Reviews (9)

Vivien is stunning!
This movie is pretty cool but Vivien makes it marvelous! Hey DVD people! Why does this movie get released on DVD for the UK and not the USA? I would like this movie for my DVD collection!

It's Still A Delight! Really It Is!...
Yes, those that complain that this 1946 film version of Shaw's famous play of the same name is mainly 'stage-bound' and the acting often seems 'stilted'-- well, sigh, they surely have a point.

Bernard Shaw himself (he did not die until the 1950s) is credited with the screenplay, which may have something to do with the criticisms. Shaw is very talky and hard to 'transfer' to motion picture standards of verisimulitude, but this movie has a beautiful, delightful Vivien Leigh, the incomparable Claude Rains, the beautifully dashing Stewart Granger, plus 'old friends' of the classic British cinema such as Flora Robson, Felix Aylmer, Basil Sidney, Stanley Holloway, Leo Genn, Francis L. Sullivan -- all who appeared in wonderful films like Laurence Olivier's 'Hamlet', David Lean's 'Great Expectations' and many other intelligent pictures of that pre- and post-war (WWII, that is) period. (There is even a very very young, but very lovely as always, Jean Simmons as a slave of Cleopatra who plays the harp.)

The picture attempts an 'epic' look, with battles yet noted I'm afraid by unconvincing stunt work and 'casts of thousands' sort of milling about -- and Cecil B. De Mille does this so much better than Gabriel Pascal, the director of 'Caesar and Cleopatra'. But I myself admit I love the Shavian ambience -- the intellectual activist actually attractive (in Shaw's plays at least!) to the winsome young woman; ... friendship, discussion and respect; thought as more important than 'action-adventure'.

If Shaw's plays do seem too dated to you and they generally bore you, yes, stay far away from this film! But if you brighten when 'entertainment' is also provocative to the intellect and not only to the eye (and other sense organs) -- and particularly if you have great affection for the era of British cinema dominated by Olivier, David Lean, and the early Tony Richardson and featuring so many familiar and adept character actors that fill the firmament with 'supporting' stars, you will like the movie, and ignoring its quite obvious flaws, enjoy every minute: I guarantee it!...

Definitly a disappointment
I just recently became a Vivien Leigh fan after seeing her in great films. I picked this up at my public library, looking foward to see her again. When I put into my VCR and when this movie appeared at the screen, I must say I was terribly disappointed. Nothing like GWTW or Waterloo Bridge. Her version of Cleopatra was ofial. And Claude Rains also gave me a bad impression, since it was the first time I had ever seen him on screen. I fell asleep half way through the movie, and when I woke up, I intended to fall back asleep. It was a horrible waste to my Saturday evening. But you can't be totally harsh because Vivien Leigh was going through some tough times during the making of the movie. But i'd recommended Waterloo Bridge, or GWTW, or any other Vivien Leigh film, but not CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA.

Great Caesar's Ghost!
This is the most affordable of the great 1940's-1950's renditions of George Bernard Shaw's plays, done perfectly by great actors of their time: Claude Rains(CasaBlanca), Vivien Leigh(Gone With the Wind), Stewart Granger, et al. Mainly true to Shaw's play, it depicts a modern, empowering leader, not a military despot; clever, quick, dialectic drama, great staging, costuming, even musical scoring. This is Shaw, not history, or Shakespeare, of course. Except for Pygmalion, other Shaw plays on film cost ... more; this is a bargain for sparking the study of Shaw's brand of post-Victorian thinking. Finally, Caesar's Egypt invasion in this play suggests timely comparisons to present U.S. conflicts with Iraq, AlQuetta & the Islamic world.

