Spartacus (1960)

User Rating:

8.0/10   

Director:

Stanley Kubrick

Writers:

Howard Fast (novel)
Dalton Trumbo (writer)

Release Date:

7 October 1960 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Biography | Drama | History | Romance

Tagline:

They trained him to kill for their pleasure. . .but they trained him a little too well. . .

Plot:

The slave Spartacus leads a violent revolt against the decadent Roman empire.

Plot Keywords:

Slave | Spartacus | Rome | Slave Revolt | Gladiator

Awards:

Won 4 Oscars. Another 4 wins & 9 nominations

Cast

Kirk Douglas	...	Spartacus
Laurence Olivier	...	Marcus Licinius Crassus
Jean Simmons	...	Varinia
Charles Laughton	...	Sempronius Gracchus
Peter Ustinov	...	Lentulus Batiatus
John Gavin	...	Julius Caesar
Nina Foch	...	Helena Glabrus
John Ireland	...	Crixus
Herbert Lom	...	Tigranes Levantus
John Dall	...	Marcus Publius Glabrus
Charles McGraw	...	Marcellus
Joanna Barnes	...	Claudia Marius
Harold J. Stone	...	David
Woody Strode	...	Draba
Peter Brocco	...	Ramon

Also Known As:

Spartacus: Rebel Against Rome (USA) (poster title)
Espartaco (Argentina) (Spain) [es]
Spartacus (Austria) (West Germany) [de]
Spartacus (France) [fr]
Spartacus (Finland) [fi]
Spartak (Yugoslavia: Serbian title) [sr]
Spartakus (Poland) [pl]

Runtime:

184 min (premiere version) | Sweden:187 min (1968 re-release) | UK:197 min (1991 re-release) | USA:161 min (1967 re-release) | USA:198 min (1991 restored version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) | Dolby SR (35 mm prints, restored version) | Mono (Westrex Recording System) (35 mm prints, original release)

Certification:

Canada:G (Quebec) (restored version) | Canada:G (Nova Scotia) (1967 version) | Spain:13 | Iceland:12 | Finland:K-14 (1992) | Finland:K-16 (1962) | South Korea:12 | Brazil:12 | New Zealand:PG | Argentina:13 | Australia:PG | Canada:AA (Ontario) (restored version) | Canada:G (Manitoba) (1967 version) | Canada:PG (Manitoba) (restored version) | Canada:PG (Ontario) (original release) | Denmark:15 | France:U | Germany:12 | Ireland:PG | Netherlands:12 (video rating) | Norway:16 (1963) | Sweden:15 | UK:PG | USA:PG-13 (restored version) | West Germany:16 | UK:A (original rating) (cut)

Filming Locations:

Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain

Company:

Bryna Productions

Trivia:

A number of scenes featuring Peter Ustinov and Charles Laughton were rewritten by Ustinov after Laughton rejected the original script.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: Slaves digging with steel shovels of a pattern invented in the early 20th century instead of Roman wooden spades.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Narrator: In the last century before the birth of the new faith called Christianity, which was destined to overthrow the pagan tyranny of Rome and bring about a new society, the Roman Republic stood at the very center of the civilized world. "Of all things fairest," sang the poet...

Movie Connections:

Referenced in I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue (2008) (TV)

A Great Movie Due To Its Romantic Ideals

Did you know that Karl Marx hero was Spartacus ? There's something deeply ironic about this because the film version of SPARTACUS has so many Marxist ideals it could have been subtitled " THE STORY OF AN ENLIGHTENED PROLETERIAN HERO " As film buffs may know the screenwriter of SPARTACUS Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted by the Hollywood studio system because of alleged communist sympathies and it's impossible not to notice that Trumbo has done a sort of leftist inversion of John Ford's " Always make the legend " mantra . As a history lesson SPARTACUS is rather poor , if you look up the goofs on this page you'll notice that no one has really bothered to their home work as to the history , politics and machinations of ancient Rome with perhaps the most striking piece of speculation is the myth that Spartacus was from a Greek province sold into slavery when it's far more likely he was a Roman legionnaire who was sent to gladiator school but I guess the being sold into slavery makes for a better story

But this very simplistic black and white view of history can be forgiven because it's what makes SPARTACUS a great movie , we know who the bad guys are and why they're bad guys ( They're rich and cruel ) and we know who the good guys are and why they're good guys ( They're poor but noble ) and therefore the audience know instantly whose side they're on SPARTACUS is also a film famous because its director Stanley Kubrick supposedly hated it mainly down to the fact that he didn't have any involvement in the screenplay . What ? A director dislikes a movie of this standard ? I'm certain Spielberg or Scorsese would have killed to make a movie this good . It contains fine performances from all the cast but the stand outs are Douglas , Simmons , Laughton ( Someone else alleged to have had leftist sympathies ) Olivier and Ustinov , so many fine actors in one movie and you don't notice how many different accents used until it's pointed out to you . Check out those battle scenes at the end and remember this was long before CGI so these were real people making up the slave and Roman armies but for me the greatest scene of the film and one of the most haunting scenes I have ever seen is where Woody Strode and Kirk Douglas sit facing each other waiting to go into the arena . What makes it even more spellbinding is that there's no dialogue at all , we only hear the sounds of the previous contestants fighting to the death

Without doubt a movie that deserves to be in the IMDb Top 250 Movies list and possibly Kubrick's best film , he certainly didn't make anything as good as this ever again . But it's a movie that was ignored for most of the major awards at that years Oscar nominations . I guess that because the Oscars are a celebration of American film making talent they didn't want to give awards to movies celebrating communist heroes