Caligula - Tinto Brass

Year : 1978

Country : Italy/USA

The original screenplay for Caligula was written by the novelist Gore Vidal with assistance from the Italian filmaker Roberto Rossellini.Their intention was to create a historical drama on a modest budget.However when finding financial backing for their film became a problem,they turned to media mogul and Penthouse magazine founder Bob Guccione.Guccione agreed to finance the project on two conditions:

1.That the film would be transformed into a flamboyant, luxurious spectacle akin to Hollywood's sword and sandal epics of the 1950s and 1960s like Ben Hur and Spartacus;

2.and that sex would be added to the script in order to promote Guccione's magazine i.e Penthouse. Both Vidal and Rossellini agreed and the Caligula project was launched.

Later on Gore Vidal was sacked by Guccione after he objected to the way the film was turning out and subsequently even Tinto Brass,the director was sacked,so that the film was hijacked completely by Bob Guccione,the founder of the Penthouse magazine. He ordered 6 minutes of hardcore sex to be added during post production featuring his Penthouse models for promotional purposes.
After it's completion ,virtually every big name associated with the film made an effort to distance themselves from it. Author Gore Vidal actually sued (with mixed results) to have his name removed from the film, and when the stars saw the film their reactions varied from loudly voiced disgust to strategic silence. What they wanted, of course, was for it to go away.Director Tinto Brass too launched a protest campaign against the film when he saw the final product.for what he saw was certainly not what he had wanted it to become.

I have nothing against sex on screen, or nudity , incest or extreme violence on screen or just about anything else on screen, as long as it all comes together and makes a good film.
Caligula seems like a kitschy mix of a pantomime,a broadway musical,a David Lynch like surrealistic piece and a historical epic.Viewer opinions will of course vary about the film.Some will like it others won't but some things that most people will agree about are:

1.The dialogue is corny, the history is poorly told and the transitions from scene to scene feel disjointed and out of place.

2.The sets were pretty nasty and poorly done.Cheap and trashy. Instead of conveying a period feel, they screamed "we just threw this together in a few minutes".The costumes looked like they'd been bought from the general store across the street,despite the fact that this was the most expensive film of it's time.

Now coming to the historical aspect of the film,it is very much true that Caius Caligula was a madman and a tyrant.but his excesses were certainly no worse than those of his predecessors or successors.the film focuses completely on these maniacal monstrosities perpetrated by Caligula and overlooks these important historical facts:

1.That caligula went "mad" only after hs mysterious illness during the second year of his reign and that prior to this he was a moderate ruler who is credited with the invasion and annexation of mauritania to the roman empire besides making attempts to expand roman control over brittanica.he is also known for initiating a few reforms which were completed duing the reigns of his successors.this is more than what many a glorious monarch in history can be credited with.

2.Caesonia portrayed by helen mirren is presented as caligula's wife along with drusilla his sister. caligula married caesonia long after the death of his sister.

Caligula as a film has it's moments.it is a cinematic milestone of sorts which must be watched by every cinephile and form their own opinions about it.But it could most certainly have ended up as a much better film had the producer not decided to fire the scriptwriter and the director and turn the film into a promotional vehicle for a porn magazine.

La Vie De Jesus - Bruno Dumont

Year : 1997

Country : France


The first thing you notice about the film is the scenery.It's beautiful.Long,slow takes of lush green rolling fields and meadows and a beaten dirt track running through them.The setting is a small nondescript French town on the Belgian border.

Freddie is a young man who hangs out with his bunch of friends who are all unemployed and have nothing to do except ride around on their bikes.The film is stark and there isn't much dialogue.And that's probably because the people don't really have much to talk about. They all seem trapped in their lives. In a way this is a film about the sheer painful ennui of existence in a small town.
The camera often focuses on Freddy and he always has a distant look on his face looking away into the distance and you wonder what he's thinking?He's epileptic and unemployed and maybe wants to get away from his mundane existence but probably isn't smart enough to express it in words.

And then the other thing you notice about the film is the impending sense of doom. You know this isn't a feel good film and as the tension starts to build you know it's going to explode in violence.It makes you squirm.And yet when the end does come it isn't as bad as it could have been. The director spares you the horror of a brutal murder.It would simply have been too much take.

The film crawls along at slow pace as we absorb the lives of Freddy and his gang and suddenly the monotony gets brutally shaken up by a couple of explicit sex scenes which,after the lulling pace of the narrative suddenly jar you back into attention.

This is a beautiful film that will leave you disturbed.Bruno Dumont has captured his characters with a lot of depth even though, surprisingly ,none of the actors is a professional.