Released in theaters in 1979, the film Caligula tells the short reign of this emperor, who became the undisputed master of the Roman world at the age of 25, in 37 AD. AD, and murdered less than four years later by his close guard. Especially known by the testimony of the Latin historian Suetonius, his excessive reign deeply marked the story of Rome. Caligula has become, in our imagination, the very prototype of the crazy, debauched and bloodthirsty tyrant.
The hybrid “Caligula” of 1979
In 1976, Bob Guccione, the very rich founder of the erotic magazine Penthousedecides to finance the production of a big budget film devoted to the reign of Caligula. The scenario is entrusted to the renowned writer of the moment, Gore Vidal, while Tinto Brass is responsible for the realization in studios in Rome. Renowned actors are recruited: Malcolm Mc Dowell, the headliner ofMechanical orangein the title role, Peter O'Toole (Lawrence of Arabia) and Helen Mirren (The best of all worlds possible).
Quickly, deep disagreements broke out when making the film. Tinto Brass modifies the initial scenario of Gore Vidal which seems to him to give too much importance to the homosexual relations of Caligula. Bob Guccione is unhappy with exuberant eroticism staged by Tinto Brass, in a style that recalls the Satyricon De Fellini and does not, he said, correspond to the expectations of the American public. He then filmed new scenes, exhibiting “charming models” of Penthousein fact pornographic actresses, in order to better respond to the sex stereotypes promoted by its magazine.
The result is a hybrid and unit work, finally denied both by Gore Vidal and by Tinto Brass. Not having the right to make the film himself, he refuses to be presented as the director.
A new, stripped version of Guccione additions
In 2023, the original film was the subject of a reconstruction from the only scenes shot in Rome by Tinto Brass. Thomas Negovan, prime contractor of this project, was able to exhume 90 hours of coils, kept in the reserves of the company Penthouse Films. He restores them before mounting them, offering the public a new version of the film, stripped of all later additions.
The result is a monumental work of almost three hours, both sumptuous and of rare violence, which plunges us into a dizzying whirlwind where sex and politics, tyranny and orgy continue to intermingle. Rid of porn scenes for readers of Penthousethe film of 2024 is revealed, ultimately, even more violent than the version of Guccione, because its exclusive common thread therefore becomes the drift of absolute power, its total monstrosity and its abominable crimes. Caligula. The Ultimate Cut No more respite to the spectator, always more amazed and suffocated by the surge of constantly renewed cruelty.
The only real break in the story shows us a moment of happiness by Caligula, Cajolé, during a languid scene of Triolism, by the two women of her life: her sister Drusilla, embodied by Teresa Ann Savoy, and his wife Caesonia, interpreted by Helen Mirren. Always so agonizing and heavy moreover, accompaniment music, also reconstructed by Negovan, then flies away from exceptional aerial impulses.
The biased testimony of Suetone
The film is mainly based on Lives of the Twelve Caesars de Suetona. The work was written at the beginning of IIe century APR. AD, at the time of the emotors of the Antonins dynasty who represented a model of good government. It is a biased source because, to better praise the emperors of his time, Trajan and Hadrien, Suetona had every interest in exaggerating the vices and crimes loaned to his predecessors of the Julio-Claudian family who had reigned on the Roman Empire, of the death of Augustus, in 14 AD. AD, to that of Nero, in 68.
The film Caligula therefore presents, in relation to historical reality, the same problems as the work of Suetone from which he is inspired. However, and even if we want to believe that the Latin author has caricatured the facts, the tyranny exercised by Caligula is no doubt. It is largely confirmed by other ancient authors, such as Flavius Josephus and Dion Cassius. But let's go back to the facts mentioned by Suetone and adapted to the screen, sometimes with some additional anecdotes.
Capri's solitary monster
In the first part of the film, Caligula arrives on the island of Capri where the old Tiberian emperor withdrew, interpreted by Peter O'Toole. This one, eager to lead a life of debauchery far from Rome, settled there away from looks. In his lair, transformed into a giant brothel, we see him swimming in the company of his sex slaves, whom he calls his “little fish”. Then he wanders, without much conviction, between the different floors of a pornographic theater where a fauna of actresses and actors recruited by him is responsible for maintaining his Chanceling Libido.
In his disillusioned discussion with Caligula, he explains the misunderstanding of whom he said he was a victim: he never wanted to become an emperor, but he had no choice, because he would have died murdered if another that had taken power. It was therefore a question of life or death. However, he does not draw any happiness, from his absolute power nor from the crowd of slaves which serve it and caress it.
The invention of political orgy
After the death of Tiberius, Caligula, who became an emperor, organizes in turn orgies, but of a radically new genre. The special feasts promoted by the young master of the Empire are no longer in secret, in a remote place: they have Rome and, more precisely, the house of the Emperor on the hill of the Palatine. The orgy acquires a public dimension; It takes place, if not in the eyes, at least in all. It constitutes a weapon and a strategy that allow the emperor to assert his limitless power.
Caligula remembers Tiberius' lesson in Capri: “The Senate is the natural enemy of any César. The palatine orgies give the emperor the opportunity to humiliate the senators whom he considers as potential opponents.
He also intends to end a fiction of the imperial regime, established by Auguste, who wanted the emperor to share his power with the Senate. In reality, the Roman Republic was dead and this sharing was only a pretense, intended to erase the deeply monarchical nature of the new regime a little. Unlike Auguste, Caligula chooses to assume a completely uninhibited autocracy.
Hypocrites and sheep
Perfectly aware of his limitless power, the young emperor demands that senators recognize that he is a living God. Then he forces them to blend like animals. During a banquet, his guests are forced to crawl at his feet. While everyone is running, the emperor notes: “I am surrounded by hypocrites and sheep. »»
Then he opens a mess in his palace to prostitute the women and girls of the senators. All these extravagances, whether real or not, are not devoid of political logic. Caligula has always had the priority of ridiculing and humiliating the members of the senatorial aristocracy which he dealt with as slaves.
In the same logic, the emperor comes to proclaim consul his horse incitatus. “I will choose as the noblest consul of the Romans,” he announces in the film, before designating his mount. Then, hearing his horse farting, he adds: “Incitatus,” he said, has just made his speech in the Senate! ” At the imperial era, the consul's burden had become purely honorary. Caligula shatters this political fiction: consuls are no longer useful and a horse can very well play this role.
The obscenity of tyranny
“I can do everything I like and to anyone,” trusted the emperor, before illustrating this maxim during the scene without a doubt the most violent in the film. Caligula, who invited themselves to the marriage of a couple of rich Romans, violates the young bride, still virgin, under the gaze of her husband, before sodomizing the husband under the gaze of the bride.
The film reconstituted by Negovan offers us a plea as extreme as flamboyant against the madness inherent in any form of autocratic power. It is a disturbing work insofar as it does not only question the tyrant himself, but also those who submit, for fear, cowardice or personal interest. The obscenity of the film, often described in its previous versions, no longer lies both in the scenes of sexual orgies as in the political submission of a whole society, trapped in its tyrant.
