“Cleopatra” and it’s unbelievable film production

[guy]

 

It’s hard to believe that the movie ”Cleopatra” (1963) is now more than sixty years old. There were amazing performances by Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, Rex Harrison as Julius Caesar, and Richard Burton as Mark Antony. (Above is the iconic scene where Cleopatra is brought to Julius Caesar hidden in a carpet.)

Also amazing is that there was no Computer-generated imagery (CGI) in 1963 to help with lavish and expensive movie sets.

Here is a short video on the movie production. Amazing stuff:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 14 hours ago by guy

[guidoLaMoto]

A) Plutarch wrote that Cleo was smuggled in hidden in a sack of bedclothes. Somehow that has morphed thru the ages into the Persian rug myth. Caesar didn't mention it at all in his Commentaries on the Civil War.

2) The Sacra Via was the widest street in Rome, only about 4m wide thru most of its course- just barely enough for two ox carts to squeeze past each other, so it's unlikely Cleo's huge parade float  in the movie would have been possible in reality.

C) In the Res Gestae, written a half century after CJ Caesar's death, Augustus famously wrote "I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble." The architecture of The Forum at the time of CJ Caesar's triumph was probably not nearly as impressively monumental as depicted in the movie.

D) The procession proceeds under an enormous arch just before she dismounts in the movie....but that arch depicted is supposed to be, presumably, that of Septimius Severus, right in front of the Curia Juila, wasn't scheduled to be built for another two and a half centuries.

But, what the heck. Truth may be stranger than fiction, but much more boring. It's still an impressive film that almost broke the studio.

Edited 43 minutes ago by guidoLaMoto