A Spectacle in Ruins: Rediscovering The Fall of the Roman Empire

In the sweep of 20th-century Hollywood epics, few have slipped so quietly into obscurity as Anthony Mann’s ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire’ (1964), a film that, despite its gargantuan scope, intelligent narrative and its stellar performances, remains one of the most unjustly forgotten works of its genre.

With television snaring cinema goers in the 1950s, Hollywood studious faced a daunting challenge in viewing back audiences to theatres. One of the devices was by producing mammoth, expensive spectaculars like Cecil B. DeMille’s ‘The Ten Commandments’ (1956) and William Wyler’s Oscar-garlanded ‘Ben-Hur’ (1959), both starring Charlton Heston.

By the 1960s, empty-headed spectacle was giving way to a more intellectual-minded epic – a trend exemplified by director Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Spartacus’ (1960) which was produced by actor Kirk Douglas, who played the titular protagonist who led the slave revolt against brutal Roman authority in 70 BCE. The film not only stood as a cinematic triumph but was a pivotal moment in Hollywood history with its true significance lying in Douglas’s role in dismantling the Hollywood blacklist. ‘Spartacus’ boasted a stellar cast, with delicious performances from Laurence Olivier (as a chillingly ruthless Crassus), Charles Laughton and Peter Ustinov. Incidentally, Douglas had fired Mann, who directed some scenes in the film.

The epic continued to evolve with 1961’s ‘El Cid’, which was directed by Mann, produced by Samuel Bronston, and which also starred Heston as the 11th century Spanish military leader battling Moors. The intellectual epic was elevated to a stratospheric level with David Lean’s ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (1962). However, the genre had a setback with the huge failure of the four-hour ‘Cleopatra’ (1963).

Then came Mann’s ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire’ with a stunning cast including Sophia Loren and Stephen Boyd (of ‘Ben-Hur’ fame) as the nominal leads, surrounded by the great performances of Alec Guinness, James, Mason and Christopher Plummer.

The idea for making this complex film came when Mann spotted an Oxford concise edition of Edward Gibbon’s monumental six-volume series ‘The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ near the front window at the Hatchards bookshop in London.

Set during the waning years of the Western Roman Empire during the reign of the wise Marcus Aurelius (brilliantly essayed by Guinness) who is succeeded by his delusional, narcissistic and brutal son Commodus (played with scene-stealing relish by Plummer), the film examines not only the external threats of barbarian invasions but also the corrosive forces within: political intrigue, social inequality, and the decay of civic responsibility.

The film sought to capture something more elusive - the slow, inevitable collapse of a civilization that, despite its vaunted military prowess, was undone by its own internal rot.

The film’s remarkable ambition is matched by its visual achievement, which somehow captures Gibbon’s literary tone. Shot on some of the largest sets ever constructed, ‘Fall’ boasts stunning recreations of Rome’s vast architectural marvels, notably the Roman Forum. Mann’s camera roves like a subtle yet unyielding observer of a crumbling empire. Dmitri Tiomkin’s haunting score, with its foreboding organ fugues, serves as a fitting auditory accompaniment for a story moving inexorably toward catastrophe.

Yet, despite its obvious achievements, ‘Fall’ faltered at the box office. Perhaps it was a time when audiences, weary from the recent political upheavals following the Kennedy assassination, were less inclined to embrace a film about the slow, tragic decline of a once-great civilization.

The irony was that the loud, muscle-bound CGI-driven ‘Gladiator’ (2000) – an inferior rehash of ‘Fall’ - was feted with Oscars 36 years later.

Today, Mann’s film looks eerily prescient in its depiction of a fractured world teetering on the brink of chaos. Gore Vidal, who advised on the script, called the film “the only ‘accurate’ Roman film” in terms of its visual representation. The historical veracity of the film has been recognized by Roman scholars, who have lauded it for its realistic portrayal of second-century Rome.

The film’s themes of the decline of great powers, the disintegration of social and political cohesion, and the dangers of unchecked ambition are themes that remain as relevant today as they were in the 2nd century A.D. In that sense, Mann’s epic is not just a relic of the past, but a dark mirror to our own time.