Good Enough for Americans?

London turned out last week for a gala premiere of a film which the U.S. may not see for another year.

Caesar and Cleopatra (Gaumont-British) is Yorkshireman J. Arthur Rank's most spectacular production gamble in cinema's newly competitive international game. With Vivien (Scarlett O'Hara) Leigh, Claude Rains and a $5,000,000 production in Technicolor, Rank hopes to put British movies--as represented by Arthur Rank--into real competition with Hollywood. The $66 million-a-year rental which Britain pays for U.S. films is involved--about half enough money to meet the proposed payments on Britain's new U.S. loan.

To screen George Bernard Shaw's 47-year-old play, Rank gave Producer Gabriel ("Gabby") Pascal a free hand and an open purse. After the London showing, TIME Correspondent Wilmott Ragsdale cabled:

"Most of London's critics seemed to feel that Caesar and Cleopatra is a good enough picture to draw American crowds. But for $5,000,000, Britishers expected something far better. With all the Technicolor brilliance, and all his sweating integrity for detail, Gabby Pascal overlooked something. As the London Times put it: 'This film is hollow at heart.'

"Pascal's production was painstakingly perfect, technically. He spent more than $1,500,000 to reproduce ancient Alexandria outside London. He endured buzz-bombs, suffered while Britain's dreary weather kept thousands of extras waiting for Technicolor sunshine. Because he was unimpressed by the real Sphinx, Gabby built a full-scale replica in Egypt. 'Every human and inanimate detail I made my own responsibility,' Gabby said. Yet he had no critical eye for the script, and this oversight robbed him of the cheers his egotism requires.

"The cast was competent and even excellent, from Claude Rains' gently wise and balding Caesar and the clawless kitten of Cleopatra Leigh to the Nubian slave who wheeled back the massive palace portals. But as the petulant kitten queen grew under Caesar's tutelage into a cat-clawed ruler, the plot slipped and dragged and Shaw's motives grew muddled. Pascal expects his movie to be a success: 'It has style, beauty and Bernard Shaw.' Most people went away after two hours and 15 minutes with their money's worth, but not quite sure what Shaw was philosophizing about. Gabby's straining seemed to have brought forth not exactly a mouse but a Technicolor camel, exotic but un-romantic."

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