Caesar and Cleopatra...Leigh/Rains Version
This version of Caesar and Cleopatra is an historical farce. The talent of Leigh and Rains are wasted on this thing. At the start of the film when Leigh meets Caesar Leigh plays the role of Cleopatra as a whimsical/foolish/giddy girl. Outrageous. Good costumes for a period piece but when compared to the Claudette Colbert or Elizabeth Taylor verions this is a disgrace. Don't bother...you have been warned. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Producer Gabriel Pascal brought the undiluted wit and wisdom of Bernard Shaw to world cinemas, and the world is grateful.But for all Shaw's philosophical irreverence and bracing ironies, as a screenwriter he had a lot to learn about structure and movement.Major Barbara made the transition to film less fluidly than Pygmalion (1938).Production took a year and a half.Pascal made himself director but left the real work to assistants Harold French (acting) and David Lean (visuals).The initial designer and cameraman had to be replaced, one actor died (Donald Calthrop), and oh yes, there were German air raids.Still, what a dream cast: Wendy Hiller as Salvation Army crusader Barbara; Robert Morley as her arch-fiend millionaire father Undershaft, preaching the gospel of money and munitions; Rex Harrison as Barbara's classics-professor suitor, Adolphus Cusins; plus Robert Newton, Emlyn Williams, Marie Lohr, and 18-year-old Deborah Kerr as sweet Jenny Hill.--Richard T. Jameson ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Worth Watching For Cast Alone
I am a hugh fan of Robert Newton, made famous as Long John Silver in Disney's Treasure Island. Seeing him in his younger days as would-be tough guy Bill Walker, was very interesting. You can clearly see glimpses of his future characters such as Long John Silver, Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist and so on. Having seen him mostly play rough guys it was aslo fun to see what a cutie his really is. The film isn't the greatest but I would definatly recommend see it despite critics pointing out its cinematic weaknesses and plot flaws. I am one of those people who simply watches a movie instead of analysizing the film to death, and it is worth watching.

A perfect film of GB Shaw.
When one watches a George Bernard Shaw play, one does not expect three-dimensional characters with social roles and inner lives. As the author puts it in a pompous forward to this film, 'Major Barbara' is a 'PARABLE' (his capitals), and the preaching never lets up. The title character (Wendy Hiller) is the daughter of a millionaire arms manufacturer (Robert Morley); she is a zealous Salvation Army officer, trying to convert the destitute of London with enthusiasm, sympathy and 'a bribe of bread'. She is seen one afternoon in mid-proselysation by Adolphus Cusins (Rex Harrison), an impoverished Classics scholar who determines to marry her. The stage is set for a typical Shavian problem play - you might subtitle the piece 'The Soul of Man Under Capitalism', with the religious fanatic and the urbane industrialist doing battle for the souls of the English working and middle classes. Barbara is tested by drama; Undershaft fights back with mind-numbing spectacle - capitalism's genius is that it absorbs all opposition. The loser is the audience. 'Barbara' is one of Shaw's less intolerable plays, with the odd funny line (all snatched by Marie Lohr as Barbara's aristocratic mother) peeping through the flat epigrams, laborious dailogues and general sterile clever-cleverness. The wonderful cast - Hiller saintly and sexy in military uniform; Harrison hysterically smart-*r*ed; Morley unflappably Machiavellian and Mephistophelean - do what they can, but they are playing Ideas, not Characters, and their attempts to blow life into cardboard only results in soggy paper. It's never nice being aggressively lectured to, and Shaw's grinding dialectic becomes less agreeable on the big screen - his use of old dramatic forms for non-dramatic purposes stops everything dead (although you can see how filming an ironic play about the armanents industry might have seemed radical during World War 2). The works isn't improved by Pascal's hapless filming (what can he do?), his style as clunky and grey as Shaw's sub-Wildean wit. There are some major talents behind the scenes, including David Lean as editor and William Walton as composer.

Based on the Krupp family.
I first came on this movie while reading "The Arms of Krupp" by William Manchester ISBN: 0736607161 the paragraph that mentions this film is:

"Yet war ministers abroad were still very much aware of the family. So were the critics, as George Bernard Shaw demonstrated brilliantly in December 1905 when his "Major Barbra", a thinly veiled satire largely based on the Krupps, opened in London. In the play Barbara is substituted for Bertha, the head munitions family is named Sir Andrew Undershoot, and Bertha-Barbara is given a pacifist brother called Stephen." ... Read more

Reviews (9)

Vivien is stunning!
This movie is pretty cool but Vivien makes it marvelous! Hey DVD people! Why does this movie get released on DVD for the UK and not the USA? I would like this movie for my DVD collection!

