The Fall of the Roman Empire Reviews

Epics are hard. It’s very easy to give in to the bloated pageantry of much of the genre, but terribly hard to ascend beyond it. Too many stars want their screen-time, too much story even for a four hour running time, too much pomp and circumstance with little actual meat to sustain yourself, I’m thinking of something like The Ten Commandments. Or the well-intentioned but complete misfire that is Raintree County.

So thank god for Anthony Mann and his two epics-with-brains, El Cid and the far superior The Fall of the Roman Empire. What he manages to do with this sweeping, all engrossing, completely riveting film is show how the rot within the Roman Empire began their downfall and managed to expedite it through political in-fighting and various other problems.

It helps to be blessed with a ridiculously talented multi-cultural cast including Alec Guinness, Christopher Plummer, Sophia Loren, Stephen Boyd, Mel Ferrer, James Mason and Omar Sharif. The cast does their best with some of the more tin-eared lines and obvious stating of themes, and generally performs at a very high level. The costumes, sets, and overall production is ornate, beautiful and a veritable feast for the senses.

The sprawling and epic plot involves various internal fissures amongst a royal family – the dead father choosing an outsider to succeed him to the throne, the tyrannical and power-mad son seizing control, the philosophical sister being ushered away from her lover and into the arms of an enemy; it’s all been well-covered before and since. But Mann offers up something more intelligent this time around. Perhaps it’s because this theme of systems rotting from within and collapsing under personal vendettas was his métier. It’s a dark, more ambitious, more serious work than it’s spiritual cousin El Cid, and despite its problems, an all-around better movie. (No disrespect meant to El Cid, that’s another unique, brainy and interesting grandiose epic from this period in film-making.)

And perhaps much of my love for the movie has to do with the fact that it doesn’t shy away from violence. These people by and large do not die in glamorous, blood-free ways. There’s no artistically held pose as they slink down in wide-eyed bewilderment or soft-focused close-ups as they heroically meet their maker. When James Mason’s character gets tortured, there’s a real sense of dread, horror and pain being inflicted upon him. And in Plummer and Boyd’s opposing ideologies and forces, a sense of two sides clashing and cancelling each other out while the schemes playing both sides make their power plays and pick up whatever pieces are left. The Fall of the Roman Empire wasn’t out of fashion, it was just ahead of the curve.