Film Review : Caligula - The Ultimate Cut

 

 "Caligula" has gone down in history as one of cinema's most troubled productions.  The writer wanted to make a grand historical epic, the director wanted to make a darkly comic satire and the producer wanted lots and lots of sex. The result was a bit of a mess that nobody was happy with.

When it was released the film outraged critics, moralists and cinemagoers and also kicked off several lawsuits. 

I suspect the real Caligula would have been delighted by all this. 

This version has supposedly been put together from the original footage and is touted as being the "closest to writer Gore Vidal's original vision." 

 So after all this time has somebody managed to make this infamous trainwreck into a good film?  

Well, my first thought is "Does this bloody movie really need to be almost 3 hours long?"  A film about one of history's premier bloodthirsty madmen is always going to be a hard watch and all that extra time made it a real slog. 

 There are some positives:  Malcolm Mcdowell gives an astonishing, dynamic performance. He goes from playful to malevolent and back again in seconds and even manages some tender moments. 

 It's difficult to feel any sympathy towards such a nasty piece of work but he almost manages it. 

 Maybe it's just my interpretation but the impression I got is that his Caligula is actively going out of his way to wind up the rest of the world. Like somebody handed him the world's biggest toybox and he got bored of it already.  

Next up we have Helen Mirren as Caesonia. Ok, ridiculously hot  - and  also a great performance that's downright restrained compared to Mcdowell, but that's why it worked, I felt. 

Peter O'Toole may have been drunk the whole time his raddled, degenerate Tiberius is on screen.  Meh, it sort of fits. 

Visually, "Caligula" looks amazing. The sets and costumes are glorious, and the whole thing is composed and shot really well.  

However, all this still leaves the central problem. "Caligula" is not an easy film to watch. 

 A bit like Caligula himself, the film is trying to be shocking, so entirely too many graphic orgies and I could really have done without the bit where Caligula rapes a a pair of newlyweds. Or the scene where Caligula turns the birth of his child into a grotesque tableau. Or....

You get the idea.  

 Then there is the overall tone. Thanks to various people trying to pull the film in different directions Caligula keeps veering into absurdity. I couldn't tell you how much of it was meant to be absurd or just landed that way. It would be camp if it wasn't for the rape, murder and so on.  

And lastly, I just didn't think the film flowed. It was just a collection of incidents, loosely hung together on a frame. I didn't get the sense that Caligula was descending into madness.  

What you end up with is a film that doesn't work as a drama, is too grotesque to be erotic and too brutal to be camp. 

I think I might have enjoyed the unrestored version more. 

Might

Watching Caligula is definitely an experience. Whether you enjoy said experience is a whole other question.