A Matter of Time

 

Director Vincente Minnelli

Father and daughter on the set

Liza Minnelli with her father, and mother, Judy Garland

Ingrid Bergman with her daughters Ingrid and Isabella

A MATTER OF TIME       D+                                                                                                     USA  (97 mi)  1976  d: Vincente Minnelli

No one dies unless we wish them to.                                                                              —Contessa Sanziani (Ingrid Bergman)

Something of a train wreck of a film, a really perplexing example of a project being stolen from the director, as Samuel Z. Arkoff, head of American International Pictures, known mainly for low-budget exploitation B-movies of the 50’s and 60’s, took the final cut out of the hands of Minnelli very early in the post-production process, before the director was able to supervise the dubbing and musical scoring, both of which are utterly atrocious in the final version, while also reducing the length of the film, yet inexplicably adding a prologue and epilogue, where all that’s left are the ruined remains of what could have been.  Based on the 1955 Maurice Druon novella Film of Memory, the film is loosely based on the real life exploits of the infamous Italian eccentric Marchesa Casati, with Druon striking up a relationship with her during her declining years in London while he was stationed there during World War II, becoming a staged version in 1965 with Vivian Leigh entitled La Contessa.  The film went through various changes in title, starting with the book title, then Search for Beauty, then Carmella, then Nina, before finally settling on the current title, which is the name of a song that can be heard in the introduction sung by Liza Minnelli, now a fabulous film star named Nina, but the film is a flashback to when she was an impressionable hotel chambermaid and finds herself living her life through the memories of an aging Contessa (Ingrid Bergman) at the once splendid, now run-down hotel.  Utterly devoted to the impoverished Contessa, who is on the verge of being evicted for nonpayment, her vivid memories serve as an inspiration for Nina to reach for a better life.  Made in Italy, shot on location in Rome and Venice, mostly taking place in a single hotel, though there are fleeting shots of an entirely different world outside (mostly stock travelogue footage of Rome), which we rarely get a chance to see, with Bergman stuck in what is arguably the worst make-up job of her career, looking more like a ghoulish vampire from Transylvania.  The claustrophobic confines of the Contessa’s room is where most of the film takes place, as we get caught up in the psychological mindset of a myriad of memories that intermingle with the present, often becoming indistinguishable, where Nina can be seen taking the place of the Contessa in her own memories, adding a surrealistic flourish of mixed identity that seems to accentuate and embellish the fractured aspects in the aging process.  Liza grew up on the MGM sets with her father, where Hollywood stars and friendly crew members comprised her extended family and helped celebrate her birthdays, so she grew up longing to work with her father, who she describes as “the gentlest, funniest, most charming man I ever met,” but he was 73 when he made what ended up being his final picture, receiving little in the way of career honors during his lifetime.  The film was badly edited, mutilated might be the better word, as Arkoff gutted the picture, described by Pauline Kael as “chopped-up shambles,” opening to terrible reviews, quickly disappearing from theaters, and never released in Britain or France.  Both ended up disowning this film, signing their names to an ad taken out in the trade papers, along with 33 other directors, protesting that their vision had been violated, “The film is a reedited, revised, altered, and distorted form that has nothing to do with the original content.  We are concerned here with principles and ethics.  An artist must be allowed his view, and those who back him must support that view after the fact, as well as before it.”  The names of support included Robert Aldrich, Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, Peter Bogdanovich, Clarence Brown, Frank Capra, John Cassavetes, Brian De Palma, Allan Dwan, Blake Edwards, Milos Foreman, Bob Fosse, Samuel Fuller, John Hancock, Elia Kazan, Gene Kelly, Irving Lerner, George Lucas, Sidney Lumet, Alan Pakula, Arthur Penn, Otto Preminger, Jean Renoir, Martin Ritt, Herbert Ross, Mark Rydell, Martin Scorsese, Joan Mickland Silver, Steven Spielberg, Billy Wilder, Gene Wilder, and Robert Wise.

