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"Two of the greatest problems in history are how to account for the rise of Rome
and how to account for her fall. We may come nearer to understanding the truth
if we remember that the fall of Rome, like her rise, had not one cause but many,
and was not an event but a process that was spread over three hundred
years."
So begins The Fall of the Roman Empire, the sprawling historical epic
from Samuel Bronston that attempted nothing less than an adaptation of Edward
Gibbon's six-volume history. Bronston's 1961 El Cid had been a critical
and popular success and the producer was eager to work with director Anthony
Mann, who carved a grand and brawny story out of the spectacular production,
once again. According to Bronston's biographers, it was Mann who suggested
Gibbon's history. To pare the sprawling work down to a three-hour movie,
screenwriters Ben Barzman and Philip Yordan ( traced the beginning of the end of
Rome to 180 A.D., with the death of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and the beginning
of the disastrous reign of Commodus, whose decadence and recklessness stands in
for the ills and failures that marked the fall. Esteemed historian Will Durant
was hired as the production's "special consultant" and received a prominent
screen credit, which didn't stop the screenwriters from mixing supposition and
downright fiction into the narrative. In this dramatization, as Marcus Aurelius
(played with almost saintly idealism by Alec Guinness) battles the Germanic
tribes (also known as the Barbarians) on the Northern frontier, he makes the
painful choice to disinherit his decadent, arrogant son Commodus (Christopher
Plummer) and hand the reins of leadership to his adopted son and loyal general
Livius (Stephen Boyd), much to the approval of Lucilla (Sophia Loren), Marcus
Aurelius' commanding daughter. Before he can act upon his decision, however, he
is murdered in a conspiracy hatched by advisors and generals loyal to
Commodus.
If any of that sounds familiar, it may be because Ridley Scott centered his
Roman epic Gladiator on the same succession of power. Scott even opened
his film with the campaign on the Northern Frontier, with Richard Harris taking
the Alec Guinness role, Connie Nielson in Sophia Loren's part, and Joaquin
Phoenix more flamboyantly decadent than Christopher Plummer as the kinky and
morally corrupt Commodus. Russell Crowe's Maximus was Scott's stand-in for
Stephen Boyd's Livius, but where Maximus was immediately and viciously betrayed
by the power-mad Commodus in Gladiator, the relationship between Livius
and Commodus is much more complicated. Torn between duty to his Caesar and
loyalty to his friend and brother Commodus – not mention his love for Lucilla,
who has been married off to the King of Armenia (Omar Shariff) – Livius makes a
dramatic show of support for Commodus at the funeral of Marcus Aurelius.
It's one of the film's most magnificent scenes. The former Caesar's body is
carried out to a pyre and lit while representatives of every province, dressed
in their military finery, look on and the winds whip the falling snow into a
bitter frenzy. The snow was real. According to Mann's production manager C.O.
"Doc" Erikson, it began to snow on the first day of the location shoot in the
dense forests of the mountains of Seville (standing in for the untamed German
frontier) as if in answer to Mann's prayers. It made life difficult for the cast
and crew, which had to match the scenes later with fake snow slathered over the
landscape, but it gives the scene an added majesty. The soundtrack, meanwhile,
offers counterpoint as Dmitri Tiomkin's grandiose score disappears into a chorus
of keening voices, like an ill wind blowing through the ceremony. It recalls a
pronouncement offered earlier by the seer Cleander (Mel Ferrer): "The omens are
bad."
Thus begins the fall, not with a bang but a ghostly wail at the ascension of a
decadent, arrogant, narcissistic ruler to the throne. Commodus recreates the
Roman Empire in his own image, doubling taxes on the provinces to make Rome into
the center of luxury and playing at gladiator camp (crossing swords with his
favorite gladiator, half naked and laughing in pleasure, is as close as the film
gets to homo-erotic suggestions) while the provinces rise up in rebellion, led
in part by his sister and his own disenchanted armies. That's a thumbnail sketch
of a three-hour drama that encompasses so much that it loses dramatic focus in
the sprawl. In the words of Bronston biographer Paul Nagle, "The script was
immense, the script was ambitious, and the script was constantly being revised,
even during production." The physical scale of the production was no less
ambitious. When Commodus rides back in to the bright, sun-kissed city of Rome,
he passes through a full scale replica of the Roman forum, built from scratch in
the Spanish desert outside of Madrid. The 27 three-dimensional structures were
not merely facades but complete buildings with finished interiors: The largest
standing film set ever built to that time. The set sprawled a third of a mile by
780 feet and rose over 165 feet at its highest point, decorated with 350
individual statues and detailed relief work on every façade. Matte paintings
enhanced and extended the visual spectacle in some shots, but otherwise it was
all real, from the sets to the cast of thousands, and Mann was a stickler for
the accuracy in costuming. The parade of kings and their armed retinues that pay
their respects to Marcus Aurelius in the opening act of the film is not just
magnificent pageantry, but painstakingly researched and accurate recreations of
national royal fashions and military garb.
