The gladiators revolution

Rating: 8/10 (17 May 2005)

There are several versions of Spartacus'life, and this drama was made based on the story written by Howard Fast seconded by the famous cinema writer Dalton Trumbo, blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, in the early 50s in Hollywood for his left wing ideas. For a film made in 1960, this is a very educative material and also very provocative for its time. The cast better cannot be, Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis together with the long-experienced and efficient British actors/actress as Charles Laughton, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons and Peter Ustinov, simply the best. Probably someone like the Russian director/actor Serguei Bondarchuk (War and Peace, 1968) would have prepared several sequels of this film, but Stanley Kubrick and his group opted for a long film, everything in one shot. Due to its length probably Kubrick could not include some more historical facts. For example, the film starts showing Spartacus already as a slave, when he was first a shepherd in Tracia, then became a soldier of Roman army, he deserted and became slave, and later was sold to an school of gladiators. These sequences are not shown or were not prepared in the film. I do not know either whether Fast included these facts in his book. The other thing is that Spartacus moved with his army up to the Alpes then came back to the South looking for the sea, this was not shown. Crassus had three battles against Spartacus, and he was defeated by Spartacus in the first two. The film only shows the final one. Finally Spartacus body was never found after the final battle, and here you know what the end is. In any case, the material is excellent, useful for everybody to know a bit of history and how things went in despotic Rome at that time. In addition, acting of Charles Laughton as Gracchus and Laurence Olivier as Crassus were certainly the best. The rest did a very good job, but Laughton and Olivier, who were not friendly at all among themselves, excelled in this film.