Runtime: Around 4 hours!
Directed by: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Pamela Brown, George Cole
From: 20th Century Fox
One of those films where I feel the production was more interesting than the final product.
Last night I was able to see this-recently recorded off the DVR-in one shot, even though it was a four hour plus recording made off of the FXM channel. While the DVR is far from being even half-full, it was nice to get a big recording off of there. I can enjoy the old epic movies, especially the ones from around this time period. Say what you will about Ben-Hur or The Ten Commandments (the '56 version), but they were spectacles, had nice casts & were lavish productions which were simply lovely to look at. This had many of those traits yet personally, its tumultuous production history was more noteworthy than what was shown on screen.
This was a longtime passion project for producer Walter Wenger. It seemed like a wise choice for Fox to make as a possible big hit when they really needed one at the time. The story was a standard tale revolving around fictionalized versions of the title character, Mark Antony and Caesar. Unfortunately for the studio, this took a few years to make due to various problems. Wenger really wanted Liz Taylor and while he was successful, she was ill often (the ailments real or imagined), this began the infamous relationship between Taylor & Richard Burton-when both were married to other people at the time-the shooting started before the script was even completed-yes, this happened even back then-original director Richard Mamoulian was fired, the movie started filming in England before production shut down and everything was scrapped to move to the more appropriate Italy... that and other calamities made it clear why this cost an estimated 44 million dollars between the production and all the advertising once this was finally released. That is almost 400 million dollars now! Needless to say, that was astronomical for the time & the long protracted shoot was a fiasco for many reasons, only some of which I've listed here.
With all that knowledge now known, it is a testament to the talent involved (especially director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who was literally worked to the point of exhaustion) that this 4 hour picture ended up being good instead of a long painful experience akin to an extended root canal. This did win a few Oscars, but none of them had to do with acting—instead it was for such things as the effects, the cinematography & costumes. It was definitely a lovely movie to look at & another nice asset was the Alex North score. The acting and story is more spotty, although none of that was terrible. It's just that the protracted production obviously had an impact on the finished product & quality-wise is not as good as Ben-Hur or The Ten Commandments. Technically it eventually did make money because it was a box office hit, but that took awhile and at the time caused more strife than anything else for 20th Century Fox.
Does it feel rather long at times? It sure does. Perhaps I should have watched it in at least two installments, as I've seen other Letterboxd users do. Even if it's flawed and the making-of was more interesting than what was presented on screen, no regrets in spending a lot of time with this then getting to explain why this movie is sometimes more well known for what was not on celluloid.
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