The Fall of the Roman Empire

Anthony Mann was fired from the director's chair of Spartacus, but he hadn't got the notion of making an epic film about ancient Rome out of his blood, and in 1964 made The Fall of the Roman Empire. It was a box-office flop, and put producer Samuel Bronston out of business.

The film has done better with retroactive critical praise, and has a 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I heartily disagree with that, though. The film is leaden and fairly boring, and lacks the intensity of other Roman pictures of the period such as Spartacus or Ben-Hur. The only thing that makes the movie really sing is a devilish performance by Christopher Plummer.

Anyone who has seen the much more recent film Gladiator will note how that film was almost a remake of this one. The stories are almost identical, particularly in the beginning. The Romans are at war with the Germans. They are defeated by a (fictional) general named Livius (Stephen Boyd). He is a favorite of the emperor, Marcus Aurelius (Alec Guinness), who intends to disinherit his son, Commodus (Plummer) in favor of Livius, who is a straight arrow. But Marcus is murdered by his advisers, and Livius, realizing there is no proof of Marcus' offer, goes along and serves Commodus, as they have been longtime friends.

Commodus immediately tries to undo everything his father did, and acts the megalomaniac. Livius fights the Germans, capturing their leader and taking prisoners. The Senate wants to make them slaves, but Livius, and his loyal Greek aide (James Mason) convinces the Senate that the way of peace is better, and these people should be given abandoned Roman farmland and welcomed into the fold. Commodus is outraged by this, and sends Livius to fight the Persians, who are leading an uprising led by the King of Armenia (Omar Sharif) and his wife, Commodus' own sister (Sophia Loren).

The film departs from Gladiator in that Livius, unlike Maximus, is never turned into a gladiator. But the film does end with he and Commodus in a mano a mano battle to the death. This is a fiction, as not only did Commodus rule for 12 years, but he was assassinated, and did not die in the arena. But history should never get in the way of drama.

The title is also misleading, and the closing voiceover narration tells us that this was the beginning of the fall of Rome, which wouldn't happen for another three hundred years.

The film is three hours long, and I watched it over two days--to sit through it straight through would have been deadly. Some of it defies sense--a battle in a cave is completely incomprehensible. Plummer is very good, though, and so is Mason, who has two great scenes--one of them being tortured by the Germans. Despite that, though, this film is a long slog through history that is far more interesting than appears on screen.