ABSTRACT
Under the headline “‘Cleopatra’ never had it so good,” a journalist from the New York Times recounted a visit he had paid to the Cinecittà studios in Rome in January 1962. He had been sent to investigate rumors that the Twentieth-Century Fox studio was continuing to encounter difficulties in the production of its film Cleopatra . Instead, the writer claimed to have found an optimism which stemmed from “the feeling that a film of import is taking shape.” On set, the director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, described the importance and focal point of his new film as residing not so much in its impressive sets or in its imposing cast list as in its characterization of Cleopatra. She is to be depicted as “a vivid and many-sided personality, whom Mankiewicz calls ‘a terribly exciting woman who nearly made it’” and her political climbing and intrigue is to be brought out in the “meat” of the film—the scenes of intimacy between Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and Mark Antony, which Mankiewicz was then shooting. 1
