1963’s Cleopatra is a guilty pleasure of mine.
On the one hand, it’s a historically inaccurate portrayal of the events leading to the transformation of the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. The pace is often slow. Some of the performances are regretful. It’s a film that was first envisioned as being a cheap B-picture but ended up nearly bankrupting 20th Century Fox. Of all of the movies released in 1963, it sold the most tickets and yet, because of the films huge production costs, it still lost money.
On the other hand, it’s a truly gigantic film, one that recreates the perhaps imagined splendor of the ancient world and which does it without the use of CGI. The film may not exactly embrace historical accuracy but it does embrace the melodrama. And, finally, you have scenes like the one below, in which it was obvious that Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton couldn’t wait for the cameras to stop rolling so they could toss off the costumes and make some history of their own.
Through the Shattered Lens 