Popular reviews

• 

  Review by Gentry ★★★★ 10

  “At last, I’ve seen a god come to life.”

  Grand, orgiastic camp, with Claudette Colbert’s midriff as best supporting actress. It’s high school level, abridged Julius Caesar + Antony and Cleopatra storytelling, but there’s an image in this film of Colbert riding in a litter, decked out in ancient Egyptian regalia, that made me understand how people in epochs of old were able to mistake regular men and women for gods.

  Digression 1: Criterion Channel has this in their “Paramount Pre-Code” collection, but it technically doesn’t meet the criteria, as it was released a month after the newly enforced, Catholic-tinged Joseph Breen revision. But DeMille is seemingly grandfathered in, albeit briefly, allowed to display a plethora of barely dressed dancers,…

• 

  Review by sakana1 ★★★½ 8

  Much of the charm of Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra is found in its recreation of a fantasy past, full of scantily clad dancing girls, elaborate mansions decorated with monumental sculptures, servants who move in choreographed patterns, and an opulent barge not unlike the TARDIS in its unlimited internal space. There is also, however, a bracing modernity to several of its key performances, specifically those of Warren William as a wry, reserved Julius Caesar, and Claudette Colbert, as the canny, seductive Cleopatra.

  Like the presence of James Cagney in A Midsummer Night's Dream, there's little doubt that William was cast to make Julius Caesar into a Warren William character, not because anyone expected him to adapt himself to a classical role.…

• 

  Review by victoryfish ★★★★ 8

  If you do not simply pass away when the title card for this film appears on screen, then you might as well find something else to watch. Cleopatra isn't the film for you.

  Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra is scene after scene of awesome extravagance--hedonistic, passionate, and deadly. If the script isn't quite up to the task of telling an epic story about empires, everything else certainly is. Even in the slightly slower first half, you will never once be at a loss for something to look at or some compelling presence on screen, all vying for your undivided attention. Cleopatra is a power struggle visually as well as narratively, spearheaded by outrageous Art Deco "Egyptian" sets and Travis Banton's scandalizing…

• 

  Review by comrade_yui ★★★★★ 4

  white people love nothing more than to pretend to be egyptian by doing a british or mid-atlantic accent... this still happens to this very day. there have been more ivory-skinned cleopatras in the cinema than one can even imagine...

  like many of the great films of the early 30s, cecil b. demille's desert corridor emphasizes texture over narrative -- the shiny chestplates, bejeweled chalices, endless parades of decked-out extras carrying furbished banners through winding streets constructed of aluminum and balsa wood -- this is a level of cinematic luxury that ceased to exist after the 1970s and will likely never be seen again. sure, the story is just the bones of shakespeare's romania put into a pre-code microwave and set…

• 

  Review by Jesse Snoddon ★★★

  "Queens don't hiccup"

  A loose version of the story of Cleopatra (Claudette Colbert), who uses seduction against first Julius Caesar (Warren William) and then Marc Antony (Henry Wilcoxon) in an effort to stave off Roman incursions against Egypt. 

  Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra is all about the lavish sets, sleek, slinky costuming of the lead and Colbert's sultry lead performance. The narrative itself is a little lacklustre and the sometimes overwrought, soapy melodramatics
  of William and Wilcoxon's performances undercut the possibility of any real sizzle between them and Colbert. The enjoyment to be found here is in the extravagant spectacle of Cleopatra's court and in watching Colbert revel in the role. The scene where she plays Antony like a fiddle, goading him…

• 

  Review by Taylor Leverage ★★★ 5

  Apparently the controversy of the week is Netflix choosing to cast a black woman as Cleopatra, so it's a great time to revisit when early Hollywood's most notorious director cast an actress with the melanin level of a marshmallow as the same queen.

