Antony and Cleopatra

1972

2h 18m

IMDb RATING

5.6/10

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18 Images

Drama

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Adaptation of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, a historical drama that attempts to bring an epic visual style to the Bard's original stage play. The story concerns Marc Antony's attempts to rule Rome while maintaining a relationship with the queen of Egypt (Hildegarde Neil), which began while Antony was still married. Now he is being forced to marry the sister of his Roman co-leader, and soon the conflict leads to war.

Directors

Charlton Heston

Writers

Charlton Heston(screenplay by)

William Shakespeare(theatre play by)

Stars

Charlton Heston

Hildegard Neil

Eric Porter

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Trailer
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Photos18

Top cast

Marc Antony

Cleopatra

Enobarbus

Octavius Caesar

Lepidus

Alexis

Octavia

Pompey

Menas

Varrius

Menecrates

Scarus

Soothsayer

Proculeius

Canidius

Eros

Thidias

Charmian

Directors

Charlton Heston

Writers

Charlton Heston(screenplay by)

William Shakespeare(theatre play by)

All cast & crew

Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

User reviews1

Review

Featured review

6/10

Whilst this is a really quite good looking version of the Shakespeare tragedy, it's the overly wordy adaptation that drags it down. What director Charlton Heston and his writing team seem to failed to appreciate is that much of the original text was designed to complement the simplicity of the stage. With an whole gamut of visuals for us to enjoy, much of the original dialogue is rendered superfluous, and abridging that is the challenge that fails this production. Essentially, it picks up just after the assassination of Julius Caesar with Lepidus (Fernando Rey), Octavian (John Castle) and Marc Antony (Heston) managing an easy truce so they can deal with Pompey (Freddie Jones). Octavian is also nervous about Antony and so suggests that he marry his sister Octavia to create a stronger bond between them and also to irritate the other player in this game. Cleopatra (Hildegard Neil) has also moved on from Julius and Antony is very much in her grip. Now he has some egg shells to tread upon as she reacts to his new nuptials and he realises that maybe together than are strong enough to redraw the map of the Roman world. It doesn't really try very hard to present us with grand scale battle scenes, but instead uses some quick-cut editing to illustrate conflict interspersed with dialogue and the odd action shot. At times that's quite effective, but most of this film just looked like a vanity project for a star very much engaged with the original work but without really much idea as to how best to deliver it engagingly on the screen. His casting of Neil is a bit hit and miss, and his own tendency to lingering shots to camera rather slow this to a snails pace. Castle does well as the softly softly Octavian as does Eric Porter as Enobarbus, but otherwise this is all just a bit long and unremarkable.

Geronimo196709 Dec, 2023