Slideshow
CLEOPATRA
Sunday, July 31
3:10
Monday, August 1
3:00
U.S., 1963
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Pamela Brown, George Cole
Screenplay by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Ranald MacDougall, Sidney Buchman
DCP. Approx. 251 min.
Tabloid scandals about the off-screen hanky-panky of stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton overshadowed the gigantic sets, lavish costumes (and even Liz’s record-setting cleavage), Mankiewicz’s politically sophisticated and comparison-avoiding script (Burton’s funeral oration is drowned out by the crowd noises), and Rex Harrison’s outright theft of the picture as the slyest of Julius Ceasars. “The most difficult three pictures I ever made.” – Mankiewicz.
Reviews
“Taylor inhabits the role with a focussed but uninhibited imperiousness, as when she turns Cleopatra's entrance into Rome, aboard a giant rolling sphinx,
into the ultimate red-carpet photo op.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker