exits, entrances, marches or battles." Even Elizabeth Taylor found it wanting, saying, "They had cut out the heart, the essence, the motivations, the very core, and tacked on all those battle scenes. It should have been about three large people, but it lacked reality and passion. I found it vulgar." The New York Times estimated that 80% of reviews in the United States were favorable but only 20% of reviews in Europe were positive. American film critic Emanuel Levy wrote retrospectively: "Much maligned for various reasons, [...] Cleopatra may be the most expensive movie ever made, but certainly not the worst, just a verbose, muddled affair that is not even entertaining as a star vehicle for Taylor and Burton." Billy Mowbray of British television channel Film4 remarked that the film is "[a] giant of a movie that is sometimes lumbering, but ever watchable thanks to its uninhibited ambition, size and glamour." Rotten Tomatoes aggregated 41 reviews and determined 56% of them to be positive. The website's consensus reads: "Cleopatra is a lush, ostentatious, endlessly eye-popping epic that sags [and] collapses from a (and how could it not?) four-hour runtime." Box office Three weeks into its theatrical release, Cleopatra became the number-one box office film in the United States, grossing $725,000 in 17 key cities. It held the top position for the next twelve weeks before being dethroned by The V.I.P.s, which also starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. It recaptured the number-one spot three weeks later, and proved to be the highest-grossing film of 1963. By January 1964, the film had earned $15.7 million in distributor rentals from 55 theaters in the United States and Canada. It finished its box-office run with $26 million in rentals in the United States and Canada. The film was also a major hit in Italy, where it sold 10.9 million tickets. It sold a further 5.4 million tickets in France and Germany, and 32.9million tickets in the Soviet Union when it was released there in 1978. By March 1966, Cleopatra had earned worldwide rentals of $38.04 million, leaving it $3 million short of breaking even. Fox eventually recouped its investment that same year when it sold the television broadcast rights to ABC for $5 million, a then-record amount paid for a single film. The film ultimately earned $40.3 million in worldwide rentals from its theatrical run. Awards and nominations The film won four Academy