You're liable to get the impression from the first couple of scenes that this is stagy and maybe without too much point. Claude Raines as the newly arrived conqueror meets Vivien Leigh as the air-headed tittering adolescent Cleopatra in front of the Sphinx and under the Egyptian stars. It's all very cute.
Well, it remains stagy. After all, it's a play. But it's hardly pointless. Raines remains the man he first appears, rather gentle, bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, good-natured, able to suffer some twitting, stern but fair, endearingly sensitive about being middle aged and losing his hair.
But Cleopatra -- wow! When she meets Raines, Vivien Leigh is wraith like and pale and imperiously beautiful without actually knowing it. At first, she's just a kid, jealous of her husband, who is her younger brother, who rules Egypt as Ptolemy -- or at least he did, until Raines takes the reins. But Leigh's character evolves. Her childishness, her giggling and choking on tears, is at first an aspect of her inner nature but later becomes a tactical ploy used deliberately in disarming enemies. She turns pretty clever, and not in a good way. Her whimsy turns to murder. She enchants Raines, but Raines is no fool. He treats her like a slightly reckless daughter until, after she has a rival assassinated, he dresses her down. But in the end he sails away, leaving her in the hands of his Executive Officer, and promising to send her a handsome younger man named Marc Antony.
Aside from "Pygmalion," I was never able to get WITH George Bernard Shaw, whose play this is. The two or three of his plays that I've seen seemed preachy and discursive. But if you get past the opening, this one is pretty good. Of course, Shaw being the rational moralist he was, it's about more than Caesar and Cleopatra and who's going to rule Egypt.
Cecil Parker is Caesar's worried slave and first-hand man, Brittanus, "an Islander," meaning he's from Britain and worships the Druids or something. Shaw has a good time with him, poking fun at his homeland. Well, I guess Shaw was Irish, but identified more with Britain. Parker's Brit is a mostly comic figure who can't swim. He's aghast when he is asked to leave Cleopatra with a man, unattended by a chaperon. "Shocked!", he exclaims, in a tone copyrighted by Claude Raines a few years earlier in "Casablanca." But then, later, someone asks Raines, "What, is Caesar in despair?" And Raines replies, "He who has never hoped cannot despair," which either Albert Camus ripped off from Shaw, or independently invented. Kids -- don't try to apply that maxim at home. I did, and it doesn't work.
What a cast! Almost everybody who was anybody is in this thing in parts small or large. Stewart Granger is present as the tall, dark, handsome, Sicilian Apollodorus. He's the only person in the film with an evident sun tan and wardrobe has him decked out in embarrassingly brief garments. Stanley Holloway goes almost unnoticed as a Roman soldier with, I think, one line. (He was a sublime grave digger two years later in Olivier's "Hamlet.") Too many other familiar names to list, though I should mention that I think I glimpsed a chubby teen-aged Jean Simmons as a harp player who had no lines at all. If her movie career had stopped at this point, mine would have been better than hers. I had a dozen parts with no lines at all.
All of those performances, by the way, are quite good, even if they seem a little hammy at times, as if this were a filmed play and the actors were trying for the balcony. The sets are both stylized and stylish.
And it's both amusing and dramatic without being in the least preachy.
Well, it remains stagy. After all, it's a play. But it's hardly pointless. Raines remains the man he first appears, rather gentle, bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, good-natured, able to suffer some twitting, stern but fair, endearingly sensitive about being middle aged and losing his hair.
But Cleopatra -- wow! When she meets Raines, Vivien Leigh is wraith like and pale and imperiously beautiful without actually knowing it. At first, she's just a kid, jealous of her husband, who is her younger brother, who rules Egypt as Ptolemy -- or at least he did, until Raines takes the reins. But Leigh's character evolves. Her childishness, her giggling and choking on tears, is at first an aspect of her inner nature but later becomes a tactical ploy used deliberately in disarming enemies. She turns pretty clever, and not in a good way. Her whimsy turns to murder. She enchants Raines, but Raines is no fool. He treats her like a slightly reckless daughter until, after she has a rival assassinated, he dresses her down. But in the end he sails away, leaving her in the hands of his Executive Officer, and promising to send her a handsome younger man named Marc Antony.
Aside from "Pygmalion," I was never able to get WITH George Bernard Shaw, whose play this is. The two or three of his plays that I've seen seemed preachy and discursive. But if you get past the opening, this one is pretty good. Of course, Shaw being the rational moralist he was, it's about more than Caesar and Cleopatra and who's going to rule Egypt.
Cecil Parker is Caesar's worried slave and first-hand man, Brittanus, "an Islander," meaning he's from Britain and worships the Druids or something. Shaw has a good time with him, poking fun at his homeland. Well, I guess Shaw was Irish, but identified more with Britain. Parker's Brit is a mostly comic figure who can't swim. He's aghast when he is asked to leave Cleopatra with a man, unattended by a chaperon. "Shocked!", he exclaims, in a tone copyrighted by Claude Raines a few years earlier in "Casablanca." But then, later, someone asks Raines, "What, is Caesar in despair?" And Raines replies, "He who has never hoped cannot despair," which either Albert Camus ripped off from Shaw, or independently invented. Kids -- don't try to apply that maxim at home. I did, and it doesn't work.
What a cast! Almost everybody who was anybody is in this thing in parts small or large. Stewart Granger is present as the tall, dark, handsome, Sicilian Apollodorus. He's the only person in the film with an evident sun tan and wardrobe has him decked out in embarrassingly brief garments. Stanley Holloway goes almost unnoticed as a Roman soldier with, I think, one line. (He was a sublime grave digger two years later in Olivier's "Hamlet.") Too many other familiar names to list, though I should mention that I think I glimpsed a chubby teen-aged Jean Simmons as a harp player who had no lines at all. If her movie career had stopped at this point, mine would have been better than hers. I had a dozen parts with no lines at all.
All of those performances, by the way, are quite good, even if they seem a little hammy at times, as if this were a filmed play and the actors were trying for the balcony. The sets are both stylized and stylish.
And it's both amusing and dramatic without being in the least preachy.