jgarbuz-1 About the only thing that makes this boring trollop of a play bearable at all is the beautiful visage of Vivien Leigh. If this is representative of Bernard Shaw's other works, then I'm thankful for my ignorance of them.

JohnHowardReid Although "Caesar and Cleopatra" has this fantastic reputation as the British Cinema's most expensive flop, all this talk about a financial disaster is simply not borne out by the figures. (The Motion Picture Guide even repeats this myth, alleging "a then staggering loss of $3 million"). Allowing an extremely generous estimate of print and distribution costs, the most that would have been lost on first release would be £70,000 — and this would surely have been earned back in the 1948 re-issue alone. In fact, by 1950 the movie was firmly in the black. Since that time, non-theatrical, including TV and video sales have produced windfall profits for the Rank Organisation. But it suited Rank at the time to cry foul. He had no love for Pascal. Or Shaw either. He didn't like being put on the spot when he was forced to bail them out. And it suited him to make "Caesar and Cleopatra" the scapegoat and a cover- up for the enormous losses sustained on movies he did heartily endorse like "Blanche Fury" and "Esther Waters".As for the movie itself, unfortunately Rains is forced to carry it virtually single-handed. Leigh is patently too old for the role — though she looks great in her opening scene. Whoever photographed that was a master of illusion. Alas, the other three cinematographers can't match him. On many later occasions, Miss Leigh is definitely not flattered at all. True, her health declined during production, but no efforts are made to disguise her often ravaged face. Her acting too seems to have fallen away with her beauty.One thing you can say though is that all the money spent on the movie is right up there on the screen, not squandered on inflated star salaries or wasted on half-shot and then abandoned footage. The sets are truly breathtaking, so impressive and expressive as to make the scenery in the Liz Taylor "Cleopatra" seem garish, disorganized and second-rate. Full marks to Bryan and Messel for such dazzling and beguiling triumphs of artistry. A pity neither the script in particular nor the performances in general seem worthy of such visual magnificence.Fortunately, the superb ITV DVD manages the seemingly impossible. On the small screen, everyone comes out with honor – except Vivien Leigh, for whom the color restoration is considerably less than kind, and Flora Robson who not only tends to over-act but seems unsure how to play her role. Is she a comic character or a very sinister one? Shaw, of course, would like to have it both ways, but a subtle actor who has read the script would play the comedy with not just an overdose of asperity but with an intimation of evil. Hard to do, I'll admit, but that's what real acting is all about.Stewart Granger has the right idea. He plays his role tongue-in- cheek. A pity some of his dash and vigor didn't rub off on Claude Rains who is far too solemn for a Shavian hero. Rains is admittedly an adequate Caesar but he lacks the dash he brought to "Casablanca".

writers_reign Whoever told GBS he was a screenwriter. Probably the same dork who told Pia Zadora she was an actress. This is the kind of movie where the blocks of dialogue complement the blocks of buildings in Alexandria.Talk about Burnham wood coming to Dunsinane, this is like the March of the Redwoods with people like Raymond Lovell, Basil Sydney, Stewart Granger etc, leaving a trail of sawdust all over the set and Ernest Thesiger anticipating Charles Hawtrey by a good ten years or so. It was shot in 1945 so that the sound is pristine with no concession to the great outdoors so there is literally no atmos of any kind be it an interior or exterior scene. Watching this is a new way to grow old.

joe-1597 I first saw this movie about 20 years ago on AMC, back in the days when AMC (American Movie Classics) included plenty of vintage British films. I have since viewed "Caesar and Cleopatra" at least half a dozen times, and, lately--especially in the wake of such deeply cynical flicks as "Gladiator" and the HBO series "Rome"--have come to appreciate its Shavian wit and the possibility of portraying human foibles without reveling in human degeneracy.The 1945 "Caesar and Cleopatra" was one of a series of attempts to capture major G.B. Shaw plays on film. The movie is somewhat eccentric by any standards, a hugely expensive theatrical production (tons of sand were shipped in from Egypt during wartime for use on the giant sound stage outside London where the movie was filmed, with the filming often interrupted by German bombing raids)that almost finished director Gabriel Pascal's career, and the movie was a commercial failure. But in retrospect, the performances of Claude Rains (Caesar), Vivien Leigh (Cleopatra), Flora Robson (Ftatateeta), Basil Sydney (Rufio), Francis L. Sullivan (Pothinus), and Stuart Granger (Apollodoros), among others, are consistently spellbinding.Of course, Shaw had his own obscure political reasons for writing the play (first produced in 1889), and it's not one of his best, but it seems to me a tribute to his genius and to the residual moral clarity of an earlier era, that "Caesar and Cleopatra," even in the stagy movie version, still captures the imagination, with a stunning send-up of human folly and degradation yet without the lame underpinnings of insistent vulgarity, gratuitous violence, and obsessive sex. If the current run of tell-all sword-and-sandal spectacles starts to wear you down, go back to "Caesar and Cleopatra" for a refresher course in human wit.