The Fall of the Roman Empire (film)

The idea for The Fall of the Roman Empire originated with Anthony Mann who had just finished directing El Cid (1961). In London, while waiting for a taxi cab, he spotted an Oxford concise edition of Edward Gibbon's six-volume series The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire near the front window at the Hatchards bookshop. Mann then considered a film adaptation of the book as his next project after having read the book on a flight trip to Madrid, in which he later presented the idea to Samuel Bronston to which the producer agreed.[8][9] In July 1961, Bronston told The New York Times that The Fall of the Roman Empire would be his next project, but he had also ruled out filming on location in Rome. He stated that upon "checking I found the Eternal City was not the 'city' of the time of the fall of the empire, so we'll build our 'Rome' in Madrid." Additionally, Philip Yordan had been tasked to write the script while Charlton Heston was being offered the role of Marcus Aurelius.[10]

In September 1961, Bronston formally announced he was planning a trilogy of historical spectacles in Spain, which included The Fall of the Roman Empire with Mann and Heston returning to direct and star in. Filming was initially set in February 1962,[11] with the production design for the Roman Forum being placed under construction under Veniero Colasanti and John Moore's supervision.[12] However, Heston had disliked Yordan's script for the film.[13] In December, at the premiere of El Cid in Madrid, Heston told Bronston associate Michael Waszynski that he was uninterested in starring in The Fall of the Roman Empire. On the next day, during a jet flight back to Los Angeles, Yordan, who was seated next to Heston, and director Nicholas Ray pitched the idea for 55 Days at Peking (1963) to him. Subsequently, 55 Days at Peking went into production while Roman Empire was placed on hold.[14] The elaborate sets for Roman Empire were later demolished and replaced with the Forbidden City sets for 55 Days at Peking.[12]

In April 1963, Mann explained to the Los Angeles Times that while the film was not a direct adaptation of Gibbon's volume series, the focus on a fifteen-year period from Marcus Aurelius' reign to Commodus' death was backed by historians as "the turning point in the history of the empire and by concentrating our story on it we can keep the same group of characters within the range of our drama."[15] Having selected a focal point for the film, screenwriter Basilio Franchina was hired for his broad knowledge of the period while Ben Barzman would handle the actual writing of the script. Together, they subsequently wrote a 350-page film treatment.[8][16] After this, Mann consulted with the screenwriters on further developing the characters, in which they wrote six drafts in total. The sixth draft would be developed throughout the shooting of the film. Mann later explained, "The writing took us more than one year. We did not have artists in mind when we were writing; but we wanted characters with memorable scenes to attract artists of the calibre of Guinness to want to play them."[8]

As the script was being written, the Roman Forum was being constructed at Bronston's studio backlot although their script had made no mention of it. Under Yordan's supervision, the action was re-written for scenes they had not written for the Forum to occur there, which brought much dismay from Barzman.[17] In January 1963, it was reported that historian Will Durant had written a prologue for the film.[18]

It was envisioned that Heston would be cast as Livius, but he turned it down. The part had also been offered to Kirk Douglas, who turned it down as well following an offer of $1.5 million. In 1971, he later said he regretted this "because with $1.5 million there are lots of things you can do that you want to."[19] In May 1962, it was announced that Stephen Boyd, who played opposite to Heston in Ben-Hur (1959), would play the lead opposite Gina Lollobrigida as Lucilla.[20] In September 1962, it was announced that Sophia Loren had been cast as Lucilla, in which she was paid $1 million.[21]

In August 1962, it was reported that Alec Guinness had been cast as Marcus Aurelius, while Richard Harris, Albert Finney, John Gielgud, Terence Stamp were being considered for other roles.[22] Later that same month, it was reported that Harris had been cast as Commodus.[23] However, in January 1963, he was replaced by Christopher Plummer who had pulled out of The V.I.P.s (1963) to do so.[18] Harris would later play the role of Marcus Aurelius in the similarly themed 2000 film Gladiator. By the time filming was set to begin, Anthony Quayle, Omar Sharif, John Ireland, and Mel Ferrer had been cast in supporting roles.[24]

Principal photography began on January 14, 1963. Marcus Aurelius's winter camp on the Danube was shot on location in the snow along the Sierra de Guadarrama in northern Madrid. By the next month, filming in the area was suspended due to a severe blizzard.[25] The "Battle of the Four Armies" involved 8,000 soldiers including 1,200 cavalry and was shot on an undulating plain at Manzanares el Real, which allowed large numbers of soldiers to be visible over a long distance.[26]

Meanwhile, Yakima Canutt had been hired as the second unit director at the insistence of Mann.[27] As he had done in El Cid (1961), Canutt performed his own stunts while his son Tap served as the stunt double for Stephen Boyd. Jack Williams served as the body double for Christopher Plummer. Among the first scenes shot was the chariot race sequence between Livius and Commodus. 1,500 horses were gathered from Spain and Portugal for which they were trained to fall safely during the battle sequences.[28]

Interior scenes were shot in Madrid at the Samuel Bronston Studios (formerly known as the Chamartín Studios) and at the Cinecittà Studios in Rome where Commodus's baths and gymnasiums were constructed.[29] Filming had been arranged to shoot at Cinecittà in order to make it eligible for government subsidies.[30] In July 1963, filming was finished after 143 days. Second unit directors Canutt and Andrew Marton spent an additional 63 days shooting the action sequences.[31]

