Greece and Rome in the Movies CC 2023

  In this scene it shows cleopatra finally comes to Rome while Caesar is becoming the head person of Rome as he did when Cleopatra was becoming the full ruler of Egypt. This is a medium shot of Cleopatra looking at Caesar and the scene after it shows Cleopatra winking at him and smiling because she knows the love and the power is building between them. This scene is also showing that you can see all the other people in the background you can see all the other people bowing and showing their respect but for Cleopatra she is standing up because she thinks she is as powerful as Caesar and that they share the power with each other. You can also see how much money Cleopatra has because of the Gold dress and how she entered Rome.

  The moment Octavian walks in to see a dead Cleopatra lying in the center of the room is a meticulously designed scene that leaves a strong final impact on the viewer. The camera slowly zooms out, initially focusing on the dead queen in her extravagant golden robe, then revealing the elaborately designed and eerily lit room in which she lays. Her servants are at her side, one dead, the other dying. The camera zooms out further, stabilizing over the shoulder of Octavian, whose perspective is then taken by the audience for the rest of the scene. We watch through Octavian's eyes as he witnesses the symbolic destruction of Cleopatra, and with it, his spoils of war. The dim lighting, the lavish scenic design, the visual juxtaposition between cleopatra and her servants, and the steady camera zoom all contribute to the feeling and impact this final scene evokes.

In this scene after Antony's death, Octavian negotiates with Cleopatra about returning to Rome with her as his prisoner. The shot seems to be pretty level, the audience isn't looking down on anyone. It seems like there are two main points the audience's eye is drawn to, Octavian and Cleopatra (It's also worth noticing that the space between the two is interestingly wide). We see Octavian standing relaxed as he looks down on Cleopatra. This shows Octavian as the one in control, not the Queen. Cleopatra is slouched and doesn't meet Octavian's eye, which again displays Octavian's power. This also shows that Cleopatra is a bit more broken than she had been before, probably because Antony had died. Cleopatra's two servants stand a few steps behind their mistress, this definitely foreshadows their loyal decision to follow Cleopatra into death. Octavian stands next to the place where Cleopatra's body will come to rest, almost as if to symbolize that he'...

  This scene from Cleopatra is a medium shot with the camera even with Cleopatra's eye level but is looking down on Mark Antony. This shot has minimal shadows and low contrast, which I feel signifies a sense of peacefulness. We see Cleopatra in a white dress, and Antony is wearing high-end armor. Mark Antony's face has a serious look on it while Cleopatra seems to be almost smirking. Another component of this shot is that Cleopatra is sitting on the bed looking down on Mark Antony while he is in a kneeling position looking up at her. This can demonstrate the power dynamic that they had. Cleopatra held more power and assertiveness in her relationship with Mark Antony than she did in her relationship with Julius Caesar. -Will

 The scene I chose from the movie "Cleopatra" is the opening scene of Julius Caesar overseeing the land after the battle with Pompei.  In the scene we can see Julius Caesar looking into the distance. The first thing we can notice in the scene is the camera shot and lighting. The camera shot is a middle shot that shows Julius from the belly up, this shot helps us get a close (but not too close) look up at an important character in the movie. The shot also lets us examine Caesar's "stoic" and "wise" looking expression on his face and lets us interpret him as an important character that shows these wise/general/strategist like characteristics. The lighting also helps us emphasize his significance as it is shining down onto him, as if coming from the audience. The lighting also illuminates his Roman armor giving it an illusion as if it is protruding even more while simultaneously letting our eyes be attracted by the shiny silver Roman insignia decorating t...

