The greatest movie ever made..!

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

The irony of The Fall of the Roman Empire is that no one wanted to be in it. Kirk Douglas turned it down for $1.5 million, an incredible offer in 1964! If you watch the three-hour movie, you'll understand why. Kirk Douglas was able to recognize a terrible script when he read one. Ben Barzman, Basilio Franchina, and Philip Yordan's script is so bad, it's hard to believe through the dozens of drafts and rewrites all film scripts must endure, no one could have improved it before the actors started speaking. For example, Stephen Boyd sees Sophia Loren after a long absence and tells he she's beautiful. "Beautiful?" she repeats. "What . . . does that mean?" As another example, in one of the plentiful battle scenes, Stephen tries to convince everyone to stop fighting, but the angry mob of bad guys won't listen. "Let us die killing them!" one extra shouts. The dialogue is so stilted and mostly unnecessary, that even when the tedious fight scenes are over, you almost long for them to return. In a film that could have easily been an hour shorter, you'd think I'd be grateful to have three hours to stare at Stephen Boyd's handsome face. As much as I love him, and as beautiful as Sophia Loren is, Christopher Plummer ruins the movie-with help from the script and the ridiculous rip-offs from Ben-Hur. In the beginning of the film when Chris and Stephen are reunited after years of being apart, they embrace and drink a toast with their arms entwined. I realize that was a Roman custom, but since the scene was so similar to Ben-Hur, it's hard to take it seriously. It's the same with the chariot race, in which Chris-the Messala to Stephen's Ben-Hur-tries to hook his wheel under Stephen's to break his chariot. When that doesn't work, he actually starts whipping him; sound familiar? Unfortunately, even if you've never seen Ben-Hur and could watch this movie with fresh eyes, Christopher Plummer still ruins the movie. He speaks nearly every line with a sing-song lilt, and he prances around as if he was a stereotypical French fashion designer, instead of a Roman leader. His performance is so horrible, it's shocking that he had a career afterwards, let alone had to be coerced into taking the role of Captain Von Trapp the very next year.Dimitri Tiomkin's score earned an Oscar nod, and when you listen to the soundtrack, it sounds very pretty, exciting, and Roman. Hearing it while watching the film feels a little incongruous. Dimitri may have come up with a pretty theme, but he probably wasn't watching the movie while he wrote it. Music buffs might not want to sit through the entire movie, and despite the supporting cast including Alec Guinness, James Mason, Omar Sharif, Mel Ferrer, John Ireland, Anthony Quayle, and Finlay Currie, movie buffs might want to either.

This documents the fall of an empire built on power, ambition, money, showmanship, rival dynasties that could leverage thousands in the field of action: Old Hollywood. Falls of this sort, the film announces, are not an instantaneous event of course but a process of decline with many contributing factors. Hollywood was falling for some time and would continue to for several more years until new blood was allowed in.But this revealingly documents several of the reasons behind the fall. In the Old Hollywood vein of DW Griffith and Cecil DeMille, the human being casts no shadow, is allowed no inner dimension or private space, life is a public display of heroism, its machinations are clear and unambiguous, love is announced, ambition is announced, ordinary humans are only given room to writhe as part of a collective backdrop.It's clear why this picture was beginning to crumble. By '64 the Beatles had taken hold, preparing the ground where a new collectivity would be the focus of life and discovery and not the backdrop to gestures. The first televised images of Earth from space had been broadcast, further undermining the notion of fixed stage. The new French philosophies were beginning to rail against any single truth in the historical narrative.So here we have Rome in an extravagant scale, a cast of thousands clashing in the battlefield or the streets, heroes or villains gesticulating conflict, all to prop something that is absolutely lifeless.Interesting is how the film itself responds to the broader perceived change sweeping it. It sees a desire for change and openness, underscored by a Christian subplot where an emancipated slave happily feeds thousands of every race in what would in a few years be understood as counterculture metaphor (the rally is quashed by Roman police). The tyrant all through the film props a culture of superficial image, spectacle, power, violence, the same exact things the filmmakers hinged the whole appeal on: chariot races, marches and counter- marches, lavish decor, the final duel.So here is a grandiose cinematic parade about its own lack of a softer humanity. It wasn't Lean who revolutionized this particular stage in Lawrence, though we had desert space for contemplation and a more dynamic capture. It was Leone, that master semiotician, trained on exactly this sort of Roman spectacle.The film ends with the tyrant dead and senators haggling with the military commander over the price of the vacant throne, foreshadowing the corporate empire of New Hollywood.

This movie had one thing going for it - incredible special effects to depict Roman architecture. The Roman fort in what is now Germany was a masterpiece inside and out. The stone work, the ramp whereby horses and chariots galloped right up to the gate, the log bridge over the gorge....looked very real. I don't know if it was historically accurate or not, but it was very impressive. The Roman temples and various government buildings in the center of Rome were fantastic - what a visual display - it was unmatched in any other toga epic. To this day, such realism has not been achieved again. The same goes for the detailed Roman legions. Now for the bad part - who exactly were the Romans up against - Barbarians or cave men? The Barbarians all had the dumbest wigs and beards. They lumbered around and seemed to fight with sticks. Then, there was the totally inane dialogue, which was more stilted than an oil rig in the Atlantic. Whenever Sophia Loren and Stephen Boyd were together, the lovey-dovey talk with reverent Biblical epic overtones was too funny. Stephen Boyd was a blond, probably so you wouldn't confuse him with Mesalah from Ben Hur. Sophia Loren was caked with oily makeup and seemed to have the same somber facial expression throughout. She seemed like a large, disoriented amphibian. Christopher Lee at least was interesting because he was evil. There were two instances where scenes from Ben Hur were revisited - the scene when Boyd and Lee reunite was very similar to when Messalah and Be Hur rekindled their friendship after many years. The chariot race from Ben Hur was revisited when Boyd and Lee raced off in a chariot "fight", whipping each other and bumping axles along the way. The film "Gladiator" with Russell Crowe borrowed half of "Fall of the Roman Empire". Same scenario where the dying emperor in Germany appoints his general over his son to succeed him. Same psychotic Commodus character. Same duel to the death as gladiators. One more thing - the musical score in Fall of the Roman Empire was very inappropriate. Seemed like the soundtrack for "The Sound of Music" or "My Fair Lady". Really bad.

The tutti orchestra blares Elgar. The leather-clad actors declaim with hand outstretched. The cameras pan across the Roman Empire. I yawn. Why, you ask? The beginning is all exposition. Actors usually are hired to show, not tell. Possibly it gets better later on, but as a member of the Baby Boomers, I haven't the nanoseconds to waste on British-accented, slowly developing pseudo-history. Varus, give me back my legions. Then give me back the time I spent watching this. The tutti orchestra blares Elgar. The leather-clad actors declaim with hand outstretched. The cameras pan across the Roman Empire. I yawn. Why, you ask? The beginning is all exposition. Actors usually are hired to show, not tell. Possibly it gets better later on, but as a member of the Baby Boomers, I haven't the nanoseconds to waste on British-accented, slowly developing pseudo-history. Varus, give me back my legions. Then give me back the time I spent watching this.