How Caligula Exaggerated The Obscene Life Of A Roman Emperor
Persichini. Icas94/De Agostini Picture Library via Getty ImagesCaligula is stabbed to death.
The 1979 movie Caligula contained so much sex and violence in a mainstream motion picture that the audience couldn’t believe their eyes.
This movie, based on the Roman emperor who reigned from 37 to 41 A.D., is allegedly as egregiously inaccurate as it is graphic.
The film stars Malcolm McDowell as the eponymous leader and Helen Mirren as his fourth and final wife, Milonia Caesonia.
According to award-winning historical writer and biographer Stephen Dando-Collins, the film certainly portrays the emperor’s penchant for violence accurately, but that’s about all the film covers truthfully.
“The 1979 film was produced and co-written by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, who set out with co-writer Gore Vidal to make it as gory and sexually titillating as possible,” he said. “Apart from portraying Caligula as a deranged 20-something emperor of Rome, they got just about everything else wrong.”
Penthouse FilmsAuthor and historian Stephen Dondo-Collins claimed nearly everything in the film was historically inaccurate. Nonetheless, it became a cult classic for its contributions to the exploitation genre.
The scene in which Caligula cuts the fetus of a child he bore with his sister, Drusilla, out of her body is utter fiction. Dando-Collins said this particular part is “great if you’re a horror film fan,” but not as strong in terms of historical accuracy.
“Drusilla died in a pandemic, and as far as we know wasn’t pregnant at the time,” he said. “Caligula was devastated by her death and had her declared a goddess, but that’s as far as his devotion to her went.”
According to The Harvard Crimson, scenes like this led the film to come under such intense public scrutiny that a Boston Municipal Court deliberated about its potential criminality the year after its release.
“I feel very strongly about First Amendment rights, but I don’t think you’d find me testifying for one of those pictures at North or South Station,” said Harvard’s former associate dean of the faculty for undergraduate education and former professor of Greek and Latin, Glen Bowersock.
Unlike Dando-Collins, Bowersock said he told the court during his three-hour testimony that the film was largely faithful to the truth.
“I’m not arguing that it’s a great movie, but as far as its historical side is concerned, it is exact,” said Bowersock.
Ultimately, just how accurate the film’s rather experimental, avant-garde depiction of Caligula really was is almost beside the point for Bowersock, who claimed historians often dismiss the film due to its explicit nature.
“If there’s one lesson to be learned from this film, it’s that it is not good to ignore a historical period because it is unpleasant,” Bowersock argued. “Sometimes one needs to be reminded of these things.”
