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Quo Vadis (Mervyn LeRoy, 1951) +
Quo Vadis was made in 1951 before there were any widescreen film processes regularly used in filmmaking, but it's still crammed with action and spectacle. First off, and you may already know this, but I'm a huge fan of Deborah Kerr, and she may well look more beautiful here than she ever did. She plays a slave who was adopted by a Roman general who subsequently became a Christian, that underground sect where many of its members are condemned to death just by loving and following Jesus. Robert Taylor plays a Roman officer who is immediately smitten with the Kerr character but fears when he learns that she's a member of the Christian cult. This is the romantic plot which drives the film, but an even more-interesting subplot involves the crazed Nero (Peter Ustinov) who wants to be the greatest Emperor which Rome has ever seen, so if he has to burn down the city while composing a song to create a New Rome, so be it! Nero can even blame the Christians on the burning and send them all to the Colisseum where they will become victims of lions, tigers and bulls who would like nothing better than to rip them to pieces while the crowd roars for more and more blood.
Even though this film is shot in the more-squarish 1:33 ratio, it's crammed with action, not only involving the scenes in the Colisseum but also the spectacular burning of Rome where seemingly thousands of extras have to escape through blocked-off sewers and roads. Jesus is not actually in this film because he'd already been crucified, but Peter (Finlay Currie, again) and Paul (Abraham Sofaer) make appearances and have some lengthy scenes where they preach Christianity, mostly involving the Sermon on the Mount. This film runs about 170 minutes which is almost an hour shorter than Ben-Hur (when you include all that film's musical interludes when the film isn't actually playing). Together, they make for one gigantic representation of what Hollywood thought of Christianity as box office, as well as sex and violence tempered with a message of "love". The heroes or heroines always get the message while the insecure villains just never see it, all the way right up to their dying moments. I recommend both films, but as you can see, you have to be ready to invest a considerable amount of time in each, and if you have a problem with Christianity, even in its "formative stages", you may want to steer clear. However if that's true, I shudder to think of all the other problems you may have with watching certain movies.
Quo Vadis was made in 1951 before there were any widescreen film processes regularly used in filmmaking, but it's still crammed with action and spectacle. First off, and you may already know this, but I'm a huge fan of Deborah Kerr, and she may well look more beautiful here than she ever did. She plays a slave who was adopted by a Roman general who subsequently became a Christian, that underground sect where many of its members are condemned to death just by loving and following Jesus. Robert Taylor plays a Roman officer who is immediately smitten with the Kerr character but fears when he learns that she's a member of the Christian cult. This is the romantic plot which drives the film, but an even more-interesting subplot involves the crazed Nero (Peter Ustinov) who wants to be the greatest Emperor which Rome has ever seen, so if he has to burn down the city while composing a song to create a New Rome, so be it! Nero can even blame the Christians on the burning and send them all to the Colisseum where they will become victims of lions, tigers and bulls who would like nothing better than to rip them to pieces while the crowd roars for more and more blood.
Even though this film is shot in the more-squarish 1:33 ratio, it's crammed with action, not only involving the scenes in the Colisseum but also the spectacular burning of Rome where seemingly thousands of extras have to escape through blocked-off sewers and roads. Jesus is not actually in this film because he'd already been crucified, but Peter (Finlay Currie, again) and Paul (Abraham Sofaer) make appearances and have some lengthy scenes where they preach Christianity, mostly involving the Sermon on the Mount. This film runs about 170 minutes which is almost an hour shorter than Ben-Hur (when you include all that film's musical interludes when the film isn't actually playing). Together, they make for one gigantic representation of what Hollywood thought of Christianity as box office, as well as sex and violence tempered with a message of "love". The heroes or heroines always get the message while the insecure villains just never see it, all the way right up to their dying moments. I recommend both films, but as you can see, you have to be ready to invest a considerable amount of time in each, and if you have a problem with Christianity, even in its "formative stages", you may want to steer clear. However if that's true, I shudder to think of all the other problems you may have with watching certain movies.