Bugsy

Synopsis: Feature film. The story of Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel, the East coast mobster who came to Hollywood in the 1940s to take over the West coast racketeering business, was seduced by its glamour and became mythologised as the man who invented Las Vegas. Critic Katherine Eggert (op cit) has argued that ‘The plot of BUGSY is, to put it baldly, exactly the plot of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. The primary characters and the sequence and rhythm of events are the same’.
Language: English
Country: United States
Medium: Film
Technical information: Colour / Sound
Year of release: 1991
Duration: 134 mins

Director

Barry Levinson

Producer

Barry Levinson; Mark Johnson (2); Warren Beatty

Cinematographer

Allen Daviau

Screenplay

James Toback

Music

Enrico Morricone

Production Design

Dennis Gassner

Costume

Albert Wolsky

Art Direction

Leslie McDonald

Cast

Warren Beatty	Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel (Mark Antony)
Annette Bening	Virginia Hill (Cleopatra)
Ben Kingsley	Meyer Lansky (Octavius Caesar)
Bill Graham	Charlie Luciano (Lepidus)
Harvey Keitel	Mickey Cohen

Awards: 1991 Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Kingsley and Keitel), Best Cinematography, Best Direction, Best Music, Original Score, Best Picture. Won Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Dennis Gassner, Nancy Haigh) and Best Costume Design (Albert Wolsky).
Reviews: Eggert, Katherine. ‘Age Cannot Wither Him: Warren Beatty’s BUGSY as Hollywood Cleopatra’ in Boose, Lynda E. & Richard Burt (eds) Shakespeare the Movie: Popularising the Plays on Film, TV and Video. London: Routledge, 1997, pp 198-214.