**½ out of ****
The mid-1970s to early-1980s were an interesting time in movie history for a variety of reasons. On the one hand, the era of director-driven, personal films was ending with Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate nearly bankrupting the studios that financed them. On the other hand, the age of the blockbuster sprung on the world with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and George Lucas’ Star Wars. On a third, somewhat dirtier hand, there were mainstream films featuring hardcore pornography.
The age of Emmanuelle and Behind the Green Door was indeed, unbelievably now, upon that era’s ticket-goers in select cinemas near them. The reason it seems hard to imagine today is, after the NC-17 rating promised death at the box office, you don’t see such things anymore. Overall, given the quality of such ventures, that’s probably a plus. While certain European films still navigate the world between serious films and porno (a recent-ish example being Blue is the Warmest Color), such movies are virtually unknown in America and have disappeared in the age of home viewing, beginning with direct-to-video and DVD and well into the streaming boom.
The most notorious of all such “high-class” porn films was dreamed up by Bob Guccione, founder of Penthouse magazine, who wanted in on the action after Hugh Hefner (of all people) invested the money to give us Roman Polanski’s chilling version of Macbeth. Guccione’s dreams were somewhat more elevated, however. He wanted to make a Roman epic that would show Ancient Rome as it truly was, unlike the Ben-Hurs of the world—not just the playful and orgiastic sex, but the sheer ubiquity of violence and bloodletting. His choice of subject was the emperor Caligula and the screenwriter he chose for the project was none other than the uncredited author of Ben-Hur himself, Gore Vidal.
Vidal was not a bad choice in the slightest. Through his novel series Narratives of Empire (in works such as Burr, Lincoln, and Hollywood), he chronicled the subject of power in America like no one had or has since. Born into a political family, he made a splash in his home country before moving to Ravello, Italy to watch the imperial American bloodletting from the other side of the Atlantic. While his fame was chiefly gained from his talk show appearances and snarky columns, he was a gifted writer of prose and gets little credit for his borne profession: as a real writer of and about power.
Guccione’s choice for director was slightly odder: an avant-garde filmmaker who had turned to Eurosex films, Tinto Brass (Salon Kitty). But more audaciously than hiring Vidal, he wanted unsimulated sex to be filmed in between dramatic scenes featuring the top talent of the acting world, including Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole, and John Gielgud. So, Guccione wanted to go big or go home, clearly.
The resulting production smacked of disaster from the get-go. Brass disliked Vidal’s two drafts and hired his own onset writers, Guccione fired Brass and so, a big budget, arthouse-porn film appeared with the credits “Principal Photography by Tinto Brass” and, most hilariously, “Based on an Original Screenplay by Gore Vidal.” The latter is possibly the funniest film title card of all time except a 1930s Hollywood production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that included “Additional Dialogue by…”
Nevertheless, after censorship issues in many major countries, Guccione released his Caligula in 1979 to horrendous reviews, but huge ticket sales as few could stay away from what Mirren called later called “an irresistible mix of art and genitals.” The version that was finally released was completed by Guccione and Giancarlo Lui, who went back onto the sets and inserted the hardcore shots, much to the dismay of everyone involved. But the movie made money and, on videocassette, became a notorious cult classic.
In the early 1980s, Guccione released an R-rated version for wider distribution and, a few years ago, an “Imperial Edition” DVD gave us the Imperial Cut, which also ejected the pornographic content and was allegedly supposed to give us more of Brass’ original intentions. Recently, however, Caligula has been back in the news as a new edit premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. The Ultimate Cut is nearly three hours in length, was produced by Thomas Negovan (primarily a noted creator of art installations), and still manages to cut the same sex material as the other cuts mentioned. What sets it apart, however, is it uses a newly commissioned score, an animated title sequence, and (most impressively) not one single shot from the original film.
My Ultimate Cut DVD arrived recently and, for frames of reference, I watched the original and Imperial Cuts before plunging into Negovan’s work. I must admit, though I’ve owned the Imperial Edition for many years, I still hadn’t seen the original film all the way through. Mostly because I would fall asleep less than an hour in every time—not saying much for a “notorious” movie. This time, however, I took advantage of the Imperial Edition’s Special Features and read Vidal’s two drafts before watching the film. The Ultimate Cut is supposed to be more of Vidal’s intentions, and it largely is, though there are still significant differences in the last third of the new reconstruction.
