Big Screen Rome - Amazon Web Services

anything that you don’t love or admire or respect” (quoted in Yacowar,
32). Using the specialized rhetoric of each cinematic genre, its themes,
strategies, and effects, Brooks exposes the satire lurking within while expressing
his admiration for the art of filmmaking.
Making the Movie
After the success of films such as Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein,
Brooks decided to tackle the epic film genre with his seventh feature,
History of the World, Part I. This was his first sole screenwriting credit
since The Producers, and his first R-rated feature since Blazing Saddles. In
terms of its enormous budget and scale, as its title modestly suggests,
History of the World, Part I was a breakthrough for Brooks, as the film
covers a variety of historical periods and cultures, from the Stone Age to
the French Revolution, demanding the creation of intricate and expensive
sets and costumes (Solomon, 2001a, 296). Once again Brooks offers up a
sweeping, high-energy comedy based upon the parody of recognizable
Hollywood genres; in this case, he focuses on the sumptuous spectacle and
thrilling adventure of the grandiose historical epic. The Roman Empire
sequence, in particular, parodies the familiar “toga-film” epic spectaculars
about the ancient world produced in the 1950s and early 1960s, such
as Quo Vadis and Spartacus (1960). From the opening narration of this
sequence, voiced with stentorian solemnity by Orson Welles, “Rome: blazing
pronouncement of mankind’s most glorious achievements,” the audience
realizes, they are in well-known Brooksian territory. The narrator’s
introductory voice-over, which is the standard beginning of almost all
earlier epic films, is a clear signal that a cinematic spoof is at hand, so
much so that in later epic films, such as Gladiator (2000), the opening
information is presented as scrolling text without the declamatory voiceover
to avoid the appearance of campy excess.
The Roman Empire sequence offers several typical scenes and locations
to alert the audience of its serious satiric intentions, from the Roman
Forum bustling with business, to the decadent imperial palace with its
extravagant banquets and plush secret inner rooms. In the first scene of
Brooks’ film, there is a specific, comic reference to the opening of the
stately film The Robe (1953), where the film’s protagonist strolls through a
Roman marketplace full of merchants hawking their wares, attends a slave
auction, and intervenes to save a run-away slave. There is even a chariot
chase scene at the end of the sequence that not only parodies such scenes
HISTORY OF THE WORLD, PART I (1981) 199