Caesar And Cleopatra 1945

I'd never seen the 1945 George Bernard Shaw film Caesar And Cleopatra before. It was produced and directed by Gabriel Pascal whom I really didn't know anything about. It was the highest budget for a British film at the time and it didn't do very well at the box office. Pascal only produced one more film after that and it was also based on a Shaw play. Androcles And The Lion came out in 1952 and Pascal died a couple of years later. Caesar And Cleopatra just appeared on the Internet Archive and I thought I would take a look at it. You can see it here or you can pick it up in a GBS on Film 3 pack from Criterion. After seeing it I doubt that I would bother spending the money but it's something that was interesting to watch once. You might like watching it. It's rather droll and somewhat witty. Shaw wrote the play in 1898 and the screenplay in 1945 at the age of 89. It's got Claude Rains as Caesar and Vivian Leigh as Cleopatra. Stewart Granger has a fairly nice part and Michael Rennie has a smaller part. Roger Moore was an extra in the film but I didn't spot him. Caesar has come to Alexandria to see about payments from Egypt. He meets Cleopatra and comes under her sway. She's having a bit of trouble with her brother Ptolemy. It's not totally accurate, Shaw used the characters to look at power and ruling. Here's a guy who talks about some of the differences in the Shaw film, the 1963 Cleopatra and the real people. Here's a March of Time short on the movie.