In the history of cinema, ‘‘ancient’’ films were present at creation and have continued to hold their own till the present. While the phenomenon is international, these films did not follow the same cycle of ups and downs in every country - when American studios, for instance, stayed away from the genre after the financial Actium of
Cleopatra (1963), Italy revved up its production of‘‘peplum’’ movies, right alongside spaghetti westerns and spearheaded by the well-built body of Hercules, while the French, as always, marched to their own drummer, even if his name was Roberto Rossellini (see Solomon 1996: 118). The result has been an almost continuous output in the major western movie-producing countries on subjects connected with ancient Greece and Rome. It is impossible to catalogue this unbroken tradition here, nor can I do justice to all of its aspects, such as the many allusions and references to classical themes in film (cf. Winkler 1991; Solomon 1996) or the similarity between mythological archetypes and the western hero (Winkler 1985). They are important for the whole fabric (and an affinity version like O Brother Where Art Thou [2000] possesses more creative sparks than the plodding retelling of the Odyssey in the TV movie of the same name [1997]), and I will refer to them occasionally. Because of limitations of space, however, I will concentrate on the movies with actual Greek and Roman subjects, including those biblical ones like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) that have a substantial Roman component. Three periods stand stand out - the silent era, the large-screen boom in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the recent revival - but there was plenty of activity in between, including television series.
In the earliest cinema, up to 1914, antiquity was a frequent subject. We should not be surprised to find hundreds of titles, especially in France and Italy, since both countries, after all, had strong Roman roots (Asterix came later). In terms of themat-ics, two phenomena deserve special comment because they turned out to be abiding in subsequent cinematic history, too. One is the plenitude of adaptations of previous literary treatments; there were several versions of Quo Vadis, Ben Hur, and The Last Days of Pompeii, to name only a few. Here we can work well with reception theory and reader/viewer response criticism: the audience already comes prepared. They know the script, so to speak, and they can fill in the ‘‘gap’’ (Iser 1978) of the missing audio. In fact, it can be argued that the unavailability of sound actually heightens the viewers’ involvement as they have to supply the missing dimension (to the amusement of family members, I often watch movies that way on transatlantic flights, although it helps to know the story). Similar considerations apply to the other factor, the concentration on well-known, riveting, dramatic, complex, and flamboyant, if not charismatic, characters of whom there was no shortage in Greece and Rome, whether in history or mythology or the realm shared by both. Accordingly, early cinema was populated, often with repeated incarnations, by the likes of Julius Caesar, Nero, the heroes of the Trojan war, Spartacus, Attila, Cleopatra (and Antony), the Minotaur, Hercules, and a host of biblical characters from Moses to Jesus. These characters’ notoriety, for good or bad, made them attractive, and so did the audience’s ability to provide the (con)text. For further perspective, we should not forget that the most popular theatrical entertainment in the early Roman empire was the pantomime (Beacham 2005: 167-72), which was the silent (albeit, as with the movies, to musical accompaniment) acting out of highlights from Greek drama and mythology. Similarly, if film had its Egyptomania, so did interior decoration in Augustan Rome after the country’s conquest (de Vos 1980); the tradition of putting up obelisks in imperial capitals goes back to that time also.
Some cinematic landmarks stand out, as always. One was Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria (1914), the prototype of future spectacles such as Cecil B. DeMille’s. The plot involves what The New York Times called ‘‘what otherwise would be a purely historical work of limited appeal’’ (cited from Smith 2004: 40), that is, the Elder Scipio’s war against Carthage and, more specifically, his assault on Carthaginian Cirta and on Syracuse. But the panorama is far more sweeping, with tableau after tableau, including Hannibal’s march over the Alps, an eruption of Mt. Etna (The Last Days of Pompeii [1900]), after all, had featured the eruption of Vesuvius), Archimedes’ attempt to incinerate the Roman armada with Hellenistic technology’s equivalent of laser rays, the palpitating atmosphere of the temple of Moloch reeking of human sacrifices, and so on. Amidst all this, the human interest story: Roman ingenue winding up in Carthage as a slave; rescued by, and then separated from, a Roman noble undercover officer and his servant Maciste, who is as noble of soul as he is teeming with muscle; placed at the court of the Carthaginian princess Sophonisba, who ultimately commits suicide (no, not by asps); then reunited with her rescuers and riding off with her man (the officer) into the sunset while angels flutter about. The impact of all this on subsequent movies is obvious, and the debate starts here: what should get the upper hand, spectacle or human interest story? It’s an abiding issue that has to be decided by every director and, in true reception fashion, will often be answered differently by different critics and viewers; the real successes, of course, strike a good balance. Cabiria also was pioneering for its many technical innovations (Solomon 2001: 48): the camera dolly, extensive artificial lighting (welcome to the Forum Shops in Las Vegas), and extensive editing (more than three-quarters of the takes wound up on the cutting room floor). In addition, the enormous budget ($100,000 at the time) set a precedent for later epic ventures like Ben Hur (1959) and Cleopatra (1963); another prededent was plucking the muscle boy not from acting studios, but from locales like the docks of Genoa or bodybuilding outfits. Finally, besides Cabiria’s Maciste (Bartolomeo Pagano) continuing the role in several other movies, Italian movies with Maciste redivivus in the 1960s were ‘‘morphed’’ into Hercules films by their American distributors.
