It almost single handedly ended the studio system.
A system, mind you, that had been ailing for years - ever since MGM, Fox and company were forced to divest themselves of their chains of theatres, a fateful decision celebrating its 60th anniversary in this, our brand new year.
After that, a veritable bevy of blades banded with Brutus: a lawsuit by actress Olivia DeHavilland freeing performers from the standard seven year contract, a landmark deal entitling James Stewart to a hefty cut of the box office (both moves paving the way for the star-driven state of the modern industry), and the increased competition from television.
But this, 20th Century Fox's 1963 production of Cleopatra, was the blow that rendered mighty Caesar - a.k.a. the studios - forever still.
Cleopatra's problems were legion, from weather and labor difficulties to costly cast indulgences. So irretrievable were the production's costs that within a few short years, the studio would find itself with less cash than you'd find on a Roman slave.
Box office records would have had to have been alarmingly shattered for the film to even have landed one sandaled toe into the realm of profit.
Audiences, however, unlike the doomed Marc Antony, stayed away from Cleopatra.
The cause, ironically, was what had served as the very impetus for the film: its star, the much-married Elizabeth Taylor, who was then transitioning from husband Eddie Fisher to co-star Richard Burton. In the world's eyes, the entire production was an expensive metaphor for her personal life, Cleopatra's allegiance from Caesar to Antony inferring Taylor's switch from Fisher to Burton.
So strong was this perception that the film was denied a proper analysis for years - a tradition that continues to this day, as it lives on only as an historical point of interest in American movie history.
As reparation then, let us say this: Cleopatra is a talky, overlong historical melodrama - but one not without sequences and performances of merit.
The latter, unfortunately, does not include Taylor. She's fine in the first half, where her coy kitten quality permeates. But in the second half, she is asked to be less coolly in control, and when vulnerable, goes flat and shrill. It's like observing an opera star good at all else but the high notes.
Burton, with his lamb's curls and his lion's roar, fares far better. His Marc Antony is showy and intelligent, and he has a good, moving scene near the end where he rides, sword held high, into rival Octavian's flanks. Hoping to die a soldier's death, he is met instead with a pacifistic snub.
The film's most memorable sequence - its money shot of money shots - is Cleopatra's entrance into Rome, a veritable Circus Maximus, with everything from Zulu dance numbers to Egyptian slaves. And of course, Cleo herself, brought out before the hordes atop a Macy's Parade-sized sphinx, in an outfit of lamee bird's feathers. So impressive is this sequence, in fact, that it seriously upsets the film's rhythm; both the climactic naval battle and the twin suicides of the main characters pale by comparison.
"Is it said as simply as that?", asks Octavian, upon being matter-of-factly informed of Antony's death. This is the moral of the film: that no matter how big you live, love or fight, in the end, it's a nondescript and anonymous existence - how ironic for a big, expensive movie forgotten today by most.
