Would you buy a Cleopatra: Director's Cut? (1 Viewer)

[Allansfirebird]

I realize the poster I'm about to respond to is listed as being banned, but now that I've had a chance to thoroughly pour through the dialogue continuity of JLM's rough cut of Cleopatra, which included everything that was filmed and exactingly notes what Mankiewicz had in his cut, I can speak to some of these points.

You're wrong. Elizabeth Taylor had many important scenes, eliminated, off the top of my head, a final divination scene where the gods abandon her, at least three scenes featuring Caesarion, two pivotal scenes involving Antony before the battle of Actium, a scene dealing with Antony's corpse and also getting 'arrested' by Octavian's guard who have broken into her mausoleum, scenes with Apollodorus, scenes involving her other servants. As a matter of facts, the roles that got the most butchering were Antony and Cleopatra, highly ironic since the reason Zanuck opposed Mankiewicz' original two part film was that nobody would be interested in seeing part one where Antony would be seen for just a few minutes.

The final divination scene was indicated as out by JLM in the rough cut. This was part of a larger concern where Mank shifted the characterization of Cleo's relationship with the gods during filming and the writing of the shooting script. Indeed, the very first sequence she was supposed to appear in the movie was cut even before the end of 1961 because of this change, and also because the original actor for Ramos was replaced because his English was terrible. JLM hoped to rewrite and reshoot this scene in memos from January 62, but this never came to be in the mad rush to just finish the damn thing. Interestingly, some of the earlier drafts of the reshoot script indicate the final divination scene was slated to be added back to the cut, but ultimately this was scrapped.

The two "pivotal scenes" with Antony prior to Actium were in the cut - his drunken tirade in a tavern, and a scene the next morning between him and Cleo on her barge.

Agrippa and Octavian regarding Antony's corpse was in, but it's not even half a page worth of action and dialogue. Same with the seizing of Cleopatra in her mausoleum. Ultimately, neither of these short moments do much to enhance the proceedings since the film is barrelling towards its inevitable conclusion.

If the draw of the film was Burton and Taylor, then why where their characters the most cut?, Well, who is Darryl F. Zanuck anyway? A proto Harvey Weinstein whose name and work barely anyone remembers and is only ever mention for his butchery of this film, possibly the greatest film of all time in scope, and who blew half his fortune on mistresses?

It was well established in the documentary Cleopatra: The Film that Changed Hollywood that Zanuck hated the characterization of Cleo in the movie. He's quoted to have said, "if any woman treated me like that, I'd kick her in the balls." However, a lot of Antony scenes in the second half of the picture were already marked as out in Mankiewicz's cut. Trying to pin that on Zanuck, while also attempting to minimize his contributions to film as a medium by way of his historically-known abuse of the casting couch is whataboutism of the grossest kind. Under Zanuck's aegis, Joseph L. Mankiewicz did much of his best work. We don't even have 20th Century Fox and therefore Cleopatra without him.