A bizarre father/daughter musical with Liza Minnelli, though it’s not really a musical at all, instead Liza sings these existential songs about making something of her life, a kind of rags to riches fantasy about becoming a huge star, where the entire story is told through the vantage point of another aging star whose memories become mixed with her own, like a Proustian reflection on time and memory, at one point pleading with her, “Please don’t give up your memories… I feel like I’m a part of them now,” Liza Minnelli and Ingrid Bergman in A Matter Of Time 1976 TikTok (52 seconds).  It’s incredible to believe this comes “after” CABARET (1972), shot by the same cinematographer, Geoffrey Unsworth, yet doesn’t have the look of any other Minnelli film, as this is a misfire on all cylinders, jinxed by labor strikes, which extended the length of the shoot, expanded from fourteen weeks to twenty, yet there’s something essentially captivating about the fact it was made at all, as it obviously had meaning for the people involved, including Ingrid Bergman and her daughter Isabella Rossellini making her first film appearance in just a bit part at the end, much more captivating in the barely seen Taviani brother’s movie IL PRATO (The Meadow) (1979), which is genuinely affecting, another film about realizing, with a sense of urgency, just how important it is to be alive.  While this is also the only time Ingrid Bergman and her daughter worked together, it is also the final film of Charles Boyer, who was in an extraordinary amount of pain for his brief appearance as the Contessa’s long estranged husband of forty years, Count Sanziani.  The shoot in Italy came at the height of a series of high-profile kidnappings known as the Years of Lead (Italy), including the kidnapping and killing of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978, and several threats were made against Liza Minnelli, but she kept this information from her father and simply increased her personal security team.  It was also the first time Ingrid Bergman returned to Italy for a film since making films together with Roberto Rossellini in the early 50’s (3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman).  While the film has a Cinderella-like structure and fairy tale ending, Liza’s singing style resembles her mother, emphasizing the lyrics through dramatic pauses, “Fairy tales can come true…Into each life a magic moment comes,” the chambermaid Nina is actually discovered by a film director staying at the same hotel, Antonio Vicari, played by Gabriele Ferzetti, the star of Antonioni’s L’AVVENTURA (1960), who is roundly criticized by the thoroughly incensed room service maid after spontaneously pouncing on her while he’s busily attempting to construct a grand rape scene for his movie finale, which is causing him no end of frustrations, Watch “A Matter of Time” | The Front Row | The New Yorker YouTube (4:58).  But the storyline goes through the Countess, where her world unravels through a kind of memory time traveling, loaded with chaotic flashbacks and fantasies, living in the upper crust of society, where she is literally worshipped wherever she goes, usually in the company of fabulously wealthy men, as she’s wined and dined and swept through a world of casinos and châteaus, staying in only the finest hotels of Europe where she’s catered to like royalty, yet this world only exists in her mind, consumed by the passions of her past, where her entire raison d’être is to feel alive.  Years ago, the Contessa left her husband for another man, still fixated on this long gone affair, one of many treatments of adultery in Minnelli films, like a Madame Bovary obsession, showing the huge costs, as not only did it wreck the Contessa’s marriage, but it may have driven her to live in the past.

Nina is drawn into this cobwebbed imagination, fixated on her experiences, utterly spellbound by the seductive detail of her recollections, as she gradually begins to imagine herself inhabiting the Contessa’s past, often placing herself in the luxurious position of the Countess.  This structure actually resembles the previous Minnelli film, ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER (1970), where a woman’s memories are recreated under a hypnotic state by her treating psychiatrist, causing the doctor to fall in love, not with the woman he’s treating, but the woman she used to be, becoming increasingly interested in taking possession of her past.  A lamentable costume drama, the horrible dubbing and intrusive aspect of oversaturated music makes it difficult to take any of this seriously, confounded by its lack of narrative cohesion, as some of the dialogue seems to refer back to things we never see, while long minutes of screen time are eaten up with rambling subplots that go nowhere.  Heavily overstylized and at times unhinged, with exaggerated theatrics veering into camp, the look of the film makes it seem like it was filmed in a cave, as the colors are dull instead of vibrant, where the passage of time has not done this film any favors, as it’s only lost more of its luster.  The subject of aging and death are a central premise of the film, as the Contessa is an eccentric woman completely out of touch with the contemporary world, like The Madwoman of Chaillot, or Gloria Swanson’s aging Norma Desmond in SUNSET BLVD. (1950), finding herself detached from reality, verging on madness, where it’s hard not to connect this to the director’s own lingering obsessions.  In Mark Griffin’s biography of Vincente Minnelli, A Hundred or More Hidden Things, Liza’s half-sister Lorna Luft recalls that Minnelli was already in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.  The postproduction problems only accentuate this element of disillusionment, as the film itself suffers from its own fractured existence.  Yet what Nina sees is someone who served as a muse for artists, and a source of inspiration for great minds, asking for little in return except to live her life free of tedium and banalities.  In lucid moments, she views Nina as her apprentice, offering teachable moments, as she hands out good advice, such as “be yourself—the world worships an original,” as nobody wants a copy, yet at the same time she is shown training Nina how to get jewelry from boyfriends.  What she’s really doing is transferring the largesse of her life into Nina’s suffocating existence, breathing new life into her, as if resuscitating her lost dreams, Liza Minnelli - The Me I Haven't Met Yet (VERY RARE SONG!) YouTube (2: 45).  Of course, as the opening song suggests, it only takes a moment, and that supposedly innocuous coincidence occurs without explanation, it just happens, and everything changes afterwards.  While lingering on issues of death, what this film really wants to convey is the essential nature of new beginnings, perhaps with the belief that the director’s films would live on in future generations, as if passing the torch, using his own daughter to emphasize how this works, as her film character is completely transformed overnight into a major star, which is how it often happens.  There is only one staggering sequence in this film, a memorable moment of Liza singing a smoky, jazz-tinged rendition of George Gershwin’s Do It Again, Liza Minnelli sings Do It Again YouTube (3:31), which is oddly fascinating, one of her mother’s most exquisite songs, but done quite differently, Judy Garland ' Do It Again' - YouTube (4:44), exquisitely shot in the opulence of Venice’s Palazzo Ca’ Rezzonico, like something right out of CABARET, literally pulsing with life and reverberating with an intoxicated feeling.

