Big Screen Rome - Amazon Web Services

With the help of computer-generated imagery, “Rome can be built in a
day” (Herbert Muschamp, The New York Times, April 30, 2000).
But modern special effects and bold self-consciousness alone do not
explain the astounding critical and commercial success of Gladiator. In a
modern film industry full of remakes and repetitive movie franchises,
Gladiator did something more than just reproduce a seemingly obsolete
genre: it wove together some of the most intelligent and entertaining
aspects of earlier epic movies. Quo Vadis was a campy riot of color and
sound, with delightfully wicked characters scheming their way through
fabulous orgies on the Palatine and dramatic martyrdoms in the arena.
Superficially more pious, Ben-Hur celebrated the half-naked muscularity
of its two male protagonists, as the well-constructed plot drove to the
climactic resolution of their conflict in the thunderous chariot race sequence.
The Fall of the Roman Empire, Mann’s elegant epic, attempted to
achieve solemnity and portray historical events accurately, but was popularly
judged as a somber and tedious film. Gladiator succeeded in uniting
and improving on these cinematic approaches, by reconciling “the bread
and circuses side of Roman epics with their aspirations to respectability”
(The Economist, May 20, 2000). Gladiator combined the spectacular decadence
and imperial intrigue from films like Quo Vadis and Cleopatra with
the serious narrative of an appealing hero’s tragic journey as in Spartacus.
Enhanced by the brilliant application of the latest computer technology,
Gladiator delivered a compelling, new kind of film: entertaining, stirring,
and impressive-looking.
In June of 1998, the creative team behind Gladiator knew they were
taking a great risk when they decided to make this film (Cyrino, 129). It
had been a long time since anyone had attempted to produce a Romanstyle
spectacular, given the dismal financial returns and critical flops
experienced by the last few films of that old-fashioned genre. Then
DreamWorks’ production head Walter Parkes noted a trend in the boxoffice
success of recent “classic” films like James Cameron’s Titanic (1997),
and thought it was time for a rebirth of the toga film. “The Roman epic
occupies a strange, special place in the heart of moviegoers,” Parkes said.
“We love the good ones like Ben-Hur and Spartacus, but even the bad
ones are guilty pleasures” (Time, May 8, 2000). Director Ridley Scott,
however, had to be persuaded to take the helm of such a risky film. Producer
Douglas Wick showed Scott a reproduction of the painting Pollice
Verso by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1872), where a victorious gladiator stands
over fallen foes in an arena crowded with rabid spectators, and Scott was
inspired by the dramatic and visual possibilities of directing a reinvigorated
GLADIATOR (2000) 225