Julius Higgins Caesar

Lady M and I recently finished watching all four hours of the 1963 epic Cleopatra, which neither of us had seen all the way through before. Whew! It was a glorious, epic mess. In fact, it very nearly sank 20th Century Fox.

We came away feeling that it suffered a bit in comparison to more recent, more vérité screen portrayals of the story. But we were most unconvinced about the casting of Rex Harrison as Julius Caesar. Of course, this was an age when stars were stars, and were expected to be themselves on screen as much as their characters. Still, it was hard not to imagine him asking "why can't an Egyptian be more like a man?"

(Okay, okay, My Fair Lady came out the year after Cleopatra, so it's not really a fair criticism. But still.)