2014 Top Ten List #5 The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza)

THE GREAT BEAUTY (La Grande Bellezza)              A-      
Italy  France  (142 mi)  2013  ‘Scope  d:  Paolo Sorrentino       Indigo Film [Italy] 

Our life is a journey

Through winter and night,

We look for our way

In a sky without light. 

(Song of the Swiss Guards, 1793) 

Travel is useful, it exercises the imagination. All the rest is dis­appointment and fatigue. Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength. It goes from life to death. People, animals, cities, things, all are imagined. It’s a novel, just a fictitious narrative. Littré says so, and he’s never wrong. And besides, in the first place, anyone can do as much. You just have to close your eyes. It’s on the other side of life.  

—Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night, 1932, Preface to 1952 Gallimard Edition 

Like other Sorrentino films, his fifth consecutive to premiere at Cannes, all but one starring Toni Servillo (the other in English starred Sean Penn), this one did not cause much of a splash, where critics have been skeptical and loathe to extend much praise to this creatively gifted Italian director, though his films have been among the most challenging of the era, and certainly seems to be the one director most prepared to extend Fellini’s vision and reach well into the next century.  Driven by the extraordinary talent and lush cinematography by Luca Bigazzi, who has worked on every Sorrentino film, whose elegant tracking shots draw the viewer into Rome’s interiors, this may be his most breathtakingly beautiful effort yet, a film that reveals the ravishing splendors of Rome, accompanied by one of the most sublime musical soundtracks of the year from Lele Marchitelli, which includes Vladimir Martynov’s The Beatitudes - Kronos Quartet - La Grande Bell - YouTube (5:25).  Based on a story written by the director and Umberto Contarello, it’s far more reminiscent of Fellini than any other film in recent history, and recalls the creative challenges of dream, memory, and the crisis of inspiration in Fellini’s 8 ½ (1963), or the sumptuous glory of extravagance and indulgence by the rich where this film is an updated, mirror image of LA DOLCE VITA (1960), a parade of the seemingly chaotic and disconnected events of the city of Rome in ROMA (1972), while also maintaining the unsurpassed classical beauty of Kubrick’s BARRY LYNDON (1975), and the elegant interior life and death struggle of Angelopoulos in ETERNITY AND A DAY (1998).  This sumptuous creation is a glorious and somewhat pompous film about the decadent party going of the idle rich as seen through the eyes of Jep Gambardella (Tony Servillo), who on his 65th birthday remains a central part of the lavish, all-night party nightlife of Rome as he has for decades, see The Great Beauty (La Grande bellezza) - Dancing Scene YouTube (7:53), unsubtitled.  Toni Servillo (at age 54) doesn’t have the flamboyance and sexual charm of a much younger Marcello Mastroianni, who was only 36 as the philandering journalist in LA DOLCE VITA, yet he may be the result of the same Fellini character who has spent the last twenty years in constant party mode, seen here as an eminent socialite who wrote a successful novel in his twenties, The Human Apparatus, but hasn’t written another since, claiming “I didn’t want to simply be a socialite, I wanted to become the king of socialites. I didn’t just want to attend parties. I wanted the power to make them fail,” taking us on a veritable travelogue of Rome, where the immense beauty of an angelic chorale I Lie - David Lang - YouTube (5:03) coming from the ruins is so overwhelming that a Japanese tourist taking pictures literally falls to the ground and dies in an opening segment.  Thus begins an elaborate journey with one eye on his own impending death, walking us through the various locations of his life, with reflections into the past while having passing encounters with various friends. 

