César et Cléopâtre

British Technicolor adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's historical play, from Eagle-Lion and director Gabriel Pascal. Roman conqueror Julius Caesar (Claude Rains) arrives in Alexandria, Egypt to supervise the occupation of the newly-acquired territory. He meets young queen Cleopatra (Vivien Leigh), a submissive girl without the skill or training to wield power. Caesar decides to personally tutor her in the ways of ruling others, while also fending off various uprisings.

This was the most expensive British film ever made at the time, and it looks it, with large, impressive sets, dozens of extras, colorful costumes, and elaborate set-pieces. The film was scripted by Shaw, and it retains the "Shakespeare-lite" quality to the dialogue. It may take modern ears a bit to get used to, but it's more accessible than the Bard's densest prose. I thought Rains was very good as older, wiser and often bemused Caesar. Stewart Granger is youthful and heroic, and Flora Robson is a scene-stealer as a powerhouse of a nurse to Cleopatra. The weakest link is Vivien Leigh, who I never bought into here. I read after watching that she suffered a miscarriage and a mental breakdown while filming, so that explains a lot of the uneven nature of her screen work. Director Pascal does a poor job of opening up the play, despite his big budget. There are a scattered few cinematic shots, but most of it feels liked a filmed stage performance. The movie earned an Oscar nomination for Best Color Art Direction.

Cleopatra and Julius Caesar carry on an arch flirtation, while spouting epigrams courtesy of George Bernard Shaw, in this literate, exuberant and thoroughly enjoyable movie. "Caesar and Cleopatra" stands out against the typical British production, which tends to be drab and morose. (Other notable exceptions are the works of Pressberger & Powell, the Korda brothers and Olivier.)

Claude Rains is perfectly cast as the cynical, world-weary and "ready for the knife" Julius Caesar. I'm not sure if it's makeup, or perhaps lighting, but Rains's face looks like it was taken from one of those memorial portraits in the Roman catacombs. In any case, while it may be Caesar's countenance we see, it's Shaw's voice we hear. I love Claude Rains in everything, but there's an intimacy with Rains here that makes "Caesar and Cleopatra" one of my Rains favorites.

And Vivian Leigh. What can I say? Her Cleopatra is Scarlett O'Hara, except that while Scarlett's flirtations were matters of the heart, Cleopatra's were purely matters of state. In the beginning Cleopatra is a sheltered, naive...well, princess. By the end, she has learned well at Caesar's knee and possesses the ruthlessness and guile of statecraft - she is a queen.

Another delight is Stewart Granger's swashbuckling Apollodorus, and Flora Robson has a delicious part as Cleopatra's nursemaid Ftatateeta. Robson is well qualified as a tutor of royalty, having herself played Queen Elizabeth in "Fire over England".

Like another classic British spectacle, "The Four Feathers," "Caesar and Cleopatra" is one of the treasures in my film archive which I view repeatedly alone.

Shaw was a wonderful historian with a deadly eye for irony. Claude Rains brings off Caesar with withering poise and breezy wit, standing tall above the flashing eye of an Egyptian hurricane named Cleopatra (Vivien Leigh). Caesar's aide-de-camp is an affable bear of a man named Rufio (Basil Sydney), who mainly just keeps his eye on Caesar. Cleopatra is likewise sheltered by her scheming counselor Ftatateeta (Flora Robson), a name that not even Caesar can pronounce. Character actor Cecil Parker as Britannus adds quaintness and serendipity to an already splendid alchemy of spotty characters. The film moves by turns through a narrow skein of classical history as the reliquarian Egyptian world gives way to a streamlined Roman one. Along the way, we witness the contending parties encompassed and entangled in a delightful pantheon of wit, irony, satire, morals, manners, and adventure. Overall, a tremendously facile projection of one of England's sharpest satirical voices, G.B. Shaw.

