giornata, 4/24/25

great gowns, beautiful gowns

Giornata is my Thursday weekly media diary, covering whatever I read, watched, or listened to in the last week. This feature is for paid subscribers.

That’s Entertainment (1974, dir. Jack Haley Jr.) and Cleopatra (1963, dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz)

The number one thing I’ve been thinking about this week is the outfit that Elizabeth Taylor wears during her segment in That’s Entertainment (1974), the clip show documentary where MGM does its own hagiography of its musical history. Elizabeth Taylor was a child star at MGM and barely in any musicals. But she watched them being made. She says of the experience growing on the backlot “as a young girl growing up in that strange place, it was hard to recall what was real and what wasn’t.” Taylor’s brief of her talking head interview is discussing the teen musicals, staring the likes of June Allyson and Peter Lawford. She wears an insane caftan.¹

this is what I look like in my head

I watched her segment of That’s Entertainment because I finally finished Cleopatra (1963). The first half really is quite a slog, focusing on Caesar and Cleopatra’s relationship. Once Caesar is killed, Mark Antony comes into focus and things really start going.

I understand why the people involved feel like the movie feel the need to establish the importance of Caesar to Cleopatra—much of Antony and Cleopatra’s relationship is about the triangulation of their loyalty and love of Caesar. But man, when you’re watching something to see Burton and Taylor, it is so painful to get there through Rex Harrison. I have to imagine viewers in 1963 might have felt similarly.

There are handful of scenes that are standouts between Burton and Taylor. Like when Cleopatra arrives in Tarsus and insists on meeting Antony on her barge, she hosts a party for him. He struggles with his fascination with her and his confusion of her goading him to greatness and his ostensive loyalty to Octavian in Rome. Most importantly, he gets drunk. A lot of the movie is about Antony’s helpless indulgence of things that are bad for him, including Cleopatra. When he realizes that Cleopatra as left the party, Antony goes to her bed. In an amazing bit of silent characterization and Burton physicality, Antony can’t figure out how to open the sheer curtains of her bed and eventually rips the gossamer curtains with his pocket dagger.