  When I first watched this scene, I didn't think much of the placement of Cleopatra and Caesar, the angle, and lighting. After finishing it, however, it's difficult not to compare this movie still to the many ones of Antony and Cleopatra. This one in particular:  The most obvious different is that, in the first one, Caesar is above Cleopatra and holding her; while in the second still, Cleopatra is above Antony, but not really holding him in place like how Caesar holds her. This, of course, symbolizes the power dynamic between both of their relationships. Marc Antony sees love (and therefore Cleopatra) as his "master" while Caesar has stated he sees Cleopatra as apart of his war gains. While Caesar does kneel to Cleopatra during her coronation, Marc Antony is much more beholden to Cleopatra throughout the entire movie. There are really only two moments within the film in which Antony has more power over Cleopatra: when he married Octavia (though this example might not...

  While watching Cleopatra, I saw a striking similarity between the fortune teller scene and the sacrificial scene in Cabiria with the way the production was put together to create the intense atmosphere. The angles are almost identical. The camera is placed close to the ground and angled up to further enforce the magnitude of the situation. They were narrating the deaths of characters very important to the plot and using their bodies to act it out. Caesar was assassinated and Cabiria almost sacrificed. There is also fire used to add to the chaos of the event in both scenes. They both also had very dark ominous backgrounds behind them.

This scene is when Caesar had to leave to go back to Rome. It is a medium shot focusing on both Caesar and Cleopatra. It is shot from an eye level view which subconsciously we feel included almost as a bystander. In the back we see the shadowed hieroglyphs on the walls. The shot is dark therefore we can infer that the mood is heavy and sad. Looking at the hands, they show us how close they've gotten and care for each other, physically holding each other for the last time before his journey. We see that Caesar is taller than cleopatra and the she has to look up to him giving him the authority and power in this situation. Cleopatras hair features gold ends, along with her neck and wrist having gold jewellery around them. The white top that we see stands out from the rest of the clothes shown drawing the eye to her. For Caesar, he's wearing his leather armour. 

Cleopatra, with its 4 hour runtime, story of political intrigue, and intricate set and costume design, is daunting, to say the least. Its story spans years and continents. It languishes in long, dialogue-heavy scenes and establishing shots; it is extravagant in every sense of the word. Many aspects of the movie, too, are meant to give it a sense of historical accuracy: a sense which it conveys very well (but does not actually completely adhere to). The acting—in particular, the transatlantic accent adopted by the majority of the cast—is meant to make the actors sound older. The accent was most commonly used from approximately 1910-1940, which, to the audiences of the ‘60s, would have sounded old and sophisticated, just as Cleopatra herself is supposed to be perceived as. In addition, the use of transitions from the movie to a still Romanesque painting creates a connotation of accurate history. These aspects of the movie are contrasted against the extravagant, unrealistic costumes and c...

Cabiria Movie Review     The Movie "Cabiria" is not your typical movie. It is a silent black and white film made in the early 20th century and released in 1914. Compared to a film made a year before "Antony & Cleopatra," the camera movement in Cabiria added emotions to the movie. Zooming in on an object or person to show significance or showing the audience the setting. Being a silent film, the only sound heard by  people is a piano. Although, through the pianist, we can hear emotions that the actors are portraying in the scenes. Cabiria is a one-of-a-kind movie which included never seen before scenes. For example placing film on top of another to add depth in a scene which not only amazes the audience but makes the them wonder how they did that. There is a clear plot line that is easy to follow and in between scenes they include a paragraph to keep you on track. This film does include racial and gender stereotypes, downgrading of women and me...

Cleopatra was very surprising to me! Going into a 4 hour movie, I didn't have high expectations, but it turned out  to be fairly entertaining the entire time. Yes, there were definitely some horribly slow moments, but even those  helped to make the story and plot meld together better. Important facts cannot be left out for the sake of the  viewers, so slow scenes are necessary. The thing that helped the most was the new technology, filming techniques  and editing. In this scene, Cleopatra is experiencing the death of Caesar which we are being shown simultaneously.  The fact that we see both scenes happening at once and we can see real-time reactions is really impressive. The  intensity of Caesar's death along with the fierce devastation from Cleopatra ties everything together nicely, making  the audience feel the impact of Caesar’s death in a different way.  The lighting between the two scenes helps to make the contrast more noticeable. The bright...

