It's very hard to understand why this film is so beloved of IMDb commentators. I'm a fan of Shaw, Rains and Leigh, but I found the pacing tedious, the screenplay lightweight and trivial, and the performances ridiculous. Leigh, normally so luminous, is like fingernails being scraped down a blackboard in this performance. She plays the Queen of Egypt as a spoilt fourth-former from Mallory Towers. Rains attempts Julius Caesar in the manner of a mildly camp scoutmaster. There is no chemistry between the two of them, and only a slight whiff of rather dubious romance predicated on a sort of indulgent father/daddy's little girl relationship. The racial stereotyping of the characters may be a mark of the film's time, but it's no less tiresome for that. Black Africans are represented as wide-eyed, wordless imbeciles; Flora Robson is half-heartedly blacked up as the evil, controlling Ftatateeta; the Egyptian aristocrats are all played by white actors as if they came from Kensington.
Caesar and Cleopatra are two of the greatest figures of history, and it is hard to imagine that they could be done less justice than they are here. The whole thing comes off like a badly-improvised school play, with the occasional hints of sexism and racism doing absolutely nothing to cheer the mood.
Caesar and Cleopatra are two of the greatest figures of history, and it is hard to imagine that they could be done less justice than they are here. The whole thing comes off like a badly-improvised school play, with the occasional hints of sexism and racism doing absolutely nothing to cheer the mood.