Spartacus (Special Edition) [DVD] [1960]

The original film, based as it was on Fast's novel, takes many liberties with history. The characterisations of Spartacus' early days with Varinia, for example, are mere speculation. The course of the slave-army progress through Italy is similarly an invention made for easier poetic rendering - the slave-army in fact wandered throughout Italy in a much different fashion, with different results than shown in the film. The film portrays a rather simple pattern of slaves accumulating to the slave-army in droves as they march toward a port to escape from Italy; this is much easier to portray than the actual course. What this film does not do is set the stage properly historically - this was not the first slave revolt in Roman history, and Spartacus and his band of gladiators drew strength and inspiration from the Sicilian and southern Italian revolts of the then not-too-distant past.

However, the main object of Fast's novel, and Stanley Kubrick's realisation of such in cinema, was the story of the quest for freedom against oppression and tyranny. There are echoes of the cold war here, to be sure - the autocratic Crassus threatening the freedom of a great republic is easily translated into the `Red Scare' that so many people in the West, particularly in America, perceived in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Kubrick already had a reputation as a good director, but the film `Spartacus' may be what made his reputation of being a master of the directing arts (films such as `2001: A Space Odyssey', `Clockwork Orange', and `Dr. Strangelove', a much less subtle `Red Scare' film, were all to come later). His casting decisions from the young Kirk Douglas as Spartacus to Laurence Olivier as the conniving Roman power-broker Crassus to Peter Ustinov (who was also a script-writer, uncredited) as the gladiator-school owner Lentulus are all inspired. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, of which it won four, including a nod to Ustinov as best supporting actor. It also won the Golden Globe as best picture.

Crassus, by all historical accounts, was a schemer who wanted absolute rule in Rome. He was not the first, nor the last, but was one of the fore-runners of the Emperors who would spring from Julius Caesar's line. Crassus was for a time the wealthiest man in Rome, competing with Pompeii for power and influence. Crassus did not have the military experience Pompeii had, and so had to make up for this by crushing the slave rebellion. Olivier plays the calculating senator with grace and subtlety, but perhaps the most daring scene (on occasion omitted) was the bath scene with the mis-cast Tony Curtis, in which they speak of bisexuality and homosexuality in very oblique terms; of course such divisions of sexuality were, by many accounts, much less rigid in the past than our post-Victorian sensibility makes them out to be.

As I say, Tony Curtis seems mis-cast here as Antoninus. The `singer of songs' is an unlikely slave and unlikely leader in the army, and almost wholly an invention for dramatic device, to give Spartacus a stronger connection to Crassus and a dramatic denouement. The only primary female character in the film is Varina, superbly played by Jean Simmons, whose beauty was at its height during this time, and whose timeless voice carried much of the meaning of the slave revolt in real human emotions. The underutilised character of Draba, the African slave whose refusal to kill Spartacus in a private match staged by Lentulus, is ably played by Woody Strode, whose filmography includes an astonishing 76 films over the course of 50 years.

The staging of the film was dramatic and well-constructed; the sets were very realistic, particularly for a time before the invention of computer generated imagery. The gladiator training camp and army maneuvering showed researched into the training and tactics used in actual Roman settings, even if the blood was still a bit unrealistic by comparison to today's special effects standards. The film is in vivid technicolour, making this a real production of the `glory days' of Hollywood, where things were larger than life.

Despite ending with the crushing of the slave revolt, the whole film turns history around, as those watching will know the outcome. The freedom of Rome will itself soon come to an end, only to fall under its own weight a few centuries later. The cycle of history continues, and human freedom is something that is always to be valued, and requires the courageous and strong to work together and be willing to sacrifice - this is the moral of the story. The famous scene where all the conquered slaves stand to claim the identity of Spartacus is legendary, for good reason. Oft repeated, oft used in parody, this scene shows both the cost and value of loyalty.

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