Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 62: Claudette is Queen

Although it was one of my favourite films from a couple of years ago, Clint Eastwood's Changeling also let me know that at the time of the 1935 Oscar ceremony everybody thought that Cecile B DeMille's Cleopatra was going to clean up and win big at that year's ceremony, apart from Angelina Jolie's character who reckoned that It Happened One Night would triumph. Of course Ange was right and Frank Capra's film became only one of three films ever to win the Big Five (Picture, Actor, Actress, Screenplay, Director) while Cleopatra only went home with the cinematography statuette. Not that Claudette Colbert was that arsed as she was the lead female in both films, plus a third nominated film - Imitation of Life. Indeed Colbert was probably the perfect choice to play Cleopatra - not too young, not too old and beautiful without being over-the-top. Indeed Colbert's Cleopatra is very flirty and sexy but never that dominant instead she is always waiting to find out what her man is going to do. The first third of the film essentially steals from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar as we follow Cleopatra from Egypt to Rome with J.C. where he is betrayed by Brutus. She is then able to seduce Marc Anthony who has come to deal with Caesar's killers but instead finds himself caught up in a battle of wits with the Egyptian queen in a relationship where they both try and kill each other. The final third of the film sees Caesar's only living relative, Octavian try and overthrow Marc Anthony as leader of Rome and get rid of Cleo once and for all. And in the final scene the Romans barge into Cleopatra's bedroom obviously to arrest her.

But the plot doesn't really seem to be that important to DeMille, instead he seems to want to concentrate on the detail and the extravagance that surrounded Cleo, Julius and Marc during their days in Egypt and Rome. So there are plenty of half-naked servant girls, large dance numbers and any number of animals lying around. Indeed the film opens with a naked servant girl who has been lit for purposes of modesty, this was just before censorship hit cinemas so this was DeMille's chance to get away with a bit more raunchy material than he would in later pictures. Claudette Colbert was great in the lead and she is fast becoming one of my favourite actresses however I still prefer her performance in Imitation of Life. Meanwhile Warren William makes a fine Caesar and Henry Wilcoxon was perfectly adequate as Marc Antony. However as a whole the film was style over substance and, even though I enjoyed a few of the later battle scenes, overall I thought if you took away all the detail you were left with a pretty flimsy film.