While the film is somber, reflective, and visually magnificent, a blend of sublime visual beauty and enchantingly gorgeous music that couldn’t be more harmoniously perfect, one of the most beautiful films one could ever hope to see, worth the price of admission in itself, see a wordless montage to the enchanting choral music of Arvo Pärt’s “My Heart's in the Highlands” by Else Torp and Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, La Grande Bellezza - The Great Beauty YouTube (8:24), unsubtitled.  The lack of any coherent storyline is a bit more problematic, as Jep, our jaded tour guide, observes the world with a poetic detachment and a somewhat nihilistic view of life, expressed through an almost unrelieved pessimism and cynical humor, very much in the manner of the Céline novel, which also utters, “As we grow older, we no longer know whom to awaken, the living or the dead,” while also contending “You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past.”  Nonetheless, as an aging journalist writing a culture column, that’s exactly what he does, taking the viewer on a seemingly imaginary journey through the ancient relics of Rome, walking through the ruins, the magnificent fountains, and the city streets, reflecting on his life, his first love, and his own growing sense of unfulfillment and discontent, even as he lives in a simply stunning apartment overlooking the Colosseum.  Despite his intimate knowledge of the city’s secrets and the entire high society of Rome, it’s his own extravagant lifestyle that slowly begins to crumble before his eyes, bemoaning the lack of “true” beauty in a city spilling over in luxury, endless excess and indulgence, where he blatantly shares his disgust with a neverending stream of his so-called friends and associates, as his ultimate revulsion lies with himself.  And therein lies the film’s Achilles heel, as the bizarre charade of Felliniesque characters adds to a dazzling landscape of surreal spectacle, capturing the seductive, empty hedonism of the Berlusconi era where the upper income 1% revel unapologetically in the obscenity of their wealth, but Jep’s utterly aloof and deep melancholic detachment from it all is expressed through a dour and everpresent gloom, rarely appealing emotionally, where he proudly declares he’s “a misanthrope not a misogynist.”  As he explores the great questions and existential meaning of life, it’s difficult to find an entry point into this all-consuming surface reality of immense Italian mansions and luxurious wealth on display, as the city’s ancient beauty and poetry overwhelm, and can be euphoric, but any sign of humanity in any of these characters is non-existent.  There is one exception, however, a singular, stand alone moment in the film where Jep crosses paths on an outdoor staircase with an unidentified woman (Fanny Ardent), where both greet one another with an infectious smile, as if they’ve known each other for years, offering a brief window into warmth and humanity, before continuing on their separate paths.   

Something of a modern day version of Fellini’s fall of Rome, the story of a man who hasn’t a real problem in the world, who eventually owns up to his own superficiality, where we hear a pretentious party reveler proclaim “I only listen to Ethiopian jazz,” this is a virtuoso piece of filmmaking, part character study, part impressionistic mood piece, where characters aren’t living their lives so much as they are constantly performing, as if all eyes are always upon them, where nearly every one of Jep’s pampered friends burns out or suffers a profound loss as they abandon themselves to one sin after another, where even the church is not exempted from this exhaustive display of fraudulent self-indulgence.  A saintly Mother Teresa figure who has taken a vow of poverty cannot speak of it, as words cannot adequately express even the poverty of the soul, where she can only perform seemingly meaningless acts of attrition, seen at age 104 crawling up an endless staircase, supposedly a redemptive act, but no more beneficial in the wide scheme of things than the endless all-night parties that are equally pointless, where Jep dances in a snake-like conga-line called a train, observing “You know what I like about the train?  It goes nowhere.”  Seen as a humorously satiric essay on nostalgia, where one of Jep’s oldest friends is another aging poet Romano (Carlo Verdone), who exclaims “What’s the matter with nostalgia?  It’s the only thing left for those of us who have no faith in the future.” While Fellini’s 60’s films expressed an unbridled enthusiasm, filled with excitement and a positive look to the future, today there is a spiritual void, as the world lacks positive energy and any deeper meaning.  Perhaps the only open door with a look to the past as well as the future is the world of artistic expression, which is the architectural foundation of this film, as art has a way of constantly getting under the surface, continually probing areas deeply connected to human feelings and emotions.  One of the best scenes in the film comes near the end when Jep visits a man whose home is a photo exhibition, displaying photos taken of him each and every day both as a boy and a young man, the accumulative effect of which is truly moving, where Jep is touched by what he sees, as the photographs have a way of evoking powerful emotions.  In much the same way, while he satirically outlines the proper rules of etiquette for a high class funeral, he violates his own rules when he’s genuinely moved to tears.  Without discovering any religious or philosophic revelations in his life, the film offers windows into Roman life that may only be understood by a fellow Roman, where perhaps the major discovery is art itself, as only then can we capture the aesthetic pleasures, deeper meanings, and true nature of beauty, an elusive quality seen here as la grande bellezza, taking us on a journey that continues right through the final moments of the end credits, La grande bellezza sigla finale YouTube (7:29).

