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CALIGULA: THE IMPERIAL EDITION
Principal Photograhy by Tinto Brass.
Produced by Franco Rossellini & Bob Guccione.
Written by Gore Vidal.
Director of Photography Silvano Ippoliti.
Edited by Nino Baragli.
Released by Image Entertainment.
Language: English.
Country of Origin: Italy/USA. 156 min. Not Rated.
With: Malcolm McDowell, Teresa Ann Savoy, Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole, John Steiner, Guido Mannari, Adriana Asti & John Gielgud.
DVD Features: New high-definition transfer of the unrated, uncensored feature film. Alternate pre-release version, never seen before. Three audio commentaries by Helen Mirren, Malcolm McDowell & Ernest Volkman. The Making of Caligula documentary. Deleted & alternative scenes & behind-the-scenes footage. On-set photos. Trailers. DVD-ROM extras including Vidal’s screenplay, three Penthouse magazine features & an interview with Guccione. Liner notes.

Few films come with so much baggage. The depiction of the third – and mad – Roman emperor’s life is as ponderous as any ’60s swords-and-sandals B-movie and as campy as Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra, despite its high-minded script by man of letters Gore Vidal. Part of its problem, and its strangely lurid attraction, is the mishmash styles, which combine director Tinto Brass’s grim Felliniesque exploitation; the grand, vast, but oddly immaculate production design by Fellini’s Academy Award-winning costumer, Danilo Donati; and producer and Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione’s soft-focus pornography (or “paganography,” as he calls it). But Guccione picked the wrong historical epic to blend with X-rated sexuality. After seeing the film’s tortures, beheadings, and castration, no libido will be found anywhere.

Vidal, in an included 1981 making-of doc (before he disassociated himself from the production), declares he set out to depict the corruption of a normal, ordinary boy who attains absolute power. However, the historical Caligula was a member of the Roman nobility and the imperial family, hardly your average Roman citizen.

There may be, as Vidal declares, a monster in all of us, but his Caligula comes off not as an evil mastermind but as all-and-out loon, which many historians believe was the case, as did Robert Graves in his novel I, Claudius. Even 30 years after the film’s production, this Caligula’s debaucheries still disgust.

But despite the movie, the highlight of this three-disc set is the often hilarious commentary. Helen Mirren divulges gossip with critic Alan Jones and film writer James Chaffin on everything from corruption on the set, Sir John Gielgud (who reportedly said, “I’ve never seen so much c--- in my life,” while working on the film), and the meltdown of actress Maria Schneider, whose behavior according to Mirren was more terrifying than anything in the film. (Schneider was replaced by Teresa Ann Savoy in the role of Caligula’s sister/lover.) Guccione should send Mirren champagne and flowers. For her, the filming was like being on an acid trip, and she also praises the film’s sexual boldness. Thanks to her paycheck, she bought a house with central heating – “I took off my clothes in order to stay warm.”

In another commentary, Malcolm McDowell’s reflections largely match Mirren’s. (He also has amusing anecdotes, especially one about a certain body part of his leading lady’s magnified on the big screen.) In both, there are enough tales to amuse or horrify (as in the treatment of the extras, many of which were pulled off the streets of Rome). A third commentary, by Penthouse reporter Ernest Volkman, offers much of the same information from the featurettes (such as the various lawsuits the film sprung). Interestingly, he mentions that Mirren originally wanted to play Caligula’s 20-year-old sister, not the emperor’s slightly older wife she eventually played, but was diplomatically talked out of it by Guccione.

The other featurettes are notably frank, where producer Guccione is resoundingly criticized. In one, he’s called the “Italian Stallion from hell,” by Penthouse Pet Lori Wagner, who hoped Caligula would launch her film career. She fully acknowledges that she was really a glorified extra “to decorate the set” along with the other Pets, who were brought in when Guccione thought the female extras director Brass had chosen weren’t sexy enough. Kent Turner
October 23, 2007