It is often said that, with few exceptions, adaptations of novels for film or television do not usually reach the level of the original work. It is probably influenced by the fact that each one represents the characters of the book with the eyes of their imagination and that it is difficult for the actors who bring them to life to do so to the liking of all readers, especially the greatest admirers of the novel. It also happens that it is difficult to transfer to the screen all the situations, descriptions and thoughts captured on paper, so something is always missing in the adaptation of the book to the screenplay. Lastly, I think that there is some "posture" missing, a kind of "I saw it first" that seems to make it necessary to make it clear to everyone who sees the film that one knows better than the others what they are talking about and where they are. mistakes because he read the book first.
Honorable exceptions to this principle that are often cited, and with which I agree, are films like The Name of the Rose or Gone with the Wind . And if there is an adaptation that takes the cake for me, it is the BBC series from the 70s I, Claudio , based on the exceptional novels by Robert Graves I, Claudius and Claudius the god and his wife Messalina, two of the main people responsible for my interest in history. In addition to seeing it when it premiered on TVE, I have been lucky enough to enjoy it again afterwards, first on VHS and then on DVD. I guess now there will be new platforms where it is available and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it.
That is why it caught my attention recently when I learned that the famous BBC version, with an extraordinary Derek Jacobi in the role of the lame and stuttering Claudio, was not the first attempt at an adaptation of Robert Graves' work. And even more so when I found out about the stars involved in the project.
In the 1930s, British cinema watched helplessly as the world film industry was clearly dominated by Hollywood productions. That caused British producers to throw in the towel and focus on low-cost home productions. Until the director of Hungarian origin Alexander Korda decided to try to confront the American giant with a quality British product that could fight with Hollywood.
To do this, he decided to focus on historical cinema. It started with a film starring Charles Laughton called The Private Life of Henry VIII , which became a hit not only in Britain, but across the pond as well. It was followed by other works such as Catherine the Great, The Scarlet Pimpernel and Rembrandt. Actors such as the aforementioned Laughton, Merle Oberon or Lawrence Olivier participated in these films.
In 1937 Korda decided to undertake an even more ambitious project :bring to the big screen the story of the Roman emperor Claudius by adapting the novels about him by Robert Graves. Big names joined the project. Korda contacted the author himself not only to get the rights, but to offer to review the script. The leading role would fall, how could it be otherwise, to the most brilliant star of these British productions:Charles Laughton.
Korda also decided not to be the one behind the camera himself and offered the role of director to a mythical name in the history of cinema:the German Josef von Sternberg, filmmaker educated in Berlin in the 1920s, discoverer of Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel , and that he had emigrated to Hollywood after the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. The reason that Korda gave the German was that he did not consider himself in a position to direct Laughton again, whose role as Claudio was non-negotiable. Sternberg would have the opportunity to choose the rest of the cast, except for Merle Oberon for the role of Messalina, who was also already hired. Laughton himself also asked Stenberg to take over as director.
A particularly difficult character to interpret was that corresponding to the empress and wife of Augustus, Livia. The role fell to Flora Robson, an actress who had played Elizabeth I of England, and the biggest problem was that Flora, who was in her mid-30s at the time, had to play a woman in her late 80s. more complicated was to support the kilos of makeup necessary to characterize it.
Everything was ready to begin the recording of the film that Korda hoped would be his masterpiece. On February 15, 1937 filming began in Denholm. in a studio filled with spectacular sets designed by Korda's brother, Vincent. The expectation in England was enormous, to the point that members of the royal family attended the shoot.
According to von Sternberg, the only actor with whom he had difficulties was with Laughton who, for the director, had a hard time getting into his role as Claudio. Merle Oberon recounts that Laughton, whom he greatly admired, confessed to her in tears in his dressing room that he was not capable of capturing her character. Until one day he told Korda's assistant that he had managed to find the tone of his character by drawing inspiration from the recent abdication speech of Edward VIII, the Duke of Windsor.
An anecdote from the shoot occurred when Sternberg insisted on that in a scene in which a group of vestal virgins appeared, the young women were naked under their veils, something that, the costume manager points out, had nothing to do with Roman religion. Another moment that the actor who played Caligula, John Armstrong, remembers is the difficulty of filming the scene of the entrance of the horse Incitatus in the Senate to be ordained a senator.
But an unexpected event put an end to filming and meant that the film was never finished or released:Merle Oberon suffered a serious traffic accident, which she narrates in the documentary that has served as a source for this entry. After waiting for a while and seeing that the leading actress did not recover and could not finish filming her scenes, it was decided to cancel the project. In the same documentary, von Sternberg shows his disappointment that he had to end the film. Something that neither the actor who played Caligula, John Armstrong, nor Robert Graves himself shared, for whom it was as if Claudius himself did not want to be represented on the screen.
The history of the filming, the interviews with the protagonists and the recorded scenes of the film that never was can be enjoyed in the following documentary, presented by another great of British cinema:Dirk Bogarde .