Caligula

Excuse the title of this review however the bottom line is, it has to be seen to be believed. The purely supreme cast is more than likely the only thing keeping the film from being well and truly buried in a basement. Historical revelations indicate that the content of this film probably does in fact (to a degree) reflect the lunacy rampant at the time and yes that means....meaningless executions, wild paranoia, incest and of course the gratuitous sex which could probably leave some soft porn movies looking very average (provided you get the right version). No its not a true classic but it dabbles with taboo, and dares go where other films draw the line. Its one i'll watch again and one you'd have to see merely to say you saw it. 6/10 scorpio

For a period there, in the late 70s, we came very close to having real life in films. More real than ever. Oh, we had blood and tears, and an occasional breast, but the state of affairs was little different than that Disney TeeVee world where no bathrooms had toilets and sex was something oddly remote from the eye, always around the corner.

Partly, its that odd, odd American prudishness, that tut tut notion that invisible things are managed things. But partly there's the simple fact that no good case could be made for "watching." So a simple balance is maintained. Since sex sells, we'll have wet lips and vamping and wild joining of invisible parts. But we won't have life the way it really is, with all sorts of skin, intimacies and gentle touches. And smells.

Into this space you'll find various intrusions. I really thought "9 Songs" was immensely clever, justifiably cinematic. I also find from time to time clever ideas in ordinary porn. "Private Teacher" by an Orson Welles associate had some neat ideas sneaked in, as did "La Foire aux sexes" which was every bit a good new wave film.

And then you'll have something like this, which perhaps by itself set back the whole notion of intimacy in film three decades.

Its big, its loud, its stupid. Fortunately, this was before that insane silicone and shaved craze hit the girlie watcher's world. But its of the same ilk in a way.

Just think: Peter O'Toole, Hellen Mirren, John Geilgud for chrissakes! Not bad set design, in that Italian monstrosity tradition of Zefferelli. A script by Gore Vidal — who knows nothing about how to flesh out a film (ouch, sorry), but whose larger arcs are solid. And Tinto Brass is not a bad filmmaker in the small, meaning he knows how to make a good image if not craft things as a project.

It could have worked, because by the late seventies, audiences had plenty of examples of performances that referenced and encapsulated other performances, so we could have what this could have been: a (film) performance of a (porn) performance of a (historical, voyeuristic-in-its-time) performance. And the projection of genital reality across those layers could have been intelligent as well as whatever else you may want.

For decades after Kinsey botched things with flawed science, Playboy was the vanguard of the sexual revolution. I'm not making this up; there really was a "Playboy philosophy" which boiled down to: "sex is natural and pleasant and if it doesn't hurt anyone, why not?" With hippies as a sort of mascot, this seemed intelligent, especially since the girlie pictures were surrounded with some of the best writing in print. Those centerfolds mattered.

Then along came a sort of second generation magazine which exploited the fact that Palyboy's girls had no body hair or genitals and were too linked to a set of obsolete fantasies. Penthouse girls had hair and fluids and were aggressive. Fewer coy blonds; more adventure. It was an equally vapid set of fantasies which as these things go went obsolete as quickly. But in the period of 76-80, that magazine was in the forefront of vaginal honesty in life. A forefront, such as society would allow.

And there was the Playboy tradition of wrapping things in intellectual goo. Which meant that this film could have been something that mattered, that changed things. It could have cast itself in the same useless space as the Romans it portrayed. But it made a strange bargain: the story has these acts as perverted, distorted life. Where ordinary films went way out of their way to not show certain things in sex, this went as far the other way to show them. Its a strange world where sexual positions and acts are arranged precisely so that you CAN see.

So I think like all great turning points in film, this film is important. Its not good, its ghastly. But its important because its mistakes hurt us in places that matter and missed an opportunity to make film better, richer.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Maybe it helps to be familiar with the history, Art, and literature of the Ancient Rome because "Caligula" is surprisingly truthful adaptation of the chapter about Caligula in "The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars by C. Suetonius Tranquillus, the Roman Historian. If you read the chapter dedicated to Nero, you'll be even more shocked because Nero was always fascinated by his uncle Caligula (he was a son of Caligula's sister Agrippina who later became a wife of Claudius who adopted Nero and made him the heir for the title and the power of Roman Emperor). Anyway, Nero made Caligula his role model and managed to surpass his uncle's' notorious fame.

The movie is notoriously famous for the plentiful scenes of real sex, including incest, necrophilia, rape, and orgies. The movie also includes quite nasty and gruesome scenes of torture, executions, murders, and humiliations but all of the events have been documented in the historical documents that still exist.

I don't think of the movie as a masterpiece or even a good movie for all of its 2.5 hours. It actually reminds the life of real Caligula. In his childhood and youth, he was adored by Roman people and especially by the army and he was a promising young man. When he grew up as a heir to the cruel and suspicious Tiberius, he had to hide his feelings and go through many humiliations in order to survive. Shrewd Tiberius said about his adopted grandson that "never humankind knew the better slave and the worse ruler than Caligula" and that he was rearing "a viper for the Roman people and a Phaethon for the world."