The other landmark film that exploited the possibilities of the new medium to the epic maximum and became an influential forerunner was D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916). It was conceived on an epic scale (it ultimately cost $2,000,000) as a tetraptych (the novelty of the endeavor deserves a novel word), juxtaposing and interposing four stories that illustrated the theme: a contemporary melodrama, dealing with the exploitation of factory workers; the massacre of the Huguenots in France; the crucifixion of Christ; and the fall of Babylon to the Persians. The final product, which spiraled out of control and flopped like Heaven’s Gate (1980), never was shown in its entirety in the theaters; instead, the Babylon segment ultimately was released separately (with a new happy ending) and is the one that ‘‘set a standard for scope and detail that helped shape the genre’’ (Solomon 2001: 234): sumptuous sets, hundreds of extras, authentic looking costumes and buildings, and gripping battle and siege scenes.
But the movie was a precursor in other important ways, too. One was the negotiation of the striving for authenticity with departures from historical facts. The latter
Figure 26.1 Giovanni Pastrone, Cabiria (1914): The Temple of Moloch, site of the miraculous rescue of the heroine from human sacrifice. Photo: Kobal Archive
Included, most notably, a Persian siege that never occurred but was too good a spectacle to pass up; compare Cleopatra’s entrance, in the 1963 movie, into Rome through the Arch of Constantine, undoubtedly one of the truly (or, to turn the usual argument on its head, authentically) unequalled moments in all of film history. At the same time, Griffith thoroughly researched all available resources for history, costume, art, and architecture, and went with the scholars in preferring the accounts from newly found Mesopotamian tablets to the narrative in the book of Daniel. Secondly, it was the orgy scenes (which actually had their basis in Daniel) that captivated Griffith’s attention and led him to allocate more resources to the Babylonian part than the passion of the Christ and the suffering of the Huguenots. One later, and perhaps involuntary, parallel was that orgiastic characters like Peter Ustinov’s Nero in Quo Vadis (1951) and Jay Robinson’s over-the-top Caligula in Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954) stole the show from the good guys, the Christians, who were virtuous and, therefore, rather dull. A third trend-setting aspect of Intolerance was cinematic intertextuality: there were deliberate echoes of Cabiria even in some of the set design, just as Cabiria had looked back to the volcanic spectacle of the earlier The Last Days of Pompeii. Such citations became a staple and are another reception aspect that links classicism in the cinema with classicism in literature and architecture. Two recent examples are Maximus’ battle against the chariots in Gladiator, which would be unthinkable without Ben Hur, and the testudo formation of Achilles’ Myrmidons as they hit the beach in Troy (2004), with their shields interlocked over their heads in imitation of the historically correct usage in just about any film involving the Roman army.
It is interesting to speculate why the tide of Greco-Roman subjects receded with the arrival of sound. Sure, there was ongoing production,2 but it was eclipsed by a preference for biblical themes and, probably not coincidentally, a marked sermonizing tendency. Besides, there was no need to take up Roman decadence when it could be found in real Hollywood. Still, DeMille turned to an old standby, Cleopatra (it had been produced at least nine times previously; see Kleiner 2005: 310) in 1934, even if he had to do so on a reduced budget, as his two immediately preceding movies (both nonhistorical) had not fared well at the box office. Cleopatra (with Claudette Colbert in the title role and running for less than two hours) was highly successful, earning several Oscar nominations and winning the award for cinematography. Otherwise, however, the lull continued; among other factors, World War II was as little conducive to ancient warrior epics in film as World War I had been to Griffith’s indictment of intolerance.
