Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 11-February-07
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Cleopatra (1934)

It's tempting for a modern (and therefore, of course, enlightened) person like me to dismiss Cecil B. DeMille's "Cleopatra" as hopelessly male-chauvinistic and out-of-date. This picture does contain an alarming amount of claptrap which subscribes to the belief that any female remembered by history must have been a conniving slut. When taken as a whole, however, it becomes apparent that "Cleopatra" denigrates not only the woman it claims to expose but everyone else as well. The epic peddles the basest form of titillation, which explains and overrides its other faults.

Claudette Colbert stars as the Greco-Egyptian queen who witnessed her country's submission to Rome and bedded two of its leaders. She establishes her role as a sexually aggressive go-getter when she defies a rival faction and gains admittance to the visiting Julius Caesar (Warren William) by stowing herself in a carpet. Being a man of martial rather than amatory conquest, Caesar accepts her advances only because they come with the wealth of Asia attached. He decides to ditch his Roman wife and form an alliance with his exotic mistress to prove his rising power. When those pesky Ides of March squelch his plans, Cleopatra is left without a protector and bitter in the knowledge that Caesar never wanted her for herself. It's on to the next hero then, as golden boy Mark Antony (Henry Wilcoxon) sails south to tame the uppity vixen and instead falls prey to her wiles. (Men like food and boobs. Uh.) This time it's Cleo who's in it for gain until Rome declares war and Antony rises up like a lion. In love at last ("I feel like a woman!"), she fights for her land and her man until the only way out is a snakebite.

To enjoy this sort of thing one has to forget, as the filmmakers did, that these people were major world leaders of the capable, albeit ruthless, kind. While it's true that Cleopatra had children with both Caesar and Antony (which this movie omits, since motherhood can look so unsexy), there is no evidence to suggest that she was their plaything or they hers. If history and logic are suspended, I suppose "Cleopatra" might be appreciated for its '30s-style carnality and spectacle. The costumes (which are short on fabric) and settings (e.g., the queen's pleasure barge) are remarkably lavish, and the imagery just as baroque. Of particular note is DeMille's use of sweeping oars to suggest the cadence of Cleopatra and Antony's first lovemaking, following as it does on a scene where she seduces him with other women's bodies, clad in leopard skins, squirming on the floor, and whipped by a guy in leather. Let it never be said that the lady didn't excel at foreign relations! Real life was certainly more complex and less silly than this, but as "Cleopatra" proves, some tastes don't call that entertainment.

Copyright © 2007 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.