Cleopatra (1934), directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Criterion Channel at home, Tuesday, May 16.

Yeah, OK, Cecil B. DeMille. Good friends suggested his 1934 Cleopatra, made right as the Hays code was getting underway. So it’s sexy, with a bunch of double-entendres and perhaps the most unhinged sex scene from a major studio in a major film. That’s the one where Cleopatra and Marc Antony embrace as five-story silk curtains close over them and the camera tracks backwards past enormous golden oars pump in sexual rhythm to the house-sized drum beating time. Holy shit.

Claudette Colbert is one of my favorite actresses, an amazing comedian who totally makes It Happened One Night, Midnight and The Palm Beach Story great movies. She is nearly awful as Cleopatra, but no one seems to agree with me. I mean, she’s funny in spots, like when she’s smuggled into Julius Caesar’s room, wrapped in a carpet and unrolled, laughing and half-dressed. I guess that happened in real life, or least in recorded history–Cleopatra in a carpet, that is. Ultimately, though, this is a tragedy, and poor Claudette just can’t pull off those feelings later on in the picture. And the final death scene, with a little plastic snake, just looks ridiculous.

I will say that it is fascinating to see the time when they used to build these damn sets from scratch. Today’s CGI sets–I’m looking at you Gladiator–are going to look just awful in short order, but Cleopatra’s look will impress as long as we have access to the movie.