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| Beautifully painted, caligraphed and designed poster for Gabriel Pascal's Caesar and Cleopatra |
QUICK REVIEW:
In this adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's (The Apple Cart (1929)) play (with screenplay by Shaw himself) Caesar is a wise, good-humored pacifist, who plays mentor to the beautiful, capricious Cleopatra in Egypt, before SPOILER he sails back for Rome.
Claude Rains (Casablanca (1942)) as the, reportedly, first actor ever, received a 1 mio. $ salary to play the part of the Roman emperor, - and the result? - What splendor! He gives a great performance and plays Caesar with real gusto.
Shaw's rich, meaningful text is done full justice here in beautiful Technicolor and silly costumes in the most expensive English film production ever, at its time, which got an Oscar nomination for its art direction by John Bryan (Great Expectations (1946)). Its production was prolonged, because it was filmed in England during WWII, and its female star Vivien Leigh (Gone With the Wind (1939)) suffered a miscarriage after a fall on the set.
The film is directed by Romanian expatriate Gabriel Pascal, whose other directorial credit Major Barbara (1941) was also a Shaw adaptation.
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| Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh, the stars of Gabriel Pascal's Caesar and Cleopatra |
Watch the original trailer here
Cost: 5.2 mil. $
Box office: 2.2 mil. $
= Huge flop
[The film made 1.3 mil. $ (62 % of its total gross) in the States, making it one of the most popular British films there up to date. 815k people paid admission in France, where it was released in 1948. But the film suffered under its own inflated costs and a perhaps inauspicious time of release in world history.]
What do you think of Caesar and Cleopatra?
Other Shaw adaptations that are worth looking out?
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