  This image exemplifies a sense of power and confidence for Cleopatra. She is posed alluding to the painting "Sleeping Venus" by Giorgione from 1510, which could've been used to enforce that she views herself as a goddess--especially since Venus is a goddess of love, fertility, and femininity.  The lighting is dimmed around the edges and brightest in the center where she is, putting attention on her even when she's lowest in the frame. The walls around her and the costumes of her servants are all darker, but the bed she lays on is an off-white shade brighter than the rest, making her the point of most contrast and appear brightest. Her dress is also the only one with gold/glitter on it, besides the occasional jewelry piece from the servant in the back.  The camera is also at eye-level and farther back, letting the viewer see the full scale of how provocative she's appearing, yet staying connected to her as she speaks and looks (slightly seductively) at Caesar. Th...

      Though at first the four hour runtime was intimidating, I ended up really enjoying Cleopatra . It gave Cleopatra as a figure more nuance than any other film we've seen with not only her own character, but portrayal of women as a whole. She had her own motivations, successes, and downfalls. We saw her arguing and angry as often as we saw her deeply in love and pining. Though there were a few hangups, such as Julius Caesar and Mark Antony having just as much (if not more at times) depth and plot as Cleopatra herself, and stealing a large portions of the movie's attention, she was still her own character, which was refreshing. (Sorry, Cabiria ) As well as this it didn't necessarily stick very close to the actual time period/the truth of the story-- such as Cleopatra's fashion and the differences in Caesar's motivations/"emperorship." Overall, though, the movie itself (I thought) was still successful overall and portrayed Cleopatra in the best light we...

      I really liked a lot of cleopatra, despite its absurd length on the day where I have the most classes (at the end it was hard to stay awake). of all is massive setpieces and the years of time production spent crafting its world, the place that stuck out to me the most was Cleopatra's garden in Rome, it only appears for two short scenes, when Cleo talks to Caesar in Rome for the first time and when she warns him not to go to the senate on the ides.          Its the place where Cleo last sees Caesar alive, at least in person. in all the excess of Egypt or Rome this garden is muted and dead, and it seems like an odd place for Cleo to say farewell to one of the great loves of her life, and the shot above in particular has the two of them tiny in the center of the frame. It feels like a reminder that these two emperors descended from gods are only human, and that they'll both die a human death, memento mori and all that...

 "Cabiria" is an Italian silent movie set in the Punic wars between mighty Rome and Carthage. The story follows the main characters Cabiria, Fulvio, and our grand macho man Maciste as they try to escape from the evil Carthaginians. I enjoyed the movie Cabiria quite a lot and it was a massive improvement from the short silent movie about Mark Antony and Cleopatra that was released just a year prior. The movie Cabiria improves on film techniques such as camera angle, movement, scale, varied shots, and other such techniques. The camera wasn't static and actively moved around in several scenes to further develop the scene. Several different camera shots were used to expand on the scale of the scenes as well as delve closer at the smaller important details that would've been hidden in static full body shots. The movie also improves on the scale of the scenes by creating vibrant backgrounds that give the shots a 3d look instead of a flat 2d perspective. The addition of come...

 Cody Guy  Knoor Sep 5 Watching the movie was something like I expected. I watched Three Stooges when I was younger but it was the Black and white version which made some of the episodes silent ones so I kinda knew what to expect. The way that the actors acted and their emotion obviously didn't have the same emotion as Three Stooges because that is meant to be a comedy and funny the whole time. With this movie is had a meaning behind it and telling the story about what actually happened which I thought they did a good job and having some comedy in the movie also helped with the story telling because not everyone wants to sit in silence and not laugh. The way the movie had their music align with the scene was really good which is something I expected but not at the same time because it was one of the first movies. I am looking forward to watching more movies.  Cody Guy 

Cody Guy  Knorr Blog 24 August 2023      What made you select this course as one of your up to six choices for college colloquium?           For me I chose this course because I thought it would be interesting to learn about how ancient Greece and Rome was in movies and the influence it had on movies today and past movies. I like to watch movies whenever I have the time and I like to look at the plot and to try and see how the plot will end up or try to guess what will happen next. Actually learning about how much Ancient Greece and Rome in movies has influenced the movies that we all watch today would be cool to look at and study and be able to know why the directors do certain things. 

