Big Screen Rome - Amazon Web Services

in historical epic films (Winkler, 2001b, 277). In Quo Vadis, the members
of the Praetorian Guard are noticeably set apart from the rank and file
Roman soldiery by their menacing black-plumed helmets. After committing
murder and arson in service to Nero, Tigellinus is killed by a
Roman soldier who proclaims it to be an act of restitution for the execution
of General Plautius. So the film situates the “good” Roman soldiers,
like those in the legions of Marcus and Nerva, against the “bad” Tigellinus
and the Praetorians, who protect Nero’s interests.
Surely the most intriguing figure in the film is the historical character
Petronius, played with ironic disengagement by British actor Leo Genn,
who, like Ustinov, was also Oscar-nominated as Best Supporting Actor.
Genn, a former barrister in London, puts his rhetorical training and velvety
vocal tones to excellent use as the sophisticated and smooth-talking
imperial flatterer, in a finely nuanced performance that also explores the
troubled and brooding side of Petronius. His position as the court’s arbiter
elegentiae suggests something like a contemporary “style guru,” a person
known for refined discernment who is employed by the wealthy and
powerful to advise them on matters of taste. Those among the jaded class
value an advisor who is able to stay above the merely trendy, as Tacitus
remarks of Petronius: “People liked the apparent freshness of his unconventional
and unselfconscious sayings and doings” (Annales 16.18). Even
with this modern veneer, Petronius represents a type of noble Roman
ideal: aristocratic, urbane, and well educated (Babington and Evans, 192–
3). While his close avuncular relationship to Marcus portrays him as a
man of strong ties, his association with Nero reveals a complicated and
rather repulsive symbiosis, as he cajoles and compliments the emperor
with his razor-sharp double talk. Some critics suggest that Petronius’ death,
presented in the film as a dignified and autonomous act of suicide, is an
attempt to compensate for his cynical indifference to Nero’s atrocities
(Elley, 125; Fitzgerald, 31–2). But before he dies, in one of the most virtuoso
scenes of the entire epic genre, Petronius dictates a derisive letter to
the emperor, which according to Tacitus was actually a laundry list of
Nero’s sex partners and deviant escapades, and asks Seneca to deliver it:
To Nero, Emperor of Rome, Master of the World, Divine Pontiff. I know
that my death will be a disappointment to you, since you wished to render
me this service yourself. To be born in your reign is a miscalculation; but
to die in it is a joy. I can forgive you for murdering your wife and your
mother, for burning our beloved Rome, for befouling our fair country with
the stench of your crimes. But one thing I cannot forgive – the boredom of
26 QUO VADIS (1951)