This film, which I first saw on tv when I was 12 or so, was my introduction to both the play and all the actors in it, too, at least consciously.
I had definitely read the play, because I remember being struck by line readings that I hadn't seen on the page. Some of them I had retained over the years, many not.
Because Mankiewicz actually copies himself/puts a homage to Julius Caesar in the staging of Caesar's assasination (which is the same in both so very different films, check it out, with the last turn towards Brutus and Brutus' physical response identical), I never imagined it happening any other way until decades later Rome did its own version.
In the fire! You're right. I can't remember if I recognized it as a self-quotation—I didn't remark on it at the time if so. I might have just thought it was the way the assassination of Caesar was supposed to look, too.
As you have seen Mankiewicz's Cleopatra more times than I have: do you see any other intertexts between the two films? There is a deliberately refused one in that we hear none of the funeral oration in Cleopatra.
Otoh, child me did not know about the Mercury theatre and its Julius Caesar production, and even after reading Simon Callow's intense descriptions of it in his Orson Welles biography, I didn't make the John Houseman connection, and of course it is there, you're so right.
I am glad to provide the info!
Patrick Stewart as Antony to Harriet Walters' Cleopatra in Stratford, and I could believe this Antony having held the funeral speech in his younger days.
That's neat to hear it can be done. The texts have always seemed in different canons to me.
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I had definitely read the play, because I remember being struck by line readings that I hadn't seen on the page. Some of them I had retained over the years, many not.
Because Mankiewicz actually copies himself/puts a homage to Julius Caesar in the staging of Caesar's assasination (which is the same in both so very different films, check it out, with the last turn towards Brutus and Brutus' physical response identical), I never imagined it happening any other way until decades later Rome did its own version.
In the fire! You're right. I can't remember if I recognized it as a self-quotation—I didn't remark on it at the time if so. I might have just thought it was the way the assassination of Caesar was supposed to look, too.
As you have seen Mankiewicz's Cleopatra more times than I have: do you see any other intertexts between the two films? There is a deliberately refused one in that we hear none of the funeral oration in Cleopatra.
Otoh, child me did not know about the Mercury theatre and its Julius Caesar production, and even after reading Simon Callow's intense descriptions of it in his Orson Welles biography, I didn't make the John Houseman connection, and of course it is there, you're so right.
I am glad to provide the info!
Patrick Stewart as Antony to Harriet Walters' Cleopatra in Stratford, and I could believe this Antony having held the funeral speech in his younger days.
That's neat to hear it can be done. The texts have always seemed in different canons to me.