{"id":9811,"date":"2014-03-30T00:01:04","date_gmt":"2014-03-30T07:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/?p=9811"},"modified":"2014-03-27T22:27:49","modified_gmt":"2014-03-28T05:27:49","slug":"tezukas-adult-features-cleopatra-1970","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/tezukas-adult-features-cleopatra-1970\/","title":{"rendered":"Tezuka’s Adult Features: “Cleopatra” (1970)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cleo-poster\"A year later, Mushi Productions\u2019 second Animerama theatrical feature, Cleopatra<\/em>, was released in Japan. Unlike A Thousand and One Nights, Cleopatra was a critical and commercial bomb. What went wrong? Everyone blamed an excessive self-indulgence by Mushi creator Osamu Tezuka, who apparently went completely gonzo.<\/p>\n

Audiences expecting something about Egypt\u2019s Roman-era legendary femme fatale queen were met by a s-l-o-o-w 2001: A Space Odyssey space scene. After four minutes of opening credits (led off very prominently with Tezuka\u2019s name), the story starts in a far-future city (the movie has been re-released titled Cleopatra 2525<\/em>) with a pastiche of Cambria Productions\u2019 notorious Synchro-Vox \u201cliving lips\u201d \u2013 instead of live-action lips superimposed on a cartoon head and body, Cleopatra had cartoon faces superimposed on live-action bodies. Yes, the American Clutch Cargo was on Japanese TV (and the Japanese considered it just as grotesque as the Americans did), but even the few Japanese movie-goers who got the in-group joke considered it overly esoteric, for animation professionals only. Most audiences were just bewildered. (Dr. Tezuka himself told me about the deliberate Synchro-Vox joke, so this is not just a theory.)<\/p>\n

The Technical Data<\/strong>: Cleopatra<\/em>, 112 minutes; released on September 15, 1970; distributed by Nippon Herald. The idea and story were by Osamu Tezuka; the screenplay, under Tezuka\u2019s supervision, by Shigemi Satoyoshi. The co-directors were Tezuka and Eichi Yamamoto. Character design was by Isao Kojima. Music by Isao Tomita.<\/p>\n

The Cast:<\/strong>
\n\"cleo-characters\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Plot<\/strong>: In the far future, a spaceship brings Mary (or Maria) back to Earth. Jiro and Harvey meet her, but are aghast when she is disintegrated. It wasn\u2019t really Mary; it was a spy from the alien Pasateli who want to destroy all humans. The two friends find the real Mary and Chief Tarabahha (in some credits, Lt. Tarabach) waiting for them at a robot-served dinner. (The foursome are very racially integrated. Mary and Harvey are Caucasian, Jiro is Oriental, and Tarabahha is black.) During dinner, Tarabahha tells them that Earth has just learned that the Pasateli intend to conquer the humans with \u201cthe Cleopatra Plan\u201d, but they don\u2019t know what that is. Chief Tarabahha proposes to send the three\u2019s minds into the past in a Time Machine, into the bodies of locals at Cleopatra\u2019s court, to investigate. Harvey, who seems to consider himself a ladies\u2019man, vows to \u201chave some action\u201d with Cleopatra. <\/p>\n

\"cleo1\"After a surrealistic montage of time-traveling into the past, the scene stops at Caesar\u2019s conquest of Egypt. (It should be noted that history in this movie flashes by so fact that the implication is that it all happens within months, though the actual period covered is seventeen years: 47 B.C. to 30 B.C.). This is the audience\u2019s first glimpse of Tezuka\u2019s taste for psychedelic slapstick humor and blatant anachronisms. Julius Caesar is depicted as a white-haired, olive-green-skinned 20th-century American political boss, smoking big, black cigars (which he later lights with a cigarette lighter) and riding in a 20th-century automobile-litter. The Roman conquest of Egypt is symbolized by scenes of comically exaggerated rapes, thousands of Egyptians being crushed by a gigantic press, and the Romans oppressing Egyptians who are copies of the more grotesque Japanese humorous manga characters of the late 1960s like Tensai Bakabon, Osomatsu-kun, and Dame Oyaji. This must have been enough by itself to guarantee no international sales of Cleopatra.<\/p>\n

