Antony and Cleopatra [HD]

READ THIS ONE BEFORE BUYING!
This is one of those films that should have been greater that it was. And now happened that Warner Video cut an entire scene out of this edition, specifically the part when Mark Antony has to return to Rome and has to find the words and courage to leave Cleopatra, who tries to get him to stay in Egypt. This is a terrible deed! I cannot believe that they cut a movie secquence just to make space for the documentary feature by Fraser Heston (?) especially since this is a dual layer disc, while the VHS edition featured the complete, uncut movie.
Even Mr. Charlton Heston would have objected to that. I would have appreciated to know this before buying this DVD, but now you know it. Therefore I took one star off the rating.

Besides this, the DVD features no Scene Selection on the menu, and subtittles are limited to English and French. Therefore I took a second star off the rating.

Now the positive points are that the DVD transfer is crisp and trufhful, well made...

Heston 10, Critics 0
Charlton Heston's production is an excellent adaptation. It is not a filmed play, but a movie. Every character, from the leads to the most minor, is well played. As director, even working on a shoestring budget, Heston managed to get in the spectacular action that a stage production can only suggest. As lead actor, he presented an Antony whose strength and weakness made him very human.

Some of Shakespeare's lines were cut, some moved around, and some "translated" into more modern English, i.e. "wanton" for "riggish". Offended purists should remember that Shakespeare was a working playwright,turning out scripts that put groundling feet on the ground and aristocratic rears on seats. Because he was a poetic genius, what he wrote turned out to be great literature, but it is better performed than read.

Heston's movie never went into general theatrical release in this country because the critics killed it. They were wrong.

Not uncut and devastatingly cut for the Cleopatra character
First I must set the record straight: this is not the uncut version. On the cover of the DVD it is written 148 minutes, but the original was 2 hours and 42 minutes long - that is what Heston said on television then in 1972 in Japan. So, about 14 minutes short. Missing are as follows as far as I can remember clearly (I saw it 5 times then, being a great Heston fan):

Act I, sc i: Cleopatra's lines from "Nay, hear them, Antony" to "The messengers!" The perceptive viewers must have noticed that Antony was suddenly wearing a pearl necklace when he says "Let Rome in Tiber melt, ..." which was not there seconds earlier. It was wound by Cleopatra while speaking those lines.
Act I, sc iii, the leave-taking scene with Cleopatra (quite a big chunk)
Act I, sc v, Alexas's appearance "Sovereign of Egypt, hail!" etc.
Prelude to part 2 (I never heard this, but it is on the soundtrack album: 1 min 31 sec.)
Whoever was responsible for that, one must have thought nobody...

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