Spartacus

SPARTACUS              C+                  

USA  (184 mi)  1960  ‘Scope  d:  Stanley Kubrick    uncredited director:  Anthony Mann  1967 re-release (161 mi)     1991 Restored version (197 mi)

The only Kubrick film that disappoints, as it was after this film, which Stanley Kubrick thought was a personal disaster, that he left the United States and took up permanent residence in Hertfordshire north of London in England.  It remains the only film directed by Kubrick where he did not have complete artistic control.  While Kubrick disowned the film and did not include it as part of his own original work, it grossed $60 million dollars for a $12 million dollar picture (one of the costliest movies of its era), becoming the biggest moneymaking hit in Universal Studio history until surpassed by AIRPORT (1970), and remains the third highest grossing Kubrick picture after 2001:  A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), nearly $200 million, and EYES WIDE SHUT (1999) at $160 million.  According to Kubrick afterwards, “Then I did Spartacus, which was the only film that I did not have control over, and which I feel was not enhanced by that fact.  It all really just came down to the fact that there are thousands of decisions that have to be made, and that if you don’t make them yourself, and if you’re not on the same wavelength as the people who are making them, it becomes a very painful experience, which it was.”  Biblical epics, also known as sword and sandal movies, were extremely popular in the 50’s, including Mervyn LeRoy’s QUO VADIS (1951), which includes uncredited direction from Anthony Mann, Henry Koster’s THE ROBE (1953), Cecil B. DeMille’s THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956), and William Wyler’s BEN-HUR (1959), which went on to win 11 Academy Awards.  SPARTACUS came about largely from Wyler’s refusal to hire Kirk Douglas in the title role, a part he passionately craved, hiring Charlton Heston instead as the noble hero, while offering Douglas the role of the villainous enemy Messala, a part he refused, instead forming his own production company to make his own Roman epic, admitting “That was what spurred me to do it, in a childish way—the ‘I’ll-show-them’ sort of thing.”  Initially turned down by David Lean, veteran director Anthony Mann, best known for his tense, psychological westerns like Winchester '73 (1950), The Naked Spur (1953), and Man of the West (1958), but also noir films like T-MEN (1947), RAW DEAL (1948), and Side Street (1950), a man with a predilection for shooting outdoors, was hired for the film.  Supposedly after shooting the opening quarry sequence of slaves crushing rocks under the brutal hot sun while under the whip of Roman guards, filmed in Death Valley, Nevada, Douglas fired him, citing artistic differences during the shooting of scenes at the gladiator school, hiring the young 31-year old Stanley Kubrick to take over, a director he had worked with previously in PATHS OF GLORY (1957).  To show how quickly this came about, Mann was fired on Friday, Kubrick read the script over the weekend, and was called in to begin shooting on Monday.

