Due notti con Cleopatra

This one can't seem to make up its mind whether to be a vehicle for Italian comic Alberto Sordi or a peplum spoof, perhaps the first in the genre; I tend to find Sordi's brand of humor in this early stage overbearing – as for the latter, CARRY ON CLEO (1964; which I watched in January) is far superior!

Lovely Sophia Loren (not yet the international star, she featured in a famous bare-breasted black-and-white publicity still for this very film!) has a dual role as the conniving Cleopatra and a lookalike slave, who is made to pass for her when she absents herself to visit Marc Anthony (played by peplum regular Ettore Manni). Sordi is an Egyptian merchant who contrives to (literally) win a place as a personal guardian to the Queen of the Nile: the trouble is that she's in the habit of taking these as lovers and then have them killed!; the title, then, refers to Sordi's having trysts with both of Loren's characters (comforting the despairing slave while aggravating the no-nonsense ruler!). By the way, "Euro-Cult" stalwart Paul Muller is Cleopatra's villainous adviser.

For the record, director Mattoli helmed several Toto' vehicles around this same time; besides, the script was co-written by Ettore Scola (later a top director in his own right) – while Giuseppe Colizzi, a future Spaghetti Western specialist, served here as production manager. Incidentally, I had resisted renting this on DVD in a dubbed version…but, when it eventually turned up on Italian TV, the battered print used featured a number of jump cuts – so that the film ended up being even shorter than its already modest 78 minutes!