#62: SPARTACUS (1960)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

7

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Never

BEST SEQUENCE

The final battle, immediately followed by the famous "I'm Spartacus!" scene

BEST LINE

"I'm Spartacus!"

"I'm Spartacus!"

"I'm Spartacus!"

- when dozens, if not hundreds, of men bravely proclaim themselves to be Spartacus in a show of solidarity with the real Spartacus, who doesn't get a chance to utter a word

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

94%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Featuring terrific performances and epic action, Kubrick's restored swords-and-sandals epic is a true classic."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"The slave Spartacus survives brutal training as a gladiator and leads a violent revolt against the decadent Roman Republic, as the ambitious Crassus seeks to gain power by crushing the uprising."

DIRECTOR

Stanley Kubrick

MAIN CAST

Kirk Douglas, Kirk Douglas's Chin Dimple, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, Tony Curtis

THOUGHTS

• I'll be frank, I wasn't really looking forward to this one. A grandiose historical epic clocking in at 3 hours and 17 minutes didn't quite sound like my idea of a thrilling time, but I shouldn't have been so quick to assume. I was thoroughly entertained all the way through, even if some parts, like all the Roman senatorial politicking, dragged a little in comparison to the action and battle scenes
• Really reminded me of Braveheart, another movie which was a little overlong, but which definitely held my attention
• Kirk Douglas, as Spartacus, was charismatic and very easy to cheer for. And while this might not count as intelligent movie criticism, I just have to say - man, that chin dimple! It's like a second belly button on his face! I honestly wonder if he had issues keeping it clean!
• As mentioned above, the Roman politics were the less interesting chunks of the movie for me, so partly for this reason I didn't necessarily find Laurence Olivier to be the most memorable villain, even while I appreciated his cold and steely demeanour
• On the other hand, my favourite performance by far was from Peter Ustinov playing Batiatus, Spartacus's former owner and the runner of a gladiatorial school. Anytime he was on screen I couldn't stop watching him and I absolutely loved his unctuous voice, a voice which has in fact been mentioned in this blog, however briefly and however long ago. Ustinov also played Prince John in Disney's animated Robin Hood, another performance I loved
• Ustinov was the only person to get an Oscar nomination for acting in this movie, a nomination he deservedly ended up winning, but Spartacus also got Oscars for Art Direction, Cinematography and Costume Design (and nominations for Film Editing and Music Score)
• This was a very early Kubrick movie, only his fifth feature film, and the only one of his movies on which he didn't have complete creative control. Perhaps for this reason, Kubrick essentially disowned it and didn't consider it part of his canon. And, having seen a good number of Kubrick's filmography, I have to agree that it doesn't quite have the same Kubrickian ineffable quality that his others do. But not to worry, this won't be the last we see of old Stanley, as he still has three more movies on the list  
• I already went on a mini rant about the use of accented English in movies when the characters definitely aren't speaking English, back when I was discussing Alan Cumming's Russian accent in Goldeneye. And we have a similar thing here. Considering Spartacus is set in the first century BC, of course the characters weren't speaking English and I wouldn't expect (or want) the filmmakers and actors to present the story entirely in Latin. But what really distracted me was the broad variety of accents we got. It seemed perhaps like the intention was to have the elitist Romans speak in stuffy British accents, whereas Spartacus's army of slaves spoke with more brash American accents, but even this didn't have total consistency between the characters. And it must be said, when I first heard Tony Curtis speak with his thick Bronx accent, I laughed out loud
• But, if I'm going to declare that I laughed at some of the filmmaking choices, I'll also admit that the ending made me tear up a little bit. I have layers
• Oh yeah, and the swords look kind of dumb
• Finally, there were some pretty fascinating behind-the-scenes stories from the making of the movie, but perhaps the most interesting little tidbit is the fact that it was written by Dalton Trumbo, a man who was imprisoned and blacklisted after refusing to testify during the House Un-American Activities Committee's investigation of Communist influences in the film industry in 1947. And while Trumbo continued to write screenplays under pseudonyms or other authors' names, Spartacus marked the end of the blacklist when Kirk Douglas insisted that Trumbo be credited for his work. Knowing this about the screenwriter also lends a fantastic poignancy to some of the events we see onscreen, especially the "I'm Spartacus!" scene in which all of Spartacus's companions refuse to give him up, even in the face of enormous consequences

Up next: Well, it might sound silly to people who were more familiar with Spartacus, but I actually didn't realize he was a gladiator or that so much of the movie would be set in a gladiatorial school. So, you can probably guess where I'm going with this - despite not being on the AFI list I've been planning on adding it in at some point, so I think this is a very appropriate time to supplement the list with Gladiator, a movie I saw once long ago