It's Still A Delight! Really It Is!...
Yes, those that complain that this 1946 film version of Shaw's famous play of the same name is mainly 'stage-bound' and the acting often seems 'stilted'-- well, sigh, they surely have a point.

Bernard Shaw himself (he did not die until the 1950s) is credited with the screenplay, which may have something to do with the criticisms. Shaw is very talky and hard to 'transfer' to motion picture standards of verisimulitude, but this movie has a beautiful, delightful Vivien Leigh, the incomparable Claude Rains, the beautifully dashing Stewart Granger, plus 'old friends' of the classic British cinema such as Flora Robson, Felix Aylmer, Basil Sidney, Stanley Holloway, Leo Genn, Francis L. Sullivan -- all who appeared in wonderful films like Laurence Olivier's 'Hamlet', David Lean's 'Great Expectations' and many other intelligent pictures of that pre- and post-war (WWII, that is) period. (There is even a very very young, but very lovely as always, Jean Simmons as a slave of Cleopatra who plays the harp.)

The picture attempts an 'epic' look, with battles yet noted I'm afraid by unconvincing stunt work and 'casts of thousands' sort of milling about -- and Cecil B. De Mille does this so much better than Gabriel Pascal, the director of 'Caesar and Cleopatra'. But I myself admit I love the Shavian ambience -- the intellectual activist actually attractive (in Shaw's plays at least!) to the winsome young woman; ... friendship, discussion and respect; thought as more important than 'action-adventure'.

If Shaw's plays do seem too dated to you and they generally bore you, yes, stay far away from this film! But if you brighten when 'entertainment' is also provocative to the intellect and not only to the eye (and other sense organs) -- and particularly if you have great affection for the era of British cinema dominated by Olivier, David Lean, and the early Tony Richardson and featuring so many familiar and adept character actors that fill the firmament with 'supporting' stars, you will like the movie, and ignoring its quite obvious flaws, enjoy every minute: I guarantee it!...

Definitly a disappointment
I just recently became a Vivien Leigh fan after seeing her in great films. I picked this up at my public library, looking foward to see her again. When I put into my VCR and when this movie appeared at the screen, I must say I was terribly disappointed. Nothing like GWTW or Waterloo Bridge. Her version of Cleopatra was ofial. And Claude Rains also gave me a bad impression, since it was the first time I had ever seen him on screen. I fell asleep half way through the movie, and when I woke up, I intended to fall back asleep. It was a horrible waste to my Saturday evening. But you can't be totally harsh because Vivien Leigh was going through some tough times during the making of the movie. But i'd recommended Waterloo Bridge, or GWTW, or any other Vivien Leigh film, but not CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA.

Great Caesar's Ghost!
This is the most affordable of the great 1940's-1950's renditions of George Bernard Shaw's plays, done perfectly by great actors of their time: Claude Rains(CasaBlanca), Vivien Leigh(Gone With the Wind), Stewart Granger, et al. Mainly true to Shaw's play, it depicts a modern, empowering leader, not a military despot; clever, quick, dialectic drama, great staging, costuming, even musical scoring. This is Shaw, not history, or Shakespeare, of course. Except for Pygmalion, other Shaw plays on film cost ... more; this is a bargain for sparking the study of Shaw's brand of post-Victorian thinking. Finally, Caesar's Egypt invasion in this play suggests timely comparisons to present U.S. conflicts with Iraq, AlQuetta & the Islamic world.

Caesar and Cleopatra...Leigh/Rains Version
This version of Caesar and Cleopatra is an historical farce. The talent of Leigh and Rains are wasted on this thing. At the start of the film when Leigh meets Caesar Leigh plays the role of Cleopatra as a whimsical/foolish/giddy girl. Outrageous. Good costumes for a period piece but when compared to the Claudette Colbert or Elizabeth Taylor verions this is a disgrace. Don't bother...you have been warned. ... Read more

Reviews (9)

Vivien is stunning!
This movie is pretty cool but Vivien makes it marvelous! Hey DVD people! Why does this movie get released on DVD for the UK and not the USA? I would like this movie for my DVD collection!

