Cleopatra Blu-ray

The Fox Blu-ray 50th anniversary edition of Cleopatra is visually stunning; the return of lost or faded detailing and the full composition of imagery are confirmation of Blu-ray’s greatest attributes. The eye-popping starts right at the beginning with the aftermath of Pompey’s fall at Pharsalia. Liz addicts and epic lovers will happily drool over the dazzling apparel, the sets—the banquet on the barge is a killer!—and those indispensable glossy Fox floors. The DTS 5.1 is impressive, with the Alex North score rejuvenated. All the flaws, quibbles and annoyances viewers bitched about throughout the years have been renewed too: Liz’s yoyo acting, voice and poundage, Dick’s overscaling, the inexcusable studio shots subbing for outdoor locales, the inept staging of battles, the infamous Zanuck-demanded editing creating confusion over director Mankiewicz’s screenplay. But in the acclaimed and prize-winning Cleopatra: A Life, author Stacy Schiff, while claiming she did not see the movie before writing the book, has done something no one has been able to accomplish in 50 years—restore some legitimacy of Mankiewicz’s vision. Chroniclers and snipers relied basically on Western perspectives to repeat the fascinating account of the Egyptian, often relegating her standing to “fabulous tales” as gossipy, vindictive asides. The general portrait is one of a wanton seductress cascading topless through the lives of Caesar and Anthony and in HBO’s Rome spaced out on drugs. The embellished persona necessary for Octavian to secure his governance of the Roman Empire but, as Schiff elucidates, little of it is fact. No one making a movie about her before Mankiewicz actually took the time to go beyond the concocted smears to reveal a deeper view, certainly not in Theda Bara’s 1917 Cleopatra, or DeMille’s 1934 camp version with Claudette Colbert, or in Gabriel Pascal’s 1945 Caesar and Cleopatra in which Vivien Leigh’s queen gets Shaw’s Chauvin treatment. (That is, her Cleopatra couldn’t become a woman ruler without the imprimatur of a man.) In Mankiewicz’s movie, we’re told Cleopatra speaks seven languages, is abreast of the then-known sciences of astronomy, geography, medicine and the arts of international diplomacy and military machination, and parcels out her sexuality to maneuver through the treachery of Rome. Seen through Schiff’s prism, we now know she spoke nine languages and, additionally, was exceptionally well-versed in agriculture, mathematics, metropolis planning, commerce, excelled in the art of spellbinding persuasion, and put women into powerful positions throughout Egypt. She was deep into the deity of Isis until the omens became increasingly ominous, the darkness of which was included in Mankiewicz’s original cut before being edited out. We’re unlikely to find a decent facsimile of what Cleopatra looked like except from a few etched depictions (on coinage the profile offers up a woman approaching 40; she died at 39), but what we do know is she was totally cognizant of her imperial stature and power, the supreme female superstar in her prime. Glorified by Blu-ray, there’s renewed appreciation of Liz as the same; she emits an inexplicable bewitchment as a player on the world stage. No one before and probably no one after her for quite some time will be the movie equal to Cleopatra because the fame and infamy of both mesh irresistibly for historians interested in cultures and social mores, and insatiably for connoisseurs of trash. Adorned in her gold serpentine eagle armor for her arrival in Rome or in that emerald gown with sheer slits, she’s the screen’s most imperfectly beautiful force of nature who became the 20th Century’s figurehead of the power of spectacular over-ripeness. In kohl eyes, plunging necklines, a tracheotomy, a bump in the middle of her forehead and whenever possible swaying hips, she’s Hollywood royalty eliciting humorous mock and cravings for junk food. (When she’s unveiled on the royal barge we see the sun-kissed bazooms yet later that night entertaining Antony with a full court feast, the luscious set is pale white.) Her whorey MGM acting kicking in, she’s often dizzying inconsistency. In the epic’s best moment, at the tomb of Alexander, she’s winning in the desire for a “one world” wherein people live in peace but when in Rome, she expresses the insult that neither she nor Caesar need “to be afraid of the people, to waste time on the people.” Perhaps what continuity there was had a hangover on the day of filming, and surely later in the editing process. Sploshed liberally are the blowsier moments and a particularly bad one comes when she gets the news of Antony’s marriage to Octavia and goes bonkers slashing away at his tunics in her bedroom and then stabs the bed they shared, collapsing into excruciatingly lousy sobbing; she’s the original Ann-Margret. With relief, she’s soon back on the throne, charged up and enjoyably rendering the “On your knees!” order to her repentant lover. Tossing a symbol of her word to the Roman Agrippa (who wants Antony’s head), she venomously sprays “Either two or none!” Blu-ray restores the secret of Liz—she is the screen’s guiltiest pleasure.

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