Word: cleopatras
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Caesar and Cleopatra (J. Arthur Rank-United Artists) cost the British $3 to $5 million (by pressagent accounting), and will be peddled in the U.S. as a spectacle. As spectacle, this Gabriel Pascal production does itself proud-from stupendous Technicolor replicas of Ptolemaic Egypt down to intimate studies of the young Queen's décolletage. But all the munificent movie art does not conceal art of a rarer, riper kind: the dialogue for this superspectacle was written by a great master of prose and of wit, George Bernard Shaw. By & large, the playing is worthy of the dialogue...
...historical fact, Caesar and Cleopatra lived together in the most literal sense of the phrase. Cleopatra bore him a son, Caesarion, who was promising enough to be assassinated eventually by order of Octavian. In Shaw's charming fiction, they warily skirt the quagmires of passion while the aging political genius, with rueful avuncular irony, helps to convert the puppet Queen from a fierce child into a woman, ripe for Mark Antony's plucking...
Most popular films: The Way to the Stars (U.S. title: Johnny in the Clouds); The Man in Grey. Henry V was fifth, In Which We Serve eighth, Colonel Blimp 15th; Caesar and Cleopatra was not mentioned. Most of the nine leaders were made under the J. Arthur Rank banner...
With the possible exception of "Antony and Cleopatra," "Henry V" more than any other of Shakespeare's plays strains even the plastic Elizabethan stage beyond its limits. Oliver in his role of producer-director makes the most of the potentially wonderful freedom and mobility of motion pictures, thereby giving "Henry" a breadth of scope utterly unrealizable on the Elizabethan stage...
...much amused as I am moved." British Cinema Producer Gabriel Pascal (Caesar & Cleopatra, etc.) wanted Kaye to play Macbeth. The Metropolitan Opera's director, Edward Johnson, proclaimed Danny the perfect Figaro-if only he had an operatic voice...