It's Still A Delight! Really It Is!...
Yes, those that complain that this 1946 film version of Shaw's famous play of the same name is mainly 'stage-bound' and the acting often seems 'stilted'-- well, sigh, they surely have a point.

Bernard Shaw himself (he did not die until the 1950s) is credited with the screenplay, which may have something to do with the criticisms. Shaw is very talky and hard to 'transfer' to motion picture standards of verisimulitude, but this movie has a beautiful, delightful Vivien Leigh, the incomparable Claude Rains, the beautifully dashing Stewart Granger, plus 'old friends' of the classic British cinema such as Flora Robson, Felix Aylmer, Basil Sidney, Stanley Holloway, Leo Genn, Francis L. Sullivan -- all who appeared in wonderful films like Laurence Olivier's 'Hamlet', David Lean's 'Great Expectations' and many other intelligent pictures of that pre- and post-war (WWII, that is) period. (There is even a very very young, but very lovely as always, Jean Simmons as a slave of Cleopatra who plays the harp.)

The picture attempts an 'epic' look, with battles yet noted I'm afraid by unconvincing stunt work and 'casts of thousands' sort of milling about -- and Cecil B. De Mille does this so much better than Gabriel Pascal, the director of 'Caesar and Cleopatra'. But I myself admit I love the Shavian ambience -- the intellectual activist actually attractive (in Shaw's plays at least!) to the winsome young woman; ... friendship, discussion and respect; thought as more important than 'action-adventure'.

If Shaw's plays do seem too dated to you and they generally bore you, yes, stay far away from this film! But if you brighten when 'entertainment' is also provocative to the intellect and not only to the eye (and other sense organs) -- and particularly if you have great affection for the era of British cinema dominated by Olivier, David Lean, and the early Tony Richardson and featuring so many familiar and adept character actors that fill the firmament with 'supporting' stars, you will like the movie, and ignoring its quite obvious flaws, enjoy every minute: I guarantee it!...

Definitly a disappointment
I just recently became a Vivien Leigh fan after seeing her in great films. I picked this up at my public library, looking foward to see her again. When I put into my VCR and when this movie appeared at the screen, I must say I was terribly disappointed. Nothing like GWTW or Waterloo Bridge. Her version of Cleopatra was ofial. And Claude Rains also gave me a bad impression, since it was the first time I had ever seen him on screen. I fell asleep half way through the movie, and when I woke up, I intended to fall back asleep. It was a horrible waste to my Saturday evening. But you can't be totally harsh because Vivien Leigh was going through some tough times during the making of the movie. But i'd recommended Waterloo Bridge, or GWTW, or any other Vivien Leigh film, but not CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA.

Great Caesar's Ghost!
This is the most affordable of the great 1940's-1950's renditions of George Bernard Shaw's plays, done perfectly by great actors of their time: Claude Rains(CasaBlanca), Vivien Leigh(Gone With the Wind), Stewart Granger, et al. Mainly true to Shaw's play, it depicts a modern, empowering leader, not a military despot; clever, quick, dialectic drama, great staging, costuming, even musical scoring. This is Shaw, not history, or Shakespeare, of course. Except for Pygmalion, other Shaw plays on film cost ... more; this is a bargain for sparking the study of Shaw's brand of post-Victorian thinking. Finally, Caesar's Egypt invasion in this play suggests timely comparisons to present U.S. conflicts with Iraq, AlQuetta & the Islamic world.

Caesar and Cleopatra...Leigh/Rains Version
This version of Caesar and Cleopatra is an historical farce. The talent of Leigh and Rains are wasted on this thing. At the start of the film when Leigh meets Caesar Leigh plays the role of Cleopatra as a whimsical/foolish/giddy girl. Outrageous. Good costumes for a period piece but when compared to the Claudette Colbert or Elizabeth Taylor verions this is a disgrace. Don't bother...you have been warned. ... Read more