Big Screen Rome - Amazon Web Services

clothing among them (Matthew 27:35, Mark 15:24, Luke 23:34, and John
19:23–4). As the storm intensifies, Marcellus clutches the base of the cross
and stains his hand with the dark red blood dripping down from Jesus’
wounds. The image sets up a symbolic visual connection between Marcellus’
culpability for the execution, and the dark red robe in his possession. At
this moment, Marcellus hears Jesus pray for his enemies’ absolution:
“Father, forgive them . . .” (Luke 23:34). The robe paralyzes Marcellus
with guilt, but it is the curse of Demetrius that triggers his post-traumatic
stress-induced madness:
You crucified him! You, my master! But you freed me . . . I’ll never serve
you again, you Roman pig! Masters of the world, you call yourselves! Thieves!
Murderers! Jungle animals! A curse on you! A curse on your empire!
The Robe enjoys an exceptional opportunity to represent two onscreen
Roman emperors. Given Suetonius’ depiction of Tiberius as a sex-crazed,
bloodthirsty maniac, the film treats the first Claudian emperor rather well.
Actor Ernest Thesiger taps into his own aristocratic roots as a member of
British nobility to convey Tiberius’ haughtiness, and uses his experience in
horror films of the 1930s to give the emperor just a hint of skeletal peculiarity.
Although the cinematic Tiberius refers to his marriage as “thirty
years with Julia,” the real Julia, daughter of Augustus, was exiled long
before Tiberius became emperor, and by the end of his reign would have
been long dead, if not forgotten. After his interview with Marcellus, as
darkness falls over Capri, Tiberius utters a prophetic speech describing the
unlikely insurgency that will topple Rome: “It is man’s desire to be free –
the greatest madness of all.”
The portrayal of Caligula, however, cheerfully indulges in Suetonian
extremes, as the young emperor is characterized right from the beginning
as a shrill, vengeful, and dangerous man. In his first movie role, 23-yearold
New Yorker Jay Robinson flaunts a high-pitched, whiny voice that is a
cross between scary and snide, in what one scholar calls his “humorously
insane hamming” (Solomon, 2001a, 215). There is simply no better imperial
cape-sweeper in the entire epic genre than Robinson’s Caligula. The
film implies Caligula has a history of hostile competition against Marcellus,
which comes to a head in their public quarrel at the slave auction and
then explodes when Caligula loses Diana to Marcellus. Caligula’s fury has
immediate and dire consequences: when he can’t get rid of Marcellus in
Palestine, he throws him in jail as a traitor. In the trial scene, Caligula
describes Christianity as a sedition, to underscore Marcellus’ particular
THE ROBE (1953) 53