Cleopatra, 1934
The story of Cleopatra has been told numerous times on the screen. This Cecil B. Demille version, like many of his epic spectaculars sometimes ponders, but with Colbert in the title role, we are treated to pure delight. Her costumes were sumptuous and she truly carried the picture herself. This version is far superior, in my opinion, the the Elizabeth Taylor version.
The scene with the Royal Barge is truly breathtaking and was definitely an inspiration for the famous Elizabeth Taylor remake. I love this quote from DeMille the Man and His Pictures, by Gabe Essoe and Raymond Lee which follows and describes this scene better then I:
| "The Royal Barge, for example, is an incredible fabrication, from its banks of oars each surmounted with a ram's head to a pillowed dias on which Cleopatra seduces Marc Antony. At her signal, an exhaustible supply of slave girls bursts out of every door to perform a series of exotic dances; a garlanded ox is led in, to be caressed by semi-naked girls, one of whom is the second before fade-out assumes a pose of sexual surrender before the animal; a nude group is whipped into submission by a huge slave; a net-full of girls, clad only in sea-weed, is dredged up to sprawl out wriggling on the deck and offer seashells full of jewels. When Antony succumbs to her wiles, Cleopatra gestures to the slaves and, as veils rise around her bed and signing girls strew them with flower petals, the cadence drummer strikes up the rhythm that sets the oars moving, and the barge moves slowly out to sea." |
The cast includes:
- Claudette Colbert .... Queen Cleopatra
- Warren William .... Julius Caesar
- Henry Wilcoxon .... Marc Antony
- Joseph Schildkraut .... King Herod
- Ian Keith .... Octavian
- Gertrude Michael .... Calpurnia
- C. Aubrey Smith .... Gen. Enobarbus
- Irving Pichel .... Apollodorus
- Arthur Hohl .... Brutus
- Edwin Maxwell .... Casca
- Ian Maclaren .... Cassius (as Ian MacLaren)
- Eleanor Phelps .... Charmion (Cleopatra's handmaiden)
- Leonard Mudie .... Pothinos (Prime Minister)
- Grace Durkin .... Iras (Cleopatra's handmaiden)
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