When the young man finally received an access to the absolute power it had absolutely corrupted him. It is also known that soon after becoming head of Roman Empire, Caligula suffered an illness and as the result of it, he became incredibly nasty, cruel, and suspicious man who had indulged in the worst acts of debauchery, cruelty, and sadism. The movie follows this pattern. I still think that it is an interesting movie with very good actors. Not every day you can see porn with Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole, Sir John Gielgud, and of course, Mr. Clockwork Orange himself, Malcolm McDowell.

Some describe CALIGULIA as "the" most controversial film of its era. While this is debatable, it is certainly one of the most embarrassing: virtually every big name associated with the film made an effort to distance themselves from it. Author Gore Vidal actually sued (with mixed results) to have his name removed from the film, and when the stars saw the film their reactions varied from loudly voiced disgust to strategic silence. What they wanted, of course, was for it to go away.

For a while it looked like it might. CALIGULA was a major box-office and critical flop (producer Guccione had to rent theatres in order to get it screened at all), and although the film was released on VHS to the home market so many censorship issues were raised that it was re-edited, and the edited version was the only one widely available for more than a decade. But now CALIGULIA is on DVD, available in both edited "R" and original "Unrated" versions. And no doubt John Gielgud is glad he didn't live to see it happen.

The only way to describe CALIGULIA is to say it is something like DEEP THROAT meets David Lynch's DUNE by way of Fellini having an off day. Vidal's script fell into the hands of Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, who used Vidal's reputation to bankroll the project and lure the big name stars--and then threw out most of Vidal's script and brought in soft-porn director Tinto Brass. Then, when Guccione felt Brass' work wasn't explicit enough, he and Giancarlo Lui photographed hardcore material on the sly.

Viewers watching the edited version may wonder what all the fuss is about, but those viewing the original cut will quickly realize that it leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. There is a tremendous amount of nudity, and that remains in the edited version, but the original comes complete with XXX scenes: there is very explicit gay, lesbian, and straight sex, kinky sex, and a grand orgy complete with dancing Roman guards thrown in for good measure. The film is also incredibly violent and bloody, with rape, torture, and mutilation the order of the day. In one particularly disturbing scene, a man is slowly stabbed to death, a woman urinates on his corpse, and his genitals are cut off and thrown to the dogs.

In a documentary that accompanies the DVD release, Guccione states he wanted the film to reflect the reality of pagan Rome. If so, he missed the mark. We know very little about Caligula--and what little we know is questionable at best. That aside, orgies and casual sex were not a commonplace of Roman society, where adultery was an offense punishable by death. And certainly ancient Rome NEVER looked like the strange, slightly Oriental, oddly space-age sets and costumes offered by the designers.

On the plus side, those sets and costumes are often fantastically beautiful, and although the cinematography is commonplace it at least does them justice; the score is also very, very good. The most successful member of the cast is Helen Mirren, who manages to engage our interests and sympathies as the Empress Caesonia; Gielgud and O'Toole also escape in reasonably good form. The same cannot be said for McDowell, but in justice to him he doesn't have much to work with.

The movie does possess a dark fascination, but ultimately it is an oddity, more interesting for its design and flat-out weirdness than for content. Some of the bodies on display (including McDowell's and Mirren's) are extremely beautiful, and some of the sex scenes work very well as pornography... but then again, some of them are so distasteful they might drive you to abstinence, and the bloody and grotesque nature of the film undercuts its eroticism. If you're up to it, it is worth seeing once, but once is likely to be enough.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

This film, as with all, has good points and bad points.

In general, I feel that the good ones far outweigh the bad.

The film simply gives the story of the rise and death of Emperor Caligula in a very straight-forward manner. Indeed, it can be seen as shocking, but I think that this is a side-effect of it's desire to be realistic, rather than a deliberate act on the part of the film-makers.

The cinematography and camera work is awful. The huge sets seem at times almost claustrophobic which is an absolute crime considering the magnificence of them. There is also too much emphasis on Caligula himself, to the detriment of revealing some important traits in other characters, making them seem somewhat shallow at times.

The sex scenes are very well placed within the context of the film. I thought that only two scenes stood out as being unnecessarily overt, but for the most part, the explicitness is on the fringe of the focus of each scene, while also playing a major part in the atmosphere.

Never once did I feel that any dialogue was out of place, nor did the acting strike me as being bad.

By far the biggest problem with this film is the fact that the sexual content is widely advertised and therefore anticipated before viewing. This may cause people to focus dominantly on those scenes without really looking at the film as a whole. For me, it enhanced the film. Not in a particularly titillating way, but in the fact that there was no compromise during scenes of sexual acts. Roman orgies are regarded to have been extremely opulent and promiscuous - I found it refreshing to see one as it may have actually been rather than lots of fully-clothed laughing fat men pouring red wine over their faces and eating grapes while draped with female automatons.

In summary, Caligula definitely has it's place in film history due to it's controversy, but if you look beyond that controversy, you should find a rather good film which neatly tells the story of how power can turn someone into a madman.