Movie review - "Caesar and Cleopatra" (1945) **1/2

Apparently the most expensive film made in Britain at the time and you can't help but wonder "why?" It's basically a filmed play, most of which takes indoors. There are some big sets and some extras and boats, but you don't really need them for the story - at least, not the way its presented here by Gabriel Pascal. 

To be fair to Rank, they gave similar free reign to Laurence Olivier and he produced Henry V so it wasn't wrong they green lighted this. I mean,Vivien Leigh, Claude Rains, Shaw, colour, the cream of English acting talent (Cecil Parker, Flora Robson, etc), with the box office appeal of Stewart Granger as an extra lure... It just should have cost a lot of money.

The story concerns the events around Caesar's arrival in Egypt and his placing of Cleopatra on the throne. Their relationship is one of friendship, politics and respect rather than romance and passion - you never get the sense they would generate enough enthusiasm for each other to create a son, as they did. But it works as an interpretation.

Shaw's dialogue is a treat and the two leads are superb - Rains isn't perhaps totally believable as a military general, but he's very engaging, and Vivien Leigh is spot on as the kittenish Cleopatra. There is a real warmth between the two. 

 

The rest of the cast use a variety of fake beards and skin dye (eg Flora Robson) which is sometimes off-putting (Granger, with his dark skin,very short toga and earring, looks as though he's on the way to Mardi Gras), although everyone can act.

A film of the head rather than the heart or the eye, and as such not suited for a spectacle, but as an example of filmed theatre, fair enough. 

 

It has that wash-out colour look found in Rank Films at this time - it may as well have been in black and white (Michael Powell's clever use of colour was a rarity for British cinema). Michael Rennie impresses as a centurion.