Cleopatra (1963)

In the early 60s, 20^th Century Fox as a studio was suffering. Having not had a true success in years and having released a few too many flops, they were desperate for anything that had the potential to show profit. After digging into the studio archives to come up with an idea for a catalogue title that could become a big remake, they came out with Cleopatra, and the rest is history.

Originally intended to be a modest drama with Joan Collins and a $2 million budget, the final film ended up costing about $44 million, which is $279 million in today’s money, adjusted for inflation. That makes this Cleopatra one of the most expensive movies ever made and also one of the biggest flops or successes, depending on how you look at it. Thanks to a great marketing scheme on the part of Fox, promising one of the biggest spectacles of all cinema and delivering, the film did eventually earn back its full budget. This was mostly due to a deal struck with the TV network ABC, who paid $5 million to broadcast the movie twice. Fox only managed to stay afloat as a company during these years because of how enormously successful The Sound of Music was, released two years after Cleopatra.

Once Fox decided in 1960 that they were going to make the movie, they first began looking for a producer. All of the people approached for the position were either too busy or uninterested. Walter Wanger was hired after he approached Fox with the idea for a potential hit: the story of Cleopatra. This would be Wanger’s last film job. Joseph L. Mankiewicz was chosen as director by Elizabeth Taylor, who had the choice of director as one of her many stipulations in the agreement to star.

Mankiewicz proved a competent choice for the project, even though he was rather vocal about how much his heart was not in it. The great chaos of the multiple years of production is not visible when you watch the final film. All that is visible is a typical historical romance on a very big scale. Mankiewicz worked on the script throughout filming, changing scenes as he came to them. When he was fired during post-production for taking too long with the editing, he was quickly rehired when Fox realized he was the only one who knew how it all fit together.

If watching Cleopatra with modern eyes is a bit of a struggle, I don’t think it is entirely Mankiewicz’s fault. He always intended his efforts to be released as two films, one telling the story of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar and a follow-up covering Cleopatra’s romance with Marc Anthony. Each film was to be approximately three hours in length, but over two hours of footage was discarded when Fox demanded that only one movie be released. During filming, a widely-gossiped affair had sprung up between stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who would soon marry each other, and the success of the film may well have been in large part due to the efforts by Fox to advertise it as a Taylor-Burton vehicle, even though Burton is largely absent until the second half.

Efforts are being made to recover the missing footage and re-assemble a director’s cut, but I can’t imagine facing even more Cleopatra than we already have. The four-hour cut that exists today is only watchable because of its absurd excess. The dramatic side of the film, especially in the second half, is dull at its best and excruciating at its worst. Scholars have marveled at how historically accurate the film is in its storytelling, but the story is never as important as the visuals, which constantly overshadow everything else. When we think back on this movie, we do not remember lengthy (campy) soliloquies. We recall the towering sets (the Roman Senate in the film is approximately three times the size of the real one), the solid gold costumes (Taylor’s record-breaking 65 costume changes cost something like $200,000 alone) and the fleet of ships that was called the third largest navy in the world. In an epic like this, model ships simply won’t do.

The production of the film has become legendary. The original sets were built at great expense in England, but before much shooting had begun, Taylor became extremely ill and was indisposed for several months. The sets were torn down and later reconstructed in Italy, where the building industry of the country was ultimately taken over by the production for how many materials were needed throughout the shoot. The original director, Rouben Mamoulian, quit after these early struggles and by the time Mankiewicz came on board, the film was already $5 million over budget with nothing to show for it.

The ten people who shared the Academy Award for Best Art Direction had their work cut out for them. As expensive as the sets already were, they had to be constantly repaired and occasionally rebuilt due to the deterioration caused by the lengthy shooting schedule. Enormous shots like the one of Cleopatra’s barge being dragged through a parade took weeks to complete because of inconsistencies in lighting and the uncooperation of the extras, who were always calling out, “Liz! Liz!” instead of, “Cleopatra! Cleopatra!” During the height of the film’s production, Fox was spending about $700,000 a day. All other projects from the studio were put on hold.

The primary reason the film veered towards the enormous was Elizabeth Taylor. As one of the biggest stars in the world at the time, and one of the fussiest, any production featuring her couldn’t afford to be modest. It is amusing to think how akin to the egotistical Cleopatra Taylor was. She agreed to star for an unprecedented fee of $1 million and ended up earning a total of $7 million just for her performance. Receiving an additionally hefty sum, one of her demands was that the filming use her late husband Michael Todd’s Todd AO camera system, which she now owned.

Taylor was not the only prima donna on set. Rex Harrison, who portrayed Julius Caesar, recounted an incident in which he had to refuse to work until he was guaranteed that his personal assistants not be taken away, despite the studio’s desperate needs to trim the budget. He also claims that he offered to sacrifice his acting fee, saying in an interview that he was “the least difficult actor in the film.” One of his other contractual demands was that no advertisement for the film include an image of Richard Burton unless an image of Harrison was also visible. Ironically, he really was the greatest acting asset the film had, giving the greatest dramatic performance of his career and the only performance in Cleopatra really worthy of praise. The only possible exception is the supporting performance by Roddy McDowall, which was popular then, but seems overbearing now. He was considered a front-runner for the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, but was accidentally submitted for Best Actor in a Leading Role and was therefore not nominated.

Cleopatra stands as one of the greatest spectacle movies in history, enjoyable for the abundance of real visual splendor that can never again exist in our computerized generation. Its clunky narrative has kept it from being anything more than an exercise in splendor, but these shortcomings are easily forgivable when witnessing what is overall an awe-inspiring picture. Fox’s enormous financial risk paid off when the film was released to months of sold-out screenings across the nation. Several re-releases throughout the years have proven profitable as well, including a new blu-ray release that is stunning to say the least. At the 36^th Academy Awards, the film won Best Color Cinematography, Best Color Art Direction, Best Color Costume Design and Best Special Effects. It was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Harrison), Best Original Score, Best Film Editing and Best Sound Mixing.