only now, it all seemed hardly worth the effort. “Perhaps you know something I don’t,” Mankiewicz quipped to Burt Parks, MC at the New York world premiere, after being afforded a glowing accolade about the general importance and overall stature of his movie. It was a prophetic epitaph. For although the careers of costars Rex Harrison, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton would emerge virtually unscathed, the reputations of Cleopatra’s producer, Walter Wanger and Mankiewicz would never recover. Neither ever worked in movies again. The irony, of course, is that in re-viewing Cleopatra from a vantage some sixty years removed from all its gossip and hype, there is a great deal to admire and absorb - far more than either the critics or audiences of its day gave the film or Mankiewicz credit. Despite the studio’s last-minute tampering, whittling down the run time to accommodate multiple showings, Cleopatra is perhaps ‘the most influential film of the sixties’; an assessment first offered by eminent commercial artist, Andy Warhol.

To his dying day, Mankiewicz pleaded with Fox’s ever-revolving regime of execs – unsuccessfully - to reassemble the picture as two separate films. Mankiewicz did not live to see the day (he died on February 5, 1993). But in 1995, Fox did launch a worldwide search for Cleopatra’s missing footage – nearly three-hours in all, long since excised and now – regrettably – presumed to have been discarded by the studio as part of that infamous mid-seventies purge of the studio’s vaults that saw virtually all of its vintage catalog destroyed, merely to ‘make room’ for other storage facilities. What a thrill it would have been to have the opportunity to re-judge, rather than pre-judge Cleopatra on those terms, as the movie masterpiece(s) Mankiewicz had first envisioned and meticulously endeavored to craft – perhaps, a vastly superior super colossus in lieu of what some critics continue to misrepresent as the lavish claptrap it ultimately became.

Cleopatra had been a great 1917 silent movie for Fox vamp, Theda Bara and a lavish 1934 Cecil B. DeMille epic starring the sultry Claudette Colbert. Both of these earlier versions had turned a considerable profit. But by the time Mankiewicz was brought into the fold, the Bara version was already a lost film. And DeMille’s was only in B&W. So, the decision to remake Cleopatra, a picture virtually unseen in thirty years then, was, at least on the surface, not without merit. To produce it on such a titanic scale was a more problematic endeavor as 2oth Century-Fox by 1959 had endured a very insidious run of bad luck. Even with such stars as John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley at their disposal, the studio struggled to keep their ledgers out of the red. What Fox desperately needed was a hit; ‘mega’, if possible, but sizable either way if Fox was to continue making movies at all. With television uniformly cutting theater attendance by nearly forty-percent, and, the government-forced divestiture of its once prominent theater chain rendering the guarantee of distribution profits moot, Spiros P. Skouras – an exhibitor at heart, further compounded this exodus by liquidating Fox’s back lots to a high-rise developer – considered by many to be second only to MGM’s. Alas, even this financial reprieve was temporary.

In its initial phase, Cleopatra seemed destined as a modestly budgeted (under two-million) sword and sandal quickie, starring Fox contract player, Joan Collins. Two overriding factors prevented the project from proceeding as planned. The first was producer, Walter Wanger’s driving ambition to do something more with the picture. The second stemmed from a gross naiveté on Skouras’ part, in his belief Wanger could deliver on his claim that an even heftier investment would yield infinitely greater box office returns.  As Cleopatra’s budget swelled to $5 million, Wanger pursued Elizabeth Taylor to star, a proposition Taylor thought ludicrous until Wanger agreed to her casual deterrent of a million-dollar salary to commit. Taylor was flabbergasted by Wanger’s immediate acceptance; even more so when her additional demands to shoot abroad, in her late husband’s patented Todd A-O process, and, with her choice of director behind the camera, were all willingly approved. Regrettably, England’s climate was not conducive to the shoot. Perpetual rainfall took its toll on the paper mache sets as well as Taylor’s fragile health. As the shoot interminably dragged on, co-star Peter Finch, the film’s original Caesar, began to get paralytically drunk between takes. Unable to distill clarity from this chaos, director, Rouben Mamoulian was fired. The film’s cast – except for Taylor – were summarily dismissed, and, Joseph L. Mankiewicz was brought in to shore up the hemorrhaging. But shifting locales from London to Rome generated heat of a different kind when Taylor began carrying on with her married co-star, Richard Burton.

