SPARTACUS (1960) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Stanley Kubrick
Kirk Douglas, Jean Simmons, Laurence Olivier,
Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, Tony Curtis,
Woody Strode, John Gavin, John Ireland,
Nina Foch, Charles McGraw, John Dall,
Herbert Lom, John Hoyt, Harold J. Stone
The movie Kirk Douglas seems likely to be remembered for, a literate, emotionally satisfying epic about the slave revolt against Rome in 73 B.C. Between them, director Stanley Kubrick, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and producer/star Douglas fill the picture with action, humor and romance, while maintaining a level of intelligence and a passionate sense of purpose that big-budget films sometimes lose track of. The scope is massive (Douglas hired 8,000 men from the Spanish army to stage the climactic battle scene), but the focus invariably centers on the everyday workings of human life. A persuasive argument for both the 70mm process and the continued preservation of older movies. (The restored print contains a now-famous exchange between Laurence Olivier and Tony Curtis that didn't make the cut in 1960.) Anybody who doesn't consider Jean Simmons one of the screen's great beauties has obviously never seen "Spartacus".
Kirk Douglas
(1916-2020)