Up to the time it was released in 1945 Caesar and Cleopatra was the most expensive British film ever made. It was as though the British cinema was trying to show America it could do a DeMille like epic as good as Cecil B. DeMille or anyone else from Hollywood. It may have been a little too overdone. Director Gabriel Pascal might have gotten a bit carried away with the spectacle and the audience might well have missed some of George Bernard Shaw's inspired dialog.

And Pascal had the advantage of the aged Mr. Shaw personally supervising the production. Of course Shaw insisted on total fidelity to his play and the ideas therein. I understand that J. Arthur Rank wanted to have a little sex and romance in there, like DeMille did do, but Shaw would have none of it.

What sets Caesar and Cleopatra apart from other Cleopatra stories that starred Theda Bara, Elizabeth Taylor, and Claudette Colbert is that Shaw portrayed her as probably what she was, a silly teenager who just happens to be Queen of Egypt. There's a little bit of Scarlett O'Hara in Vivien Leigh's performance as she moves from silly teen to a young women well schooled in statecraft by Julius Caesar.

Claude Rains plays a world weary Julius Caesar and the Shavian quips roll off his tongue with great aplomb. Like George Bernard Shaw's other masterpiece Pygmalion, Rains tutors Leigh and the results far exceed what he could have hoped for.

Production on Caesar and Cleopatra was begun while there was still a shooting war in Europe and V-2s and other such explosive devices were still raining down on the United Kingdom. A couple came real close to the studio in London this was being filmed at.

Stewart Granger got his first real notice in this film playing Apollodorus and Francis L. Sullivan plays a blustering and plotting Pothinos. If you look hard among the various slave women you will find both Jean Simmons and Kay Kendall among the extras.

You will also like both Basil Sydney as Ruffio and Cecil Parker as Britanus, two aides to Caesar who both occasionally give him a reality check.

Caesar and Cleopatra failed to recoup the cost of making it in initial release. J. Arthur Rank misjudged the British public taste post World War II. Maybe a little less expense and more attention to Shaw's words and the film might have been better.

Still it's pretty good as is.

Shaw's hardly a speck on the windshield of American cultural consciousness anymore. Too bad. "The Devil's Disciple," "Major Barbara," "Arms and the Man," "Candida," "You Never Can Tell." Witty, clever, insightful, intriguing... a century and more later.

For those who haven't discovered him yet, this colorful, fast-paced rendition of "C&C" makes a nifty portal. The film -looks- like "Quo Vadis" or "Samson and Delilah" (of more or less the same vintage). It even looks like the Taylor-Burton-Harrison marathon done almost two decades later.

But it doesn't -feel- like -any- of those. Shaw always had a great story to tell -- and a something worthwhile to -say- -- and he (or his characters) almost invariably told and said it well. One could hardly call the 1934 or 1963 films "insightful romps." This, however...

I've been a sucker for Vivien Leigh since I watched her whip the boys into shape in "GWTW," but as interesting as she was there, she's miles beyond Scarlet O'Hara here. Shaw gave -his- Cleo a far more complex character than Young or Mankiewicz gave their Cleo's; this alabaster Leigh is both adolescent and guileful. But to Rains's conflicted but self-suspect Caesar, she's about as transparent as that look-alike, late-night, hottie-cum-biblical-scholar who inherited Gene Scott's TV ministry.

The relationships here are no different from those in the Mankiewicz mess, but they move along in far more sophisticated -- and entertaining -- fashion here. We already know the resolution, it's the unfolding of the drama that matters.

Rains ("Casablanca," "The Invisible Man") and Leigh bring the wise, amused, self-effacing old man and the desperate, manipulative, narcissistic young woman in Shaw's play far more credibly to life than was the case in the DeMille or Manciewicz films. And supporters like Robson, Granger and the rest add plenty. But as in any Shaw play, it's the playwright's sophisticated revelations that matter.

The "big success" narcissist who thinks a "trophy wife" is a good idea might learn plenty from a trip to Blockbuster and a two-dollar investment.