(2 of 2)
Sad to say, however, the deep-revolving, witty Mankiewicz fails most where most he hoped to succeed. As drama and as cinema, Cleopatra is raddled with flaws. It lacks style both in image and in action. Never for an instant does it whirl along on wings of epic elan; generally it just bumps from scene to ponderous scene on the square wheels of exposition. Part of what is wrong went wrong in the cutting room, and for that Darryl Zanuck, boss of 20th Century-Fox, is possibly to blame. But much of what is wrong was wrong in the script, and for that Chief Scenarist Mankiewicz must wear the ears. Part One seems on the whole a competent and entertaining picture, but in Part Two, Mankiewicz goes wildly wrong.
Antony and Cleopatra, as Shakespeare conceived them, were superhuman symbols: Mars and Aphrodite, Rome and Egypt, hero and serpent twined in the grand passion that compels the universe itself. "The nobleness of life," they cried, "is to do thus," and as they "kiss'd away kingdoms" they ecstatically proclaimed the world well lost for love.
Antony and Cleopatra, as Mankiewicz conceives them, are all too human. He is an aging politician, she is his ambitious mistress. The script says they are in love but they obviously aren't. Nothing suggests that the most famous lovers of all time felt anything better than lust. What the hero calls love is a Freudian fixation, what the heroine calls love is a power complex. The motives of the central characters are confused and ultimately mean, and as a result their tragedy is befuddled and ultimately petty.
The confusions of the scenario inevitably confound the actors. Burton staggers around looking ghastly and spouting irrelevance, like a man who suddenly realizes that he has lost his script and is really reading some old sides from King of Kings. And in the big love scenes "the ne'er-lust-wearied Antony" seems strangely bored—as if perhaps he had rehearsed too much.
As for Taylor, she does her dead-level best to portray the most woman in world history. To look at, she is every inch "a morsel for a monarch." Indeed, her 50 gorgeous costumes are designed to suggest that she is a couple of morsels for a monarch. But the "infinite variety" of the superb Egyptian is beyond her, and when she plays Cleopatra as a political animal she screeches like a ward heeler's wife at a block party.
Harrison alone deserves the laurel. He makes a charming and surprisingly impressive Caesar—though some may doubt that the most prodigious public energy in human history can be portrayed as the Acheson of antiquity.
Still and all, as spectacles go, Cleopatra goes reasonably well, and may safely be seen by those who can afford it. But customers will be well advised to do what the wife of Senator Jacob Javits did on opening night. She brought a little pillow to use in a pinch.