The pendulum swung back mightily in the 50s and early 60s. Spurred on by blockbusters like DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949) and his colossal The Ten Commandments (1956), the major studios vied with one another to fill the big screen. That, literally, was the objective: television had started invading the American living room, and the customers had to be reminded that a small black-and-white screen could not deliver the goods like a huge one in a movie house. It was the time that witnessed the introduction of several large-screen formats, including CinemaScope and Panavision, and the concomitant onset of horror vacui (a fear of empty spaces): the screen existed not for the exploration of two characters’ inner anguish (Goodbye, Ingmar Bergman) but had to be filled at all cost. And what better way to do so than with lavish recreations of ancient metropolises and palaces, sweeping vistas of Roman armies and navies, and spectacles in the arena? Lew Wallace’s unbeatable combination, which he dreamed up in 1879 in his many spare hours as Governor of the New Mexico Territory, of the Bible and Rome in Ben Hur (the subtitle was A Tale of the Christ) roared to its grandest success ever under William Wyler’s direction in 1959. It set all kinds of records and precedents: most Academy Awards ever (unsurpassed to this day, even if tied by Titanic [1999]); most expensive production, the cost of which (over $15,000,000) was eclipsed within a year by revenue from Ben Hur merchandise, including Ben His and Ben Hers towels; and a chariot race for the ages that, aside from being a cinematic milestone that is unlikely to be surpassed, also marked one of the few happy moments in history when Jews and Arabs cheered in unison (against the pax Romana, the Roman peace, of course). While not quite as grandiose as Ben Hur, other films used the same formula of melding Roman and New Testament themes for success, including the first CinemaScope movie, The Robe
(1953) , with its edifying tale of the conversion and martyrdom of the Roman tribune Gallio (Richard Burton), who wins Christ’s garment in a dice game at the foot of the cross. Other ventures that turned out to be less memorable include Sign of the Pagan
(1954) , with Jack Palance defending the Roman empire, and the enjoyable and lavish Helen of Troy (1955), during whose filming, history repeated itself as its Troy set in
Cinecitta went up in premature flames (almost half a century later, Wolfgang Petersen’s set of Troy [2004] in Baja California was wiped out by a hurricane - call it Priam’s curse). Undeterred, the Italians produced The Trojan Horse (1961), wisely focusing on Aeneas (Steve Reeves), who got away from the inferno; and Victor Mature marched across the Alps and more in Hannibal (1960), although ‘‘the real stars of the show are the forty-five elephants who comprise the bulk of Hannibal’s army. With little effort, they manage to upstage the human performers in the film’’ (Smith 2004: 118). Enough said.
The second coming of ‘‘ancient’’ movies cut an even wider swath. Hercules, the most adapted and adaptable figure of Greek mythology, was the subject of dozens of films. Many were made in Italy, including the prototype with Steve Reeves (1959), and then conquered America and other markets without much labor. Greece got some attention, as in a Cold War paean to democracy, The 300 Spartans (1963), which tellingly strikes that note in the first few frames against the backdrop of the Athenian Acropolis rather than Sparta. But Rome was the preferred venue because one could have it both ways. On the one hand, Rome signified decadence and imperialism (cf. Winkler 2001b: 272-90, and Winkler 2001a), and Crassus (in Spartacus [1959]), Caligula, and Nero became its easy icons; so, to an extent, does Messala in Ben Hur. The virtuous time was that of the Roman Republic, as it had been for America’s founding fathers. But, as Margaret Malamud (2001) has pointed out, a funny thing happened along the way: once the US became an imperial power, empire began to look not all that bad. In fact, its opulence and even excess called for celebration in life, and the new icon became Caesar’s Place in Las Vegas, which opened in 1966. It has been expanded several times since, and its adjacent, Roman-themed Forum Shops today are the mall with the highest merchandise revenue per square foot in the entire US. In the same year, 1966, Richard Lester adapted Broadway’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which was true to Plautine comedy by being a musical and a melange ( contaminatio) of diverse comedies. It functioned, at least on one level, as a parody of the moralizing heavies of the preceding 13 years, including the chariot race in Ben Hur (the movie’s context and comic antecedents in cinema are well discussed by Malamud 2001: 191-208).
