One of the many problems facing anyone wanting to make an ancient-world epic, is that the times and the people you must depict are so far removed from everything we know today that it is difficult, if not impossible, to produce a picture with any emotional or empathetic weight. Many have tried – the term "intimate epic" is often bandied about when discussing those 50s and 60s behemoths, but I have yet to see one that truly merited the description. But to Cecil B. DeMille, a producer-director who goes with epics like John Ford goes with Westerns, this would be missing the point.
The screenplay of Cleopatra is definitely a dramatic one. Aside from the fact that Hollywood was still cash-strapped by the depression, the story is not really suited to impressive action sequences; it is essentially a human love story and such conflict as does take place would be distracting if it was made exciting. The script, by DeMille's current favoured hacks Waldermar Young and Vincent Lawrence, while full of interaction is far from emotionally involving. But even an ace screenwriter would have been hard-pressed to write something that was. How is a modern day audience supposed to relate to a love affair between an emperor and a Queen who lived two thousand years ago? We can't, but we can be entertained by it.
In any case, DeMille was not a director who could do deep and moving. Gripping as they often are, even the finest of his contemporary dramas are unlikely to provoke tears or satisfy on an emotional level. Instead, DeMille's pictures stir or dazzle us through their poetic rhythm and imagery. Just like a renaissance painting of some tragic figure, we do not feel the subject's pain, but we can appreciate the beauty with which it is portrayed. This was something that came to the fore in the director's 1930s pictures, when budgets were tight, sets small and extras limited. DeMille was forced to use all his technical abilities to make the images speak.
Always a talented choreographer of crowds, and an inventive user of elements within the frame, DeMille here constructs little dances out of camera movement, extras and whatever is on the set to give mood and pace to each scene. One (rightly) well-known instance is at the end of the barge scene, where the camera pulls back smoothly between the rows of oarsmen, adding a bit of romantic atmosphere (not to mention sexual suggestiveness) while, to put it bluntly, Anthony and Cleopatra get it on behind a curtain. But there are other less obvious examples, such as at the party scene where the camera trundles sideways, slaves pottering about in the background, until eventually coming to rest behind a curtain where Caesar's enemies are plotting his downfall. As well as giving a tone to each moment without being intrusive, these manoeuvres keep the picture flowing, and prevent it from becoming a sequence of dull dialogues.
And it's just as well Cleopatra is visually engaging, because the acting is pretty mediocre. Warren William is probably the best of the bunch; very theatrical but good in that context. Claudette Colbert is not bad either – she really flourished in these seductive, assertive roles, although she was better yet playing an out-and-out villain – see for example her turn in Sign of the Cross. Henry Wilcoxon on the other hand is as wooden as the set he stands in – I really don't know what he was doing here. but apparently he hit it off with the director and ended up becoming part of the DeMille stock crew as an associate producer. No-one else among the cast stands out as either good or bad.
So, back to this problem of ancient-world epics – on an emotional level they are impenetrable to the modern viewer, simply because their setting is just that: ancient. Generally producers of these pictures acknowledged this and instead resorted to impressing us with the stupendous and spectacular. DeMille could easily be pigeonholed as doing the same – certainly that is what his reputation suggests – but in fact he does something even more effective. With his flowing, dreamlike presentation, he actually heightens and envelops his audience in the myth and mystery of a bygone age.
The screenplay of Cleopatra is definitely a dramatic one. Aside from the fact that Hollywood was still cash-strapped by the depression, the story is not really suited to impressive action sequences; it is essentially a human love story and such conflict as does take place would be distracting if it was made exciting. The script, by DeMille's current favoured hacks Waldermar Young and Vincent Lawrence, while full of interaction is far from emotionally involving. But even an ace screenwriter would have been hard-pressed to write something that was. How is a modern day audience supposed to relate to a love affair between an emperor and a Queen who lived two thousand years ago? We can't, but we can be entertained by it.
In any case, DeMille was not a director who could do deep and moving. Gripping as they often are, even the finest of his contemporary dramas are unlikely to provoke tears or satisfy on an emotional level. Instead, DeMille's pictures stir or dazzle us through their poetic rhythm and imagery. Just like a renaissance painting of some tragic figure, we do not feel the subject's pain, but we can appreciate the beauty with which it is portrayed. This was something that came to the fore in the director's 1930s pictures, when budgets were tight, sets small and extras limited. DeMille was forced to use all his technical abilities to make the images speak.
Always a talented choreographer of crowds, and an inventive user of elements within the frame, DeMille here constructs little dances out of camera movement, extras and whatever is on the set to give mood and pace to each scene. One (rightly) well-known instance is at the end of the barge scene, where the camera pulls back smoothly between the rows of oarsmen, adding a bit of romantic atmosphere (not to mention sexual suggestiveness) while, to put it bluntly, Anthony and Cleopatra get it on behind a curtain. But there are other less obvious examples, such as at the party scene where the camera trundles sideways, slaves pottering about in the background, until eventually coming to rest behind a curtain where Caesar's enemies are plotting his downfall. As well as giving a tone to each moment without being intrusive, these manoeuvres keep the picture flowing, and prevent it from becoming a sequence of dull dialogues.
And it's just as well Cleopatra is visually engaging, because the acting is pretty mediocre. Warren William is probably the best of the bunch; very theatrical but good in that context. Claudette Colbert is not bad either – she really flourished in these seductive, assertive roles, although she was better yet playing an out-and-out villain – see for example her turn in Sign of the Cross. Henry Wilcoxon on the other hand is as wooden as the set he stands in – I really don't know what he was doing here. but apparently he hit it off with the director and ended up becoming part of the DeMille stock crew as an associate producer. No-one else among the cast stands out as either good or bad.
So, back to this problem of ancient-world epics – on an emotional level they are impenetrable to the modern viewer, simply because their setting is just that: ancient. Generally producers of these pictures acknowledged this and instead resorted to impressing us with the stupendous and spectacular. DeMille could easily be pigeonholed as doing the same – certainly that is what his reputation suggests – but in fact he does something even more effective. With his flowing, dreamlike presentation, he actually heightens and envelops his audience in the myth and mystery of a bygone age.