Chris Knipp
08-14-2024, 12:41 AM
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20clga.jpg
HELEN MIRREN IN CALIGULA: THE ULTIMATE CUT
TINTO BRASS: CALIGULA: THE ULTIMATE CUT (2023)
The decline of Rome, late-Seventies style
After more than forty years, here is an "ultimate" version of the controversial and disreputable film. How will it look? It still has what it started out with, the class acquired by featuring some very respectable actors: Malcolm McDowell as the lead, the corrupt, crazy emperor Caligula; Peter O'Toole as his predecessor, Tiberius; Helen Mirren as Caligula's wife Caesonia; John Gielgud as Tiberius' friend, Nerva. Gielgud at least was not happy with being in this film and others abandoned it. Gore Vidal sued because his screenplay was jettisoned. The director, Tinto Brass, also disavowed the thing. Actually, this is one glossy epic which makes you feel dirty watching it. And taking out some sexual material and adding some non-sexual material doesn't change that.
What can you expect when the publisher of Penthouse, the more louche competitor of Playboy, was the producer? Can it be restored and is there anything to restore anyway? This new, longer cut overseen by Thomas Negovan seeks restoration. (Note: the titular director, Tinto Brass, did not do it.) That is, it purports to bring back lost scenes originally cut in favor of pornographic material. But some of these "restored" scenes are just unnecessary improvisatory filler. This isn't enough by a long shot to repair the gaudy mess of Bob Guccione's overblown, soft core Roman epic. Plus now it's twenty-two minutes longer, and requires even more patience to sit through.
But if you have seen the original theatrical version, you may want to see what sense has been injected into it now with the lost footage. This is a curiosity that will interest some viewers even if it's borderline distasteful, and still drags. "The worst movie ever made," you say? Then bring it on! Any film that can garner such a subtitle must have something going for it. History in movies always shows its age. This is Roman depravity as it was seen by soft core pornographers with a good budget in the late-Seventies. It was a louche moment, an era of billowy skirts, men with lots of hair, beards, wide lapels, flared trousers. Much of that was happily left behind in costuming this movie, but the new taste for display and excess and willingness to slip back into pre-Code daring may come through.
Watching this however one feels what Caligula most needed was a trim, not an expansion. So much happens, but what really is happening? One thing that stands out in this now nearly three-hour version: a lugubrious pace and a lack of energy from scene to scene. That is despite Malcolm McDowell's panache. One always has the feeling that the actor, youthful-seeming even if he's thirty-seven, is refusing to be pulled down, his energy and youthfulness strong. But a newly added droning score and the cluttered sets Danilo Donati - more fully shown now - combine to provide an effect of lugubrious weight that can't be cast off.
Still the film is beautiful in its way. The gaudy costumes look gloriously tacky - and risqué, especially McDowell's shorty outfits (he has many costume changes, running through an extravagant panorama of colors and lengths). It seems he is having the time of his life traipsing about, flaunting those skimpy outfits, prancing across the stage (it all feels incredibly stagey), like a movie from a much earlier time - which now, it arguably is. McDowell running around obsequiously in the early sequence behind O'Toole's Tiberius carrying the decadent, declining emperor's long golden-fiber train is a sight to see.
Whatever was titillating about the story is still there and more was added: nudity, including some male frontal; public intercourse in orgy scenes. But what stings are the greater and worse pornographies of violence and cruelty, still present. It is distasteful to watch the loyal Macro being killed in a brutal pubic coliseum game; the soldier made to drink gallons of wine; the abuse and humiliation of the Roman senators. There are the strong hints of incest between Caligula and his sister Drusilla (a role that Maria Schneider abandoned when it made her uncomfortable and the lesser, but very pretty, Teresa Ann Savoy took her place). There is more of Helen Mirren in the "Ultimate Cut," but she still doesn't say much: her recessiveness in this context of excess is welcome.
The mood of Caligula, more evidently now perhaps than then, is oppressive, its outrageousness expressive of a kind of desperation. Most scenes, even in private bedrooms, since they're imperial and Roman, are set on a large scale and feel heavy and overproduced. Imagine an orgy of people in Roman garb doggedly having sex on three storeys, and the constant oppressive moaning and droning. And yet for all their elaborate staging, these scenes don't feel authentic, even if they're occasionally beautiful. There's no help for this, because forty-five years later, no on screen version of ancient times is going to look right, and the constant insistence on provocative tableaux fails to capture a sense of individual Roman life.
