Hit and Myth

Rating: Null/10 (28 August 2005)

Director Stanley Kubrick was brought in late on this sprawling epic, which is probably why it possesses few (if any) of his touches; nevertheless it still qualifies as one of his better movies and as perhaps the best of the epics from the 50s/60s. Kirk Douglas stars as the eponymous hero, a troll-like biter of Roman's ankles when we first meet him, who is transformed into a svelte and charismatic leader of an army of slaves. Needless to say, this being a Hollywood studio movie, the story told here plays pretty fast and loose with the truth. Major characters, such as Verinia and Antoninus are pure invention, and the film has created something of a myth about the real Spartacus who was apparently a Roman deserter who was sold into slavery upon his capture and sent to Batiatus's gladiator training school. Gracchus (a wonderfully written part played with typical skill by Charles Laughton) did exist  but about 50 years before the slaves' uprising.
It's a shame that writer Dalton Trumbo and executive producer Douglas felt it necessary to add these invented characters, as they provide the weakest strands of the story. Jean Simmons is miscast in the part of Verinia: she's too demure and fragile-looking, too much the English lady you'd expect to find pouring tea in the garden instead of wine in the atrium. Her part is not particularly well written, either  too passive, even in her scenes with Olivier after the final battle. The character of Antoninus, played with little distinction by a too-old-for-the-part Tony Curtis  whose occasional forays into historical epics were never successful  is superfluous to the plot, and his only function seems to be to provide the writers with a means of demonstrating the sexual mores of Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier  another strong performance), the political foe of Gracchus, who represents the autocratic alternative to Gracchus's democratic ideal. Having abandoned his position as Crassus's body servant, Antoninus joins up with Spartacus and accompanies him to the very end. It's difficult to understand why Trumbo didn't simply merge the characters of Crixus (John Ireland), Spartacus's fellow gladiator and friend, and Antoninus, and find some other way to convey the nature of Crassus's character and ambition for Rome.
The political intrigues provide by far the more interesting aspect of the story, and were probably more important to Douglas than the emotional side, which seems to have been incorporated as a sop to the studio's need for a box office return. The intrigue and machinations of Crassus and the wily old senator Gracchus are never less than completely absorbing, whereas the emotional sub-plots rarely rise above the level of some biblical potboiler. For me, Laughton's performance far outshines that of Oscar winner Peter Ustinov (who nevertheless gives a terrific performance as Lentulus Batiatus, the cowardly owner of the gladiator school in which the slaves' revolt is born) and it's a mystery how he never received even a nomination for any major award for the part. Kirk Douglas, resists the temptation to grandstand for the most part in what could so easily have become a showy role, and works hard to show the man behind the myth. Russ Metty's superb cinematography never fails to do justice to the scale and scope of the story, and Alex North's score is justifiably celebrated.
While it's not without its shortcomings  not least of which is its protracted running time  SPARTACUS is deserving of the praise it has received over the years, and its reputation will no doubt continue to be enhanced in years to come.