Although it is often described as being based on the Shakespeare play Antony and Cleopatra, this film actually resembles the Shakespeare play very little altough obviously the bais story (from Plutarch is he ame). What is noticeable here is that there is remarkably little sympaathy either for Cleopatra or for the Egyptians in general. I have only seen the film in an English version but here the intertitles rather oddly emphasise continually thier "pagan" and "barbaric" nature - oddly since, after all, the Romans were in fact not less "pagan" nor less barbaric (the court culture of the Ptolemies was basically Greek).
One is reminded of the fact that the flourishing of the Italian epic at this period coincided with Italy's post-union attempts to join the ranks of the colonisers with the Italo-Turkish war of 1911-1912 bringing them what is now Libya but it had also acquired Eritrea (from Egypt) long harboured ambitions in the horn of Africa (eventuually leading to Mussolini's extremely barbaric invasion of Abyssian/Ethiopia). So the Italians were eager to present the Romans (seen obviously as symbols for themselves) as a sort of "nearly Christian" power involved in a civilising mission amongst the pagan and barbaric peopes of Africa. None of this is there in Shakespeare but it was probably there in Pietro Cossa's very orientalist 1879 verse play (I have only seen the set designs) and it is certainly there in Guazzoni's film.
Shakespeare privileges the autumnal love of the two principal characters (both in practice middle-aged) above the "wide arch of the rais'd empire" but here it is the imperial project that is regarded not merely as the inevitable winner but also as the desirable outcome.
One is reminded of the fact that the flourishing of the Italian epic at this period coincided with Italy's post-union attempts to join the ranks of the colonisers with the Italo-Turkish war of 1911-1912 bringing them what is now Libya but it had also acquired Eritrea (from Egypt) long harboured ambitions in the horn of Africa (eventuually leading to Mussolini's extremely barbaric invasion of Abyssian/Ethiopia). So the Italians were eager to present the Romans (seen obviously as symbols for themselves) as a sort of "nearly Christian" power involved in a civilising mission amongst the pagan and barbaric peopes of Africa. None of this is there in Shakespeare but it was probably there in Pietro Cossa's very orientalist 1879 verse play (I have only seen the set designs) and it is certainly there in Guazzoni's film.
Shakespeare privileges the autumnal love of the two principal characters (both in practice middle-aged) above the "wide arch of the rais'd empire" but here it is the imperial project that is regarded not merely as the inevitable winner but also as the desirable outcome.