Caesar and Cleopatra

Gabriel Pascal – 1945 – England

According to experts, George Bernard Shaw has never been well-suited to screen adaptations, but that’s hard to believe in light of this version of his Caesar and Cleopatra by director Gabriel Pascal.  Somehow it avoids the staginess of some play-to-film attempts and the dogged faithfulness and trying earnestness of others such as Olivier’s various stabs at Shakespeare.  Its saving grace is not only its stellar cast – Vivien Leigh as Cleopatra and Claude Rains as Caesar – but Shaw’s beautifully intact dry sense of humor.  The film is as much comedy as drama and spectacle, and its playful disinterest in strict historical reporting is met with relief rather than irritation.  The Egyptian queen is portrayed as capricious and childishly sadistic, while Caesar displays an ironic and philosophical view of his conquests and his own reputation, a sharp contrast to the sober pomposity usually shown in film depictions of the character.  Pascal spares no expense in frustrating expectations.  Just when the banter between the two leads threatens to feel stage-bound, they step outside to view legions of Roman soldiers, the vast port of Alexandria and the sand-bound Sphinx.  Most importantly, Shaw, by way of Pascal, makes little effort to hide the allegorical nature of the political situation depicted as one empire on the rise (Rome) annexes another in decline (Egypt); something that certainly resonated within the film’s native England as World War II was just ending.  (The pulsating Technicolor images are courtesy of a team of some of the greatest cinematographers in the world at the time; Jack Cardiff, Robert Krasker, Freddie Young and Jack Hildyard.)