Cleopatra (1963 film)
Overview
 
Cleopatra is a 1963 British-American-Swiss epic
Epic film
An epic is a genre of film that emphasizes human drama on a grand scale. Epics are more ambitious in scope than other film genres, and their ambitious nature helps to differentiate them from similar genres such as the period piece or adventure film...

 drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career and is best known as the writer-director of All About Eve , which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six. He was brother to screenwriter and drama critic Herman J...

. The screenplay was adapted by Sidney Buchman
Sidney Buchman
Sidney Robert Buchman was a screenwriter and producer who worked on 38 films from the late 1920s to the early 1970s. He is also sometimes credited as Sydney Buchman.-Career:...

, Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist. Called "the Shakespeare of Hollywood", he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some 70 films and as a prolific storyteller, authored 35 books and created some of...

, Ranald MacDougall
Ranald MacDougall
Ranald MacDougall was an American screenwriter who scripted such films as Mildred Pierce , The Unsuspected , June Bride , and The Naked Jungle ....

, and Mankiewicz from a book by Carlo Maria Franzero. The film starred Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age...

, Richard Burton
Richard Burton
Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...

, Rex Harrison
Rex Harrison
Sir Reginald Carey “Rex” Harrison was an English actor of stage and screen. Harrison won an Academy Award and two Tony Awards.-Youth and stage career:...

, Roddy McDowall
Roddy McDowall
Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude "Roddy" McDowall was an English actor and photographer. His film roles included Cornelius and Caesar in the Planet of the Apes film series...

, and Martin Landau
Martin Landau
Martin Landau is an American film and television actor. Landau began his career in the 1950s. His early films include a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest . He played continuing roles in the television series Mission: Impossible and Space:1999...

. The music score was by Alex North
Alex North
Alex North was an American composer who wrote the first jazz-based film score and one of the first modernist scores written in Hollywood ....

. It was photographed in 70 mm Todd-AO
Todd-AO
Todd-AO is a post-production company founded in 1953, providing sound-related services to the motion picture and television industries. The company operates three facilities in the Los Angeles area.-History:...

 by Leon Shamroy
Leon Shamroy
Leon Shamroy, A.S.C. was an American film cinematographer. Together with Charles Lang, he holds the record for most number of Academy Award nominations for Cinematography...

 and an uncredited Jack Hildyard
Jack Hildyard
Jack Hildyard, B.S.C. was a British cinematographer who worked on more than 80 films during his career...

.

Cleopatra chronicles the struggles of Cleopatra VII, the young Queen of Egypt, to resist the imperialist ambitions of Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

.

Despite being a critical failure, it won four Academy Awards.
Quotations

The corridors are dark, gentlemen… but you mustn't be afraid. I am with you.

We must not disappoint the mighty Caesar! The Romans tell fabulous tales of my baths and handmaidens... and my morals!

I will not be told where I can go and where I cannot go!

I am the Nile. I will have sons. Isis has told me… My breasts are full of love and life. My hips are rounded and well apart. Such women, they say, have sons.

How dare you and the rest of your barbarians set fire to my library? Play conqueror all you want, Mighty Caesar! Rape, murder, pillage thousands, millions of human beings! But neither you nor any other barbarian has the right to destroy one human thought!

There are never enough hours in the days of a queen, and her nights have too many.

We'll make this our beginning. Beginning with tonight... You must never envy Caesar, or anyone, anything else again.

[Speaking of the Grand Eunuc])... a position not acquired without certain, shall we say, sacrifice.

[After the execution of Pothinus] Flavius, return Apollodorus' dagger to him… but clean it first. It has Pothinus all over it.

I do not understand why the eyes of a statue should always lack life.

 
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