Product Details

• Actors: Charlton Heston, Hildegard Neil, Fernando Rey
• Directors: Charlton Heston
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Embassy
• Run Time: 160 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000683DJQ
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #301,259 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Charlton Heston worked very hard in "Anthony and Cleopatra" an adaptation of Shakespeare scripted by himself. Heston is the director too, and the movie is a wonderful experience of filmmaking, a true labour of love, with some fault, perhaps, but full of energetic sequences. a story of love, passion and death. Heston knows very well the Shakespeare original, and he express in the screen all the strenght , all the fascination of the shakesperian text. "Anthony and Cleopatra" was filmed in Spain , with a marvellous soundtrack and a great camera work. Heston is superb in the title role.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heston 10, Critics 0, April 10, 2005

By 

Norma S. Hass (Sleepy Hollow, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Antony and Cleopatra (VHS Tape)

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.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars READ THIS ONE BEFORE BUYING!, July 11, 2011

By 

Jose A. Perez (Puerto Rico) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Antony & Cleopatra (DVD)

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. The movie plays smoothly and beautifully and the audio is definitely better that in the VHS edition.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hard to Find...Snap It Up, July 3, 2010

By 

Eileen Cunningham - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Antony and Cleopatra (VHS Tape)

Charlton Heston directed and starred in this production of Shakespeare's *Antony and Cleopatra*. Filmed in England in 1972, it seems to have been influenced by Franco Zefferelli's 1968 version of *Romeo and Juliet* in which nudity was introduced into film adaptations of the bard's plays.

English teachers who may wish to show this movie in class should preview the film and make their own decisions about whether to employ the famous "hold-a-folder-in-front-of-the-screen" technique as Heston did find a way to introduce a bit of skin, creating a scene on Cleopatra's barge where her ladies-in-waiting go in for some eye-popping sunbathing in front of the eunuch who protects them.

J. Arthur Rank (1888-1972), the British founder of the Rank Group, PLC, which made the movie, got into the filmmaking industry in the 1930s in an effort to bring family-friendly films to the British filmgoing audience to counter-balance what he considered the risque direction American films were taking. Knowing that, one wonders if the sincere Methodist, who would have been 84 and in the last days of his life when this film was in production, would have jumped so blithely onto the Zefferelli bandwagon had he still had a hand in what his company was doing.

Still, the delivery of the Shakespearean dialogue is masterful, which is an important consideration for the literature classroom. My main disappointment was that Heston's Antony seemed wooden and hardly the slobbering fool that "piece of work," Cleopatra, led around by the nose. Thus, Heston lost a key element in Shakespeare's history plays: how human folly can bring down even the greatest of the world's powers.

Since this movie was made in England, it is hard to find in a VHS format that will play in Region 1. It has not yet been released in DVD format, and since Charlton Heston himself considered this film a flop, it may be a long time before someone takes the risk of doing so. Bottom line: snap up a VHS copy and make your own decisions about classroom use.