{"id":3478,"date":"2011-08-29T23:21:48","date_gmt":"2011-08-30T03:21:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=3478"},"modified":"2011-11-10T16:26:57","modified_gmt":"2011-11-10T21:26:57","slug":"dvd-antony-and-cleopatra-1972","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=3478","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Antony and Cleopatra (1972)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>A<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Excellent\/ DVD Transfer: Very Good\/ DVD Extras: Good<\/p>\n

Label: Warner Home Video\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released:\u00a0 March 29, 2011<\/p>\n

Genre: Shakespeare \/ Drama \/ Tragedy<\/p>\n

Synopsis: The love affair between Marc Antony and Egypt’s Queen Cleopatra insults Rome’s people, and fractures Rome’s ruling triumvirate.<\/p>\n

Special Features:\u00a0 Featurette: “The Making of Antony and Cleopatra with Filmmaker Fraser C. Heston” (32:28)<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

Charlton Heston loved Shakespeare\u2019s play so much that he chose to tackle not only the lead role, but direct and adapt the play to create a robust cinematic version, with surprisingly grand battle scenes shot in Spain on land and sea.<\/p>\n

The intimacy of the play is never lost, however, and while Heston is a wee bit old to play Marc Antony, at least he\u2019s seen here as a maturing, graying soldier whose lost his battle-ready mojo by spending far too much down-time with Egypt\u2019s sultry Queen Cleopatra.<\/p>\n

His men are having trouble tolerating his state of laziness-in-love, and back in Rome, Octavius (played by a strangely sterile, yet effective, John Castle) is getting ready to centralize his power, since he has the bigger and better ideas for Rome and its territories.<\/p>\n

Each cast member is uniformly solid, but among the big surprises is Julian Glover as loyal Roman soldier Proculeius, who maintains decorum and dignity as the triumvirate established by Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus fractures. He also playas pivotal role when Antony and Cleopatra\u2019s pungent romance finally reaches its toxic peak in the final act.<\/p>\n

Jean Lapotaire is also strong as Cleopatra\u2019s loyal maiden Charmian, who stays with her Queen until the bitter end. (The actress would later tackle Cleopatra in a 1981 BBC version of Shakespeare\u2019s play.)<\/p>\n

Hildegard Neil is fine as Cleopatra, but there are odd moments where the couple\u2019s passionate groping and poetic declarations becomes a bit sniveling, and Neil\u2019s complexion is so pale that one has to assume the Queen of Egypt spends most of her time indoors, sheathed from the sun by thick camel hair blankets and impenetrable stone doors.<\/p>\n

For his directorial debut, Heston focused on casting, performances, rehearsing, and getting every nuance right, while producer Peter Snell handled the budget issues, which managed to include desert and sea battles. Covered largely ion montages, the sequences act as buffers to lengthy dialogue scenes, but even without them, Heston\u2019s version would still hold its own.<\/p>\n

Lacking a mounting conspiracy, Shakespeare\u2019s play isn\u2019t as gripping as Julius Caesar, but the second half of the Bard\u2019s Caesarian diptych beautifully balances multiple characters whose identities never blur, and whose tragic outcomes or conflicted circumstances remain deeply moving to the bitter end.<\/p>\n

The last scene in which Antony dies with Cleopatra is still potent tragedy, and it\u2019s no surprise director Joseph L. Mankiewicz quoted lines from the play in his own mega-Caesar opus, Cleopatra<\/strong> (1963).<\/p>\n

There are more than major plot and dialogue similarities between the Heston and Mankiewicz epics: at times the battle scenes seem to share the same wardrobe, and the barges used in the sea battle are also quite similar, even though Joe Canutt handled the second unit choreography and fights for Heston.<\/p>\n

One standout scene involves two gladiators trying to slash each other to pieces while the fate of the Roman Empire is being discussed quite sullenly by the triumvirate. Heston\u2019s staging also shows the inherent cruelty of the ruling Romans, who glance a few times at the gladiators, and give a token thumbs up when one\u2019s hand is impaled in the ground before an imminent death blow; only when death is near or there\u2019s a cry of agony does anyone bother to glance at a bloodsport that\u2019s been reduced to background wallpaper.<\/p>\n

John Scott\u2019s score is lovely, but its\u2019 near monothematic nature with little variation becomes tiresome, particularly during the wall-to-wall moments of looped theme statements. (The film\u2019s Main Titles also credits Augusto Algero for \u201cadditional music,\u201d which is either for the source cues, or perhaps bridge material.)<\/p>\n

At 148 mins., Heston\u2019s compact epic is really well-paced, and it\u2019s a pity he only directed three films in his career; both A Man for All Seasons<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] (1988)\u00a0and Mother Lode<\/a> <\/strong>[M<\/a>] (1982) proved he could handle emotional epics, as well as little B-movies about prospectors hungry for gold.<\/p>\n

Son Fraser Heston made his own debut as a second unit director, learning the ropes of directing from both his father and action maestro Joe Canutt. The younger Heston appears in the DVD\u2019s making-of documentary (interviewed by Laurent Bouzereau in 2009) and recalls the film\u2019s tight production, his father\u2019s dual handling of acting and directing, and getting a lot of visual scope in what was a modestly budgeted film. The featurette has one major flaw, though: too much footage from the film, which pads the running time, and delays the next interview segment.<\/p>\n

Charlton Heston had previously appeared as Marc Antony in Peter Snell\u2019s 1970 production of Julius Caesar<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>], and he reportedly made his Broadway debuting in a supporting part in Antony and Cleopatra.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2011 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Soundtrack Album <\/a>— Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/ A<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ A . Film: Excellent\/ DVD Transfer: Very Good\/ DVD Extras: Good Label: Warner Home Video\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released:\u00a0 March 29, 2011 Genre: Shakespeare \/ Drama \/ Tragedy Synopsis: The love affair between Marc Antony and Egypt’s Queen Cleopatra insults Rome’s people, and fractures Rome’s ruling triumvirate. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[406,144,410,689],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-U6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3478"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3478"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3788,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3478\/revisions\/3788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}