Spartacus *****/*****
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Writer: Dalton Trumbo
Stars: Kirk Douglas, Jean Simmons, Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton,
Peter Ustinov, and Tony Curtis
Genre: Action/Adventure
Length: 196 minutes
Cinema: 1960
Rating: Not Rated
Another spectacular film starring
Kirk Douglas as Spartacus. Not only did he star as the title character, but served as the executive producer.
Douglas also hired blacklisted screenwriter
Dalton Trumbo to do the screenplay under his own name--
Spartacus stands tall in film history for breaking the blacklist. The first director,
Anthony Mann, was fired a few days into shooting, and
Douglas replaced him with
Stanley Kubrick, his director from the great
Paths of Glory. Though this is hardly a "
Kubrick film," since
Kubrick wasn't involved in the pre production,
Douglas's wisdom in calling on
Kubrick to bail him out on this ambitious production is evident throughout.
Spartacus, born a slave in ancient Rome, finds himself in a gladiator school run by Batiatus [
Peter Ustinov, who won an Oscar as best supporting actor]. There he is trained with other slaves to fight in the arena, for the purpose of being sold to Romans who wish to watch, for amusement, combat to the death. There he meets Varinia [
Jean Simmons] and falls in love.
But when Roman senator Crassus [
Laurence Olivier] drops by and insists on a fight to the death right there at Batiatus' school, it evolves into a riot as the slaves revolt and escape. Spartacus eventually organizes them and they cross the land freeing other slaves and building an army.
Love is both the engine and the subject of
Spartacus. It is because Spartacus loves fellow slave Varinia and is about to be deprived of her by the evil senator Crassus that he starts the revolt in the first place. Her love for him, in turn, gives him the courage to lead his rebel army even though it means certain death. This theme is made flesh in Douglas's performance.
Paths of Glory is
Kirk Douglas's greatest film, but
Spartacus is his labor of love.
Spartacus plan is to make it to Southern Italy where they will pay a large group of pirates to sail them far away from the Roman Empire that had enslaved them. Spartacus who was born a slave, was fed up with being treated like an animal, and tells everyone he doesn’t want anyone to go through the same situation. This plan of course leads to a seven month journey where we see the group of gladiators facing different weather conditions such as: Rainy days, snowy days, and there are times where they had to cross lakes. Men, women, kids, and seniors are risking their lives to get out of this country, where there’s probably more slaves then Romans!
Meanwhile, the film spends a great deal of time showing us the backstage antics of those in power in the Roman Empire, namely the political warfare being waged between a senator with dictatorial ambitions, Marcus Licinius Crassus, and an older, more restrained senator, Gracchus [
Charles Laughton]. For 1960, the film was decidedly frank about Roman decadence, which gives it an edge that is lacking in too many sword-and-sandal epics of the era. The film contains a great deal of talk about Gracchus' fondness for many women, and he and Batiatus have an amusing conversation about why corpulent men are better people.
There was no rating system in 1960, but this restored version has received a
PG-13 for violence, along with a couple of brief moments where
Simmons is partially nude.
This may be one of
Stanley Kubrick’s weaker movies, but his massive cinematic talents make it a better than average epic. Considering his situation as a new director confronted with the acting egos of
Douglas,
Olivier,
Laughton, and
Ustinov, it’s a wonder that
Kubrick was able to create any coherence at all. Without
Kubrick, this could have turned into another forgettable
Cleopatra, and that’s a scary thought.
Even if you don’t care that much about the actual movie, get hold of the newly released
Criterion DVD version to learn the real behind-the-scenes “dirt.” After hearing
Charlton Heston croon inanely about how each of the actors and film personnel in
Ben Hur were either “good” or “very good,” this pleasurable DVD sets a new standard and feels like a Roman feast and orgy of film tidbits. It’s compelled me to re-watch
Spartacus more times than I would have thought possible!