I'm a fan of the genre, especially from the time period this one was made.
I'm a fan of the actors in almost every other film they were in.
Just something never clicked for me in this movie even with so much going for it.
I am watching it disk by disk. About 4 hours. It was a magnificent epic. A little disjointed, but the set decorations and costumes are wonderful. I wasn't a Liz Taylor fan, but she was cast just right for the part.
It's very Shakespearean.
The problem is the running time and the soporific editing. We need a new cut of this film and a much shorter running time. If you are interested please tweet 20th century fox about it, here's someone from the tv division maybe they can do a new made for tv cut: @Manald1
shareSoporific is a great word and perfect for this movie. And it's funny you should suggest an abridged cut since there have been plans for years to restore the orifinal six-hour Mankiewicz cut. This thankfully hasn't come about since plenty of footage is still lost.
I'm here, Mr. Man, I cannot tell no lie and I'll be right here till the day I die
That's because of the stupid "butchered masterpiece" narrative. There is no butchered masterpiece, Mankiewicz was an incompetent director who couldn't focus on the main subject out of sheer woman hating. Hence why he wanted two three hour movies, to focus on what he wanted to show, the men and the man feels, but that was never what the studio wanted. This should have been a 2 and a half hour movie at the most. Please tweet to 20th century fox for an abridged version.
share"...sheer woman hating. Hence why he wanted two three hour movies, to focus on what he wanted to show, the men and the man feels."
Some pretty severe Patriarchy Derangement Syndrome going on here.
In addition to soporific editing I would add ponderous dialogue.
shareI like some of the dialogue, the problem is that most of it doesn't lead anywhere. You have several minutes of Caesar and his homoerotic mute man servant going back and forth talking about rugs. The first rule of storytelling is get on with it.
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