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Stream Caligula Online. Movie Title: Caligula Average customer review: Caligula is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download Caligula

Caligula, one of the most controversial movies ever made, is now available on DVD. This film was a real eye-opener for me, and the DVD is far superior to the VHS that was floating around a bit in the ’80s (for all you people complaining about the quality, just shudder to think of how it used to be). The story of Rome’s infamous emperor was probably not this wild in real life, but this is Penthouse and as a result is chockablock with sexual scenes and graphic violence. Because Caligula is basically in every single scene, it’s hard for the other characters to develop, but there are some colorful supporting players, and McDowell really delivers. It’s hard to believe his next film was to play the reserved, scholarly H.G. Wells (”Time After Time.”) He is quite a talented actor. The movie drags on and on, and sometimes the cinematography is uncertain, but other times it is dead on the money. The film is a bit grainy on DVD, but as someone else once said, this really contributes to the “gritty” factor. As far as realism, many of the sex scenes look real, but I doubt the world has ever seen the likes of that purple-skinned four-eyed (or was it three-eyed?) woman, plus the guy with all those extra digits and the siamese twins joined at the head resting at Tiberius’ palace. And how about the scene where Caligula “consecrates” that marriage…if that’s how it was, I’d never get married.

The DVD has these things going for it: the creepy music added to the menu (the same as the opening title with the quote from Mark), the 30 chapters nicely divided up, the documentary about the making of featuring Gore Vidal and Bob Guccione (although in places everyone’s face looked way too pale, but it was an old ’70s film), and the sound is far superior to the VHS from what I can remember.

But this is Caligula and I would definitely not let anyone under 18 (or maybe even 21) watch it.

I will concentrate on the movie’s historical accuracy (or its lack of it), since the previous reviews seem to either have overlooked it, or claimed that it is “historically accurate”, or on the opposite extreme, that it totally ignored history.

“Caligula” does have some merit from the historical point of view, surely already present in Gore Vidal’s original script. It’s also very weak in many points.

The bare events of Caligula’s life and reign are actually quite accurate. It may surprise many viewers that most of the secondary characters – Emperor Tiberius, Senator Nerva, the praetorian prefect Macro, Tiberius’s grandson and Caligula’s rival for the succession Gemellus, Caesonia, Chaerea (who murdered Caligula), his sister Drusilla – were all historical and, as far as the facts have come down to us, their portrayal in “Caligula” was fairly accurate, at least according to some ancient authors.

Tiberius did retire to the island of Capri in his last years and did invite the elderly Nerva to join him there, and ancient authors do claim that he indulged in sexual perversions there. Nerva really committed suicide as shown in the movie.

The conversations between Caligula, Nerva and Tiberius, probably by Vidal, really reflect contemporary views and issues – for instance, the deification of Julius Caesar and Augustus, Tiberius’s predecessors: Tiberius was totally cynical about the whole thing, whereas Caligula firmly believed it. Throughout the movie, many of Caligula’s lines come straight from ancient authors.

On the other hand, Nerva’s comment on Caligula’s “gift for logic” seems to owe more to Camus than to ancient sources – still, a nice touch, I thought.

Tiberius’s murder by Caligula and Macro, Caligula’s removal of Macro and Gemellus, his incestuous relationship with Drusilla, her death, his marriage to Caesonia, her giving him a daughter, his increasing tyranny, his farcical invasion of Germany and attempted invasion of Britain, and his murder by his own guard – are all historical facts, and on the whole not too inaccurately shown in the movie.

On the other hand, the movie’s biggest weaknesses from the historical point of view are (1) the way it *looks* and (2) the suggestion that Caligula’s and Tiberius’s depravity were somehow “normal”, part of Rome’s “decadence”.

The sets and clothes all look more like something from a Fellini film than from ancient Rome. Tiberius’s palace on Capri is perhaps the most unrealistic, along with that ship, and the execution machine – and countless details.

The clothes aren’t very realistic, either. Romans were more casual about nudity than we are today, and I suppose that their clothes might reveal much some times. But I doubt that Roman ladies would be as casual about parading half-naked as portrayed in the movie (I mean in normal situations, not the sex scenes).

Moreover, it’s simply not true that “orgies” such as that portrayed in the movie were common among the Roman upper classes. Actually adultery – also on the part of males – was an offense punishable by death, at least for the upper classes (this didn’t cover prostitution). The vast majority of the Roman senatorial class would, and did, find behavior such as that of Tiberius and Caligula scandalous.

However, Caligula’s in cognito wanderings through Rome after Drusilla’s death give perhaps for the first time in a movie a good impression of what ancient Rome actually was at night – dangerous, dark, chaotic, where no person of means would venture without an armed escort.

I also enjoyed the glimpse of what an emperor’s routine largely consisted of, with Tiberius and Caligula stamping their seal onto endless piles of official documents.

“Caligula” was obviously intended to be mainly a pornographic movie – Bob Guccione made sure of that. But it also, at some point, was intended to have a core of historical accuracy, which is why Gore Vidal was asked to write the script.

This core is still present in the movie, and it’s not true that you don’t learn anything of Roman history by watching it.

But of course, I know that that’s not what most people will watch it for. So perhaps Guccione was right.
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