The trouble always remains that this is a film that was chopped up and added to for added sensuality, and its effort to be titillating becomes wearying very soon. The declared plan in this "Ultimate" cut was to weave back in more "political" scenes that made sense of the story, scenes cut out by Guccione to put in pornographic moments. But restorer Negovan may have cut out sexual moments that director Brass originally intended as well.
The best and worst that Caligula the film can do is shown in the first half hour, in Peter O'Toole's performance as the declining, degenerate Emperor Tiberius, his face heavily painted to give the effect of venereal disease. For effect, O'Toole shouts at the top of his lungs in every other sentence. He was grandiose and theatrical already as the lead in David Lean's 1962 Lawrence of Arabia, also a film of over-the-top grandiosity, but it's David Lean. Here O'Toole is shouting and has a brightly painted face. He carries it off, as only he could. But it's just a piece of gaudy theatricality, an aggressive showstopper.
The movie hits hard on Caligula's corruption, starting with hinted at, but not actually shown (a line is drawn) sexual relationship with his sister and his obsequiousness and then murderousness toward the reigning emperor, Tiberius. We don't get the breath of hope that history tells us there was when "Little Boots' (Caligula), the army mascot and youngest son of murdered military hero father Germanicus, first became emperor. Then, we're told (https://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/caligula.html#:~:text=Caligula%20%7C%20PBS&text=Seen%20as%20a%20welcome%20breath,just%20five% 20years%20in%20power.), after the unhappy years of purges and treason trials, Rome welcomed its new emperor at first. Unfortunately in this film we know too well what a little creep he is already.
So the movie makes Caligula crazy from the start, and this new edit doesn't change anything as basic as that. Remember this is all, old or new, material put together when Gore Vidal's screenplay, which according to McDowell in an online interview (https://www.dreadcentral.com/interviews/464788/malcolm-mcdowell-shares-his-experience-watching-caligula-the-ultimate-cut-on-the-big-screen-fantastic-fest-2023/) was terrible and he refused to rewrite, was thrown out.
Caligula: the Ultimate Cut, 156 mins., debuted at Cannes, May 2023 (Malcolm McDowell, now eighty, declined to attend). US release Aug. 16, 2024. Release on Blu-ray Sept. 17.
For details of the film's history, see the Wikipedia article "Caligula (film) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula_(film))." See also Peter Bradshaw's Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/aug/07/caligula-the-ultimate-cut-review-ambitious-1979-shocker-minus-the-spurious-porn).
HELEN MIRREN IN CALIGULA: THE ULTIMATE CUT
TINTO BRASS: CALIGULA: THE ULTIMATE CUT (2023)
The decline of Rome, late-Seventies style
After more than forty years, here is an "ultimate" version of the controversial and disreputable film. How will it look? It still has what it started out with, the class acquired by featuring some very respectable actors: Malcolm McDowell as the lead, the corrupt, crazy emperor Caligula; Peter O'Toole as his predecessor, Tiberius; Helen Mirren as Caligula's wife Caesonia; John Gielgud as Tiberius' friend, Nerva. Gielgud at least was not happy with being in this film and others abandoned it. Gore Vidal sued because his screenplay was jettisoned. The director, Tinto Brass, also disavowed the thing. Actually, this is one glossy epic which makes you feel dirty watching it. And taking out some sexual material and adding some non-sexual material doesn't change that.
What can you expect when the publisher of Penthouse, the more louche competitor of Playboy, was the producer? Can it be restored and is there anything to restore anyway? This new, longer cut overseen by Thomas Negovan seeks restoration. (Note: the titular director, Tinto Brass, did not do it.) That is, it purports to bring back lost scenes originally cut in favor of pornographic material. But some of these "restored" scenes are just unnecessary improvisatory filler. This isn't enough by a long shot to repair the gaudy mess of Bob Guccione's overblown, soft core Roman epic. Plus now it's twenty-two minutes longer, and requires even more patience to sit through.
But if you have seen the original theatrical version, you may want to see what sense has been injected into it now with the lost footage. This is a curiosity that will interest some viewers even if it's borderline distasteful, and still drags. "The worst movie ever made," you say? Then bring it on! Any film that can garner such a subtitle must have something going for it. History in movies always shows its age. This is Roman depravity as it was seen by soft core pornographers with a good budget in the late-Seventies. It was a louche moment, an era of billowy skirts, men with lots of hair, beards, wide lapels, flared trousers. Much of that was happily left behind in costuming this movie, but the new taste for display and excess and willingness to slip back into pre-Code daring may come through.
