In 1959, Twentieth Century Fox began to prepare for the production of "Cleopatra". In order to show the epic legend of Cleopatra, the first thing the producers had to do was to restore the scenes of the magnificent empire and luxurious court life at that time, before advanced special effects technology existed. In the 1960s, all of this required a costly real scene. The heroine, Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, became ill and stopped filming shortly after the film started in the UK. As a result, the bridges that required her to appear had to be shut down. As almost all scenes required Taylor to show his face, it actually caused the entire scene. Interruption of the film production process. Because the changeable weather in the United Kingdom is very detrimental to Taylor's recovery, the producer decided to move the filming location to Rome. This resulted in the use of the scenes that had been built in the UK and had to re-set the scene in Rome. At the time, the director of the film was Rouben Mamoulian . Finally, in 1961, after the torture of the filming process and the collaboration with Elizabeth, he resigned from the directorship in January of that year and Joseph Leo Mankiewicz replaced him.
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was the director of the film "Caesar the Great" in 1953. Obviously he has a stronger control over the big scenes and epic themes of "Cleopatra". During the filming of "Cleopatra" in 1961, Zanuk, the gold president of 20th Century Fox, also returned to the company as chairman. At this time, 20th Century Fox was already in financial difficulties. He promoted the " The slow progress of Cleopatra accelerated the completion of the filming.
After difficult shooting, the film finally came to an end. According to Joseph Leo Mankiewicz's idea, the film should be edited into two works of 3 hours each, namely "Caesar and Cleopatra" and "Anthony and Cleopatra", but the production Fang firmly opposes such a proposal. The producer also inexplicably fired Mankiewicz during the post-production period, but apparently, for the film that Mankiewicz personally filmed in the chaos, it is true that other people can complete the editing. It was an impossible task, so the producer had to invite Mankiewicz back to complete the editing of the film, but still insisted on the single-episode film method, so the audience saw the last 4 hours version of.
