Cleopatra (1934)

Cecil B. DeMille is the king of spectacle, directing over 80 films, silent and talkies, including The King of Kings, The Sign of the Cross, The Buccaneer, Samson and Delilah, The Ten Commandments and the 1934 Cleopatra. Cleopatra stars Claudette Colbert in the title role, with Warren William as Julias Caesar and Henry Wilcoxon as Mark Antony. This epic story follows Colbert as Cleopatra uses her feminine wiles to keep Rome at bay from taking over her beloved Egypt, at first by wooing Caesar and later, by falling in love with Antony. At the end, she is willing to sacrifice her country for her love of Antony, but he misinterprets her negotiations and kills himself.

The film has elaborate dance and entertainment sequences for Queen Cleopatra as she tries to impress the Roman leadership and there are grand battles where Antony leads the small Egyptian Army against the massive Roman forces. The film is very dated in style and theatrically large acting. But Colbert does have one of the most natural screen presences of the time and finds great nuances in the script to give the character greater dimension than one would anticipate in a film made at this time.

I can only assume that such elaborate escapism was very popular during the financially hard times of the 1930s. DeMille is certainly a master of filling the screen with every such excess to represent the grand lives of royalty of the past, allowing struggling movie-goers the chance to escape into a world where every want can readily be gratified.

Overall, I found the film slightly entertaining, but not greatly profound or rewarding. It was nice to see Colbert's easy of screen presence so effortlessly displayed, but the other actors in the film did not match her natural ability.