EXCLUSIVE: Helen Mirren on Three Decades of the 'Visceral,' 'Flawed' Caligula

This week sees the opening of Love Ranch, the long-delayed, fact-based retelling of the life and times of the first legal brothel in the United States. And this year sees the 30th anniversary of Caligula, a movie whose A-list depravity first arrived on these shores in February 1980. What do they have in common? Dame Helen Mirren, who stars as Love Ranch's willful, no-nonsense madam Grace Bontempo and appeared as Caesonia -- the courtesan who bears the mad emperor's (played by Malcolm McDowell) child -- in the notorious, massively expensive film whose power struggles involved everyone from Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione to screenwriter Gore Vidal to top-shelf English talent like McDowell, Mirren, John Gielgud and Peter O'Toole. Reached today to discuss Love Ranch, the Oscar-winner indulged Moveline's flashback.

We're 30 years removed from Caligula; three decades on, what's your relationship with -- and perception of -- that film?

I did the commentary for the DVD recently, and I actually got to see it. Actually I had never sat through it before, and I hadn't been able to sit through it. I think it's got... [Pause] You know, I wish in a sense someone could come along and re-cut Caligula -- re-cut it and maybe shoot just a tiny little bit of extra scenes, and then I think you'd have a really great movie about ancient Rome. I think Malcolm was spectacular in the role of Caligula. It was a really major performance, and I think in any other kind of movie, he probably would have been nominated for an Oscar.

It's got some really wonderful, visceral, gritty, great filmmaking in it, but all of those really great elements sit in a film that's incredibly flawed, obviously. And I think that the greatest flaw in it -- to me, watching it -- was its rhythm. It's just relentlessly sex and violence, sex and violence, sex and violence. The rhythm needed to be calibrated. But I don't think that when Caligula was being made, anyone was remotely interested in the rhythm of the movie.

Really?

No, I don't think. It was a shock-and-awe kind of thing.

When you were on the set, how aware were you of the notoriety that might be on the way?

I guess. I don't know. I was fairly naive at the time -- although I wasn't young. I was naive. [Pause] But the answer is, "No, not particularly."

Check back here tomorrow for more with Mirren about Love Ranch.