Mann's staging of the processions and ceremonies is majestic, but his handling
of the action scenes is both grand and dynamic. From the savage battles with the
fierce Barbarian warriors in the German forests to the massive clashes of armies
in the plains of the east, Mann not only fills the width of the frame with
action, he stages the battled in depth, creating a rich canvas of furious
combat. With the help of second unit director Yakima Canutt, the legendary stunt
man and stunt coordinator who helmed the chariot race on Ben-Hur, Mann
stages his own chariot battle, this one through the German forests where
Commodus and Livius careen down a winding path and tip precariously on the edge
of a cliff. And for the climax, Mann stages a glorious mano-a-mano gladiatorial
combat amidst a grotesque celebration in the Roman forum as decadent as any
Cecil B. DeMille pagan spectacle. Such grandeur came at a high cost. The Fall
of the Roman Empire became Bronston's most expensive production and, in
adjusted dollars, one of the most expensive pictures ever made. It almost
bankrupted the independent Bronston, who had to seek funds from outside
investors, finally striking a deal with Paramount to pay off his debts and
finish the film.
The Fall of the Roman Empire, shot Ultra-Panavision by Robert Krasker
(whose resume includes photographing the intimate Brief Encounter for
David Lean and the expressionist The Third Man for Carol Reed as well as
El Cid) is surely the most magnificent period piece of its era. Bronston
tops himself in terms of sheer physical spectacle and Mann puts every dollar on
screen, but it suffers from a less focused story and a weaker leading man than
El Cid. Bronston and Mann had hoped to reteam Charlton Heston and Sophia
Loren, but to say that the stars did not get along is an understatement. By the
end of El Cid they hated each other. Bronston signed Loren to a return
engagement – at a premium price, thanks to hard bargaining by Loren's producer
husband, Carlo Ponti – but Heston refused the offer. After Richard Harris and
Kirk Douglas (fresh from Spartacus) also turned down the role, Mann
suggested Stephen Boyd, who played Charlton Heston's boyhood friend turned
nemesis in Ben-Hur. With his wide shoulders and Kirk Douglas cleft, Boyd
certainly looks the role of the mighty and noble Roman soldier, but he lacks the
screen presence and dramatic strength of Heston, who could hold the center of a
massive drama and hold his own against overwhelming sets and locations. Boyd
tends to be diminished by the scale of the production, not to mention Loren (who
is truly larger than life as Lucilla) and the rest of the film's grand
supporting cast. In addition to Alec Guinness and Christopher Plummer (who
suggests Commodus' corruption with impish smiles and blazing eyes and a
provocatively casual manner), Bronston and Mann cast James Mason as the former
slave turned patriot philosopher Timonides, John Ireland (under a wild red wig
and beard) as the Barbarian leader Ballomar, Mel Ferrer as the blind seer
Cleander, and Anthony Quayle as Commodus' champion gladiator Verulus. Omar
Shariff, the Egyptian matinee idol who became an international star with
Lawrence of Arabia, is given little screen time as the King of Armenia,
but his presence burns through his every appearance.
The film was nowhere near the success of El Cid, neither critically nor
commercially. It arrived at the end of the vogue for historical epics and
costume spectacles and it ended not in heroic triumph but in the bitter
disappointment, not a theme that resonated with audiences in 1964. Watching with
contemporary eyes, however, Mann's disgust at the self-destructive corruption
that poisoned the empire and led to its fall feels very modern. The speeches
strewn through the film often sound showy and hollow, but Mann's direction is
both bold and subtle, illustrating the ills dooming the empire better than any
speech.
The Fall of the Roman Empire marks the second release in the Weinstein
Company's "The Miriam Collection" and features the nearly complete roadshow
version of the film (a newly-discovered scene surfaced after the disc had been
mastered, according to a note on the disc), with original entrance, exit and
intermission music intact. The film, beautifully restored with vivid colors and
sharp clarity, is spread across two discs, split at the intermission. The
commentary by Bill Bronston (son of producer Samuel Bronston) and Bronston
biographer Mel Martin is largely focused on behind-the-scenes details and trivia
and, with so much time to fill, they often fall quiet. The 30-minute Rome in
Madrid is an archival promotional film focused on the creation and
construction of the massive Roman forum set, with some behind-the-scenes footage
from the shoot.
The second disc features four original featurettes. The half-hour The Rise
and Fall of an Epic Production is a somewhat unfocused but very informative
overview of the film from inception to release. No less than three Samuel
Bronston biographers are joined by Bill Bronston, Anthony Mann's widow and
daughter, screenwriter Ben Barzman's widow and Mann's production manager C.O.
"Doc" Erikson, and they provide plenty of detail on the production and on
director Anthony Mann's working methods, as well as look at the causes of the
production's spiraling budget. The Rise and Fall of an Empire is a
perfunctory sketch of the real-life history behind the film's story while
Hollywood Vs. History takes a livelier look at the differences between
the historical record and the film. More interesting is Dmitri Tiomkin:
Scoring the Roman Empire, an in-depth look at the composer and his work on
the film, including a detailed listen to the score with insights on his
style.
The "Limited Collector's Edition" box set features an exclusive third disc with
five short Encyclopedia Britannica On The Roman Empire educational
documentaries that were shot on the sets of the production, plus a reproduction
of original 1961 souvenir program and six postcard reproductions of color
stills.
To order The Fall of the Roman Empire (limited collector's edition), go
to
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