 I enjoyed Cabiria a lot more than the first movie. To start I enjoyed the music that went along with the film. The music fit with the scenes of the movie. The music ramped up in pace when more action was happening in the movie such as when the temples were collapsing. The camera also switches camera angles during the same scene which was something new. There was an impressive 3D stage, and there was much more depth that they added to the background of scenes. I also was impressed by their ability to cut film and edit shots like the volcano scene. That is something I would of expected to have been technology that wasn't available yet in that time. I was interested in the attempts to add comedic bits to the film. Will

  I loved the film “Cabiria”, especially in comparison to “Antony and Cleopatra”. The camera-work improved so much in only a year and it’s honestly astounding! The camera moved and followed characters to give depth, had zoom-ins and -outs, and had the first close up! The innovation of this film is amazing to think about, with the manual labor that went into splicing frames together to make special effects, and even the difficulty of shooting fire at night. In general, the movie was much more interesting, too, with entangled sub-plots for character development, plus characters moving in real-time instead of slow-mo.  The only cons to this film were what we discussed in class–the demonizing of other cultures that were “exotic”, the black face, and the stereotyping of gender and race. I wish the women in the film were a little less helpless, I wish the Phoenician royalty were not played by white actors, I wish the protagonists of the film didn’t have an ulterior/materialistic m...

 I was very surprised by how much I liked Cabiria. I have seen a couple other silent films but none of them really had the same feel as this one. The set design was beautiful and was made to further the story. It also gave the picture depth and alongside the movement of the camera really made it stand out against Marc Antony and Cleopatra. The acting was very exaggerated which gave the film a very theatrical tone and really went well with the extravagant costumes as well. It was also very ahead of its time with the special effects, which I think still hold up now. My personal favorite effects were the dream sequence and the Mount Etna eruption. Though the movie was nice it still has some problematic topics. Though it was made 100 years ago and was is socially acceptable has changed, some themes used reinforced stereotypes and prejudice to fear monger. Since this movie was made after the Italian Turkish war, you can see the prejudice against anyone who looks "foreign" or not R...

       I found the film Cabiria  a lot more interesting and entertaining than I first assumed it would be. I had never watched a silent movie beforehand and was admittedly apprehensive. But it had a lot of great qualities I hadn't expected, such as the well done score, grandiose sets, and much faster pace and plot. Even the editing, though old, was still really impressive and had me wondering how they did it at times. I really enjoyed the large scale shot of the ships burning and people running-- the film really knew how to do destruction well! I also had to acknowledge the quality difference from the 1913 Antony and Cleopatra  we had seen a bit of before. The text was much more legible, gave more time to fully read it, and fit the plot and characters well, which made me forget at times the movie was a silent one at all.       Though, there were also things that did stand out in less than positive ways. It makes sense for a film made over 100...

Avery Stoddard  Cabiria was a great movie! I understood all the twists and turns of the plot much better than I expected to, especially for a silent movie. One thing I didn't see coming was just how many scenes in the movie would be purposely funny. Before watching this, I would have guessed that a movie that old would have taken itself too seriously and just been funny in 21st century context. But there were a lot of scenes that were made to be comedic! Of course there were some outdated themes, it's to be expected with a movie that's over 100 years old. Some racist and sexist themes as well as some creepy ones. For example, an adult Fulvius saved Cabiria when she was a child, then 10 years later they ended up together. There's a bit of an ick factor there, but again, when you consider the time the movie was made in, it does make sense. All in all though, I really liked Cabiria and I already told my family they should watch it.