A statue of Juno as seen in the movie, displayed at the Cinecittà studios in Rome, Italy

Veniero Colasanti and John Moore served as the art directors overseeing the production design with the guidance of Will Durant. Actual construction began on October 1, 1962, using 1,100 men who labored for seven months. About 400 art students and craftsmen throughout Spain worked on the statuary, tiles, frescoes, and details of the set. The film's reconstruction of the Roman Forum was constructed in Las Matas near Madrid, approximately sixteen miles from Bronston's studio. The entire set was measured at 400 x 230 metres (1312 x 754 feet), which holds the record for the largest outdoor film set. Uniquely for the film, the set was not extended through the use of matte paintings.[12]

The Temple of Jupiter was constructed on a 29-metre (95 ft) high hill along the plains of Las Matas by which craftsmen built the 50-metre (160 ft) temple on it. The bronze equestrian figures at the top of the temple were 24 metres (79 ft) above the pavement of the forum set. For the statuary, 350 statues had to be constructed. There were 76 life-size statues, more than a thousand sculpted bases for the remaining figures and victory columns, and a series of the aforementioned equestrian statues that were 7.6 metres (25 ft) high. Ultimately, more than 3,000 sketches were drawn to illustrate the 27 structures that would comprise the sets.[32] The various ancient Rome settings covered 22 hectares (54 acres).[33] After much of the set was pulled down, the remaining sections were reused in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966).[34]

In conjunction with the film's release, a paperback novelization also titled The Fall of the Roman Empire was published by Fawcett Publications. The novelization was written by Harry Whittington and was based on the film's screenplay.[40][41] The cover of the novel is a screenshot from the film. The text of the novel provides a more detailed exposition of the film's plot line. Other covers that were not screenshots of the film were used for this novel of the film.

The film was first released on LaserDisc in a letterboxed format during the 1990s. The most complete version of the film was released on Super 8mm in the early 1990s, extracted from a 16mm print.[39]

On April 29, 2008, the film was released on a three-disc limited collector's edition DVD as part of the Miriam Collection by the Weinstein Company. This edition included bonus materials including an audio commentary by Bill Bronston (son of producer Samuel Bronston) and biographer Mel Martin; a reproduction of the original 1964 souvenir program; a behind-the-scenes look at the fall of the real Roman Empire; a "making of" documentary; five Encyclopædia Britannica featurettes on the Roman Empire; and a set of six color production stills.[42] The Blu-ray disc was released in the United Kingdom on May 16, 2011.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times sharply criticized the film writing, "So massive and incoherent is it, so loaded with Technicolored spectacles, tableaus and military melees that have no real meaning or emotional pull, that you're likely to have the feeling after sitting through its more than three hours (not counting time out for intermission), that the Roman Empire has fallen on you. The reason it misses is obvious — misses as entertainment, that is, not as a mass of noisy footage that leaves the senses flattened and numbed. There isn't a character in it for whom you're made to care two hoots —or, indeed, made to feel is important, or, for that matter, made to understand. The fellows who wrote the screenplay — Ben Barzman, Basilio Franchina and Philip Yordan—have failed completely to shape a drama that has human interest or even sense."[3] Time magazine criticized the production design as well noting "Bronston's Rome is patently too fabulous to have been built in a day, but it doesn't look lived-in either. Director Anthony Mann makes it a picture-book setting aswarm with extras behaving like extras and movie stars all dressed up to face posterity in spanking new tunics, togas, and armor."[4]

Hollis Alpert of Saturday Review wrote: "Never before have script writers (there were three involved) written a screenplay like this one, in which the two main parts are complete voids. One must assume Mr. Bronston offered Mr. Boyd and Miss Loren huge sums to journey to Spain for the movie, they took time only to read the contract and not the script. Several others also appear to great disadvantage in the film, among them James Mason, Omar Sharif, Mel Ferrer, and Anthony Quayle."[5] Philip K. Scheuer, reviewing for the Los Angeles Times, felt the film was "more like a recapitulation of all the great movie spectacles, historical and pseudo, than a monumental entity in itself." He further wrote "Yet the only emotion it engenders is excitement — intermittent excitement, and its art lies in its parts (the camera work, the color, a few of the performances, even the music) but not in their sum. Its triumph is the triumphs of its technicians, of matter over mind."[6] In contrast, Variety praised the film, summarizing: "Large in theme and concept, colorful in treatment, The Fall of the Roman Empire is Sam Bronston's greatest coup de cinema."[7]

Among later reviews, Mike Cummings from AllMovie gave the film a positive review, praising the film for its performances and musical score.[43] Leonard Maltin awarded the film 31⁄2 out of 4 stars, writing "Intelligent scripting, good direction, and fine acting place this far above the usual empty-headed spectacle".[44] Steven H. Scheuer disliked the film at first and asked his Movies on TV readers to "excuse the divine Sophia Loren for looking so uncomfortable," but later reconsidered his opinion and rated it 3 out of 4 stars.[45]

The film has a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 13 reviews, with an average of 7.20 out of 10.[46]

The film grossed $4.8 million at the box office in the United States and Canada,[2] from which it returned $1.9 million in North American distributor rentals.[47]