Despite everything that is good about Spartacus, in many people's minds it will foreverremain the one film Stanley Kubrick made as a "gun for hire." Brought in by actor/executive producerKirk Douglas after he fired the original director, Anthony Mann (El Cid), Kubrick came inwhen production was already well underway. He was responsible for helming the majority of thefilm, but it never feels like a Kubrick film. Although he managed to leave a few of his imprints on thefinished product, for the most part it looks as though it could have been made by any polisheddirector.

The film tells the story Spartacus (Kirk Douglas), a slave who led a daring revolt in Italy against theRoman Empire about 73 B.C. When the film opens, Spartacus is purchased by Lentulus Batiatus(Peter Ustinov in an Oscar-winning role), a wealthy slave trader who runs a school for gladiators. Atthis school, the slaves-turned-gladiators are taught to fight each other to the death for the enjoyment ofRomans rich and debauched enough to enjoy such a spectacle. At the training school, Spartacus alsolearns love, when he meets the beautiful British slave girl, Varinia (Jean Simmons).

Finally fed up with being treated like an animal, Spartacus leads a revolt against the guards at theschool. They are quickly overrun, and the newly freed gladiators take off through the Italiancountryside, gathering numbers as they attack estates, freeing the slaves and pillaging the riches. Theirplan is to make it to Southern Italy where they will pay a large group of pirates to sail them far awayfrom the Roman Empire that had enslaved them.

Meanwhile, the film spends a great deal of time showing us the backstage antics of those in power inthe Roman Empire, namely the political warfare being waged between a senator with dictatorialambitions, Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier), and an older, more restrained senator,Gracchus (Charles Laughton). For 1960, the film was decidedly frank about Roman decadence,which gives it an edge that is lacking in too many sword-and-sandal epics of the era. The film containsa great deal of talk about Gracchus' fondness for many women, and he and Batiatus have an amusingconversation about why corpulent men are better people.

However, one key scene with heavy homosexual overtones was cut from the film and later restored tothe finished print in 1991. The scene shows Crassus being bathed by his slave, Antoninus (playedfairly badly by Tony Curtis). It includes a classic line where Crassus, after asking Antoninus if helikes to eat oysters or snails, says quietly, "My taste includes both oysters and snails,"which is a none-too-subtle code for his bisexuality. It is of little surprise that the Production CodeOffice demanded the removal of this scene, not so much because of the line itself, but because thescene in which it is uttered, shot through sheer curtains with lush music, is so heavily homoeroticized.

Kubrick took two years and a staggering $12 million to make Spartacus, and much of themoney was well-spent, especially in the extensive battle scene near the end of the film in whichSpartacus' army of slaves faces down the Roman legions. This magnificent staging of two armiesfacing each other across a plain and the ensuing battle is truly an epic of thousands (Mel Gibsonobviously took careful notes before filming Braveheart). Kubrick takes his time establishingthe parameters of the battle, giving us long, wide shots of the Roman army marching in perfectlyformed columns as they move forward, their numbers seeming to grow each moment as legionsseparate out and form new columns. The battle that follows is fast and furious, punctuated with quickmoments of graphic violence that were removed during most theatrical prints in 1960 (there is onebrief, shocking moment when Spartacus hacks off a Roman soldier's arm).

However, like many films from the 1960s, Spartacus is a classic that betrays its age. Someof the hairstyles are decidedly un-Roman (especially the women's, although Kirk Douglas' perfectlystyled flattop seems out of place, as well), and several lines of dialogue are wooden and awkward.Still, the film was groundbreaking in many ways, most notably Douglas' decision to hire screenwriterDalton Trumbo (A Guy Named Joe), one of the blacklisted members of the infamousHollywood Ten, to pen the screenplay when novelist Howard Fast did not satisfy in his attempts toadapt his own novel. Of course, Trumbo had worked steadily throughout the decade following hisyear of imprisonment in 1950 for refusing to answer questions and name names at the McCarthyhearings, but he had been denied screen credit because no one wanted to risk being associated with ablacklisted writer. Douglas was one of the first to break the blacklist by giving Trumbo screen credit,which was the beginning of the end of the hysterical McCarthy era.

Spartacus also pushed boundaries with its tragic ending that does not give its audiences avictorious hero, but rather a crucified one whose only salvation is the hope that all his fighting was notin vain. Without its ending, this grand, old-fashioned Roman epic (it runs well over three hours)would be more along the lines of something Cecil B. DeMille might have made. Spartacusstill stands out because it has a certain intelligence and underlying political agenda moving beneath itsgrand Technicolor surface (Trumbo managed to insert several digs at McCarthy, including a referenceto Crassus "making lists of the disloyal"). Looking back on the film more than 40 years later, some ofKubrick's resonant themes about dehumanization manage to shine through, especially in the earlyscenes at the gladiatorial school, which almost serve as a warm-up for the more intense dehumanizingthat takes place in the Marine boot camp in Full Metal Jacket (1987).

However, even for those detractors who might feel Kubrick sold out to the Hollywood establishmentwhen he made this film (even once), Spartacus is an undeniably rousing picture. Kubrick'svoice may have been muted, but it is there. You just have to listen for it.

Copyright ©1997, 2001 James Kendrick

Overall Rating: (3)