Roman in the Gloamin’

From forty million dollars plus Elizabeth Taylor plus the ingenuity of producer Walter Wanger and the genius of screenwriter-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz I did not expect too much, but I cannot say that Cleopatra lived up to my expectations. In brief it is a slow-moving, slow-paced species of film epic with the usual De Mille-ana on an even more sumptuous scale, but without even the outrageous exaggerations that have made some of the more blatant film spectacles at least diverting. Mr. Mankiewicz with his embattled assistants and his Fox letters of credit has labored to produce a work of art while avoiding too exact an imitation of either Shakespeare or Shaw. And so the wit and the beauty have been eliminated, leaving a residue of pseudo-history for an uphill four hours that are still uphill even in an air-conditioned theater with the temperature outside 96 degrees. If I owned stock in 20th-Century Fox I’d sell now, for instinct tells me that those forty million winged dollars are not going to turn into homing pigeons.

Over the years I have seen a representative number of film epics from A Daughter of the Gods starring Annette Kellerman (Miss One-Piece-Bathing-Suit of 1916), Theodora (circa 1919)—with, I believe, the scenario by D’Annunzio—through the silent Ben Hur, King of Kings and Ten Commandments to the groves of technicolor winding up with Lawrence of Arabia. Cleopatra doesn’t hit the high spots of any of these. True, Elizabeth Taylor takes a bath in the buff to end all such baths, but there’s still nothing in the film to equal the watery intensity of A Daughter of the Gods when Annette Kellerman dives into a tankful of alligators that promptly turn to swans. Nor is there anything as hair-raising as the Coliseum scene in Theodora when the lions—admittedly somewhat mangy— claw their way up the walls and into the mass of spectators. Nothing like the sustained hokum of the chariot race in Ben Hur. Even the sea fight in that film is more exciting and convincing than the Actium engagement in Cleopatra where the opposing fleets appear to be shooting Roman candles at each other. As for the land fighting, the maneuvering and advances of the legions in Spartacus were infinitely superior to Mr. Mankiewicz’s battle-drill. So was the scenery in both Exodus and Lawrence of Arabia. I don’t know how issue

FR

About the Author

Francis Russell

Featured Tags

From forty million dollars plus Elizabeth Taylor plus the ingenuity of producer Walter Wanger and the genius of screenwriter-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz I did not expect too much, but I cannot say that Cleopatra lived up to my expectations. In brief it is a slow-moving, slow-paced species of film epic with the usual De Mille-ana on an even more sumptuous scale, but without even the outrageous exaggerations that have made some of the more blatant film spectacles at least diverting. Mr. Mankiewicz with his embattled assistants and his Fox letters of credit has labored to produce a work of art while avoiding too exact an imitation of either Shakespeare or Shaw. And so the wit and the beauty have been eliminated, leaving a residue of pseudo-history for an uphill four hours that are still uphill even in an air-conditioned theater with the temperature outside 96 degrees. If I owned stock in 20th-Century Fox I’d sell now, for instinct tells me that those forty million winged dollars are not going to turn into homing pigeons.

Over the years I have seen a representative number of film epics from A Daughter of the Gods starring Annette Kellerman (Miss One-Piece-Bathing-Suit of 1916), Theodora (circa 1919)—with, I believe, the scenario by D’Annunzio—through the silent Ben Hur, King of Kings and Ten Commandments to the groves of technicolor winding up with Lawrence of Arabia. Cleopatra doesn’t hit the high spots of any of these. True, Elizabeth Taylor takes a bath in the buff to end all such baths, but there’s still nothing in the film to equal the watery intensity of A Daughter of the Gods when Annette Kellerman dives into a tankful of alligators that promptly turn to swans. Nor is there anything as hair-raising as the Coliseum scene in Theodora when the lions—admittedly somewhat mangy— claw their way up the walls and into the mass of spectators. Nothing like the sustained hokum of the chariot race in Ben Hur. Even the sea fight in that film is more exciting and convincing than the Actium engagement in Cleopatra where the opposing fleets appear to be shooting Roman candles at each other. As for the land fighting, the maneuvering and advances of the legions in Spartacus were infinitely superior to Mr. Mankiewicz’s battle-drill. So was the scenery in both Exodus and Lawrence of Arabia. I don’t know how issue