Quo Vadis

A while back I was lamenting the lack of some titles on DVD.

Quo Vadis was one of them, but today TMC played it uncut.

First off, the print they had was not best, there were repaired breaks and reel change dots. The colour look shifted, with green sometimes too predominate.

What doesn't hold up? It does have its share of shaky dolly shots, obvious painted backgrounds, and some truly awful rear projection (but again, it also has some beautiful model and matte painting works as well).

The women in this film are complete idiots. Petronius's Spanish slave girl is in love with him, even after he tries to have her sold, and beaten (gently now, don't break the skin...).

In a particularly creepy scene, she proclaims her love...to his statue.

And of course, she follows him in suicide...at dinner.

The so called female lead, Deborah Kerr (here just slightly too old) falls for the incredibly boorish Roman solider Robert Taylor, after he

1) mistakes her for a slave
2) insults her important general father by having her taken from him (she was his adopted daughter)
3) insults her house guest, St. Paul, yes The St. Paul, by breaking a crucifix in front of him.

There are other minor things, like attempted kidnapping...but before hour 2 (of this almost 3 hour movie) she's in love. Awwww.

What's fun about the film? The design. This is a Rome that never existed. Bigger, grander, more colourful. We are even given a Roman "Feast" (read orgy), or as much as 1951 Hollywood could show. There are one or two double entendres in the film (We must take them to our breast....Yes, my Lord)

But above all, it is still very much Peter Ustinov's film. He is Nero, and no one has flung around velvet better. See the film for him, no question.

The burning of Rome is meant to be the film's high point, but I found the arena scenes much more powerful. Christians while attacked by lions singing to a baffled Nero, and later used has human torches, are all the more disturbing as they are not the film makers creations, but taken from Roman histories themselves.

Whither St. Peter showed up to challenge Nero...in the arena...in front of everyone, is not important. It's a great moment.

The Christianity portrayed here is fairly benign, though be warned there is a 12 minute sermon at the beginning of hour 2 (ok, it's from St Peter but still. This actor shows up in Ben-Hur as a wise man btw).

All in all, a not terribly inaccurate portrayal of what we know of that period, c. 64 A.D., in a Hollywood style of course (and no more unbelievable than HBO's Rome).

This film's echos can be hear in others such as The Robe, Ben-Hur, Star Trek (check out the Empress's makeup), Monty Python's Holy Grail (check the Greek they hire to lead them to the Christians...)