Everything about this mammoth historical epic was on the big scale; from the 1000 extras and 54 massive sets - including 12 villages, four cities, and various castles and palaces - to the 3000 bars of music composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. For all that (or perhaps because of it) the whiff of real life escapes it. Director William Dieterle certainly had his hands full with a set-ful of temperamental stars, but took precautions - he consulted his astrologer and demanded everyone on to the set on a particular morning in 1938, a time when the planets indicated his personal destiny to be favoured. But they didn't help the box office figures and the film made a loss. Paul Muni is almost unrecognisable under tons of make-up as Mexican leader Benito Pablo Juarez, and Bette Davis goes to town as the unbalanced Empress Carlotta, offering a stone-faced tour-de-force of madness personified.


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