Cleopatra 5: Cleopatra on Screen
5/28/202659 min
Mary and Charlotte talk to Professor Maria Wyke, classicist and film historian, about Cleopatra’s rebirth on the screen. By far the most famous Cleopatra film is the 1963 epic starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton - at the time the most expensive film ever made and with a steamy on-set love affair between the two stars to match that of the characters they were playing. Almost as brilliant, in its way, is the parody made the following year - Carry on Cleo - giving Kenneth Williams, as Julius Caesar, one of the greatest lines of all time: “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” This pair of films hog the limelight, but Maria shows how cinema’s fascination with Cleo goes right back to the early years of silent film through to the 21st Century. Why? On one hand, the Cleopatra story is an opportunity for spectacle and sex appeal - in other words, good business. On the other, the story is reinvented by each generation, playing on the anxieties and desires of the age. Looking at Cleopatra films tells us a lot about changing attitudes to sex, race and politics over the last 100+ years. Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading: Maria has written about Cleopatra on film in her books Projecting the Past (Routledge, pb, 1997) and The Roman Mistress (OUP, 2002). Films also figure in Lucy Hughes Hallett’s, Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions (Fourth Estate, pb, 2026) A discussion of the Taylor-Burton film on its 60th anniversary: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jun/12/cleopatra-60th-anniversary-elizabeth-taylor-richard-burton And for the fashion aspect: https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/1963-mankiewicz-cleopatra/ @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube @insta_classics for X email: instantclassicspod@gmail.com Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci Producer: Jonty Claypole Video Editor: Jak Ford Theme music: Casey Gibson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsCharlotte Higgins· Host0:00
"Off set, she's as languid as a cheetah, relaxing cat-like at her Via Appia villa with her husband, three children, four dogs, two Siamese cats, sipping champagne by the pool, letting the world come to her, and it does."
Mary Beard· Host0:17
That is how Vogue Magazine in 1962 described the megastar Elizabeth Taylor, or Miss Taylor, as they rather primly called her, who was then filming the most expensive movie ever made, Cleopatra, co-starring Richard Burton.
Charlotte Higgins· Host0:36
What captured the public imagination around this production, as what I have just read hints at, was how closely art seemed to follow life and life art. While they were filming in studios in Rome, Taylor was living a luxurious life worthy of Cleopatra herself at her out of town villa. And of course, she was having a real-life affair with Burton, her lover in the movie, Mark Antony.
Mary Beard· Host1:04
In this episode, we're going to start by exploring this Cleopatra film and some of the intriguing stories that surrounded it, and the near disasters it suffered. But we're also going beyond the celebrity gossip to look at some of the many earlier movies that recreated Cleopatra for the cinema, and at what's coming up