Caligula (film)

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Movie
German title Caligula - the rise and fall of a tyrant
Original title Caligola
Country of production USA , Italy
original language English
Publishing year 1979
length 156 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Tinto Brass
script Gore Vidal
production Bob Guccione
Franco Rossellini
music Bruno Nicolai
camera Silvano Ippoliti
cut Nino Baragli
occupation

Caligula (German subtitle: Rise and Fall of a Tyrant ) is a 1979 film by the Italian director Tinto Brass about the Roman emperor Caligula (Italian Caligola ). The film is based on a book by Gore Vidal and was funded by the adult magazine Penthouse . The producers were Franco Rossellini and the penthouse boss Bob Guccione . Guccione excluded Brass from the film editing, removed and changed numerous scenes and added hardcore scenes that he had shot together with Giancarlo Lui immediately after Brass' work.

content

Rome in AD 37: Emperor Tiberius , clearly marked by syphilis, is looking for a successor. Unfortunately, his last close relatives, his weak grandson Tiberius Gemellus and his crippled and simple-minded nephew Claudius , are unsuitable, and so he brings Gaius, called Caligula, to him. This seizes his chance, kills Tiberius and takes the signet ring of Caesar and with it the rule. As emperor, he declares his sister Drusilla to be his lover. As the plot progresses, his dependence on her becomes more evident. In the German dubbed version she calls him “Stiefelchen” ( Caligula : Latin for “Soldier's Boot ”, diminutive of caliga ).

Life at court is progressively characterized by decadence and debauchery of all kinds. The applicable rules are being ignored more and more. For example, Caligula demands sexual submission from a young couple during the wedding and finally has the groom murdered. He forces the wives of unpopular senators into prostitution, the senators banished or murdered. The climax of the atrocities is the appearance of a huge scythe machine with which traitors buried in the floor of the Circus Maximus are beheaded.

When he declares himself god, the resistance against the tyrant is formed and he is murdered by his bodyguard , the Praetorians . His uncle Claudius, who is considered idiotic, is put on the throne.

Reviews

Caligula received harsh criticism worldwide, both from film critics and viewers. The film was often accused of being a pornographic and speculative piece of work. This opinion was also shared by the Federal Testing Agency for Media Harmful to Young People , which indexed the film. The American film critic Roger Ebert described the film as "shameless garbage" and put it on the list of his most hated films. Other reviewers made similar statements.

The Lexicon of International Films judges the film as "a lush, speculative moral painting full of sex, violence and sadism". The director may have had a "less trivial reworking" of the material in mind, but could not "save" anything of his ambitions into the film.

Director Tinto Brass made it possible for him not to be named as a director in the opening credits, but only to appear “Principal Photography: Tinto Brass”. Starring actors Malcolm McDowell and Peter O'Toole distanced themselves from the film soon after it was released.

publication

The original running length of 156 minutes (with PAL Speed-up about 150 minutes) was later almost halved for some countries to allow age rating from 18 years. Since the producer cut the film in all versions without the involvement of the director and changed, omitted or added numerous scenes, Brass' intentions are no longer clearly recognizable in any of the published versions.

In the current version (in Germany from the U unaudited and until April 2018 indexed PAL - Videos about 142 minutes), the emphasis is in any case on a series of sex, violence and Sadismusszenen, and the film is often even as a real porn film (see links ) rated, although both legally approved and until April 2018 indexed VHS were defused cassette and which also until April 2018 indexed DVD to some sex and violence scenes. The cuts had become necessary because the SPIO's legal commission found the uncut publication (it largely corresponds to the unchecked Constantin version) to be relevant under criminal law . As a result, almost all hardcore settings, u. a. three detailed lesbian love games and a long tracking shot over the "love galley", edited. The scenes that were added later and were not filmed by Tinto Brass can only be seen in the released version. The unchecked version (as on video) could still be seen in the cinema, but some cinema operators only released the film voluntarily from the age of 21. A re-release in German cinemas in 1998 by Knipp was curiously cut heavily despite the advertising slogan "The scandalous film of the century - now finally released uncut".

The version of the film released on October 4, 2012 by the Sunfilm label has been greatly shortened. It has not been approved for young people by the FSK and can therefore not be indexed.

Penthouse plans to release a reconstructed version of the film with the cut originally intended by Tinto Brass. Alexander Tuschinski, who wrote a bachelor's thesis at the University of Stuttgart, is being supported by the new owner of Penthouse Kelly Holland with the reconstruction.

Sequels

Tinto Brass' Caligula called a few more unofficial successors on the scene. The best-known unofficial sequel comes from the Italian director Joe D'Amato and is from 1981: Caligula 2 - The Untold Story. In this remake , the sex content was additionally increased, so that it contains several minute hardcore sequences. Joe D'Amato's film was not available in its originally intended version until recently. Strongly cut versions appeared almost exclusively worldwide (e.g. in Japan, Australia, Denmark and the USA). D'Amato also shot two different versions of the film, which gave an additional boost to the confusion of frames and made the film a coveted and rare collector's item, because for the international market, i.e. outside of Italy, he had additional scenes shot that included zoophilia . For a long time, the Dutch video remained the longest version in the world. A year later, in 1982, another unofficial spin-off called Caligula and Messalina was shot. The controversial director Bruno Mattei was involved in this film . As further unofficial Caligula sequels Caligula III - Emperor of Terror and Caligula 4 - The Whores of Caligula were filmed. The latter is also to be understood as a remake of the film Messalina - Empress and Whore . In addition, the aforementioned Joe D'Amato turned some hardcore films, which he marketed under the title Caligula or similar name combinations. This happened for the first time in 1981 and most recently in 1996, three years before his death.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Detailed English-language reconstruction and analysis of the editing version planned by Tinto Brass (PDF; 15.2 MB)
  2. ↑ Film Lexicon: Caligula
  3. ↑ List of the various cut versions ( Memento from April 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ There are rumors about a 210-minute version, but it never seems to have existed (see: web.archive.org ( Memento from April 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive )).
  5. ↑ YouTube: Mission Caligula - For the reconstruction of the film