THE LIKES OF ISHTAR and Waterworld may have succeeded it in the public imagination as bywords for Hollywood excess, but for a certain generation 1963’s Cleopatra is the quintessential more-money-than-sense film. Throughout the 1950s, “sword and sandal” movies did huge business, from Quo Vadis (1951) to Ben-Hur (1959). An epic about the female pharaoh who purely as political tactic seduced first Julius Caesar and then Mark Antony therefore seemed a slam dunk.
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