at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City on June 12, 1963, with an estimated audience of 10,000 spectators congregated outside. Among those present at the premiere were Rex Harrison, Walter Wagner, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Darryl F. Zanuck, Jacob Javits, Richard Rodgers, Joan Fontaine, Louis Nizer and Beatrice Miller. Burton and Taylor were not in attendance; Taylor was in London and Burton was filming Becket (1964). Top ticket prices at the Rivoli were a record $5.50. Soon after the film's premiere, its running time was truncated from 244 to 221 minutes. Two weeks after opening in New York, the film's release was expanded into 37 cities. For its general release in the United States, the film's running time was 184 minutes. Home media Cleopatra has been released on home video on several occasions. The film was released on videocassette by 20th Century-Fox Video in 1982. A three-disc DVD edition was released in 2001. The release included numerous supplemental features, including the two-hour documentary Cleopatra: The Film That Changed Hollywood. Schawn Belston, senior vice president of library and technical services at Fox, led a two-year process that restored a four-hour, eight-minute version in 2013. The original 65-mm camera negative was located and used as a source. Fading and damage to the negative were corrected digitally but with care to preserve detail and authenticity. Belston's team also possessed the original magnetic print masters, from which they removed clicks and hisses and created a 5.1 surround sound track. On May 21, 2013, the restored film was shown at a special screening at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival to commemorate the film's 50th anniversary. It was later released as a 50th-anniversary version available on DVD and Blu-ray. Since Fox had long ago destroyed all of the trims and outs from negatives to save costs, traditional outtakes could not be included. The home-media packages did include commentary tracks and two short films: The Cleopatra Papers and a 1963 film about the elaborate sets, The Fourth Star of Cleopatra. Reception Critical response Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called Cleopatra "one of the great epic films of our day," crediting Mankiewicz for "his fabrication of characters of colorfulness and depth, who stand forth as thinking, throbbing people against a background of splendid spectacle, that gives vitality to this picture and is the key to its success." Vincent Canby, reviewing for Variety, wrote that Cleopatra is