Review – Caesar and Cleopatra

This may well be the most improbable epic ever made. For starters, it was shot with a huge budget during the hardships and shortages of World War Two England. They got Claude Rains to play the male lead, and apparently shooting for some kind of half-baked British answer to Gone with the Wind they borrowed Vivien Leigh from David O. Selznick to play Cleopatra. But strangest of all is the script, based on a play by George Bernard Shaw. Only such a great playwright would ever attempt to turn this grim historical debacle into a romantic comedy, and honestly even he can’t really make it work. But I was in the mood for a costume drama, and this worked as well as anything. Mildly amusing