Cleopatra

DeMille!

This time it's his 1934 hit Cleopatra staring Claudette Colbert (with the lowest voice of anyone), Warren William as Caesar and Henry Wilcoxon (a DeMille regular, he making his first appearance sounding like a little girl) as Marc Antony.

This is a transition film, that shimmers on the border between silent and modern cinemas. Although techniques and lighting had progressed, much of the look of this film would have fit in well with any of DeMille's silent work.

As would some of the attitudes expressed. Woman are "playthings" and someone asks of Cleopatra "Is she black?"...



Cleopatra makes her entrance.

Though this film is not historically accurate in any way, it does contain nuggets of truth, as in the carpet incident above.



Yup, it's the drapes again, this time in the form of gifts from "all the empresses of the world". Neat.



Boy do we get the drapes, yards and yards, everyone is covered in it.

We spend half the film dealing with Caesar and Cleopatra, but we all know what happens to him. So now comes the moment we have been waiting for. No not that...



The Seduction of Marc Antony. Yes Ladies and Gentlemen, that is a woman lounging on a bull. Then it gets stranger. Actrobats, dancers and whip driven leopard women come next...and then...



No images can convey the bizarreness of this sequence, but the pay off is worth it. In one shot DeMille gives us the ultimate homage to um, rowing and silent movies he ever made.



Of course, it doesn't end well for Cleopatra either, but at least she's deified into St. Cleo at the end.