Wednesday, May 24, 2017

By the Gods!

Cleopatra (Vivien Leigh) and Rufio (Basil Sydney) await the departure of Caesar (Claude Rains) in CAESAR & CLEOPATRA (1945)

As noted in the post below, Roger Moore is supposed to be in this film. There are some scenes with Roman soldiers and I scanned them. Is that Roger behind Vivien? It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Roger might have worked on the film as an extra but it doesn't mean he appears on screen.

As I've said many times before here at the blog, I like this film. In fact, this was the film that made me love the genre before learning all about Italian PEPLUM films. I know it's not perfect by any means but I still enjoy it, mainly for its opulent production values.

2 comments:

Scott Ochiltree said...

I agree production values were excellent.

Unfortunately Claude Rains was totally miscast as Caesar, but Vivien Leigh was a really first class Cleopatra.

G.B. Shaw's play provided some cleaver and amusing lines of dialogue. In general, however, I do not think Shaw's works transfer very well from stage to screen.

The movie was largely a critical and financial disappointment at its initial release in December, 1945.

Finally, there are a couple of scenes in the beginning that have some most unfortunate humor at the expense of Blacks.

E Olsen said...

Oh yeah, Vivien...hot as Cleo :)