While Mankiewicz directed by day and feverishly wrote his script by night, Cleopatra slowly began to spiral out of control. Falling behind schedule and going way over budget, Mankiewicz endured constant threats from the studio to either cancel the movie or fire him. These added personal strain to an already unwieldy production. The extras grumbled even more – about their skimpy costumes and the hot sun. At one point, Skouras asked Mankiewicz for a final budget; the monumental figure quoted by the director only serving as a ballpark of where the movie’s final tally was headed. Unable to go to Fox shareholders with this princely sum, Skouras instead indulged in a bit of creative book-keeping to keep everything a secret. This, eventually, would get him broomed from the executive suite. But for the time being, the ebullient Greek exhibitor, who had assumed the mantle of quality as Fox’s chair after Darryl F. Zanuck departed to Europe to make pictures as an indie producer, was riding on the ether, as well as the blind promise, everything would turn out alright in the end. He was, alas, misinformed.

Cleopatra is basically the story of three formidable titans doomed to the notorious quagmire of history. We first meet Julius Caesar (Rex Harrison) in his final military campaign against the forces of Pompey. Having secured another victory for Rome, Caesar journeys to the port city of Alexandria, Egypt for an audience with the joint rulers of the land: Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII (Richard O’Sullivan) and his sister, Queen Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor). Caesar quickly discovers Ptolemy has already sprung a palace coup, forcing Cleopatra into exile. Ptolemy makes Caesar a gift of Pompey’s severed head, a gruesome reward that does not gain Caesar’s favor. Indeed, Caesar is a nobleman and repulsed by the offering. Later, Cleopatra reenters the palace, disguised in a rug slung over the shoulder of her trusted protector, Apollodorus (Cesare Danova). She forewarns Caesar of her brother’s forces, intent to murder him. In response, Caesar orders his Centurions to burn the Egyptian fleet. The fire spreads to the city, destroying the library where many sacred documents, including the original remnants of the Bible are stored.  Cleopatra is outraged by this display of Roman barbarism. But her distemper is quelled by Caesar’s passionate embrace. Ptolemy’s forces attack, thwarted by  Caesar’s brilliant military strategies. Ptolemy and his lord chamberlain, Theodotos (Herbert Berghof) are brought to justice and sentenced to death for their attempts on Cleopatra and Caesar’s lives. Shortly thereafter, Cleopatra is crowned as the undisputed ruler of Egypt.

Cleopatra’s contentment is tied up with Caesar, a bond made more precarious for the Romans when their illegitimate son, Caesarion (Loris Loddi) threatens the legitimacy of his other marriage back home. Caesar’s pride in accepting the child as his heir apparent becomes a scandal, heatedly debated in the Roman Senate. Two years pass. Caesar is made dictator of Rome – a ceremonial post falling short of his expectations to be king. Nevertheless, Caesar sends for Cleopatra who arrives resplendent in a lavish processional that instantly garners the adulation of the Roman people. Despite symbols of foreboding from his wife, Calpurnia (Gwen Watford) and Cleopatra, Caesar enters the Senate where he is brutally murdered by a contingent of politicos.

Caesar’s nephew, Octavian Caesar Augustus (Roddy McDowell) is appointed as Caesar’s successor, tendering Cleopatra’s position in Rome tentative at best and highly volatile at its worst. Marc Antony (Richard Burton) spirits the queen and her young son away on a barge, promising to avenge Caesar’s murder. Two years later, Antony’s mission is accomplished. He has caught and put to death all responsible for Caesar’s untimely death and established a second triumvirate with Octavian. But the empire is divided. Antony takes control of the eastern provinces and, like Caesar before him, makes his pilgrimage to Egypt where he too finds passion in the queen’s arms. Cleopatra is consumed in her love for Antony and yet, devoured by a venomous rage to learn Antony too has plans to return to his wife, Octavia (Jean Marsh). Hence, when Antony ventures back to Egypt many months later on a military campaign in Parthia, Cleopatra coolly denies him her audience, eventually agreeing to a détente in Tarsus aboard her royal barge. There, Antony becomes a piteous and slovenly drunk. Cleopatra exploits the moment to make a fool of him in public. Bursting into her bedchamber for a night of violent love-making, news of Antony’s seduction reaches Octavian who uses the affair to smear Antony’s good name in Rome. Antony is forced to grovel at the queen’s behest, an acquiescence that includes a divorce from his wife. Branded ‘the Egyptian whore’ by Octavian, who uses the circumstances of Antony’s will – that he should be buried in Egypt/not Rome – for his own campaign of war, Rome’s forces ready in preparations to march on Alexandria; a decision stirred to near religious fervor when Octavian publicly murders the ever-loyal Egyptian Ambassador, Sosigenes (Hume Cronyn) on the Senate steps.