The grand finale, however, of the period may have cheered the moralizers: like the Roman Empire, Cleopatra (1963), which did not sermonize, fell because of its own excess. Call some of it bad planning: whoever was responsible for thinking that English fall weather (in 1961) would be hospitable to a story set in the Mediterranean should have been fired and probably was, and that was only the beginning of multiple personnel changes, relocations, and stupendous cost overruns that forced Twentieth Century Fox to sell some of its properties in Los Angeles to stave off bankruptcy. In the affair of the two protagonists (Burton and Taylor), life began to imitate art (cf. Wyke 1997b: 101-5). A final vignette was that after some $30,000,000 in expenses, there was no money to provide Antony with an army in Egypt and Burton had to face Octavian’s legions like the Lone Ranger. Cleopatra’s story has been told many times; it is still a stupendous spectacle and ultimately broke even, but no studio would touch a big budget film on Greece or Rome until the next millenium. Fittingly, Anthony Mann’s The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) provides the whimper to
Cleopatra’s bang. It had already been in production (in Europe) as Cleopatra was winding up and, besides Sophia Loren, it featured Stephen Boyd, who had risen from Messala’s ashes, while the looks of Alec Guinness’s Marcus Aurelius prefigure Richard Harris’s in Gladiator, as did some of the plot themes (virtuous Republican sympathizers vs. the depraved Commodus - alas, the Republic had been gone for two hundred years and the Empire did not fall for another three hundred). Despite a strong cast, good acting, and one of the best sets of Rome, the movie got caught badly in the downdraft of Cleopatra and failed commercially, driving the last nail into a big coffin.
The interregnum, as I observed earlier, was not lacking in ongoing activity. Fittingly, several Greek tragedies were brought to the screen by Michael Cacoyannis, two with Irene Papas playing the protagonist (Electra [1962]; The Trojan Women [1971]). Idiosyncratic efforts like Fellini Satyricon (1969), Pasolini’s Medea with a stunning Maria Callas (1970), and, regrettably, Bob Guccione’s Caligula (1979) have some memorable qualities, but they did not reach a mass audience. Ray Harry-hausen came closer in Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1981); his stop-motion technique (Dynamation) offered some novelty, and so did his campy treatment of the Olympic gods - how else could they be handled in modern film after Lucan had already jettisoned them in his blood-and-guts epic of the first century ad? Television, therefore, became the medium for classical subjects to draw large numbers of viewers, especially through multipart series like Zeffirelli’s beautifully filmed Jesus of Nazareth (1977) and Masada (1981), which combined thoughtful issues, good acting (especially by Peter O'Toole, who seemed happy to put his role as Tiberius in Caligula behind him as quickly as possible), and absorbing action. Highbrows could indulge in the eccentricities and misogynism - it's good to keep in mind that some Julio-Claudians actually died of natural causes rather than by Livia’s machinations - of the BBC/PBS 13-part series I, Claudius (1977-8; see Joshel 2001: 119-61), which reaffirmed once and for all that Romans spoke with a British accent (a divide that had been established in Spartacus and Ben Hur, where the representatives of the evil empire are played by English actors vs. American freedom fighters and Bravehearts).
The unexpected success of Titanic (1997) with its $200 million budget suggested to studios that cinemepics somehow based on history could be a worthwhile venture again. The best and most profitable of the ensuing ancient trio came first: Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000), which won several Oscars, including one for Russell Crowe, was followed in 2004 by the less resounding Troy and Oliver Stone’s Alexander, both of which actually cost more to produce. They all created the climate for the expensively ($100,000,000) produced HBO/BBC 12-part series Rome (2005), which excelled in authentic - and, therefore, often dimly lit - settings, but fell short of the brio and zippy dialogue of previous HBO series, such as The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, which had put the network on the map. Rome was soon eclipsed in its time slot by ABC's more inventive Desperate Housewives, but the series will return for 12 more parts in 2007, ending where I, Claudius begins. And it is more than a coincidence that Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, with Romans in a major role and even speaking in Latin, also appeared in 2004.
All in all, this is quite a record for the classical tradition in cinema. It has had a major starring role, far greater than that of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and it includes some of cinema’s greatest names and achievements (see the list in Solomon 2001: 33-4). I will spend the remainder of this chapter not on special effects, but, using the three most recent films as a springboard, on highlighting some pertinent issues for further reflection and debate.
World History
