Subject
In this excerpt we see Richard Burton in the role of Mark Antony as he rides a chariot along a stretch of the Via Latina, now included in the Park of the Tombs of Via Latina. Also starring Elizabeth Taylor in the title role and Rex Harrison as Julius Caesar, this is the 1963 American colossal film “Cleopatra”, until then the third most expensive of all time, costing $44 million and nearly driving 20th Century Fox out of business. The sets and costumes were magnificent, including 65 dresses worn by Cleopatra, of which one handmade from 24-carat gold.
The film, while recounting the last years of the Roman Republic, the civil wars of Caesar versus Pompey and Anthony versus Octavian, focuses on Cleopatra’s loves, first for Caesar and then Mark Antony, and ends with the suicide of the seductive queen of Egypt. In this very brief clip, Richard Burton rides along the Via Latina past the so-called Barberini Tomb, still surviving today since 160 AD, including with its polychrome brickwork. On the opposite side of the road, embellished for the film by numerous statues, we see another ruin: the remains of a probable entrance to the great villa of Demetriades, just outside the current boundary of the park. As today, when the film was shot this place still survived as authentic Roman countryside, with the ancient road, monuments, and pine trees planted in the early 1900s, making it a perfect setting for a historical epic. The scene shows the moment when Mark Antony goes to meet Calpurnia at the house of her husband, Julius Caesar, to tell of his new wedding to Cleopatra, a few months earlier in Alexandria, Egypt.
Director
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Year
1963