The naval Battle at Actium decimates Antony's legions. His devoted second in command, Ruffio (Martin Landau) commits suicide. Cleopatra stirs Antony to challenge Octavian’s forces on Egyptian soil – a battle already lost in Antony’s mind and affirmed when the Romans refuse to fight Antony, but instead regard him as a pathetic figure. Disgraced Antony returns to the palace where Apollodorus - believing him unworthy of the queen - convinces Antony that Cleopatra has died, whereupon Antony falls on his own sword. Octavian conquers the city without bloodshed. But his plans to return to Rome in triumph with Cleopatra as his slave are thwarted when she arranges to be bitten by a poisonous asp. Infuriated, Octavian asks Cleopatra’s devoted servant, Charmian (Isabelle Cooley), also lethally wounded by the serpent and dying at her queen’s feet, if the deed was done ‘well’ to which Charmian replies, “Extremely well, as befitting of the last of so many noble rulers.”

Cleopatra is an undeniably dazzling epic – the last of its kind. And yet, there is something rather unimpressively overwrought, if overproduced about it. The picture’s appeal rests with the public’s ravenous need to know all about the backstage badinage between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. And yet, especially given the voracity of their affair in Rome, the love-making scenes depicted between Antony and Cleopatra in the film are rather antiseptically rendered. The acting throughout is very fine – particularly, Rex Harrison’s Caesar. The character’s assassination, to cap off the first half of the picture, is, arguably, a loss from which the rest of the movie never entirely recovers. And nothing but high praise can be afforded John DeCuir’s production design. A more mammoth undertaking, one simply cannot imagine – much less, visualize and will into existence on the screen. It’s all full-scale, and staggeringly beautiful. The fault, therefore, must lay in Mankiewicz’s direction, serviceable, but entirely lacking in flair. Truth to tell, Mankiewicz’s strengths were always more heavily weighted toward his writing, particularly, dialogue. One need only revisit his back-to-back double-Oscar winners, A Letter to Three Wives (1949), and All About Eve (1950) to appreciate the quality of that work. Cleopatra is, decidedly, not Mankiewicz’s kind of movie and the discrepancies show. His action sequences are executed with a perfunctory desire to accommodate, merely to get to the next heavily-written dialogue scene. Mankiewicz would much have preferred Cleopatra as a drawing-room discussion piece arguing the virtues and vices of realpolitik. Alas, here he is saddle with the studio’s expectation for grandeur beyond all scope, and, the public’s desire to see action overtake conversation.

Cleopatra never attains the sort of immortality afforded epics like The Ten Commandments (1956) or Ben-Hur (1959), perhaps, in part, owing to the absence of any religious subtext. And yet, by 1960, even the Bible-fiction fodder was on the downswing. So, to infer Mankiewicz’s involvement on Cleopatra instantly elevated its potential from B-grade quickie to A-list colossus is a bit much. Yet, there is no denying the buzz in Hollywood then; that Cleopatra would become one of the greatest epics of all time. Tragically, what began as a ten-week shoot in Rome quickly escalated into a ten-month ordeal, under siege by bad timing and ill-planning. At one point, it was estimated the delays were adding $70,000 of debt to the movie’s bottom line per day, with Elizabeth Taylor’s overtime alone costing Fox $50,000 a week. Hence, the obvious virtues in the production were all being eaten away by grotesque budgetary mismanagement, a sentiment echoed in Fox’s corporate boardroom, and worse, slowly trickling out to the press. The oppressiveness here rests squarely on Mankiewicz’s shoulders and, unfortunately, on occasion, is glaringly apparent in the final product.

