There’s a lot of heat about this one. In the film community. A restored version that sets out to recreate a vision the original director was fired from, and disowned this particular version alongside it. In a long, storied, history, Caligula (1979 Dir. not really anyone but Principal Photography done by Tinto Brass) is a cinematic clusterf**k in terms of who did what to who to get that film made.
In short, Penthouse Magazine Founder Bob Guccione, having partially funded several films previously, wanted to make a film which straddled the borders of erotica, film and art. Hoping to make a lot of money. Caligula, first developed with Franco Rosselini (Roberto Rosselini’s nephew), had a rejected script. Enter Gore Vidal, adapting the story to be a good man corrupted by power and madness. Also very gay, which producer Bob Guccione struggled with. Needed more straight scenes to appeal to the push for this film. Penthouse owner, Penthouse film.
Tinto Brass signed on as director, shot over 96 hours of footage. Rejected Gore Vidal’s script, only signed on if he could re-write it entirely. Sueing ensued, from Gore Vidal. Countersuing. Meanwhile, after Brass shows a rough cut of an hour, they take the film away it from him (the firing mentioned above), give it to various editors. They cut the film as best as they can. Shoehorning in music selections, or who knows really? Bob Guccione doesn’t feel like he has enough sex scenes, so he goes and shoots more, breaking into the sets months later with a skeleton crew to film porno.
During the edit, and release, the artistic vision and financial vision clashed to the point where Tinto Brass was fired, the editor and the composer refused to be credited, and the writer had vanished. Various actors disowned the film upon release, McDowell refusing to see it, and Helen Mirren saying “it has exactly the right mix of art and genitals”.
It released to major picketing and lawsuits across U.S states, charging it with obscenity (although they beat several of these, the threat of them was enough to prevent screenings in various areas). Critics were not sold either; a grand, turgid, confused epic with very little redeeming qualities. Scenes of obscene sexual acts and a blend of “erotica, film and art” did little to defend the film’s reputation.
Over the years, various releases or re-releases, expanded upon elements left unused or removed the material shot by Bob Guccione. Along the way, various questions came up about authorship as it’s crew and participants died along the way, leaving their voice mute about later creative decisions. And so we come to now. Producer Thomas Negovan decided to reconstruct the film, closer to Gore Vidal’s original screenplay, where the material allowed.
And so, using entirely alternate takes from a discovered set of original reels, reconstructed a historically revised vision of Caligula. Using access to recently discovered original camera negatives of the original shoot, as well as extensively reconstructed location audio. Thomas Negovan is an extremely dedicated Reconstructionist, making an entirely alternate film out of dedicated passion. Wanting to restore Malcolm McDowell’s performance to it’s full complexity, the film is less of a “Director’s Cut”, and more of a intrepid attempt to map a fable of a film. Like a folk telling, at the campfire, someone’s deeply constructed vision of a film from it’s various parts.
It also features an interesting Dave McKean animation sequence at the beginning. It is interesting now, in that the remains of Caligula (the film) are those to be picked over, like the Roman Empire’s remains being fought over by vultures. Tinto Brass has already disowned the film, AI has been used to enhance some of the voices and original voices have been chosen over dubs in other areas. The Reconstructionist actively comments on new video reviews, championing Caligula‘s cut as if it was a new extravagant feat of entertainment, a buoyant spectacle on the precipice of hysterical violence.
Decadent and endlessly confounding, even with the alternate focus on master takes. Exhibiting huge wide sets designed to take place in some turbulent pagan hellscape, it has ample amounts of time to throw visual representations of Roman vice at you. It contains a more consistent story, something that brings out more from the material. It is an elephantine colossus, just bursting with luminous sour gardens of imagery. Some of it is foul, as power destroys Caligula (Malcolm McDowell) as his contempt for those around him destroys their ability to believe in him. He is a viper in a nest of snakes.
These histories written by Suetonius and others about the emperors will be lost somewhere between fact and fiction; Caligula’s reputation has been challenged by classicists over time as to whether he was so heinous and villainous, and to what element his possible mental illness(es) might have played in his life. But the film is truly at the extremer end of deploying that depravity and deplorability. Caligula was a powerful tyrant.
So the film is more like a visual map of all the available material filmed, hewed closer to an original script but not with the director’s sculpting. A similar version exists with Richard William’s “The Thief and The Cobbler“, who’s most important version existed as a fan edit called “The Recobbled Cut”. Cinema’s greatest tragedies (the latter) and it’s catastrophes (the former) are being preserved through avid artistic technicians who can compel the material to fill the frame in a new way, a more positive way than the ruins of before. It is an act of cinematic community, at a time when the director of The Crow (1994, Dir. Alex Proyas) is ripping into the reboot The Crow (2024, Dir. Rupert Sanders, it is a more nuanced take on the perspectives of others on beloved cult properties.
Opulence, punishing financial failures, excess to make you puke, torture and nightmares, Roman scandals, modern scandals; Caligula‘s reintroduction to the cinematic landscape has it’s traces, it’s vestiges of it’s former grandeur. The sets are insane. The cinema is gratuitous, violent, intentionally disruptive, and it’s all so much. It restores Helen Mirren’s character Caesonia, restores coherence and validity to Malcolm McDowell’s performance; it is interesting as an act of restoration. It is a colossus, unwieldy and not to be taken lightly.
-Alex
Film Pravda 
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