DVD/150: CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA (Gabriel Pascal, 1945)

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.

 

DVD/150: THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS (David Lean, 1949)

David Lean followed his vibrant OLIVER TWIST with the listless THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS; despite his affair with star Ann Todd, no passion transferred to the screen, she gives her usual glacial performance

Ronald Neame was to direct Eric Ambler's adaptation of HG Wells' novel but Lean disliked the script so co-wrote a new version, moved Neame to producer and became the director.

Former lovers Mary and Stephen meet again nine years after she rejected his marriage proposal to live independantly; she is now married to the banker Howard (or Haaaard as Todd says) for the security of his wealth.

They grow closer but Howard demands the relationship ends.

Nine years on, while waiting for Howard at a Swiss hotel, Mary meets Stephen by accident and they spend the afternoon together before he flies home.  Howard sees them however and starts divorce proceedings.

Desperately, Mary tries to resolve the situation...

 

Shelf or charity shop?  It's part of a David Lean box-set, if I ever break it up I suspect it will be the first to go.  Lean seems less interested in his performers than finding other ways to tell the story such as a double-flashback (which comes too early in the film) and a showy way of speeding up the action by tracking his camera along telephone poles and wires while we hear back-to-back phone calls on screen.  It's unsurprising that it failed at the box-office, Lean just cannot make you care for his characters.  Nice camera-work and a good sense of London locations however... There had been a previous silent version made in 1922.