‘Caligula: The Ultimate Cut’ Review: The Taming of a Screwed Production, Minus the Penthouse Taint
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In “Caligula: The Ultimate Cut,” absolute power corrupts absolutely, but even using absolutely all of the footage shot for the notorious production back in 1976 does not necessarily result in a better film. The most expensive independent film ever produced until that time, “Caligula” was conceived by late Penthouse founder Bob Guccione as a sexually explicit film that also featured real actors and high production values; hiring bestselling author Gore Vidal to write a script for Italian avant-garde director Tinto Brass (“Salon Kitty”), Guccione subsequently attracted such respected thespians as Malcolm McDowell, Peter O’Toole, John Gielgud and Helen Mirren to star. But after disputes between Brass and Vidal prompted the author to sue to remove his name from the film, Guccione commandeered final cut and inserted shots of graphic sex and violence, prompting cast and crew alike to disavow the film.
Devoting a substantial portion of his adult life to “Caligula” after first becoming obsessed with it during the original 1980 theatrical release, writer, musician and art historian Thomas Negovan dedicated three years to meticulously re-editing the film using those original materials with the intent of uncovering a lost masterpiece equal to the pedigree of its talent in front of the camera and behind. He still hasn’t found it.
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More a heroic act of preservation than artistic vindication, “The Ultimate Cut” highlights what does work practically in the film (the production design and performances), as well as the foundational issues that were likely irreparable from its conception. Credit or blame to Guccione, “Caligula” has always aspired to be both decadent and refined, prestigious and sleazy, cheeky and credible, and it’s a balance that here definitively proves untenable, at least by the creative team involved, though Negovan’s efforts remain intriguing as a thought experiment and cinematic curio.
The plot of “The Ultimate Cut” is not materially different than the original version: Young Caligula (McDowell) succeeds his great-uncle Tiberius (O’Toole) as Emperor (and a perpetual vibe-ruiner) and proceeds to make an absolute mess of Rome by plundering its resources as his personal playground. Though he consolidates power by surrounding himself only with his most trusted confidantes, notably his sister Drusilla (Teresa Ann Savoy) and wife Caesonia (Mirren), Caligula quickly grows to resent his political and military supporters for precisely the blind fealty he demands from them. He soon risks the destruction of Rome as he violently exorcises his contempt for its senatorial class, until advisors Longinus (John Steiner) and Chaerea (Paolo Bonacelli) decide that his rule may be too dangerous to continue.
Negovan reportedly used Vidal’s script as a template to rebuild a number of scenes that were truncated or otherwise hamstrung in the 1980 version edited by Guccione without the consent of Vidal or Tinto Brass, and re-edited the rest using alternate takes that he believed better showcased the cast’s performances, not to mention Danilo Donati’s production design. He additionally enlisted artist Dave McKean to animate an opening-credits dream sequence that was never shot, which creates a thematic throughline connecting Caligula’s prophetic visions throughout his tenure as Emperor. The result is a more cohesive, comprehensible and, at 178 minutes, just plain longer version of Vidal’s story. By Negovan excising the unsimulated sex scenes that Guccione shot and added in postproduction, he partially redeems the project as a serious, artistically-legitimate telling of Caligula’s tenure as Roman Emperor.
Yet Bob Guccione, as financier or would-be filmmaking visionary, was never going to be the person to produce a film of this material that was going to be serious or artistically legitimate — and anyway, who outside of the bruised and betrayed collaborators who worked on it want one? McDowell’s performance, along with Mirren’s and a handful of others, has been dutifully restored. Negovan reportedly razed Guccione’s version and replaced the histrionic reactions used in the original cut with more nuanced ones. But who’s watching this gaudy monstrosity for nuance?
