Spartacus (1960)

Stanley Kubrick was only 31 years old when Kirk Douglas (star of Kubrick's classic Paths of Glory) recruited the young director to pilot this epic saga, in which the rebellious slave Spartacus (played by Douglas) leads a freedom revolt against the decadent Roman Empire. Kubrick would later disown the film because it was not a personal project--he was merely a director-for-hire--but Spartacus remains one of the best of Hollywood's grand historical epics. With an intelligent screenplay by then-blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo (from a novel by Howard Fast), its message of moral integrity and courageous conviction is still quite powerful, and the all-star cast (including Charles Laughton in full toga) is full of entertaining surprises. Fully restored in 1991 to include scenes deleted from the original 1960 release, the full-length Spartacus is a grand-scale cinematic marvel, offering some of the most awesome battles ever filmed and a central performance by Douglas that's as sensitively emotional as it is intensely heroic. Jean Simmons plays the slave woman who becomes Spartacus's wife, and Peter Ustinov steals the show with his frequently hilarious, Oscar-winning performance as a slave trader who shamelessly curries favor with his Roman superiors. The restored version also includes a formerly deleted bathhouse scene in which Laurence Olivier plays a bisexual Roman senator (with restored dialogue dubbed by Anthony Hopkins) who gets hot and bothered over a slave servant played by Tony Curtis. These and other restored scenes expand the film to just over three hours in length. Despite some forgivable lulls, this is a rousing and substantial drama that grabs and holds your attention. Breaking tradition with sophisticated themes and a downbeat (yet eminently noble) conclusion, Spartacus is a thinking person's epic, rising above mere spectacle with a story as impressive as its widescreen action and Oscar-winning sets. --Jeff Shannon Amazon.com

SPARTACUS

A GREAT EPIC FILM. I WAS DISAPOINTED THAT IT DID NOT INCLUDE ANY OF THE EXTRAS THAT OFTEN GO WITH DVDS TODAY. NO COMINTARY TRACK, NO FEATURETTES, NO DOCUMENTARY WITH INTERVIEWS. BUT MOETLY, IT COUILD HAVE BENIFITED FROM A HISTORY DOCUMENTARY. July 3, 2008

The Slave Who Challenged Rome

Impressively mounted old-school sword & sandals spectacle featuring a command performance from Kirk Douglas. I found myself liking it but not loving it. More admiration and respect than active engagement. I've never been a huge Kirk Douglas fan and the movie suffers from a weaker second half. Spartacus' studio pic trappings owe more to Gone With the Wind & Ben Hur and less to today's director epics.

I'm not surprised Stanley Kubrick repudiated Spartacus. Kubrick was the very definition of auteur director and this sort of big budget Hollywood blockbuster type moviemaking must have bored him to tears. Working for others & putting on a show with a cast of thousands in period piece costumes and sets isn't particularly creative but it is a lot of work. The project manangement side of directing. It's more of star driven studio pic than anything else.

The first half of the movie has most of the best scenes. The salt mines, the gladiator training school, the fight with Woody Strode's trident-wielding Draba and Draba's surprising and inspiring show of rebellion and humanity, and the gladiator rebellion. The second half bogs down in talking, talking, & talking with Roman political infighting (well-acted but somewhat tedious) and a gooey and not very convincing love story. Finally, we are rewarded with the awesome climatic battle scene. The battle scenes are expertly mounted and impressive. Spartacus' action scenes actually benefit from the pre-cgi realism.

I should qualify all this by pointing out I was born in 1972 and raised on modern epics. Spartacus might be the technically better movie but I have to admit I gravitate to epics like Braveheart, Gladiator and Dances With Wolves. I am, unavoidably, a person of my generation.
June 16, 2008

Bothersome Details

I used to love this movie, I saw it countless times when I was a child and then in adolescense and to me it was perfect. That is until I learned some history and then this movie started to show some faults:

First the characters: Crassus was portrayed as a handsome, cultured, athletic and cruel Roman general. In truthness he was a banker and money lender far from an educated and cultured aristocrat, he was more a pudgy fat misser with an interest in politics for economic gain reasons and he demostrated talent as an organizer and raised legions with his own money but was far from being a heroic master tactitian as portrayed in the movie.

