Left the queen at half time
There’s great cinema and there’s famous cinema. Correlation is not guaranteed.
This afternoon, what with the death recently of Liz Taylor, I decided to bring up Cleopatra on the main screen in our local theatre. No popcorn machine, a couch rather than a row seat, the ability to hit pause when I wanted instead of waiting for the reel to change. Yes, children, at one time the show would stop to allow threading and focus. But I digress.
Almost sixty years have gone by since the first wraps. Back then, the movie was one of the most expensive ever made, at a reported $44 million (inflated value $300 million). Right up there with anything else in the Top Ten. Lots of pastel armour, boats that went nowhere and a few old buildings. Oh, and Cleopatra. She didn’t work for anything less than top dollar.
And, two hours in, I hit pause and didn’t go back. Not worth my time. The story had some parallels with a play I studied in Grade Ten (the one by Willie S). Not much else. Maybe the Romans had less to get excited about, but a head in a wine jug doesn’t pale next to a horse head in the bed.
A little research shows that my pause point fits in with the original director’s intentions. He wanted to make two good movies. Instead, he had to glue the whole thing together and then do a Reader’s Digest on it to keep the run time down. Cut the good parts out and left the footage that showed the queen’s best side.
Will I go back to see the end? Maybe, if some other Sunday afternoon there is nothing but golf reruns on the networks.