At times, Elizabeth Taylor appears visibly displeased, either with her commitment to this folly, or Mankiewicz’s direction. Conversely, Richard Burton infrequently speaks his lines as though he were merely amused. This leaves Rex Harrison as the standout – a consummate pro, deep diving into character and rising like a phoenix as a peerless and very stately Caesar. Regrettably, Caesar is only a third of the show and featured in less than half. Without Harrison, the narrative waffles – badly at times – in a sort of ‘what’s to become of me?’ limbo, infrequently resurrected by Mankiewicz’s attempts to seize control and steer his production back on course. Undeniably, the last act is hampered by one final insult – Fox’s cutting off of the purse strings after Darryl F. Zanuck’s triumphant takeover and return to the studio. To be fair, Spiros Skouras was an exhibitor at heart. He had no yen, and worse still, no stomach for the managerial overflow in conducting business at a vast studio like Fox. But Zanuck’s virtues as a superior administrator have ramifications of their own to ponder. His tinkering with Cleopatra’s continuity without Mankiewicz’s approval or input. Recognizing the Herculean task involved in assembling even a rough cut, Zanuck did eventually recall Mankiewicz to the editor’s chair. But by then, the damage had been done. At 320 mins., Cleopatra’s theatrical cut is elephantine, yet somehow tedious; a ‘monumental mouse’ as described in the New York Times in 1963. It remains a fascinating catastrophe and a magnificent flop; a carefully orchestrated, collaborative misfire, the likes of which Hollywood had not seen before, and, is unlikely to ever witness again.

Revisiting Cleopatra on Blu-ray in the aftermath of Disney’s acquisition of the Fox studio catalog, and, more recent farming out of all its holdings to Sony to distribute, one is immediately dumbstruck by the shortcomings in this original hi-def presentation. While much of the visuals here exhibit a high-quality digital rendering, the lower than adequate bit rate reveals itself when this image is blown up in projection. There are digital artifacts throughout to contend with and an absence of depth that, given Leon Shamroy’s superb cinematography in the ultra hi-def Todd A-O film process, simply should not be. Colors do pop. But the image is infrequently marred by less refined contrast and an anemia of fully saturated blacks to add texture and layering to the hues. Fine details appear to have had some minor, though still untoward tinkering, resulting in slight, but present and ringing haloes around fine detail, while background information appears digitized, in some cases, with glaring distractions. There is better news for the DTS 5.1 audio to reveal the subtler nuances in Alex North’s monumental underscore. Dialogue is crisply rendered, though SFX can appear somewhat strident and lacking in tonal bass.

Extras are impressive. The very best of the lot is ‘Cleopatra: The Film That Changed Hollywood’ – a 2-hr.-plus chronicle of the movie’s debacle and resurrection as a pop-u-tainment with an abundance of archival footage and newly produced interviews. Truly, this is one of the best documentaries ever on the making and aftermath of a motion picture, and, such a colossal shame Fox did not bother to remaster it beyond 720i. So, image quality is highly suspect and, at times, not even adequate to hold our attention. There’s also a vintage featurette, ‘The Fourth Star of Cleopatra’, and, a lengthy audio commentary from Martin Landau and others. These were all a part of Fox’s long-defunct Five Star DVD line-up. To these goodies, Fox curated a few exclusively new-to-Blu offerings, including Cleopatra Through the Ages, an insightful glimpse into the real ruler of Egypt. Also worth noting: Cleopatra’s Missing Footage – a featurette that explains how short-sightedness back in the 1970’s led to virtually all of Mankiewicz’s extemporaneous archival material presumably being junked. There is, however, a problem with that theory, as a goodly number of outtakes and scenes not included in the actual movie have found their way into the aforementioned, ‘Film That Changed Hollywood’ doc, produced decades after this purge. So, precisely where that footage hails from, and why it was never included as an outtake reel for our consideration beyond the documentary is rather mysterious. Finally, there is ‘The Cleopatra Papers’, a private correspondence about the movie that provides a fascinating backstage pass into the trials and tribulations of bringing Cleopatra to life. Bottom line: while Cleopatra is an imperfect entertainment – in some ways, fraudulently so, it remains a movie for which the public’s thirst to see more/know more has never entirely diminished. This Blu-ray is due for an upgrade. Will Sony endeavor to fulfill those dreams? Possibly. Wait and see.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

3.5

EXTRAS

5+