Dispensing with the Rashomon-like flashbacks of Howard Fast’s novel, each attuned to a different character’s view of Spartacus, executive producer Kirk Douglas’s film is a blunt, thin “big movie,” a collection of boring, silly, gory scenes that puts the best possible face on the Roman obliteration of the actual Spartacus’s slave rebellion in the first century B.C. This is a terrible movie—although the early parts, directed by Anthony Mann before bully Douglas fired him, are certainly more adept than the nonsense that follows. Stanley Kubrick, hired by Douglas as a replacement for Mann, wasn’t permitted to bring any of his own perspective to the material; as a result, he disowned the film, left the country permanently and never again made a Hollywood film, and refused to discuss the film for the rest of his life. The original author of the script, Dalton Trumbo, also more or less repudiated the released version, whose bevy of authorial hands after his left that script in the dust, obscuring especially Trumbo’s political intentions. Spartacus is the proverbial movie-by-committee watching which is a waste of time. (The waste of a lot of time: 198 minutes.)
Oh, a set or two are nifty, as is Alex North’s score; however intellectually and emotionally bereft, the thing is rich in production values. The acting is variable: Peter Ustinov’s Oscar-winning Batiatus chews up the scenery; Laurence Olivier is elegant and incisive as contumelious Crassus; Tony Curtis is ridiculous as the curly-topped slave whom Crassus keeps a cultivated eye on. Douglas’s exaggerated Spartacus is without nuance or insight.
Spartacus is fancifully given a wife and baby just so all three can participate in a grotesque farewell where the crucified Spartacus is invited to see in his son, vicariously, below, a future of freedom.
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SPARTACUS (Stanley Kubrick, Anthony Mann, 1960)
By grunesDispensing with the Rashomon-like flashbacks of Howard Fast’s novel, each attuned to a different character’s view of Spartacus, executive producer Kirk Douglas’s film is a blunt, thin “big movie,” a collection of boring, silly, gory scenes that puts the best possible face on the Roman obliteration of the actual Spartacus’s slave rebellion in the first century B.C. This is a terrible movie—although the early parts, directed by Anthony Mann before bully Douglas fired him, are certainly more adept than the nonsense that follows. Stanley Kubrick, hired by Douglas as a replacement for Mann, wasn’t permitted to bring any of his own perspective to the material; as a result, he disowned the film, left the country permanently and never again made a Hollywood film, and refused to discuss the film for the rest of his life. The original author of the script, Dalton Trumbo, also more or less repudiated the released version, whose bevy of authorial hands after his left that script in the dust, obscuring especially Trumbo’s political intentions. Spartacus is the proverbial movie-by-committee watching which is a waste of time. (The waste of a lot of time: 198 minutes.)
Oh, a set or two are nifty, as is Alex North’s score; however intellectually and emotionally bereft, the thing is rich in production values. The acting is variable: Peter Ustinov’s Oscar-winning Batiatus chews up the scenery; Laurence Olivier is elegant and incisive as contumelious Crassus; Tony Curtis is ridiculous as the curly-topped slave whom Crassus keeps a cultivated eye on. Douglas’s exaggerated Spartacus is without nuance or insight.
Spartacus is fancifully given a wife and baby just so all three can participate in a grotesque farewell where the crucified Spartacus is invited to see in his son, vicariously, below, a future of freedom.
Tags: Laurence Olivier
This entry was posted on November 12, 2009 at 9:51 am and is filed under Formal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.