Cleopatra
“The most beautiful motion picture ever made”
About Cleopatra
Cleopatra offers the Greek fisherman Pharon ten days of love on the condition that he kill himself when they end. The Roman soldier Ventidius orders her to Tarsus to answer Mark Antony's charge of conspiracy. Antony stays. When he hears that his wife Flavia is dead, he goes back to Rome and marries Octavia, sister of Octavius. Cleopatra sails for Actium, where his fleet is under siege, and her navy deserts him. Beaten again in Egypt, Antony stabs himself. Rather than be led through Rome as Octavius's prisoner, she presses an adder to her breast.
Cast & crew
More about Cleopatra
Helen Gardner's mother put up the money, and Gardner built a studio at Tappan after leaving Vitagraph. Charles L. Gaskill directed and wrote the screenplay from Sardou and Moreau's 1890 play Cléopâtre, with Shakespeare also cited as a source. United States Film Co. released it on a states' rights basis on November 13, 1912. Gardner edited and designed her costumes. A Moving Picture World ad of December 21 called it six thousand feet and one hour and forty minutes.
Themes
Background
Grau wrote that producers and exhibitors in 1912 thought a six-reel independent feature of this kind was ill-advised. A short Antony and Cleopatra had already been made about two years earlier.
Making
Outdoor scenes use the ground around the Tappan studio as well as built sets. The picture went out as a roadshow with a publicist, a manager, and a lecturer who also ran the projector, and it played opera houses as well as theaters.
Reviews
Louis Reeves Harrison, in Moving Picture World on November 30, 1912, wished Gaskill had followed Cleopatra's girlhood instead of staying so close to Sardou, then said the reel was crowded with incidents and that the continuity never lapsed. Edward Wagenknecht, who finally saw it in 1961, wrote that Gardner gave an unsuccessful imitation of Sarah Bernhardt.
Audiences
Robert Grau, writing in 1914, said the film attracted overwhelming patronage wherever it was shown.
Look
Lucien Tainguy is the cinematographer. Gardner used the Tappan landscape for exteriors and built sets for the court scenes.
Music
Silent on release. The 2000 Turner Classic Movies restoration carries a score by Chantal Kreviazuk and Raine Maida.
Preservation
Turner Classic Movies and George Eastman House restored the film from an earlier preservation. The version aired on TCM in August 2000, in the Women Pioneers in Film series, runs about thirteen minutes under the advertised six reels and is color-tinted.
Notes
- It was copyrighted as Helen Gardner in Cleopatra. A subtitle on the film is The Romance of a Woman and a Queen.
- Players are billed in the theatrical style, as Miss Gardner and Mr. Sindelar. Pearl Sindelar is Iras. Her husband Charles Sindelar is Antony.
- Helene Costello, billed as Miss Helene, plays the child Nicola. Harry Knowles is Kephren, captain of the guard. James R. Waite is Ventidius.
- An opening card says the author wanted to suggest the woman devotedly loved by Julius Caesar, and that stage traditions founded in ignorance were set aside.
- In 1918 the Cleopatra Film Co. reissued it, states' rights, after Gardner added scenes. A news item says Gaskill supervised additions in 1917, aimed at Theda Bara's Fox Cleopatra.
- Robert Grau wrote in The Theatre of Science (1914) that she and Gaskill were planning Cleopatra within an hour of her leaving the Vitagraph studio.
Scenes
- Cleopatra bargains with Pharon: ten days of love, then his suicide.
- Ventidius brings the order to meet Antony at Tarsus.
- Her ships desert Antony at Actium.
- Antony stabs himself after the defeat in Egypt.
- She presses an adder to her breast.
Influenced by
- Victorien Sardou and Émile Moreau's 1890 play Cléopâtre
- William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Cleopatra (1912).webm)