THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1964)

More like The Fall of Producer Samuel Bronston who channeled hefty profits, goodwill & much creative talent from EL CID/’61 into this hubristic deadweight; then never recovered. There’s plenty of wrong to go around here, but the main problem is that the writers (even with ‘your free gift’ historian Will Durant as ‘Consultant’*) could neither whip up nor lick the storyline. And the film trailer promises ‘A World . . . An Empire . . . A Motion Picture!’ Not quite. First half of a three-hour slog has Alec Guinness’s Marcus Aurelius crawl his way to chilly death while daughter Sophia Loren (in Balmain on the Tiber fur) longs for preferred successor Stephen Boyd (in unbecoming blond locks) and stares daggers at nutso brother/would-be heir Christopher Plummer’s Commodus. (Plummer gives the fruitiest perf in the pic; atrocious, but lively.) To everyone’s relief, blind philosopher Mel Ferrer pulls the ol’ poisoned apple gag on Aurelius, hastening his demise to keep the line of succession in the family. And with Plummer installed as a new mad emperor, the usual Bread & Circus Sword & Sandal tropes take over as we move from frosty Germanica to a massive Roman Forum reconstruction of truly spectacular scale. You feel bankrupt just looking at it. (Not since Henry King & Lillian Gish rebuilt Renaissance Florence in ROMOLA/’24, without resorting to miniatures, mattes or trompe l’oeil, has anything so gobsmacking been seen on screen.) Plus, grunting stars (Anthony Quayle; John Ireland); speechifying poetic types (James Mason; Omar Sharif; even old Finlay Currie), all to little purpose, while Dmitri Tiomkin’s odd score enters in its own aural acoustic with pastiche Bach (an organ sonata for the opening credits); fake Rimsky-Korsakov (Eastern Empire revolt); and a Rossiniana tarantella for the dancing throngs finale. The film is not without defenders (I’m looking at you, Martin Scorsese), but it's no EL CID.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Orson Welles, with a fortieth the budget, was shooting CHIMES OF MIDNIGHT/’65 on the Bronston lot a stage or two away from all this mishegas. There’s the ‘consultant’ Bronston should have gone for.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In an attempt to liven up the first half, Yakima Canutt’s staged a very BEN-HUR like chariot race between brotherly competitors: Boyd, now as ‘good guy’ & Plummer doing the sub-textual/suppressed gay ‘bad boy’ honors.

DOUBLE-BILL: Ridley Scott must have taken notes on this when he was working up GLADIATOR/’00.