Max Borg
“In the two hours of this film that I saw, there were no scenes of joy, natural pleasure, or good sensual cheer. There was, instead, a nauseating excursion into base and sad fantasies.” In 1980, Roger Ebert wrote this about Caligula, the controversial big screen portrait of the infamous Roman emperor, a movie so messy in its released form that very few people associated with it did not try to distance themselves from the production. Four decades later, the film is back in theaters in a new version called the Ultimate Cut, which premiered in Cannes last year. But is that the right term?
Caligula’s genesis stems from Penthouse founder Bob Guccione’s wish to make an explicit adult film within a more traditional feature with high production value. Given ancient Rome’s reported penchant for debauchery, he thought the mad emperor would make for the ideal subject, and commissioned a screenplay from Gore Vidal. For the director’s chair, Guccione picked Italian filmmaker Tinto Brass, then on his way to becoming a major name in the field of cinematic erotica. And that’s where the problems began.
Brass, not a fan of Vidal’s script, requested permission to rewrite it, much to the chagrin of the author who believed writers were the true creative force in the film industry. Banned from the set, Vidal disowned the project, which has no official screenplay credit; instead, it merely states it’s “Adapted From a Screenplay by Gore Vidal”. So far so good, where Brass was concerned. But then he did something unforgivable: he angered Guccione.
In a textbook example of creative differences, the director downplayed the presence of Penthouse Pets as extras for the sex scenes, sometimes not bothering to film them at all. Additionally, Brass chose to shoot simulated sex, rather than the hardcore material the producer had in mind. Thus, after filming had concluded, Guccione snuck back onto the set, still standing in the studios in Rome, and shot all the smut Brass had objected to. With the director officially out of the picture (he was removed from post-production after editing about an hour of the film), the project was handed over to multiple editors, tasked with rearranging the footage and adding the unsimulated scenes Guccione had created.
When Caligula finally opened in theaters, three years after filming ended, it was the subject of critical ridicule, and legal issues in some regions, in both cases because of the hardcore sex. More importantly, it made its production woes blatant by not having an official director’s credit: the sole mention of someone having supervised the shoot reads “Principal Photography by Tinto Brass”. The cast also distanced themselves from the movie, albeit in a more tongue-in-cheek manner: for the 2007 DVD release, Malcom McDowell, who starred as Caligula, recorded an audio commentary where he states his horse gave the best performance in the whole film.
The disc in question was notable for containing two versions of the picture: the unrated theatrical cut, and a shorter edit with scenes playing in a different order and none of the extraneous material inserted by Guccione (who at that point had left Penthouse and was in a legal dispute with the company). Interest in this first attempted reconstruction led to the announcement, in 2018, that German director Alexander Tuschinski, the world’s leading Brass scholar, had been hired to bring the Italian filmmaker’s vision back to life. By this point, both thorns in Brass’s side – Vidal and Guccione – had passed away.
Tuschinski’s reconstruction has yet to see the light of day. And in 2020, a separate re-edit was announced, this time at the hands of American art historian Thomas Negovan. His efforts led to the so-called Ultimate Cut: 178 minutes long, with none of Guccione’s X-rated inserts, but also no input from Brass. In fact, when the movie was unveiled as part of the 2023 lineup of Cannes Classics, the Cannes sidebar devoted to restored films, the director’s name was conspicuously absent in the press release. This is because the reference used by Negovan was the original Gore Vidal script, which Brass loathed.
Unsurprisingly, the filmmaker distanced himself from the project once more, officially condemning it shortly before the Cannes screening. Conversely, other people involved have expressed their support: McDowell endorsed it on Instagram, claiming his work could now be seen in its proper context, almost five decades after he first set foot on the set. But from the looks of it, the madness that was the whole making of Caligula has not yet found its definitive resolution.
“Caligula: The Ultimate Cut” begins its theatrical rollout on Friday.
