Quo Vadis (1951)
Just as westerns were a far more pervasive genre in the 50s and 60s compared with modern day, these epic sword and sandal type films really had their heyday in that era. Most attempts in the past couple of decades seem to have paled in comparison to the best ones of that earlier period. And even stuff that I'd call pretty good like Troy and Kingdom of Heaven just doesn't quite measure up for me. But a film like Quo Vadis, which I saw multiple times in my youth, just really works.
The film's premise, based on a novel, involves a Roman general named Marcus who returns from a three-year campaign during Nero's reign. He reunites with his uncle, a noble named Gaius Petronius, who arranges for his nephew to stay with a retired general and his family before he heads to his estate in Sicily. At that general's home, he becomes enamored with the couple's adopted daughter, played by the great Deborah Kerr. When he learns that she is actually the daughter of a defeated king who had to send her to Rome as a hostage in her youth, he uses his status as a war hero to convince Nero to pledge her to him. He gradually learns that she is a Christian and that she and fellow members of the religion within the empire are quietly practicing their faith in a potentially hostile environment.
Meanwhile, Peter Ustinov plays Nero as unhinged, delusional, and callous. Petronius, ostensibly his close friend, consistently uses his influence to curb Nero's more violent tendencies. But Nero, surrounded by sycophants and enabled by his similarly malicious (but far more focused) wife Sabina commits an atrocity. When he realizes that the furious denizens of the city are going to besiege the palace, he scapegoats the Christians as a means to save himself and preserve his rule.
I think a lot of films from this era that were based on novels were really narratively tight. The result is that you can have a three-hour long movie like this one that is so well-structured that you do not feel the runtime at all. It moves very briskly. Every scene feels like it is necessary and they all logically build to the climactic sequence. Like many films in this genre, the scale and scope are really effective. It's a technically impressive movie.
The performances are all quite good. Ustinov and Leo Genn as Nero and Petronius steal any scene they are in. Since they share a lot of screentime, the dynamic between those two characters is a very important factor in the film. I thought Genn's laid back affability worked really well for the character. He plays Petronius as a guy who feels confident that he can manipulate Nero in a manner that will at least prevent him from indulging his most debased intentions. He even has a bit of fun with it, encouraging him to keep writing subpar songs and poems and amusingly urging him to use the word omnivorous to describe himself in one of these songs even when he clearly intended to use the word omnipotent. But when Nero burns Rome without having informed the nobles he planned to do so, Petronius becomes well aware of the limitations of his influence and is horrified and shocked that it happened.
The Robert Taylor-Deborah Kerr love story is good, too. The movie does a good job of focusing, in the first hour, more on thematic elements like oppression, self-determination, and the abuse of power. Only gradually does the film become more about Kerr's and her friends' religious affiliation. It's a solid element of the narrative because it adds to the sense that the characters have to practice their religion quietly for self-preservation. The film gets pretty intense and unsettling, too. Even though movies in that era did not show graphic depictions of violence like modern movies, the implied, offscreen, and quick cutaway brutal acts have a similar impact.
Really liked this one when I last saw it a couple of decades ago. Really liked it now. Not as good as Ben Hur or as memorable as The Ten Commandments, but highly recommed it to anyone who likes these classic genre films.
8.3/10
