Badmovies.org Forum

SPARTACUS (1960)  

This was on TCM Saturday night.  I watched it again.  It's a remarkable film; loaded with every Roman power trope turned on its ear and damned suggestive.  Still powerful with superb performances. 

Also an argument against. Cropping or Pan and scan tv adaptations. Distance was used in many shots for subtke effect.  Thankfully today's modern windscreen tv's can show movies like this in the right way.

My favorite part of Spartacus was the credits whe Kubrick gave ooen credit to some blacklisted writers, effectively giving a big middle finger to the tyranny of the mcarthy era and the blacklist.

So a movie about a revolt against tyranny became an act of revolt against tyranny.  :wink:

At one time I imagined an alternate history where the Spartacus revolt succeeded abd toppled Rome after a considerable time,  replacing Rome with a. Republic that banned slavery.

It changed the world.  At the time if ancient Rome the Greeks had been experimenting with early machines  Hero built a simple steam engine. These went nowhere because slavery was more cost effective.

With the end of slavery a new economic paradigm came.  Firmer slaces became consumers and labor costs went up. Free to profit from their labor former slaves became industrious workers who bolstered Rome's economy.

The experiments with early steam power were invested in. An early industrial revolution occured. Rome never fell, the dark ages were averted. Instead of being abducted and sold as slaves . for.life Africans were recruited to be paid workers, many signing up for a period of years as workers in rome and other civilizations, often returning home after years of working abd learning more advanced ways with relatively considerable wealth,  both of which infused into Africa and lead it to it's own rennisance period.


There was a major war against the Chinese empire that gave rome blackpowder.

The effects on the world were great.  The first moon landing occured in 1492.

It was a set up fir an alternate history rpg world setting.

Kubrick was critical of this movie later in life for its failures to be more historically accurate (and because he was a megalomaniacal genius who resented being controlled to the extent he still was at the time) but for the power of its story and the heft of so many of its performances, I think it's a jewel in his crown and I admire this film very much.

(Personally I think Colleen McCullough got it right and Spartacus escaped the Romans.)

It's true that he later had issues with Spartacus but his courage in defying "the black list" was a bold abd beautiful act of valor.

Censoring artists and writers, openly or unofficially,  is always an early act of a totalitarian movement. Kubrick knew this and fought it.

Was anyone ever blacklisted who was innocent of the accusations made against him?

A lot of fine writers and artists have been left-leaning, and I am all about freedom of conscience and expression, but at the same time studios and the publishers had the right to hire whomever they wished or to decline to hire for any or no reason, and in an era when we were at war with the Soviet Union and its ideology (and yes we were at war) why should the entertainment industry or society as a whole have tolerated Soviet sympathizers and Communists here in our homeland? Did the USSR tolerate dissent there?

Arguably people had the right to be pro-Communist but they did not have a right to employment during a dangerous time in world history.

The left, with its control of universities and the entertainment/news industry has done a good job over the last sixty years of demonizing the HUAC, but good did come out of its activities. Take a moment and look into declassified Cold War Soviet files.  HUAC put the hurt on Soviet activities within the United States, which were extensive.

What accusations? Having a political opinion that didn't agree with McCarthy? Yes I'm sure most victims if tge HUAC would be guilt if that if it were a crime.

What people like you never get is that he Nazi party rose to power on a platform of fear. Fear of the communists. Fear of the Bolsheviks. Fear of the socialists. Fear of the foreigner.

Propagandists like Julius Streicher and Joseph goebbles created an epidemic of fear abd inflamed it to the point Germany was willing to accept a total dictatorship to "protect" them from what they were carefully conditioned and programmed to fear.

Barely a decade after tge Nazi regime. Was crushed and burned to the ground. People in America began using fear tactics to promote their aggenda,  which was to take absolute power in america and eliminate the constitutional rights of all who dissented with them. All in the name of "protecting america".

When Texas decided to rewrite textbooks to praise McCarthy they took a step towards endorsing his tactics which came. Out of the Nazi. Playbook.

We're kind of hijacking AHD's Spartacus thread, so I'll let my thoughts rest here with this post, and if you want to continue it elsewhere I'll meet you there, but what I think (people like) you may not grasp, Sven, and I say this gently, is while there were abuses in the "Red Hunt" of the era, the Soviet intelligence services had infiltrated nearly every level of American life by the time of you're talking about, and the work of Senator McCarthy, whatever his faults may have been as a person, did make the task of the Soviets that much harder, especially in the entertainment industry, which, as you mentioned in the case of Nazi Germany, was a field that carried a lot of power to influence Americans toward totalitarianism.

Soviet spies, and more commonly compromised Americans working for the Soviets, were more widespread than I likely could convince you they were, being as we know in local school boards, in everyday businesses, in political office, the military, and widely scattered in the media and in film studios. The documents to demonstrate that are out there, if you'd make the effort to look.

So, yeah, Spartacus was a good film, yep, one of the best.

Kubriick managed to touch on the issue of homosexuality in tge Roman empire in a movie made at a time when such matters were considered all but unmentionable with subtly that was quite effective in giving the audience a clear picture of what was being portrayed while leaving the censors nothing specific to target.

One mark of kubrickcs genius was he could convey a message in an era of heavy censorship in a way that left censors frustrated and impotent.

Great movie. A classic.

It was KIRK DOUGLAS, Producer, who gave THE writer DALTON TRUMBO credit.  



A lot of what you write is conjecture.  The "homosexual" scene between LAURENCE OLIVIER and TONY CURTIS was cut from the film upon initial release.  The scene was restored in the 1980s or '90s though the soundtrack had been lost.  TONY CURTIS redubbed his own lines and ANTHONY HOPKINS dubbed LAURENCE OLIVIER's...