Caesar and Cleopatra (1945)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Introduction Gallery-Photo
Rating
Year Of Production	1945
Running Time	122:46
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Gabriel Pascal
Studio Distributor	MRA Entertainment	Starring	Claude Rains Vivien Leigh Stewart Granger
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$29.95	Music	Georges Avric

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Frame	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	None
16x9 Enhancement	No
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.37:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Caesar and Cleopatra is the 1945 movie adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's play of the same name.

    Shaw is a renowned playwright, and in 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Perhaps his best-known work is the play Pygmalion, which spawned the musical and movie My Fair Lady. While I appreciate his contribution to the arts, I must admit that I'm not a big fan of his work.

    Shaw's play Caesar and Cleopatra debuted in New York in 1906. I find the play rather dull, and grossly historically inaccurate. While it contains a few of Shaw's witty one-liners and sharp observations, I find it fairly empty and humourless. Caesar and Cleopatra was made into a movie at the end of World War II, and this movie is also now pretty dated and slow. Interestingly, I find that the central relationships are a little similar to Pygmalion. Consider the character of Julius Caesar as Professor Higgins, his sidekick General Rufio as Colonel Pickering, and Cleopatra as Eliza. Let me extrapolate: Caesar (Claude Rains) meets a silly young girl, Cleopatra (Vivien Leigh). Caesar attempts to turn this uncouth youth into a Queen, much to the disdain of his friend and assistant General Rufio (Basil Sydney), who thinks that Caesar is wasting his time. Cleopatra promptly falls in love with the much older and wiser Caesar.

Video

    Considering the age of the movie, the quality of the transfer is acceptable.

    Strangely, the movie is presented on four 'titles' on the one disc, Titles 4, 5, 6, and 7. I will refer to the Title and the time in my examples below.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, full frame.

    The transfer is very soft throughout, but this might be due to the source material. The shadow detail is also very poor throughout. There is some low level noise on occasion, such as during Title 7 at 18:59.

    The colour has suffered with age, and it is irregular, often appearing drab or washed out.

    In regard to MPEG artefacts, at times the image looked a little pixelated, but due to the soft, yet grainy image throughout, it was hard to be sure.

    Film-to-video artefacts appeared in the form of aliasing, such as the shimmer on the throne during Title 5, 17:59. There is also telecine wobble on occasion, most noticeably during the end credits.

    This transfer contains almost every film artefact known to mankind, but due to the age of the print that might be expected.

    There are no subtitles on this DVD.

    This is an RSDL disc, but as the movie is spread across four titles, I could not pick the layer change for sure. The first segment (Title 4) runs for 21:55, the second (Title 5) runs for 29:30, the third (Title 6) runs for 37:23, and the final segment, (Title 7) runs for 33:59. The DVD froze at 10:03 during Title 6 each time I watched it. Fast-forwarding past this glitch allowed the movie to continue.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Originally released theatrically in mono, this DVD is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded, but only the centre speaker is utilised throughout.

    The dialogue quality and audio sync are adequate considering the age of the print, but neither is great. There are also frequent audio drop-outs, clicks, and pops throughout.

    The musical score is credited to Georges Avric, and although it appears sparingly, it is overly melodramatic.

    There is obviously no surround presence and activity, and no work for the subwoofer.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The extras are slim.

Menu

    A very simple menu, presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is static and silent.

Slide Show (1:20)

    This extra presents a series of stills of lobby card style photographs. They are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, without any audio.

    Caesar and Cleopatra has been released on video in Region 1 but not on DVD.

    Rather slow, and very dated, this DVD is for historical movie buffs and George Bernard Shaw fans only.

    The video quality is acceptable considering the age of the movie.

    The audio quality is also acceptable considering the age of the source material.

    The extras are really not worth mentioning.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall