THE KUBRICK SERIES #6:
SPARTACUS
Whenever you're dealing with major cinematic auteurs, there seems to be two kinds of films: the passion projects and the jobs. The passion projects are the ones the filmmakers themselves spend years developing and really put all of their heart and soul into it, whereas the "job" is merely serves as means to pay the rent. My assessment may be a bit cynical, but when doing research it appears, to me at least, to be the case. Sometimes a brilliant auteur is able to take a "job" and turn it into something stylish and/or personal work. Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987) and Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991) come to mind. The same however can not be said of Stanley Kubrick's "job", Spartacus.
Although Paths of Glory was only a modest commercial hit, it helped cement Kubrick as a major filmmaker on the rise, and to finally make Hollywood take notice of him. One major figure to take notice of Kubrick was none other than superstar Marlon Brando, who approached Kubrick with the possibility of directing the western One-Eyed Jacks with Brando as star. Kubrick accepted the offer and a then-unknown Sam Peckinpah was hired to write the script. But Kubrick and Brando butted heads with each other, and eventually both Kubrick and Peckinpah left the project. Brando would later direct the film himself in his sole directorial effort. After scrambling for a new project, Kirk Douglas called Kubrick and his producing partner James B. Harris. Douglas was one week into shooting his epic passion project Spartacus when he fired his director Anthony Mann. After a quick discussion, Kubrick and Harris agreed it could boost Kubrick's career and make things easier for their company to get their own projects financed. But the actual making of the film would prove to be anything but an enjoyable experience on Kubrick's part.
Kirk Douglas, who played Spartacus and was the executive producer of the film.
Although Paths of Glory was only a modest commercial hit, it helped cement Kubrick as a major filmmaker on the rise, and to finally make Hollywood take notice of him. One major figure to take notice of Kubrick was none other than superstar Marlon Brando, who approached Kubrick with the possibility of directing the western One-Eyed Jacks with Brando as star. Kubrick accepted the offer and a then-unknown Sam Peckinpah was hired to write the script. But Kubrick and Brando butted heads with each other, and eventually both Kubrick and Peckinpah left the project. Brando would later direct the film himself in his sole directorial effort. After scrambling for a new project, Kirk Douglas called Kubrick and his producing partner James B. Harris. Douglas was one week into shooting his epic passion project Spartacus when he fired his director Anthony Mann. After a quick discussion, Kubrick and Harris agreed it could boost Kubrick's career and make things easier for their company to get their own projects financed. But the actual making of the film would prove to be anything but an enjoyable experience on Kubrick's part.
One can only dream of what awesome stuff Kubrick and Marlon Brando could've made together.
Douglas and Kubrick in the gladiator school set of Spartacus.
Spartacus is based on the historical novel of the same name by Howard Fast and tells the classic real-life story of Spartacus, a Thracian slave-turned gladiator who started the biggest slave revolt in history at that point against the Roman Empire. With 120,000 runaway slaves at his disposal, Spartacus tries to escape from Italy via the sea with the help of pirates. However the pirates are bought off by the Romans, and Spartacus' troop is left stranded, with Roman legions marching in closer and closer on them. Eventually, Spartacus comes to the conclusion that they must fight in order to win their freedom.
Although it is technically a Stanley Kubrick film, it's a much more generic and standard Hollywood film than anything the director has ever done before or since, which is probably the reason why I reacted to coldly to it when I saw it. There's virtually none of Kubrick's key trademarks to be found in Spartacus, like his razor-sharp ear for ironic use of music, his sardonic sense of humor or any insights into sexuality and violence. Almost the entire film looks and feels like it could've been directed by anyone, with only a handful of semi-Kubrickian shots and compositions in the film. There are a few shots that bring to mind the Max Ophüls-inspired fluid tracking shots that we saw in The Killing and Paths of Glory. Then there's these two shots that feel the most Kubrickian in the whole film. The first one is a gladiator fight seen, or rather heard, through Spartacus' perspective, who's sitting behind a wooden door unable to see the fight, hence hearing the fight and seeing the aftermath. The other shot is a big wide shot during the climactic battle scene were you can see the Roman legions marching towards Spartacus' troops.
Another one of my criticisms is the portrayal of Spartacus as played by Douglas. Douglas does a very good job at portraying the titular gladiator, especially in the first act of the film where he doesn't have a lot of dialogue and is forced to do the majority of his acting through the body langugage and his eyes. This was the part of the film that genuinly surprised me and caught me off-guard, which made me go "blimey, he hasn't said that much now, has he"? So my issue is not with the way the character of Spartacus is acted, but rather the way he's written. Because he has essentially no quirks or major flaws, which in other words makes him a dull and uninteresting character to follow. And I'm not alone on thinkin this, because so did Kubrick in fact when he got the job. But because Douglas was also the producer on the film, he was able to overrule Kubrick and all he could do was to do what he was told.
The rest of the cast is filled with enough A-list talent to make classic movie fans go wild, and they all deliver strong performances. From top to bottom we have Laurence Olivier as our basic atnagonist Crassus, Jean Simmons as Spartacus' wife Varinia, Tony Curtis as Crassus' former slave and Spartacus' right-hand man Antoninus, Charles Laughton as Crassus' senatorial arch-enemy Gracchus, Peter Ustinov as gladiator-school owner and Spartacus' brief master Batiatus and John Gavin as a young Julius Caesar. Like I said, they all deliver strong performances despite a lackluster script which I think serves as a testament to their qualities as actors. Olivier, Laughton and Ustinov are particularly exception in their respective parts.
The film is also very well shot, albeit very traditionally. This is the first Kubrick film to be shot in color and also in the the 2:20:1 widescreen aspect ratio. All of his other films had been shot in either the 1:33:1 or the 1:66:1 aspect ratios. This practice allowed Kubrick to display great vistas and a large number of extras within a single frame, as exemplified in the wide shot of the Roman legions during the battle scene. However, just like on The Killing, Kubrick would once again clash with an old Hollywood pro cinematographer. Russell Metty was the experienced cinematographer of Hollywood classics such as Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby (1938), Orson Welles' The Stranger (1946) and Touch of Evil (1958), plus a number of Douglas Sirk's films and had been hired to shoot Spartacus when Anthony Mann was still directing. Metty took exception to Kubrick who would often interfere with his camerawork and lighting to better suit his own sensibilites. Metty at one point walked off the set and exclaimed "This guy is going to direct this movie? He's going to tell me where to put the camera? They've got to be kidding"! But since he had a contract he stayed, but the majority of the film was shot by Kubrick. How ironic then that Metty would receive the Oscar for Best Cinematography because he was the credited cinematographer.
I think ultimately, my problems with the film comes down to the script. The script was written by famed screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted from Hollywood the last decade due to his alleged communist sympathies and refusal to name names on other alleged communists (although he was still able to work in Hollywood under a pseudonym). Because of this the film itself is often seen as an allegory for the Hollywood blacklist, best exemplified in the infamous "I'm Spartacus!" scene, but also for the civil rights movement which was in full swing in the late 50s and early 60s. But that still doesn't excuse the fact that Spartacus remains an uninteresting character and that the films way of dealing with politics and rebellion is very simplistic. In fact, one of the things Kubrick wanted to change about the script was to show how the slave rebellion was capable of the same level of cruelty as the Romans and also how easily a rebellion falls apart under its own weight. But all of these ideas and suggestions were discarded in favor of a more black-and-white portrait.
Despite an obviously troubled production and obvious flaws, Spartacus proved to be a huge success, both critically and commercially. The film even outgrossed Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho as the highest-grossing film of 1960. The film received six nominations at the Oscars that year and won four, including previously mentioned wins such as Best Supporting Actor for Ustinov and Best Cinematography for Metty and also Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design. But despite all of this, Kubrick disowned the film and decided that he had had enough of all the Hollywood hoopla. From now on, Kubrick would now only direct films were he had total artistic creative control. And for the rest of his life, he always did.
I myself must rate Spartacus relatively low in Kubrick's filmography, only Killer's Kiss and Fear and Desire are worse in my opinion. And it makes me truly sad to say so because it is a well-made film with great production value, but it's just too bland and too generic to be ranked highly in Kubrick's body of work. My final word on Spartacus: it's fine, but no more than fine.
Although it is technically a Stanley Kubrick film, it's a much more generic and standard Hollywood film than anything the director has ever done before or since, which is probably the reason why I reacted to coldly to it when I saw it. There's virtually none of Kubrick's key trademarks to be found in Spartacus, like his razor-sharp ear for ironic use of music, his sardonic sense of humor or any insights into sexuality and violence. Almost the entire film looks and feels like it could've been directed by anyone, with only a handful of semi-Kubrickian shots and compositions in the film. There are a few shots that bring to mind the Max Ophüls-inspired fluid tracking shots that we saw in The Killing and Paths of Glory. Then there's these two shots that feel the most Kubrickian in the whole film. The first one is a gladiator fight seen, or rather heard, through Spartacus' perspective, who's sitting behind a wooden door unable to see the fight, hence hearing the fight and seeing the aftermath. The other shot is a big wide shot during the climactic battle scene were you can see the Roman legions marching towards Spartacus' troops.
This shot from the battle scene feels very Kubrickian and is a good example of visual storytelling, probably because this is the one part of the film that was genuinly his own idea.
Another one of my criticisms is the portrayal of Spartacus as played by Douglas. Douglas does a very good job at portraying the titular gladiator, especially in the first act of the film where he doesn't have a lot of dialogue and is forced to do the majority of his acting through the body langugage and his eyes. This was the part of the film that genuinly surprised me and caught me off-guard, which made me go "blimey, he hasn't said that much now, has he"? So my issue is not with the way the character of Spartacus is acted, but rather the way he's written. Because he has essentially no quirks or major flaws, which in other words makes him a dull and uninteresting character to follow. And I'm not alone on thinkin this, because so did Kubrick in fact when he got the job. But because Douglas was also the producer on the film, he was able to overrule Kubrick and all he could do was to do what he was told.
The rest of the cast is filled with enough A-list talent to make classic movie fans go wild, and they all deliver strong performances. From top to bottom we have Laurence Olivier as our basic atnagonist Crassus, Jean Simmons as Spartacus' wife Varinia, Tony Curtis as Crassus' former slave and Spartacus' right-hand man Antoninus, Charles Laughton as Crassus' senatorial arch-enemy Gracchus, Peter Ustinov as gladiator-school owner and Spartacus' brief master Batiatus and John Gavin as a young Julius Caesar. Like I said, they all deliver strong performances despite a lackluster script which I think serves as a testament to their qualities as actors. Olivier, Laughton and Ustinov are particularly exception in their respective parts.
A publicity photo of the cast. Top row, left to right: John Gavin, Laurence Olivier and Peter Ustinov. Bottom row, left to right: Douglas, Jean Simmons and Tony Curtis.
Peter Ustinov's performance in Spartacus is excellent, and he would end up winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, which was also the only time anyone won an acting award for appearing in a Kubrick film.
The film is also very well shot, albeit very traditionally. This is the first Kubrick film to be shot in color and also in the the 2:20:1 widescreen aspect ratio. All of his other films had been shot in either the 1:33:1 or the 1:66:1 aspect ratios. This practice allowed Kubrick to display great vistas and a large number of extras within a single frame, as exemplified in the wide shot of the Roman legions during the battle scene. However, just like on The Killing, Kubrick would once again clash with an old Hollywood pro cinematographer. Russell Metty was the experienced cinematographer of Hollywood classics such as Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby (1938), Orson Welles' The Stranger (1946) and Touch of Evil (1958), plus a number of Douglas Sirk's films and had been hired to shoot Spartacus when Anthony Mann was still directing. Metty took exception to Kubrick who would often interfere with his camerawork and lighting to better suit his own sensibilites. Metty at one point walked off the set and exclaimed "This guy is going to direct this movie? He's going to tell me where to put the camera? They've got to be kidding"! But since he had a contract he stayed, but the majority of the film was shot by Kubrick. How ironic then that Metty would receive the Oscar for Best Cinematography because he was the credited cinematographer.
Kubrick and cinematographer Russell Metty. Metty would often spout antisemitic slangs and comments at Kubrick, who nevertheless remained calm and collected during the rough shoot.
I think ultimately, my problems with the film comes down to the script. The script was written by famed screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted from Hollywood the last decade due to his alleged communist sympathies and refusal to name names on other alleged communists (although he was still able to work in Hollywood under a pseudonym). Because of this the film itself is often seen as an allegory for the Hollywood blacklist, best exemplified in the infamous "I'm Spartacus!" scene, but also for the civil rights movement which was in full swing in the late 50s and early 60s. But that still doesn't excuse the fact that Spartacus remains an uninteresting character and that the films way of dealing with politics and rebellion is very simplistic. In fact, one of the things Kubrick wanted to change about the script was to show how the slave rebellion was capable of the same level of cruelty as the Romans and also how easily a rebellion falls apart under its own weight. But all of these ideas and suggestions were discarded in favor of a more black-and-white portrait.
The slaves Draba (Woody Strode) and Spartacus (Douglas) fighting each other as gladiators for the amusement of Crassus and his friends. In the scene Draba refuses to kill Spartacus and tries to attack Crassus but fails and gets killed. One possible interpretation of this scene is how the black men and white men are pitted against each other in society by the powers at be and the only thing they can do is stand up and fight the oppressors.
A montage of images from the famous "I'm Spartacus!" scene, which also inspired the very similair scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian when everyone on the cross exclaims "I'm Brian! No I'm Brian and so is my wife!"
Despite an obviously troubled production and obvious flaws, Spartacus proved to be a huge success, both critically and commercially. The film even outgrossed Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho as the highest-grossing film of 1960. The film received six nominations at the Oscars that year and won four, including previously mentioned wins such as Best Supporting Actor for Ustinov and Best Cinematography for Metty and also Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design. But despite all of this, Kubrick disowned the film and decided that he had had enough of all the Hollywood hoopla. From now on, Kubrick would now only direct films were he had total artistic creative control. And for the rest of his life, he always did.
I myself must rate Spartacus relatively low in Kubrick's filmography, only Killer's Kiss and Fear and Desire are worse in my opinion. And it makes me truly sad to say so because it is a well-made film with great production value, but it's just too bland and too generic to be ranked highly in Kubrick's body of work. My final word on Spartacus: it's fine, but no more than fine.
To be continued with: Lolita (1962)
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