So how can one film provide us with so many disparate versions and why? For one thing, McDowell’s performance has always been criticized in much the same way as Jack Nicholson’s in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. In the original Stephen King novel, Jack Torrance gradually becomes a monster while many who watched Kubrick’s adaptation (a bad one, of bad source material—sorry) saw madness in Nicholson’s eyes from the first frame leading to the overwhelming critical and audience consensus that Nicholson’s performance does not build much.
With Caligula, Vidal wanted to portray him as a good person who went bad. Guccione and Brass wanted the madness from the beginning and both the original and Imperial Cuts suffer from this. Sadly, as early on as the scenes with Tiberius (O’Toole) and Nerva (Gielgud), McDowell’s Ultimate Cut performance does not escalate as much as we would have hoped. Overall, it might still be a better performance—McDowell certainly thinks so—but not appreciably.
Also, curiously for a project showing Vidal’s read on the character, one of the most interesting aspects of the original version—Caligula demanding Nerva say he was seeing Isis on his ascent to the inevitable is lost in the Ultimate Cut. This is, perhaps, the only change I missed, but most of what Vidal wanted as far as Caligula’s monotheism was never filmed for the movie in the first place, so Negovan can only deal with the footage he has—it’s 90 hours of footage (and he went through all of it), but some good material from Vidal is still lost to time.
Is this Caligula a better film than the one from 1979? Well, in the original and Ultimate cuts, one today can admire its ambition. Guccione’s idea, overall, was not a bad one: to show pagan Rome with realism. But, along with that, scenes of endless sex cut back and forth from ones of such extreme violence (downplayed a tad in the Ultimate version) makes it hard to keep one’s eyes glued to the screen. While the shot of Princess Julia Drusilla’s death is much more palatable in the newer version, there remains a lot of senseless violence filmed rather too naturalistically. In telling the story of Caligula, that is perhaps inevitable, but never satisfying on a movie-going level in any traditional way.
Overall, I admired Negovan’s work. You have to give it to someone who takes on a task such as this because the film does include great acting from some of the best actors who ever worked onscreen. Mirren’s role has tripled in size, but to be ever the contrarian, I disagree with the consensus that it is a better performance. With the role of Caesonia, there is only so much one can do. In the never-seen-before footage, Mirren is not especially dazzling (a crime, given her obvious ability).
In the end, we have a new cut of the film that is better, but not a masterpiece. Ambitious as it is, when you think about wanting to portray “the real Rome” and yet having see-through, plastic-looking bathtubs (no matter how gloriously rendered by Oscar-winner Danilo Donati), there are still laughable moments between what you can admire and what you can stomach
The DVD features two audio commentaries, one by Negovan with the new editor, Aaron Shaps, and another with Negovan and author Grant Morrison as well as the Teaser from Cannes. The Blu-Ray edition includes the original 1979 film as well.
PS—While the new score is fine, it is actually hard to watch Caligula without the original musical selections from Sergei Prokofiev and Aram Khachaturian. The former’s work, especially, is almost indelibly linked to the film.
Caligula: The Ultimate Cut
Blu-Ray/DVD, 2024
Drafthouse Films/Sunshine Mesa Films/Vitagraph Films
Thomas Negovan, reconstructionist/producer, Ultimate Cut
Tinto Brass, principal photographer
Gore Vidal, original screenwriter
Troy Sterling Niles, composer, Ultimate Cut
Aaron Shaps, editor, Ultimate Cut
Silvano Ippoliti, cinematographer
Danilo Donati, art director
Bob Guccione/Franco Rossellini, producers
Malcolm McDowell as Caligula
Helen Mirren as Caesonia
Teresa Ann Savoy as Drusilla
Peter O’Toole as Tiberius
John Steiner as Longinus
Lori Wagner, Agrippina
John Gielgud as Nerva
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