Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 178-179: The Further Adventures of Liz and Dick

Those of you who have been following the Big Oscar Challenge since the beginning know that I devote a large part of the 1950s portion of the project to chronicle the career of Elizabeth Taylor. As we all know Taylor's relationship with Richard Burton was almost as famous as her acting career and in the 1960s they starred opposite each other in two very different Oscar-nominated films.

The first of these is quite infamous in itself mainly as it took years to make, almost bankrupt a studio and elicited a negative reaction from its lead actress. That film was Cleopatra an epic that took three years to shoot and whose location had to be moved after Taylor, who ultimately earned a fee of $7 million for her appearance, had had emergency surgery and claimed that the British weather wouldn't help her healing process so all the sets had to be rebuilt in Italy. There were also issues on the direction front as original director Rouben Mamoulain was replaced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz who envisaged his film as a six hour epic. The film was edited down to three hours and then lengthened back to four for the DVD release, which I watched, which separated the film into two very distinct segments. The first told the story of the Egyptian Queen's meeting with Julius Caesar, played by Rex Harrison, who he later marries and has a son with however as we know Caesar's closest allies were planning to kill him off. After Caesar's death his closest ally Anthony, played by Richard Burton, heads over to Egypt and ends up having it off with Cleopatra himself however he then has to battle Caesar's nephew who has been named his heir. As the second half of the film goes on the relationship between deteriorates as they realise that their allies are being killed off. By the end of the film there has been plenty of deaths, fires and costumes however the stories off-screen have somewhat eclipsed what was happening on screen.

Watching the film for the first time I found it to be visually spectacular and deserving of its awards for costume design and special effects, but maybe not for cinematography, and I did find the battle scenes the most stimulating. I also thought Liz Taylor improved as the film went on, perhaps because she was on the mend, really maturing during the second half of the film during Cleopatra's scenes with Anthony. However at the same time I personally believed the first two hours of the film were very slow and Taylor had very little chemistry with Rex Harrison meanwhile some of the dialogue was just laughable. Cleopatra is still in the history books as one of the most expensive films of all time and famously almost bankrupted Fox who eventually clawed back the money after the VHS and DVD releases. Taylor meanwhile wasn't too keen when she saw the film at the London premiere as she actually threw up however it wasn't all bad as she met her next husband in Richard Burton. The two were both married at the time they began their affair on the set of Cleopatra and after they married they began to star in a number of films together one of which would see Taylor pick up her second Best Actress Oscar.


That film was Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? an adaptation of Edward Albee's play which stars Taylor and Burton as married couple Martha and George who corrupt a young couple who join them for drinks. Despite it being late George and Martha agree to have Nick, the newest professor at the college where George teaches, and his wife Honey around however the night soon descend into accusations and betrayal. As the quartet down more alcohol Martha and George argue about their son while Nick confides in George about his relationship with Honey and why there were married in the first place. As director Mike Nichols didn't have to work within the confines of a theatre he takes the play outside George and Martha's house as the four end up at a road house diner and its adjoining car park before ending up back in the living room.

Personally I still found Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? an incredibly stagy film but I didn't consider this necessarily a bad thing when the four performers are so good. Taylor became one of the first actresses to change her appearance for a part and then win an Oscar here gaining weight and playing a woman ten years older than she was at the time. The film also became of only one of a handful to get nominations in all four acting categories with Burton and George Segal being nominated and Sandy Dennis rightfully winning a Supporting Actress award for breathing life into the innocent Honey. The Oscar-nominated cinematography was also very well done closing in on the characters at the right moment to add intensity to the more emotional moments of the film. What made the film so great though was the chemistry between Taylor and Burton who actually made you believed that they'd been married for years and that they were as old as the characters they played. Overall I greatly enjoyed this film more than the much more expensive Cleopatra as it felt more intense, more emotional and ultimately a more enjoyable watch. After two marriages Burton and Taylor finally divorced in 1976 however the legacy of their romance lives on in films that have some merit to them whether it be the history of their budget or the brilliance of their performances in them.

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.