Movie review - "The Fall of the Roman Empire" (1964) **

The film that caused the collapse of the Samuel L Bronston empire (well, that and a few other things).

Despite the catchy high concept title and the bright idea of setting a film in the reign of Commodus (which worked during Gladiator) the film has a conceptual flaw - unlike King of Kings or El Cid it isn't set around a particular person, and unlike 55 Days at Peking it's not around one particular self-contained event.

The Fall of the Roman Empire took a long time (as the opening narration admits), too long to really be encapsulated in one film - though it is fair enough to mark it at the end of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and the film does touch on the broad reasons (bringing barbarians within the frontier but never really getting along with them, corruption at the top with the crown basically being a thing for sale)

Stephen Boyd is the fictitious hero, seemingly modelled on Ben Hur (his hair is dyed light brown, Charlton Heston was originally offered the role) - indeed, there is a scene at the beginning where Boyd and Chris Plummer talk about their childhood friendship which is just like the one at the beginning of Ben Hur between Boyd and Heston, and Boyd and Plummer have a chariot sort-of-race along a mountainside road.

The similarities don't end there: both Gladiator and Fall have as their hero a fictitious general who is favoured by Marcus Aurelius over the Emperor's actual son, Commodus and who is loved by the Emperor's daughter (here played by Sophia Loren, beautiful but with little to do). Both films Commodus gets jealous and Marcus is murdered. Commodus becomes emperor and eventually turns on the hero. The hero ultimately defeats Commodus in a gladiator battle.

But there are some keen differences - and these differences are, I think, why the film flopped at the box office (the writers of Gladiator must have watched this film and learned). Marcus A dies relatively early in Gladiator enabling the story to get going but here its over an hour before Alec Guinness kicks the bucket. In Gladiator Commodus tries to kill Russell Crowe pretty much straight away, sending Russell off to gladiator land and a strong second act. Here Commodus makes Stephen Boyd head of the army - Boyd goes off to fight on the northern frontier and there is kind of a second act plot, about Rome trying to get along with barbarians (led by John Ireland in an unconvincing beard) - but this is driven more by James Mason, as a Greek slave who envisions the Roman Empire as a kind of international brotherhood of man, rather than Boyd, who stands to the side and goes "I agree" and asks after Loren. But when Loren and others rise up against Commodus (Loren's married to Omar Sharif, who I had trouble recognising without his moustache), Boyd refuses to join in. So we have a passive hero. And when Boyd is finally arrested, the final climax fight happens straight away.

This film can't be simply dismissed - it does seek to tackle some difficult subjects, such as the role of the Roman Empire in incorporating different nationalities, and some of the visuals are awesome: the forum set was the biggest outdoor set ever constructed and looks great, there are memorable images, such as the funeral of Marcus Aurelius, shots of legions trooping through the snow (this is one of the snowier Roman epics), Marcus inspecting the troops.

The final fight between Plummer and Boyd in the forum, surrounded by spears, is also good - if only you cared a bit more about who won. If only Plummer cut loose a bit more (we only see a bit of gladiator stuff).

If only, if only... if they'd just copied Ben Hur's structure the way Gladiator did (have act two with Boyd as a prisoner then becoming a gladiator), then act three would have really had impact - and this might have saved Bronston. 

 

Story, story, story.

NB Bronston films that had to be cancelled included The French Revolution, Paris 1900, Night Runners of Bengal and Isabella of Spain.