Caligula: The Ultimate Cut

I came, I saw, I walked out

Directed by Thomas Negovan & Tinto Brass

United States & Italy, 2023

Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, and public health ... what have the Romans ever done for us?

Well, as Monty Python neglected to mention, they also gave us the enduring ‘sword and sandals’ epic. From Spartacus to Monty Python’s own Life of Brian, and of course the Gladiator franchise, we have grandiose sets bursting with huge crowds of extras and visceral action. The perfect films for the CinemaScope that eventually gave way to today’s IMAX.

Yet there was one swords and sandals film banished to cinema’s Hall of Infamy: Caligula. Financed and produced by Bob Guccione the publisher of Penthouse (for our younger readers, a ‘men’s magazine’) Caligula was intended as a dramatic retelling of the story of one of Rome’s more peculiar Emperors…

The production however spiralled into chaos. The original scriptwriter, Gore Vidal, disowned the screenplay, and after Guccione reshot and recut the film splicing in hardcore pornography, the director Tinto Brass walked away. And that says a lot given that his previous film was Salon Kitty, a Nazi sexploitation flick. Even more surprising though, was the A-list cast featuring Malcolm McDowell as the eponymous emperor, Helen Mirren as his wife Caesonia, Peter O’Toole clearly playing the whole thing for laughs and presumably money, and the venerable Sir John Gielgud.

Helen Mirren: it was like being on an acid trip … it went where angels fear to tread. Malcolm McDowell: needless to say we were all appalled by the final product.

Given the name of the producer did they seriously think that they were involved in a sober historical drama?

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We screened Caligula for our university film club, half-expecting to be raided by the police. We played the reels in the wrong order, although no one seemed to notice, and by the end just four people were left in the auditorium - S

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The original Caligula ran for 150 minutes, so you can imagine the trepidation with which ReidsonFilm approached Thomas Negovan’s 2023 version, Caligula: The Ultimate Cut. In a bold, or foolhardy, quest – an epic in itself – he re-edited the film using unseen footage and has somehow come up with a three-hour restoration.

The storyline remains the same: 24 year-old Gaius Caesar Germanicus – nicknamed Caligula, ‘little boots’, by soldiers for his childhood military uniform – ascends to the throne following the death of his depraved uncle Tiberius. Tiberius is the emperor whose pool parties involved small boys ‘nibbling’ at his body, all on show here. Four years pass during which Caligula declares himself a god, sleeps with his sister (Teresa Ann Savoy), and appoints his horse a senator - all amidst an imaginatively diverse array of capriciously sadistic acts. His reign comes to an end with his assassination in 41 AD.

So what did ReidsonFilm make of this Ultimate Cut? Divergent views: a fascinatingly grandiose entertainment that holds the kernel of a decent film, or an unending tedious parade of phalluses and poisonings purporting to be art? John Gielgud, playing Tiberius’s counsellor Nerva, dies early in the film, slicing his wrists while sitting in a large glass bath. As the water turns a shade of dusky red, his pained expression suggests that he’s realised the nature of this production and is getting out now.

There is some interest to be had in the 70s take on the decadence of ancient Rome… the miniskirt togas and the bubble perms. And Negovan has managed to construct a narrative arc that presents Caligula as an anarchic playboy at the outset of his reign. Despite wielding absolute power, he is haunted by a constant fear of treachery and rebellion. Paradoxically, his attempts to assert his dominance only serve to weaken his authority, fueling his paranoia and deepening the mistrust of those around him. What we are now watching may be a mirror of the film’s original production…

The production design is undeniably lavish, with no CGI in sight. The sets are expansive and decorous – but an opulence that takes you to the grand guignol ceremony of Andrzej Zulawski’s On the Silver Globe, or is this just the gaudy camp pantomime of Flash Gordon?

McDowell delivers a committed performance. His piercing blue eyes add to his vivid depiction of the physical embodiment of the axiom that power corrupts. But the background of bored extras indulging in a myriad of sex acts is distracting, to say the least. Over three hours, the writhing naked bodies and mass orgies, punctuated by a live birth on stage and the emperor’s wedding gift of a double rape of the bridal couple, becomes mind-numbing and nauseating, rather than provocative. Of course, the vital question is, were we entertained?

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Reids’ Results (out of 100)

C - 66

T - 63

N - 60

S - 41

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Coming next… ReidsonFilm are heading overseas this week, so watch out for our Holiday Edition.