  Cabiria definitely caught me off guard with how high quality the whole production was. The special effects and props were amazing for its time. The destruction of the city at the beginning and the volcano scene looked almost realistic. Pastrone’s work with scale was really cool. It was quite long though. The plot also sometimes did separate from the subject. The movie was titled Cabiria yet the title herself was barely in the movie. It felt like she was more of an accessory to tell the story of the punic wars rather than the punic war being an accessory to tell her story. However, I was surprised with how multiple storylines were happening within one movie. With Sofonisba’s love interest, the punic wars, and Cabiria’s kidnapping all in one silent movie, it's impressive that the plot was still understandable.

"Cabiria" was absolutely a step up from the film we first viewed a section of. The silent film used (at the time) groundbreaking camerawork to help tell its story. Pans, zooms, and extreme closeups all contributed to a much more intricate final product. It had unheard of special effects, like the volcanic eruption, the burning ships, and the dream sequence, turning the movie into a true spectacle. All this being said, there were some noticeable flaws in the film. Some aspects felt convoluted, and others rubbed in the face of the audience. For example, while the queen's motive of suicide was initially confusing to me, her death itself was incredibly overplayed and drawn out. This juxtaposition of complexity and simplicity was seen throughout the film, and while I would've liked the director to have closed the gap, it definitely did not ruin the movie for me. While this film is not for everyone, I would absolutely recommend it to anyone interested in film or in Ancient ...

I didn't expect to like Cabiria as much as I did, although it was quite long and (at times) very slow. It felt like a theater production to me, which had both pros and cons. For example, the acting. The acting was very over-the-top and not "realistic", but it communicated emotion well and was entertaining to watch. The characters, too, were over-the-top, but the more I thought about them the more complex I realized they were, especially Cabiria herself.  In terms of just things I liked, I enjoyed the set design, especially the exterior and interior of the Temple of Moloch and Sofonisba’s living space. I also thought the special effects and stunts were very impressive for the time. I particularly liked the shot of the volcano erupting and the dream sequence because they were both very visually interesting and added a lot to the story in terms of tone and atmosphere.  Overall, I liked the movie. It worked well for the time and it was enjoyable to watch (for the most part)....

      Cabiria was a pleasant surprise. I was expecting 3 hours of slow, historical storytelling, but the moments of exciting action and humor helped the film to be engaging and gripping. I felt there was a good mix of informational scenes, and scenes where everyone really felt and looked human. The impact from the brand new filming techniques definitely impacted the viewing experience. The shifts from large view shots, to closer in shots which focused on specific items within the scene, made it so much easier to watch and enjoy. Overall,  Cabiria was an excellent first silent-movie experience and exceeded expectations.  Sophia Kaplan

      Cabiria is a monumental film, pioneering in filmaking with the dolly camera and extreme closeups, as well as in film budget, with massive sets and explosive special effects giving it a sense of scale brand new to film. The acting is theatrical but human, and it sports a cast of lively characters who jump out of the screen (and in Maciste's case, into 24 more movies). However I found the plot to drag in some regards, trying to double as a history lesson for the 2nd Punic war leads to the aspects of the him I liked, such as Cabiria's rescue, having to share the spotlight with Generals arguing and queens suffering, and there were points where I thought "can't it go back to the good part of the story."

 Cabiria is one of the most entertaining silent films that I've personally seen. The score, special effects, acting, comedic relief, and plot are all captivating and it's also visually stunning. Many of the sets (such as the temple of Moloch) are to-scale, grand, and detailed, so it's easy to admire when you're watching. Many of the sequences and scenes are also very visually appealing and cinematic, especially for its time. All that being said, I think this movie is a good watch for people who are 'film buffs' or just like history and/or silent movies. While there is a cohesive and easy to follow plotline, the story is pretty weak, at least if you go into it expecting the story to be about Cabiria. It's more about the 2nd Punic War along with the misadventures of Fulvius and Maciste (which is pretty entertaining, but the way in which these all relate is a little farfetched). It's as if the creators wanted to tell 3 different stories at once but didn...