  Trying to condense the Shakespearean Cleopatra into less than 100 minutes is certainly a tall order; Caesar is being stabbed to death after some not-so-subtle foreshadowing before 40 minutes are up. As a result of the compact runtime the film suffers quite a bit in the story and character department, but where this film shines is in its visual style; Cecil B. DeMille can never polish up his modern reputation, but he was an undisputed master when…

• 

  Review by threepenny ★★★★★

  Pretty sure I loved this movie from Cleopatra's introduction to Julius Caesar, rolled out of a carpet at his feet, half naked, seducing him from there. But the clincher was definitely on her royal barge on the Nile where she entertains Marc Antony with women dressed in tiger skins crawling on the floor and getting whipped, while other women are captured in nets as "clams", as she calls them. There's epic battle scenes, but they are nothing compared to every scene with Claudette Colbert in it. Cecile B. DeMille seems to have crafted this movie to worship her, and who am I to argue. Big spectacle filmmaking at its best.

• 

  Review by Graham Williamson ★★★½ 12

  Reviewed on Cinema Eclectica.

  There's a bit in this where some Roman society gossips are discussing Cleopatra, and the one who knows the least about her asks if she's black. The others, astonishingly, all giggle, as though it is just the most insane thing in the world to expect an African queen to be black. So it's not exactly historically accurate, then. It's a product of Jazz Age America's fascination with Ancient Egypt, and when it plays up to that with wisecracking screwbally love triangles it's pretty delightful. A lot of Cecil B de Mille's films feel very disjointed, and I'd usually assumed it was because he has to pivot from showing spectacular violence and debauchery to condemning it. But…

• 

  Review by Raphael Georg Klopper ★★★★

  If Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra is mostly now regarded as a massively opulent drag dumpster fire of an Hollywood epic, I always wondered if a character such as Cleopatra would ever benefit from a worthy movie that made worth of her name. The moment I heard that Cecil B. DeMille had made his own version back in the 30s, so my curiosity immediately sparkled to see what the showman master had cocked up with his own version of such an historic and popular icon.

  For my surprise, this is a very particular Cleopatra, even if following the same events and structure you would’ve grow familiar around her story, after having seen many versions that go from iconic Elizabeth Taylor, that bad miniseries…

• 

  Review by noir1946 ★★½

  I’m sure there was excess in the cinema before Cecil B. DeMille, but he certainly refined it—if “refined” is the right word. His Cleopatra alternates dull, talky scenes with over-the-top ones. I like the sea battle, with CBD warming up for Reap the Wild Wind. One problem with Cleopatra, however, is that we’re supposed to care about the fates of Rome and Egypt, but screenwriters Vincent Lawrence and Waldemar Young come up with nothing to make us feel anything. Vinnie and Wally also write awful dialogue. When Cleo (Claudette Colbert) tells Marc Antony (Henry Wilcoxon), “I’ve seen a god come to life,” I defy you not to giggle.

  “I never saw anything so beautiful.”

  What we’re left with is an…

• 

  Review by Sea Lucas ★★★★★

  Claudette Colbert weaves a glamorous spell, undulating sensuous and serpentine through DeMille’s lavish dreamscapes. She is more than a queen, she is a cobra goddess crowned by the divine Uraeus - poisoner and protector, lover and enemy, her irresistible but annihilating touch destroying old lovers and future kingdoms. Everything else pales in her presence, but it barely matters.

• 

  Review by Scott Huston ★★★★ 1

  Release date: October 5, 1934
  Ninety years ago today 

  Cleopatra (Claudette Colbert), the devoted Queen of Egypt, wanted to save her nation as the world crumbled. Cecil B. DeMille only asks one question: “Where should I hold the camera?”

  Cleopatra was the last dynastic pharaoh of Egypt, marking the end of 7000 years of Egypt.

  This film is interesting but not intriguing—THAT is, until the beguiling dulcet tones of Cleopatra win over Julius Cesar and then Mark Anthony. The pleasure barge, the Cirque du Soleil performances, the leopard women, and then I too would have traded all of Rome for Egypt.

  1934 was a good year for Claudette Colbert.