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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarky Oracle!" data-source="post: 427961" data-attributes="member: 57984">I've been watching CLEOPATRA, for some reason, over the last couple of days on YT. The main problem really isn't what's there (in the 4-hour version) but what's missing. With 90 minutes trimmed from what Joe Mankiewicz wanted, the conflict scenes between the principals being all that remains -- the relationship development largely removed, the context gone -- those conflict moments become more hyperbolic and soapy as a result. The movie isn't too long; it's too short.As one 1963 critic (Judith Crist?) said in their review: at 6 hours, CLEOPATRA might have been a movie, but (with the cuts) it becomes a series of coming attractions that will never come... (That's as close to the quote that I can get at the moment).And it's really true. There's a decent film -- I think -- at the center of the slashed-up 4-hour theatrical version. Somewhere. (Some versions were mutilated down to less than 3-hours!). Mankiewicz wanted it released as two movies six months apart. But FOX wouldn't allow it. Burton is featured most heavily in the second half, and Daryl Zanuck feared that the Taylor-Burton romance, the most scandalously celebrated in all of Hollywood history, might be over before Part 2 could be released. When people talk about the movie, they often refer to it derisively as "pretentious," "bloated," "elephantine," "melodramatic," and "smart-talky." And it's frankly hard to disagree with that. But every time it comes on TV, I find myself sitting through the whole damned thing. (If I have the time)... But the one adjective I never find myself using for this boring motion picture is: "boring." I cannot flip it off. Unless my bowels become a problem.     Yes, it's stagey and static (Mankiewicz was a more inspired writer -- one of the best Hollywood ever had, as evidenced by ALL ABOUT EVE and other pictures -- than he was a director). And the expensive location footage from Rome and Egypt was completely removed for purposes of time. And the dialogue, although classically Mankiewicz and strangely brilliant (well, he's Scorpio Rising/Moon in Libra), he never had enough time, given that he was brought into the movie months after they'd started shooting, to do a second or third draft.I guess it's the splashy, gauzy, early-'60s elegance of CLEOPATRA, the refined gaucherie of Taylor & Burton, and -- yes -- the mesmerizing pretentiousness of the picture, that always tends to hold my attention, even though I feel a loss of brain cells by the time it's over. (Which, at my age, I can't really afford). And the acting approaches goodishness, despite a certain stiffness that runs throughout.Elizabeth Taylor is really quite acceptable. Her regal vulgarian era having begun with BUTTERFIELD 8, and running into the '70s until she porked up and collapsed. But, Holy Jesus, whenever Roddy McDowall appears on screen (Elizabeth demanded he be cast) as Augustus Octavian, the cinematic disaster it already was is exacerbated beyond redemption. And it goes down like Cleopatra's golden barge hit an unremoved Anzio landmine: he is sooo miscast, it's ridiculous. (I still say, give me Oliver Reed).  Will the missing 90 minutes ever be found, after two thirds of a century? Probably not. But I'd like to see it.<img src="https://www.oscarchamps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1963-Cleopatra-07.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 901px" /><img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/oliverreeddynastier.jpg~original" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 900px" /></blockquote>

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