Hail legionnaires, I bring today to be presented in our ranks, none other than our controversial Emperor Caligula. In fact, his name was Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.
He was nicknamed Caligula (“booties”) of the legionaries in the service of his father, who were amused to see him when he was still a little boy dressed as a military man and wearing “caligas” – sort of a “boot sandal” used by soldiers at the time.
Did that nickname make you P of life? Definitely yes (laughs), it was one of many other reasons for him to want to “touch the terror” in ancient Rome.
Caligula became a movie in 1979 with Malcolm McDowell (the same from A Clockwork Orange, from 1977) as the main character, Peter O’Toole as Tiberius and Helen Mirren as Caesonia.
The feature film was directed by Tinto Brás and produced by Bob Guccione (creator of Penthouse magazine) who invested 17.5 million dollars.
At first it wasn’t supposed to contain scenes of porn and violence, however, shortly before its launch, Guccione (yes, the guy from Penthouse), fearing damage, ended up grafting scenes of explicit sex (to our delight) and violence onto warm up the work.
The fact is that no one wanted to know the veracity of historical facts. The film earned, in the United States alone, 23.4 million dollars in its opening year.
The production is one of the most controversial achievements of cinema – the only one that shows the show of perversions that the Roman Empire was hiding, and tells the story of the most “piradão” of emperors, who had a bizarre sexual affair with his sister, and was married to the most infamous of prostitutes.
At the same time that Caligula lived surrounded by flatterers, he also had dangerous enemies, crazy to see him away from power.
The film includes extreme violence, debauchery, a lot of humiliation and the organization of absurdly exaggerated orgies. Some think there is no script in the film, but it is there and it is efficient within the proposed proposal, treating the Emperor as a person “3 Volts”, focused on its oddities.
Just think, if you were invited to go to his party, you would have every right to piss yourself in fear, because he could do whatever he wanted with you, whether or not he liked you (laughs).
We can see how it was in practice at that time, with several very explicit scenes, including masturbation, penetrations, oral sex, lesbianism, etc.
But, however, a lot of current porn puts him to shame in terms of sex. What counts is the whole atmosphere of theatrical tone and dramatic appeal in several scenes, the overproduction with grandiose sets and costumes as far as the eye can see, in addition to the first-rate cast.
I must say that Calígula divided Hollywood, when many directors refused to take it on account of the explicit content, rejected by the critics.
Roger Ebert, the most famous of American critics, gave the film a score of 0, considering it unspeakable garbage. Many other critics reinforced the fact that possibly in the entire film only 6 minutes of its 150 in total are of quality, with the rest focused on the bacchanalia and sadism of Caligula and the entire Roman troupe.
In fact, I think more that the film portrays a vision of this period in the history of the Roman empire, sex ends up being a way of illustrating the way the Romans saw it, violence, and the freedom to demonstrate it.
Caligula has become one of the most loved (if we can put it that way), repudiated (for sure) and “cultured” of the history of Cinema, precisely because of all its “aesthetic daring” and mainly because of the furor caused by themes considered taboo by society.
Caligula, love it or hate it… or not.
A scene from Caligula
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