Watching this however one feels what Caligula most needed was a trim, not an expansion. So much happens, but what really is happening? One thing that stands out in this now nearly three-hour version: a lugubrious pace and a lack of energy from scene to scene. That is despite Malcolm McDowell's panache. One always has the feeling that the actor, youthful-seeming even if he's thirty-seven, is refusing to be pulled down, his energy and youthfulness strong. But a newly added droning score and the cluttered sets Danilo Donati - more fully shown now - combine to provide an effect of lugubrious weight that can't be cast off.
Still the film is beautiful in its way. The gaudy costumes look gloriously tacky - and risqué, especially McDowell's shorty outfits (he has many costume changes, running through an extravagant panorama of colors and lengths). It seems he is having the time of his life traipsing about, flaunting those skimpy outfits, prancing across the stage (it all feels incredibly stagey), like a movie from a much earlier time - which now, it arguably is. McDowell running around obsequiously in the early sequence behind O'Toole's Tiberius carrying the decadent, declining emperor's long golden-fiber train is a sight to see.
Whatever was titillating about the story is still there and more was added: nudity, including some male frontal; public intercourse in orgy scenes. But what stings are the greater and worse pornographies of violence and cruelty, still present. It is distasteful to watch the loyal Macro being killed in a brutal pubic coliseum game; the soldier made to drink gallons of wine; the abuse and humiliation of the Roman senators. There are the strong hints of incest between Caligula and his sister Drusilla (a role that Maria Schneider abandoned when it made her uncomfortable and the lesser, but very pretty, Teresa Ann Savoy took her place). There is more of Helen Mirren in the "Ultimate Cut," but she still doesn't say much: her recessiveness in this context of excess is welcome.
The mood of Caligula, more evidently now perhaps than then, is oppressive, its outrageousness expressive of a kind of desperation. Most scenes, even in private bedrooms, since they're imperial and Roman, are set on a large scale and feel heavy and overproduced. Imagine an orgy of people in Roman garb doggedly having sex on three storeys, and the constant oppressive moaning and droning. And yet for all their elaborate staging, these scenes don't feel authentic, even if they're occasionally beautiful. There's no help for this, because forty-five years later, no on screen version of ancient times is going to look right, and the constant insistence on provocative tableaux fails to capture a sense of individual Roman life.
The trouble always remains that this is a film that was chopped up and added to for added sensuality, and its effort to be titillating becomes wearying very soon. The declared plan in this "Ultimate" cut was to weave back in more "political" scenes that made sense of the story, scenes cut out by Guccione to put in pornographic moments. But restorer Negovan may have cut out sexual moments that director Brass originally intended as well.
The best and worst that Caligula the film can do is shown in the first half hour, in Peter O'Toole's performance as the declining, degenerate Emperor Tiberius, his face heavily painted to give the effect of venereal disease. For effect, O'Toole shouts at the top of his lungs in every other sentence. He was grandiose and theatrical already as the lead in David Lean's 1962 Lawrence of Arabia, also a film of over-the-top grandiosity, but it's David Lean. Here O'Toole is shouting and has a brightly painted face. He carries it off, as only he could. But it's just a piece of gaudy theatricality, an aggressive showstopper.
The movie hits hard on Caligula's corruption, starting with hinted at, but not actually shown (a line is drawn) sexual relationship with his sister and his obsequiousness and then murderousness toward the reigning emperor, Tiberius. We don't get the breath of hope that history tells us there was when "Little Boots' (Caligula), the army mascot and youngest son of murdered military hero father Germanicus, first became emperor. Then, we're told (https://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/caligula.html#:~:text=Caligula%20%7C%20PBS&text=Seen%20as%20a%20welcome%20breath,just%20five% 20years%20in%20power.), after the unhappy years of purges and treason trials, Rome welcomed its new emperor at first. Unfortunately in this film we know too well what a little creep he is already.
So the movie makes Caligula crazy from the start, and this new edit doesn't change anything as basic as that. Remember this is all, old or new, material put together when Gore Vidal's screenplay, which according to McDowell in an online interview (https://www.dreadcentral.com/interviews/464788/malcolm-mcdowell-shares-his-experience-watching-caligula-the-ultimate-cut-on-the-big-screen-fantastic-fest-2023/) was terrible and he refused to rewrite, was thrown out.
Caligula: the Ultimate Cut, 156 mins., debuted at Cannes, May 2023 (Malcolm McDowell, now eighty, declined to attend). US release Aug. 16, 2024. Release on Blu-ray Sept. 17.
For details of the film's history, see the Wikipedia article "Caligula (film) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula_(film))." See also Peter Bradshaw's Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/aug/07/caligula-the-ultimate-cut-review-ambitious-1979-shocker-minus-the-spurious-porn).