The most expensive British film flopped badly at the box office, and no more Shaw adaptations were filmed during his lifetime.
Yet there are pleasures: John Bryan's sets, Oliver Messel's costumes and the cinematography of Freddie Young, Robert Krasker, Jack Hildyard and Jack Cardiff.
Stewart Granger is a dashing Apollodorus, and the cast includes Basil Sydney, Cecil Parker, Frances L Sullivan, Ernest Thesiger and Flora Robson, going over the top as Cleopatra's murderous nurse Ftatateeta and looking like Scary Spice...
Milling around are Stanley Holloway, Leo Genn, Michael Rennie, John Laurie, and 16 year-old Jean Simmons - unseen are Roger Moore, Renée Asherson and Kay Kendall.
Claude Rains has the right avuncular air as Caesar but his wry performance gets somewhat lost among the columns.
Vivien Leigh is gloriously kittenish as young Cleopatra and grows into an imperious Queen, but filming proved tragic as she miscarried after falling on-set.
Shelf or charity shop? Shelf for Vivien. It is a bit of an acquired taste - and the Shavian dialogue is an uneasy fit with several action scenes - but it is such a curio it is worth the climb. Poor Vivie, the miscarriage heralded the first of her bi-polar depressions which dogged her career and life from this moment. But showing the courage that also marked her life, she and Olivier appeared on stage in 1951 with their own repertory company playing both CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA on alternative days in London and New York - a Herculean feat for the fittest performer.
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