I credit this movie with sparking my love for movies which garners my forever love for it.
Claudette Colbert is monumental in bringing the picture to life and dominates every scene she’s apart of, but what really makes it work is De Mille’s directorial choices. This was one of the last pictures made before the Hays Code really cracked down so it’s about as risqué as you can get for the 30s. I mean it opens with a nude woman holding smoldering bowls of incense.... how was I allowed to watch this as a child??
Where most biopics focus on telling the whole story of the person or coming up with situations to give an actor the right scenes so they can win accolades, DeMille isn’t interested in that at all. He said “this is a fantastical character that has devolved into legend, let’s give her that treatment”. The scene on the boat where Cleopatra wows Anthony with the riches of Egypt incapsulates this perfectly. The dancing, the flowers, the robes, the fake cat fights, the giant curtains that go up to cover Anthony and Cleopatra from their first sexual experience... it’s brilliant.
Also the war montage... how many Playmobil battles did that inspire in me, we’ll never know. I was obsessed with it. The chariots thundering over the desert to meet the legions of Rome, the ships crashing into one another while the catapults fired flaming bundles, Cleopatra mourning the death of her Egypt over the retreating forces... something about it struck a chord with me.
While not historically accurate or accessible to most everyone in its souped up dramatization of the facts, it’s special to me.
I credit this movie with sparking my love for movies which garners my forever love for it.
Claudette Colbert is monumental in bringing the picture to life and dominates every scene she’s apart of, but what really makes it work is De Mille’s directorial choices. This was one of the last pictures made before the Hays Code really cracked down so it’s about as risqué as you can get for the 30s. I mean it opens with a nude woman holding smoldering bowls of incense.... how was I allowed to watch this as a child??
Where most biopics focus on telling the whole story of the person or coming up with situations to give an actor the right scenes so they can win accolades, DeMille isn’t interested in that at all. He said “this is a fantastical character that has devolved into legend, let’s give her that treatment”. The scene on the boat where Cleopatra wows Anthony with the riches of Egypt incapsulates this perfectly. The dancing, the flowers, the robes, the fake cat fights, the giant curtains that go up to cover Anthony and Cleopatra from their first sexual experience... it’s brilliant.
Also the war montage... how many Playmobil battles did that inspire in me, we’ll never know. I was obsessed with it. The chariots thundering over the desert to meet the legions of Rome, the ships crashing into one another while the catapults fired flaming bundles, Cleopatra mourning the death of her Egypt over the retreating forces... something about it struck a chord with me.
While not historically accurate or accessible to most everyone in its souped up dramatization of the facts, it’s special to me.