A Biblical epic with no religious overtones, the film about an early Roman slave revolt was based on the 1951 novel by Howard Fast, a former communist who began writing it as a reaction to his own imprisonment during the era of McCarthyism and Hollywood blacklisting, where he was imprisoned for 3-months for contempt of Congress after refusing to disclose the names of contributors to fund a home for orphans of American veterans of the Spanish Civil War.  While Douglas optioned the book, he also took on the dual responsibilities of executive producer and star of the film.  Ironically, after receiving 60 pages of script from Fast, Douglas turned to another blacklisted writer, Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten who defied the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 and was sentenced to a year in jail for refusing to cooperate.  After a decade of writing scripts under pseudonyms, Douglas helped destroy the Hollywood blacklist by using Trumbo’s own name in the credits.  There are interesting parallels with the McCarthy Hearings demanding witnesses “name names” of supposed communist sympathizers and a climactic scene near the end of the film after the revolt is crushed, where the tyrannical Roman General Crassus demands the captured slaves identify their leader, where each one stands up and proclaims “I am Spartacus,” leading Crassus to make the ominous proclamation, “In every city and province, lists of the disloyal have been compiled,” where every one on the list is cruelly put to death.  Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper denounced the film, claiming “The story was sold to Universal from a book written by a commie and the screen script was written by a commie, so don’t go to see it.”  Apparently nobody listened.  This is truly a Hollywood spectacle, with 10,000 extras used in the climactic battle sequence between slaves and Roman legions, but much of the film has little or no dialogue (where Kubrick reported having the most artistic freedom), accentuating the visual composition, often featuring the grandeur of an immense landscape, much of which were painted sets used as backdrops.  While the opening shots of the final battle sequence between Spartacus’s army of slaves and the geometrically arranged Roman army were actually shot in Madrid with Kubrick directing the armies from the top of specially constructed towers, the battle sequences were shot on a Hollywood soundstage, where the vast visual design recalls similar uses of perfectly choreographed battle formations set in giant landscapes from Miklós Jancscó’s THE RED AND THE WHITE (1967) and Kurosawa’s RAN (1985).  This was Kubrick’s first film in color and the first shot in widescreen, using 35 mm Super 70 Technirama which was then blown up to 70 mm film.  The cinematographer Russell Metty often complained about Kubrick’s unusually precise and detailed instructions for the film’s camerawork, but never complained about winning the Oscar for Best Cinematography. 

Despite hiring a visionary director like Kubrick, he was little more than a hired hand, unfortunately straddled by the suffocating restrictions of the era, where the film is basically a traditional “sword and sandal” costume drama with little or no character development, accentuating the heroic nature of the noble hero Spartacus (Kirk Douglas), while all the other Roman characters couldn’t be more despicable in their plotting attempts to continually manipulate and outmaneuver others for power or money.  According to Kubrick, the film “had everything but a good story,” as there’s a lack of identification with anyone onscreen, where Kubrick complained the character of Spartacus was depicted as a saint, with no human faults, which has a way of dating the film, unlike the timelessness of Kubrick’s other films, but this was the typical Hollywood formula that continued unabated throughout the 50’s and 60’s until they broke the bank with CLEOPATRA (1963), where by the end of the decade studios had completely lost their autocratic power.  Kubrick distanced himself from the film afterwards, continually at odds with the writer Trumbo over conflicting visions, where the working relationship with Douglas soured as well.  Douglas notes in his autobiography, “You can be a shit and be talented and, conversely, you can be the nicest guy in the world and not have any talent.  Stanley Kubrick is a talented shit.”  Despite all the troubles on the set, SPARTACUS was a critical and commercial success, winning four Academy Awards, and established Kubrick as a director of note, though many of the violent battle scenes were eventually cut due to negative audience reactions at preview screenings.  Also excluded in the original release was a bath scene (filmed at William Randolph Hearst’s San Simeon estate) where Roman general Crassus (Laurence Olivier) attempts to seduce his slave Antoninus (Tony Curtis with his completely out of place Brooklyn accent), claiming sexual preference is all a matter of taste, like “eating oysters” or “eating snails,” rather than a reflection of morality.  The film was re-released in 1967 in a version 23-minutes shorter, and again in 1991 with the same 23-minutes restored while also adding an additional 14-minutes cut from the original release.  Due to the death of Olivier two years earlier, when the film was restored in 1991, the original audio recording of the bath scene was missing, so it had to be redubbed by Tony Curtis, and with the permission of Olivier’s widow, actress Joan Plowright, she recommended Anthony Hopkins, a protégé of Olivier from the Royal National Theater, to impersonate Olivier’s voice in the scene.  Also missing is a scene where Roman Senator Gracchus (Charles Laughton) commits suicide, though the act is certainly implied due to the dramatic power shift.  