Second: who is Graccus ? I tried to find him in Roman history books, this is not Gaius or Tiberius Graccus as they were dead by the time of the Spartacus revolt. The leaders of the Senate at the time after Sulla's demise when this story takes place were Crassus as pointed, Pompey The Great as a great rival of Crassus, Aemilus Scaurus, Metellus Pius and others but there is no mention of a Graccus as a prominent member of the Senate. Crassus was never dictator, the tittle was not given to him, there were two Consuls as leaders of the Republic, Crassus was one of them and never led Rome alone.

The big battle, I thought before it was very well portrayed with hundreds of soldiers participating and a great approach to the battle field by the Roman Legions, and then it becomes messy. The romans charge the huge slave army that is occupying a commanding position in hills surrounding a valley with a thin 4 rank line, they approach at a walk, move the shields forward and then run away seeing the flaming logs launched by the slave army against them, they never attempt to throw the pilum javelin or do anything useful. What a waist of energy. Then the slaves charge abandoning a perfectly good defensive position to collide haphazardly in the valley against the mass of the roman army. The romans soon lose cohesense and fight as individuals with swords, never do any coordinated attack or defense, never throw their javelins (why do they bother to bring them to the battlefield as they only resort to their swords as armament), the roman army was mighty because it fought as a unit not as individuals as portrayed in the movie. Then Spartacus charges with his cavalry into the meleé instead of doing something clever as trying to outflank the Romans or attack their rear or something better, demostrating that he was not a military genius as in fact he is claimed to be, and lastly Pompey charges blindly into the meleé adding only to the confusion and maybe even endangering Crassus army. In fact examining the battle it becomes a ridiculous scene.

From history I recalled that Pompey never in fact participated in the battle portrayed in the movie and that in fact his army defeated a renegade band of gauls that detached from Spartacus main army but never confronted Spartacus personally. Later Pompey claimed victory for this separate action and detraced from Crassus' more merited glory.

Julius Caesar was in fact friend of Crassus but it is very unlikely he participated in the Spartacus revolt in any capacity as he was away at the time as military governor of part of Spain.

These and many other quirks had turned me against this movie and I still ask myself when is Hollywood going to get it right, stick to the historical facts and present a descent portrayal of the Roman battle form. June 13, 2008

Spartacus

It was OK. I reminded my old memory from the movie that I saw when I was very young. May 9, 2008

I am spartacus! No,I'm Spartacus! No, I'm Spartacus! I'm Spartacus!

That there appears to be enough historical information on a man who was nothing more than a slave of Rome near the beginning of the "Common Era", makes this dramatization a bit free with historical perspective. Stanley Kubrick did a fantastic job in bringing the "Man" to the big screen, though.

Kirk Douglas had his work cut out for him, playing Spartacus. You KNOW what he feels at any given moment, just by looking at his face! Here was a man who railed against the bonds he was born into. By what we know of the Ancient Roman world today, being made a Gladiator was a step up from the miserable existence Spartacus was used to, and if so, why did he revolt? Gladiators were the Superstars of their day. Men were jealous of their fame, and women, whether married or unmarried, dropped to the Gladiator's feet, and gave themselves in to whatever the Gladiator wished to do to them! They also became wealthy, and many were able to "buy" their freedom! Hardly something to revolt over, HMM? Revolt he did, though, and he became famous not for revolting, but for revealing to the Roman people, the excesses and arrogance of one of their own, Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier). By reading history on this man, you will find an intelligent and devious schemer, who preyed on all those around him. Crassus was known to (being the only one in Rome who owned "fire trucks") let fellow Romans' houses burn, unless they paid him his "fee"! While Kubrick makes him out to be somewhat bisexual, there is nothing on the history of this man to lend credence to it. His name and his legacy lives on, in Dictionaries around the world (look up the word "Crass", and you will know the man).

Much care was taken to lending a sense of realism to the strategies of both Spartacus and Crassus. Spartacus' near total ignorance as a strategist just made Crassus look all the more incompetent (if this is historically accurate, then what we see on screen very well may have happened)! This does not sit well with Crassus, and upon Spartacus' eventual defeat, he is advised by Rome's elite that if he kills all of Spartacus' followers, there would be no slaves to do the work, so he must spare them. In what is now the famous tagline associated with the film (and historically true, as well), Spartacus' followers were crucified, and the crosses stretched all the way to the gates of Rome, itself!

This film is a lush retelling of the story of one of Rome's darkest periods as a Republic. The film is bursting with first-rate talent, and it shows (it won four Academy Awards). While there are no special features on the DVD, you still get one heckuva great film! April 5, 2008

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