Movie: Spartacus

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Peter Ustinov Charles Laughton
Director: Stanley Kubrick, Producer:

From amazon.com:

'Stanley Kubrick was only 31 years old when Kirk Douglas (star of Kubrick`s classic Paths of Glory) recruited the young director to pilot this epic saga, in which the rebellious slave Spartacus (played by Douglas) leads a freedom revolt against the decadent Roman Empire. Kubrick would later disown the film because it was not a personal project--he was merely a director-for-hire--but Spartacus remains one of the best of Hollywood`s grand historical epics. With an intelligent screenplay by then-blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo (from a novel by Howard Fast), its message of moral integrity and courageous conviction is still quite powerful, and the all-star cast (including Charles Laughton in full toga) is full of entertaining surprises. Fully restored in 1991 to include scenes deleted from the original 1960 release, the full-length Spartacus is a grand-scale cinematic marvel, offering some of the most awesome battles ever filmed and a central performance by Douglas that`s as sensitively emotional as it is intensely heroic. Jean Simmons plays the slave woman who becomes Spartacus`s wife, and Peter Ustinov steals the show with his frequently hilarious, Oscar-winning performance as a slave trader who shamelessly curries favor with his Roman superiors. The restored version also includes a formerly deleted bathhouse scene in which Laurence Olivier plays a bisexual Roman senator (with restored dialogue dubbed by Anthony Hopkins) who gets hot and bothered over a slave servant played by Tony Curtis. These and other restored scenes expand the film to just over three hours in length. Despite some forgivable lulls, this is a rousing and substantial drama that grabs and holds your attention. Breaking tradition with sophisticated themes and a downbeat (yet eminently noble) conclusion, Spartacus is a thinking person`s epic, rising above mere spectacle with a story as impressive as its widescreen action and Oscar-winning sets. '

(The review refers to the digitally restored DVD, currently available, incidentally, at Rainbow Centre.)

Just a word of personal comment: the script of the film is extraordinarily well-written. Though I read somewhere that Kubrick was displeased with all the moralising the characters indulged in, I believe the dialogue is perfect for the vision this film serves. There were instances of pure poetry at times, particularly in one scene with Ustinov and Craughton, where Craughton explains their shared predisposition towards corpulence!

I would recommend this film to all who haven`t seen it.