Plot: Tormented by the murder of his family, the young, wary Caligula eliminates his devious adoptive grandfather Tiberius and seizes control of the declining Roman Empire as it descends into a spiral of depravity, destruction and madness.
Review: One of the most infamous movies of all time, Caligula has long been one of the most intriguing projects in cinema history. Developed and produced by Penthouse founder Bob Guccione, Caligula was the most expensive independently produced film upon its release. From filming to release, Caligula took four years and included the departure of screenwriter Gore Vidal and director Tinto Brass and the addition of explicit pornographic material by Guccione, which resulted in a critical drubbing and countless legal proceedings taken against the film. While restorations have been attempted before, producer Thomas Negovan’s ultimate cut of the film pored over almost one hundred hours of footage to compile a vision of Caligula, which hews closer to Gore Vidal’s initial script. While this nearly three-hour version of the story is superior to the prior cuts, Caligula remains a fascinating cinematic failure, albeit a beautiful and horrifying one.
Premiering at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Caligula: The Ultimate Cut is both the same and simultaneously distinct from the Guccione cut of the movie. While the final running time is only twenty-two minutes longer than the theatrical cut, it boasts over an hour of new scenes excised in favor of explicit sexual content, as well as alternate takes that subtly shift the way scenes play out, including a new animated opening sequence from artist Dave McKean and a new musical score from Troy Sterling Nies. This new footage reduces some characters, notably Donato Placido’s soldier Proculus, while adding forty-five minutes of scenes featuring Helen Mirren as Caesonia. The new film still has a fair amount of nudity, male and female, with quite a bit of moaning and orgasms visible and audible. But, by removing the shots of penetration and unsimulated sex, the film feels more erotic than pornographic but still fails to feel very sexy. Once you have seen breasts, vaginas, and penises to the degree they are visible in Caligula, they cease to feel relevant or even necessary.
The removal of the sex and violence in Caligula: The Ultimate Cut may be the most damning change in the entire movie. While Bob Guccione enlisted his own director to add more explicit content to the theatrical cut, Tinto Brass himself filmed sexual content that was no longer in the restored version. Negovan has stated that the Ultimate Cut is meant to follow Gore Vidal’s screenplay as closely as possible, but that disregards Tinto Brass’ vision. The director has tried to take legal action against the makers of The Ultimate Cut to no avail. At the same time, star Malcolm McDowell stated that this new edit would restore one of the actor’s career-best performances. Nevertheless, by cutting the sex and violence, Caligula: The Ultimate Cut is now densely packed with story, which means we must judge it by what is now included rather than what we have all heard via word of mouth.
Filmed five years after A Clockwork Orange, Malcolm McDowell’s portrayal of the debaucherous Caligula is in many ways a companion role to the Stanley Kubrick film. McDowell’s wide-eyed stare and maniacal smile give the Emperor a sense of being unhinged. This film heavily focuses on how much he despises the Roman people and would rather lavish himself with glory while also being paranoid that those he trusts are out to get him. Helen Mirren’s expanded role as Caligula’s wife offers the legendary actress more of an arc as Caesonia struggles with allegiance to her spouse and her emperor. Peter O’Toole’s unhinged performance and John Gielgud’s brief appearance remain largely the same as they feature in the more sexualized opening of the movie. But as the three hours tick by, the remaining sexual content feels less organic to the story than required because those scenes could not be edited around the nudity.
From a technical standpoint, the high-definition quality of the footage used for Caligula: The Ultimate Cut is impressive. While the gauzy and soft lensing of the production still remains, the film feels fully assembled rather than a workprint, as we have seen from other restorations. The new score, which replaces classical music cues, is appropriate in scale, as is the surreal opening animation sequence, which builds on the meaning behind Caligula’s name. Thomas Negovan does solid work piecing together the copious footage into a coherent narrative, but it still fails to work as well as intended. Gore Vidal’s original script emphasized the homoerotic elements of the Roman setting, while Tinto Brass’ approach to lensing the film does not necessarily align with the finished product. While Caligula was so full of explicit sexual content, The Ultimate Cut veers too far in the other direction, which limits the goal of what the story aims to convey.
Caligula: The Ultimate Cut is an interesting experiment in retroactively changing a completed film to achieve a distinct purpose. While many director and producer cuts come from the filmmakers themselves, Caligula: The Ultimate Cut does not match the desired result of Bob Guccione or director Tinto Brass. While it retains the recorded performances of the cast and the production values of the crew that created it, the use of alternate takes makes this a curiosity rather than a satisfying expansion of the original film. It is somewhat easier to watch for those with weak stomachs; Caligula: The Ultimate Cut still has a fair amount of nudity and violence but now feels nowhere near as intriguing as the original film four decades ago. Caligula: The Ultimate Cut is worth watching for the impressive performances from Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren, but beyond that, it still represents a failed attempt to tell an epic story of sex, debauchery, and excess from the decadent history of the Roman Empire.
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