vampyrate
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I, Claudius/The Epic That Never Was
This topic is for discussing his performance as Caligula in the uncompleted 1937 film I, Claudius, his interview sequences in the BBC documentary about the (un)making of the film, and/or the film/documentary in general.
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"It's all rather stylish and pretty and rather worrying" --Timothy Spall on his costume in Sweeney Todd
"He must have been fun." --Emlyn Williams (liner notes from "Emlyn Williams as Dylan Thomas in 'A Boy Growing Up'")
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10/15/2006, 10:43 pm
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meranch
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Re: I, Claudius/The Epic That Never Was
It is a great pity that this film was never completed. From what little we have seen of it, it would have been one of the memorable ones. I found Caligula to be a very convincing character.
Eva
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10/17/2006, 7:31 am
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vampyrate
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Caligula
Emlyn Williams's Caligula is so deliciously, entertainingly wicked and depraved, I think it could have been one of his greatest roles as well as Laughton's; it's a true shame it was never completed.
Interestingly, though, I'm currently reading two books about the real Caligula (one by Anthony Barrett and the other a novelization by Alan Massie), and the depictions of Caligula (and probably Claudius and most of the others as well), are highly fictionalized. In fact, it's hard to believe that the author of I, Claudius, Robert Graves, was also the translator of Suetonius's The Twelve Caesars! Here are some discrepancies I've found:
* Livia was Caligula's great grandmother, not his grandmother. After the exile of his mother and brother (and murder of his other brother), he lived with his grandmother, Antonia, then went to live as a teenager with the aged Tiberius until his death.
* Contrary to Dirk Bogarde's assertion that Caligula was one of the most perverted rulers in all of history, recent research has shown that he was no more "perverted" than any of his contemporaries, including Tiberius and Claudius (who hardly sounds like the wise but misunderstood champion of righteousness he's portrayed as in the movie). And Caligula had nothing on Nero for cruelty--Nero had his own mother killed, kicked his pregnant wife to death, and came up with the idea of using Christians as torches to light his garden at night.
* I can't find anything historical to suggest that Caligula (who, BTW, detested his childhood nickname Caligula; his real name was Gaius) ordered Claudius to be married to Messalina--in fact, I don't think it was the first (or last) marriage for either of them. (As emperor, Claudius later married his own niece--Caligula's sister and the mother of Nero--Agrippina.) And he certainly wouldn't have referred to them so condescendingly as a "remote descendant of Julius Caesar" and a "remote descendant of Augustus," for he himself was an even more remote descendant of both emperors than his father's brother was!
* Caligula probably didn't look much like Emlyn Williams (not that I'm complaining about the casting, for the fictionalized tale anyway!), and it's unlikely he'd be found gazing so lovingly at himself in the mirror; he was said to be self-conscious about his baldness.
* He was a good ruler (or tried to be) for about the first six months of his reign, and he was well-loved by the people, partly due to his father's popularity as a war hero. So it's unlikely he would have been acting like such a bully toward Claudius before he took the throne; it doesn't seem like they actually had much to do with each other. About six months into his reign, he became gravely ill to the point that the people were afraid he would die, while others were plotting and scheming about who his successor would be, and it was on his recovery that became a despot (possibly out of insecurity about his position), started antagonizing the senate, and began to think of himself as a god.
* There's no evidence he ever actually made Incitatus a senator; he only threatened to, probably as a joke. He's said to have been a great orator with a biting wit.
* Williams describes in the interview how he was told to play the role "a little bit sissy," which would not have fit Caligula at all. While he didn't discriminate in his tastes between men and women, he disdained effeminate behavior in men. As for his encounter with Cassius (Robert Newton), the Praetorian guard who refuses to kneel, prompting Caligula to kick him to the floor (which certainly makes for great cinema!), what set Cassius against him in real life was that Caligula was constantly mocking him for his effeminate voice! How's that for irony?
So I'm curious: Has anybody else noticed a distinct similarity to his "I am undergoing a transformation ... I am being reborn" apotheosis with Claudius as his captive audience ... and Ralph Fiennes's "I am becoming ..." scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman in Red Dragon?
One of my favorite parts of Emlyn's performance is that great laugh after he sentences Claudius to die "in the most beautiful possible way." But even better than that IMO is the unedited version in which the camera keeps rolling, and he just keeps laughing so hard it looks like he's going to hurt himself (totally undignified ... *snort*!) ... until the director yells "cut," and he just straightens up and walks serenely off-stage so that you'd never guess he'd been laughing at all ... Now *that's* a real actor!
Susan
Last edited by vampyrate, 11/6/2006, 7:19 pm
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"It's all rather stylish and pretty and rather worrying" --Timothy Spall on his costume in Sweeney Todd
"He must have been fun." --Emlyn Williams (liner notes from "Emlyn Williams as Dylan Thomas in 'A Boy Growing Up'")
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11/5/2006, 3:56 pm
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htrm
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Re: I, Claudius/The Epic That Never Was
While waiting in the computer lab at the hotel where a scene for "Recount" was being filmed (my boyfriend Johnny and I were working as extras), my boyfriend decided to drag John Hurt in from the lobby to introduce me since I was getting on to Johnny for talking about Alien with John earlier instead of "I, Claudius". He played Caligula in the 1976 version. I'm not sure how flattered an actor would be to hear that someone wanted to meet him simply because he played the role that the person's favorite actor was supposed to play 40 years prior. I do have a lot of respect for John Hurt as an actor, but my respect for famous people is much greater than my desire to bother them.
Unfortunately I'm overly socially awkward with anyone and everyone, so I didn't make good conversation, but he did say that Emlyn took a much darker take on the character than he did, and that Emlyn was a very witty man (he repeated that statement). He also mentioned that Charles Laughton was in it. Even though he had to carry the conversation he seemed like a quiet person, but very friendly.
I wanted to tell him that I had read Emlyn's books, I wish I could have seen Charles Laughton on stage, and that I plan to get the DVD version of "I, Claudious" that has a special segment about the 1937 film, but I was only slightly more comfortable talking to him as I was with the other extra who happened to look like a 1950's Emlyn. I'll post info about him in another section of the forum.
If you like John Hurt or want to see an Emlyn look-a-like, "Recount" is supposed to be on HBO next year. I don't think anything said here breaks confidentiality.
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11/7/2007, 12:13 pm
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