Word: cleopatras
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...second, which tells the story of Antony and Cleopatra, begins with the battle of Philippi, which once more breaks the power of the republic and this time makes a triumvirate (Antony, Octavian, Lepidus) master of the Roman world. Antony (Richard Burton) is allotted the East, and Cleopatra's reveries of empire revive. She amorously regales him on her gilded barge, and the charms that captivated a cerebral Caesar enslave the sensual Antony the old war dog degenerates into...
...years later, when Cleopatra flees the battle of Actium, Antony runs after her. He abandons his legions, abandons his empire at a woman's whim. Back in Egypt, he falls on his sword as Octavian (Roddy McDowall) approaches, and Cleopatra receives from an indifferent asp the famous kiss of death...
Physically, Cleopatra is as magnificent as money and the tremendous Todd-AO screen can make it. The De Luxe Color is perfection; the sets, for the most part, are harmonious modules of the Golden Section to which all good classical architecture answered; and a capital ship for an ocean trip is Cleopatra's barge-250 ft. from prow to poop and covered with gilt linoleum...
...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...
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...