BEYOND FEST
Aero Theater and Loz Feliz 3 Theater
Sept. 26 to Oct. 10, 2023
CALIGULA: THE ULTIMATE CUT
With special guests Malcolm McDowell and film critic/historian Thomas Negovan
Moderated by critic/historian Stephen Farber
Aero Theatre, Santa Monica
Sept. 29, 2023
Beyond Fest returns to Los Angeles for two weeks’ worth of cinematic madness, just in time for Halloween. Billed as the biggest genre film festival in the United States, the annual event has been delighting crowds since 2013, with the 2023 edition screening a whopping 55 feature films, from low-budget debuts from around the world to restorations of classic movies and cult favorites.
One of the premiere events of the festival was the screening of a brand new version of the controversial 1979 film Caligula. Despite the movie’s scandalous reputation, the screening was far from the raincoat-and-Kleenex orgy of titillation one might have expected; instead, it was a celebration of the acting talents of Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren and the glorious sets of Danilo Donati.
The extensively recut print still features plenty of gratuitous nudity and simulated sex, but it also now salvages a surprisingly compelling story arc out of what was once simply pornographic excess.
Caligula’s production is a well-known story of missed opportunities. In the mid-1970s, Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, eager to get into legitimate filmmaking, commissioned Gore Vidal to write a script for a historical blockbuster based on the notoriously depraved Roman emperor. Directed by avant-garde filmmaker Tinto Brass and featuring performances by Peter O’Toole and John Gielgud, the movie might have been a mainstream success, but Guccione’s overbearing meddling in all aspects of the project — including his decision to cut the last 45 minutes of the story and replace it with outright pornography — created a movie so terrible that both Vidal and Brass sued to have their names removed from the credits.
This new version, restored and reedited by Thomas Negovan, was taken from over 90 hours of negatives. In his introduction, Negovan let the audience know that there isn’t a single frame of the restoration that was taken from the Guccione cut. The recut version also adds an animated opening scene by Dave McKean and a new score that gives the story some narrative tension. Negovan explained that he wanted to recapture Vidal’s and Brass’s original visions for the project in order to evoke the movie that might have been.
What Negovan has created is a completely different film. By giving considerably more screen time to McDowell and Mirren, and downplaying the more comic episodes of the original, this version conveys a gripping story and greatly improves the performances of both actors. By focusing on plot and character instead of mere titillation, it allows McDowell to show the mad emperor’s gradual descent into damnation, fueled by the death of his sister, Drusilla. The expansion of the third act highlights the attempts of Caligula’s wife, Caesonia (Mirren), to rein in her husband’s madness. This new Caligula is definitely worth seeing when released on home video, and it will completely erase any trace of the original from viewers’ minds.
After the film, McDowell was interviewed by film critic and historian Stephen Farber. McDowell, still fit and feisty at 80, delighted the crowd with stories of his initial involvement with the project and tales of misery and madness during production. At one point, he recalled the magisterial Gielgud, with whom he shared a villa during filming, remarking that there were “an awful lot of cocks” on the set during an orgy scene, and asking, “Do you think they’re prepubescent or that they shave their pubic hair?” You can’t get that kind of experience watching the film at home.