Even without its most prurient asset — an onslaught of pornographic close-ups — this is a film in which Tiberius’ sex dungeon in Capri has a functioning elevator, Caligula’s public games feature a three-story beheading machine and the Emperor prostitutes the Roman senate’s wives aboard a massive ivory ship he constructs inside his landlocked court. Already a two-time Oscar winner for costume design, Donati’s work as art director is indisputably detailed and sumptuous, which Negovan better spotlights by leaning heavily on what appear to be master shots of the set. It also results in a flatter, decidedly more prosaic feel for the narrative, as the actors battle the enormity of the sets instead of competing with wall-to-wall T&A.
That said, there’s much to admire in the scale and size of the production, and McDowell and Mirren both fare much better, appropriately, in a cut of the film actually interested in letting them deliver recognizable human performances. Playing a mercurial emperor who maintains an incestuous obsession with his sister and has people murdered like it’s a bodily function, McDowell doesn’t exactly earn the audience’s sympathy, but the actor charts the young man’s path from ambitious successor to maniacal despot with much greater clarity and believability than ever before. It’s easy to compare Caligula to his sociopathic hooligan Alex DeLarge in “A Clockwork Orange,” but the new cut evidences the character’s occasional vulnerability and the thin line McDowell maintains between impish petulance and abject cruelty.
Mirren’s role is greatly expanded — she appeared in only 17 or 18 minutes of the original cut, but is on screen here for almost an hour — and her Caesonia proves to be not just a more involved collaborator with Caligula, but one constantly evaluating how honest she can be with the man who’s both her Emperor and her husband. Conversely, there were additional scenes in the original cut featuring a young soldier named Proculus (Donato Placido), but the Ultimate Cut disregards him after Caligula savagely enacts his own version of Prima Nocta on the Praetorian’s wedding day. For the sake of seeing less genital trauma on screen, it’s a beneficial choice, but its absence also is a reminder that the film was at some level meant to depict a full, unvarnished panorama of the vagaries of Caligula’s rule (as much violence as sex), and the new cut effectively undercuts those original marching orders.
What emerges from this version is the sense that Negovan decided that more is more with the production’s 90-something hours of footage, and attempted to get as much “story” as possible into the film while minimizing its sexual and violent content. But according to on-set writer Ernest Volkman, who recorded a commentary for a 2007 DVD release produced by Negovan, some of that explicit material was actually shot by Brass (and not merely shoehorned into the cut by Guccione) — in which case, doesn’t it belong in anything billed the “ultimate” version?
The passing of many members of the creative team have further complicated any choices Negovan and his editors had to make about how best to balance the film’s different elements. Their decisions lengthen scenes rather than add meaningful information or depth, and tone down their bawdy, ostentatious spectacle to the detriment of the film’s flow and momentum. Moreover, the Ultimate Cut replaces classical cues by Khachaturian, Prokofiev and an uncredited Bruno Nicolai with a newly composed score that substitutes ominous menace for their rhapsodic pomp, again aiming for a gravitas out of sync with the material’s melodrama.
In 2023, after extensive documentation of his infamous meddling, Guccione is persona non grata with regard to “Caligula.” By all accounts, that reputation seems well-earned. But somewhere amidst all of the in-fighting and controversy, much less this cut of the film attempting to honor basically everybody but him, was it ever possible to create a version of this film that satisfied each person’s vision, delivering polished, believable performances, Fellini-esque spectacle and a bit of good old-fashioned smut all at once? Unlikely as it may seem, I’d argue that the answer is “yes.” Under surer and more collaborative leadership during the original production, these contrasting elements had the potential to work together chocolate-and-peanut butter style to give audiences something unprecedented: a film that was both titillating and thought provoking.
But even now, there seems to be a belief that it must be one or the other, and as sincerely as Negovan approached the film, he ultimately errs too much on the side of good taste, to the point where it’s often tepid instead of transgressive. As such, “Caligula: The Ultimate Cut” is as a work of revisionism, a project to be admired, but in terms of truly breathing new life into a maligned production, the result is still a bit flaccid.
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