The plot switches back from surrealism to humorous but coherent plausibility, and occasional real history. An emissary from Alexandria and his teenaged daughter present flowers to Caesar — Caesar takes the daughter instead. Young Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII (the real Ptolemy was fifteen years old), with his advisor, the eunuch Pothinus (the real power behind the historic Ptolemy\u2019s throne), is terrified that Rome is going to annex Egypt, but he is reassured when Caesar says he is willing to rule from behind the scenes with Ptolemy as a figurehead. Caesar will keep the emissary\u2019s daughter as a \u201ctranslator\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"cleo3\"Meanwhile an Egyptian underground meets. They are violently opposed to Egypt\u2019s surrender to the Romans, and are not much happier with Ptolemy\u2019s Greek dynasty. (The native Egyptians are authentically notably darker-skinned than Ptolemy\u2019s Greek dynasty. The movie is accurate in many little ways. Aside from the fantasy depiction of Caesar, Mark Anthony and Octavian look like their portraits on ancient Roman coins, allowing for the movie\u2019s cartoony art style.) They want to assassinate Caesar, but are divided on how to get close to him. \u201cCaesar is too tough to die.\u201d \u201cThen we will use a woman who will soften him up with sex.\u201d Lydia, an attractive young virgin, volunteers for the job, but Apollodoria (clearly an older lesbian) claims that she must fail. \u201cCaesar is a powerful man, so it will not easy for him to fall for any common woman. You should use a famous prostitute with much erotic skill.\u201d \u201cWhere will we find someone like that?,\u201d she is asked. \u201cI already have.\u201d Apollodoria\u2019s candidate is Cleopatra, Ptolemy\u2019s older sister. According to this movie, Ptolemy has ignored his sister, and she has mastered the erotic arts to gain some power, despite a very plain face. \u201cI have no respect for my brother. I hate any man who yields to Caesar.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Roman Army discovers and kills most of the conspirators. Apollodoria and Cleopatra escape in the confusion to an ancient Egyptian wizard living in a tomb with his pet leopard, Lupa. Apollodoria has already arranged with the wizard to transform Cleopatra into a super-sexy beauty that Caesar will be unable to resist. At this point two of the three future minds arrive in the past to take over local bodies. Mary becomes Lydia, who also escaped. Harvey becomes Lupa the leopard. This frustrates his chances of romancing Cleopatra, though he keeps trying \u2013 humorous bestiality.<\/p>\n

The beautified Cleopatra captivates Caesar, to the point that he announces that he has made her the queen of Egypt so the Egyptians will keep a native ruler. He still plans to rule behind the throne. Ptolemy feels betrayed, and he and Pothinus openly fight Cleopatra\u2019s Roman-supported puppet government. The Roman fleet is burned; in the movie Ionis, one of the Romans\u2019 Greek slaves, escapes. His body is taken over by Jiro, the third future man, and he meets Lydia. They are captured by the Egyptians led by Ptolemy and Pothinus. Ionis kills Pothinus by using his future knowledge to make hand grenades, and Ptolemy drowns in the Nile during his retreat. (The latter is true.) This sequence features more of Tezuka\u2019s crazy anachronisms; an audience prompter to stir up applause for Caesar, Ionis\u2019 fight with an Egyptian warrior repeated in Slow Motion, and the hand grenades.<\/p>\n

The Romans recapture Ionis, and Caesar, impressed by his fighting ability, makes him his personal slave for a gladiatorial fight in the Coliseum. To make sure that Ionis can win, Caesar gives him a gun. The anachronism is never explained.<\/p>\n

\"cleo2\"Appolodoria reminds Cleopatra that she is supposed to be vamping Caesar to get close enough to assassinate him, and she slips him poison as they bathe together. Ironically, Caesar has one of his epileptic fits at this moment, and the poison brings him out of it. (Caesar did have occasional minor epileptic fits, but nothing as exaggerated as in this movie.) Cleopatra soon gives birth to Caesar\u2019s son, Caesarion, and although she continues to give lip-service to Appolodoria\u2019s orders to kill Caesar, her heart is not really in it.<\/p>\n

Caesar makes his long-delayed triumphal return, bringing Cleopatra as an honored guest. Caesar\u2019s wife, Calpurnia, is not happy. This sequence features one of Tezuka\u2019s most extensive anachronisms, lasting for two minutes. The Roman triumph includes dancing girls. Tezuka begins by animating famous paintings of ballet and can-can dancers by Edgar Degas, going on to Renoir, Monet, and other 19th-century French Impressionists, and then seguing ever-faster into non-dancing works by Matisse, Modigliani, Delacroix, Botticelli, Leonardo, Van Gogh, Goya, Picasso, Mir\u00f2, Dali, David, Bosch, and others that could not be considered even vaguely appropriate, ending with Saul Steinberg. The sequence goes on to depict Caesar\u2019s attempt to subvert the Roman Republic into giving him dictatorial power (Ionis\u2019 stint as Caesar\u2019s champion gladiator to win popularity), and powerful conservative Senators opposing him, leading to his famous assassination on March 15, 44 B.C. \u2013 presented as a Kabuki drama! Calpurnia tells Cleopatra that respectable Roman noblewomen will never recognize her or Caesarion.<\/p>\n

After that, Cleopatra and Caesarion escape back to Egypt. The Roman government appoints Mark Anthony to follow and end Egypt\u2019s independence. Anthony is well-meaning, but basically a comic-relief governor easily seduced by her. She \u201cdistracts\u201d Anthony into continuing to allow Egypt\u2019s independence for so long that Rome disowns him and replaces him with Caesar\u2019s nephew, Octavian. Anthony commits suicide following Octavian\u2019s victory at the Battle of Actium. Cleopatra, Ionis, and Lydia (and Lupa) retreat into the Great Pyramid, where Octavian kills Apollodoria. When Cleopatra attempts to seduce Octavian (later to become Caesar Augustus, the first Roman Emperor) in his turn, he turns out to be flamingly gay and impervious to her charms (but he is really turned on by the handsome Ionis). Cleopatra commits suicide by asp-bite and dies in delirium, calling out for Mark Anthony, clearly the one that she really loved.<\/p>\n

Back in the future, the three give their report on the Cleopatra Plan, to seduce Earth\u2019s leaders in the form of beautiful women and kill them all. The three\u2019s discovery is just in time for Earth to strike before the final Pasateli kill order can be given.<\/p>\n