Stunning Technicolor photography by four of the best in the business - Freddie Young, Jack Cardiff, Robert Krasker and Jack Hildyard - and a moody performance by Flora Robson are the main bonuses to this leisurely, expensive adaption of Shaw's play. Britain's most expensive film at the time it was made, it failed to persuade cinemagoers to see it, and accounted for a large slice of the Rank Organisation's dismaying loss of £1,700,000 on film production for 1945/46. Imposing sets, lavish costumes and stars by the handful failed to disguise the ponderous nature of Gabriel Pascal's direction, although Claude Rains' wonderful, civilised Caesar is pretty well director-proof. Vivien Leigh could have been the perfect Cleopatra had she been induced to produce a livelier performance and the crowd scenes are teeming with embryo stars strumming lutes, carrying spears and the like. You'll be hard-pushed, though, to spot Kay Kendall and Roger Moore among the hundreds of crowd players.


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