It was actually during the making of this movie that Kubrick discovered a preference for filming in the controlled environment of a studio, as there were fewer outside distractions or acts of nature to contend with, believing actors could better concentrate working on a sound stage.  Douglas assembled a powerful cast, starting with Laurence Olivier, who read the book and felt he’d be perfect playing the part of Spartacus, then afterwards suggested he’d consider the part of Crassus if it was improved upon.  Laurence Olivier playing one of the first bisexual characters in a major Hollywood film, you’d think this would be noteworthy, but according to Douglas, the scene was “very subtle, nothing explicit.  The censors weren’t sure it was about homosexuality, but just in case they wanted it out.”  Douglas fought for the scene, claiming it was significant because it “showed another way the Romans abused the slaves.”  For the role of Varinia, Spartacus’s love interest, initially the role was given to German actress Sabina Bethmann, but once shooting got underway, it was decided she was not right for the part, so Douglas quickly replaced her with Jean Simmons, who had just finished shooting ELMER GANTRY (1960), eventually marrying the director Richard Brooks.  Peter Ustinov quickly signed on as Batiatus, a major slave trader and the operator of the gladiator training school, winning the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor, but it was harder to convince Charles Laughton, who took one look at the script and reportedly uttered, “Really, a piece of shit.”  In the end he took the role as he needed the money, earning $41,000 for 13 days of shooting that he claimed was far from a pleasant experience, though Laughton stole most every scene he was in.  Rounding out the cast was Woody Strode, part of the John Ford stable of actors who played one of the strongest gladiators, matching Douglas blow for blow in the ring, among the better scenes in the film, becoming the spark that led the slave revolt at the training camp in Capua, quickly overrunning the guards, leading to an uprising that soon spread across the Italian Peninsula freeing tens of thousands of slaves, expressed as a utopian vision of freedom, where they quickly overrun the initial Roman army dispatched to rout them, causing a great deal of embarrassment and dissatisfaction in the Roman Senate, where John Gavin as Julius Caesar is promoted as Commander of the garrison of Rome, while General Crassus and his own army takes it upon himself to quell the rebellion. 

The historical era of the slave revolt was the two year period from 73 – 71 B.C., a time when slavery accounted for roughly every third person in Italy, where Spartacus and his ragtag army that included the elderly, women and children, actually defeated the Roman army on several occasions, even threatening Rome itself, eventually hoping to escape through the purchase of pirate ships awaiting them in the Eastern seaport of Brundisium, where the slaves could return to the lands of their origins where they had originally been sold to the Romans.  In the film Spartacus improbably announces their intentions, disclosing the exact location where they are heading, all but guaranteeing a massive Roman army would be there waiting for them.  While this strategy appears doomed from the outset, had they not been double crossed by Crassus, the ships bought out from underneath them, they might have gotten away with it.  Instead, after a long march to the sea, they have to turn and face the enemy, unwittingly moving his forces into a historical trap that the Romans were well acquainted with, having the time to bring in legions of troops from abroad, leaving Spartacus pinned between armies in what turns into a gory spectacle with tens of thousands slaughtered and a few thousand survivors left for capture.  When they refuse to identify which one is their leader Spartacus in exchange for leniency, Crassus decrees they all forfeit their right to live, stringing up all 6000 of his followers along with Spartacus on wooden crosses where they are crucified along the Appian Way, a 120 mile corridor between Capua and Rome.  For Trumbo, the barely hidden allegory of Joseph McCarthy’s fascist destruction of left-wing dissent in the 50’s was paramount, where the scene was meant to dramatize the solidarity of those accused of being Communist sympathizers during the McCarthy Era, glorifying the heroism of those who refused to implicate others, but there’s little evidence Kubrick held similar interests or motivation.  There’s no hint of any revolutionary spirit, or any sense of sacrifice for a greater good, instead there is a rush to doom where each one is left to an inglorious fate, dying an agonizing death, left isolated and alone, where they end up pawns in somebody else’s game.  Like most costume dramas, especially one based in antiquity, actors rarely give their best performances as they tend to overact and overdramatize, where the human element along with subtlety is diminished in order to emphasize the dazzling spectacle and pageantry.  Kubrick remedied that situation when he made his own historical costume drama, BARRY LYNDON (1975), one of the most ravishingly beautiful films ever made, where the contemplative pace balanced with plenty of sardonic wit and humor on display are a welcome change to these dreadfully pompous Hollywood presentations, where Kubrick’s later film is an advanced experiment in cinematic structure and design, one of his most worthy masterpieces.