Luckily, Kirk kept Kubrick under control.

Rating: 7/10 (27 May 2012)

Kubrick started his career as a fairly dim-witted student, but was nevertheless a moderately talented stills photographer. As a film director he was also exceptionally pig-headed and obsessive, who frequently drove those he worked with to the point of desperation. A light touch was something he did not have. Some people think all his films are different. In fact, they all exhibit very similar and highly annoying characteristics. They are badly paced, since he appears to have had a poor idea of cinematic timing: the inflexibility, and fixed nature, of his stills photography training constantly shows through. The shots are composed as if they were intended to be totally static. An example in this film is the interminable build-up to the final battle. Often there are passages of excruciating slowness.
Secondly, in almost every picture there is at least one actor who is driven wildly over the top, usually from being forced to undergo a prolonged series of takes which render him near-demented. The prime example is G.C.Scott in "Strangelove", but there are many others. Kubrick may not have been responsible for the casting of Tony Curtis, but the actor's performance here as a "singer of songs" bordered on the ridiculous.
Thirdly, although Kubrick relied on using scripts by gifted writers he seems to have constantly wanted to distort these scripts along his own lines. The "adaptations" he made were not constructive, and never improved the stories. Authors he mistreated in this way included Burgess, Clarke, Nabokov, King, Schnitzler, etc. Typically, "Burgess felt that Kubrick had used him as a film publicity pawn", according to Wikipedia. Burgess later called him "Sidney Labrick". Malcolm McDowell shared these feelings, and spoke harshly about Kubrick. As evidence, both novelist and actor cited Kubrick's uncontrolled ego, made manifest in the film credits: the only author credited is "Kubrick". The sole thing truly great about Kubrick was his gigantic ego. If he was dim-witted, why was he so successful and rich? Bloody-minded doggedness does it, is the answer. Brawn bludgeons, beats and baffles brains.
Kubrick once remarked that "Spartacus is the only film on which I did not have absolute control", and this must be why it still retains superior qualities, sadly lacking from his later painful disasters like Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut and so on. Curtis is reported to have written that Kubrick's "greatest effectiveness was his one-on-one relationship with actors." The ambiguity of this comment may have been because Kubrick perhaps was still alive at the time Curtis published it. Several actors fell out permanently with Kubrick: Douglas, Brando, Scott, for starters. You might call these relationships one-on-one, if your tongue was in your cheek.
In spite of Kubrick, Spartacus is a splendid, entertaining and fascinating film epic, featuring fine performances by several outstanding actors: Olivier, Laughton, Ustinov, Strode, Lom, besides Simmons and Douglas. At this stage in Kubrick's career, all these personalities outweighed him, and, although I'm not totally certain, I don't believe any of them ever worked with him again.. The script is intelligent, perceptive, and often quite witty, although it tips over into excessive sentimentality at the end. The final ropy shots of Douglas on the cross make me think that Kubrick was trying to sabotage the film. However, allowing for the different eras in which they were made, it is a fundamentally better film than Gladiator. Both of these are far inferior to Troy, however.