Dirk Bogarde narrates this documentary about Korda's attempt to film Robert Graves' I, CLAUDIUS, with Charles Laughton Merle Oberon, Emlyn Williams, and Flora Robson.
John Ford put the old Hollywood aphorism that "when the truth and legend conflict, print the legend," and golly, this is a clear case of printing the legend. That fabulous fabulist Josef von Sternberg, is on hand to talk about his contributions; Miss Oberon explains that she was Korda's biggest star at the time, and he had the idea to produce an A picture which no one else in Britain was interested in doing; of course it was all done so she could play Messalina. When Robert Graves shows up to explain that he wrote the books to raise his mortgage and nothing more, I was confronted with the idea that this spinner of fantasies was the only reliable witness to events.
John Ford put the old Hollywood aphorism that "when the truth and legend conflict, print the legend," and golly, this is a clear case of printing the legend. That fabulous fabulist Josef von Sternberg, is on hand to talk about his contributions; Miss Oberon explains that she was Korda's biggest star at the time, and he had the idea to produce an A picture which no one else in Britain was interested in doing; of course it was all done so she could play Messalina. When Robert Graves shows up to explain that he wrote the books to raise his mortgage and nothing more, I was confronted with the idea that this spinner of fantasies was the only reliable witness to events.