Big Screen Rome - Amazon Web Services

desertion: I from myself.” As he dies in her arms, he acquires a sense of
satisfaction in preceding her for once, instead of playing catch-up. “You
and I will prove death so much less than love . . . we’ll make of dying
nothing more than one last embrace. A kiss . . . to take my breath away.”
Like a good romantic hero, Antony is restored to the masculine role by his
tragic death.
British actor Roddy McDowall plays Octavian in “a splendidly ruthless
and accurate performance, with a sure sense of the character’s realization
of his own victorious destiny” (Elley, 94). McDowall began his career as
a child star in the 1940s, playing opposite Taylor in Lassie Come Home
(1943), after which the two became lifelong friends. He played several
roles in theater, television, and films, and later became famous as a sympathetic
simian in Planet of the Apes (1968) and its numerous sequels.
With his narrow, dour face and sinister composure, Octavian’s severity is
a clear counterpoint to Antony’s amiability and expansive bluster. The
antagonism between the two rivals is established in an early scene on the
Senate steps, where the senators gossip about the birth of Caesar’s son by
Cleopatra. This event obviously threatens Octavian’s position as the adopted
son and heir of Caesar, with whom he never actually interacts in the film.
When Antony questions him, Octavian’s answers are detached and parsimonious.
Antony snaps: “It’s quite possible, Octavian, that when you die,
you will die without ever having been alive.”
Their rivalry is exacerbated in the second half of the film, when Antony
receives military accolades, but the frail Octavian misses the battle lying
sick in his tent. Aware of Antony’s popularity, Octavian ingeniously claims
the legacy and the name of Caesar for himself. During the time Antony
is absent from Rome, Octavian uses the opportunity to smear him as an
enemy and a doting pawn of the Egyptian queen. He snarls his accusations
to the troubled senators: “For so many years, Antony has fed upon the
crumbs that fell from Julius Caesar’s table.” The film also makes clear the
marriage with his sister Octavia is a cunning trap to cast Antony as a man
who deserts a decent Roman wife for an “Egyptian whore.” While Cleopatra
presents a realistic portrait of Octavian as “one of the shrewdest
politicians in the history of mankind” (Solomon, 2001a, 72), his role
as the villain becomes unfairly inflated in the shocking scene where he
viciously murders the old Egyptian diplomat, Sosigenes. In the end,
Octavian’s extraordinary reaction to the news of Antony’s death, and his
strange concern for Antony’s honor, suggests a profound need for worthy
adversaries in his drive to establish himself as the savior of Rome. In
his meeting with Cleopatra, his ultimate foil, Octavian reveals a prurient
148 CLEOPATRA (1963)