Cleopatra at 60: the expensive epic that almost tanked a studio

As I prepared to write on the 60th anniversary of Cleopatra, I asked a few friends and relatives if they had ever seen it. Some had, but more hadn’t: life, even or perhaps especially for the well-versed cinephile, is short, and four-hour-plus Hollywood follies with steadily mouldering reputations quite reasonably aren’t high on everyone’s catch-up list. But more than one person told me that they weren’t actually sure: “I definitely feel like I have,” said one film writer, citing the reams of well-publicised lore on its tortured production and imposing industry legacy, the popularly cemented visual iconography of Elizabeth Taylor’s lavishly eyelinered Egyptian queen, and the film’s status as the origin