Quo Vadis

Quo Vadis, based on the late nineteenth century novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz, has been filmed many times in many lands for the cinema and for television. It was done as a Broadway play at the turn of the last century. But this is the version that most people remember and talk about.

It's also the first of the big budget sand and scandal epics that the movies made to try and compete with that little home entertainment machine that was popping up in more and more homes. MGM built the magnificent sets the film was done on and sent Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr and the whole cast over to Italy to shoot it. Those sets later popped up in Ben-Hur, The Fall of the Roman Empire and dozens of Italian gladiator films. Supposedly somewhere in the cast of thousands both Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren appeared as extras. Spot them if you can.

Another extra was Lia DiLeo and gossip about her and Robert Taylor led to the break up of the Robert Taylor-Barbara Stanwyck marriage.

The story is about Robert Taylor as Marcus Vinicius, Roman soldier and his lust then love for Christian girl Lygia played by Deborah Kerr. Their story is set against the background of the early Christian church in Rome and the persecution of it by the Emperor Nero.

Taylor and Kerr are fine in the leads, but in this case the supporting cast really overshadowed the stars. Peter Ustinov as Nero and Leo Genn as Petronius were both nominated for Best Supporting Actor of 1951, but lost to Karl Malden in Streetcar Named Desire.

Peter Ustinov got a once in a lifetime part as Nero. It's the kind of role that one can overact outrageously and still convey all the sinister impulses that this villain possessed. Ustinov was compared with Charles Laughton as Nero in The Sign of the Cross and I wouldn't dare say who was better.

My favorite part in this film has always been Leo Genn as Gaius Petronius. He's the only actor in the film who's holding his own with Ustinov. He's a pretty smart guy this Petronius, keeping his place at the court by flattery and guile. It's a bitter pill for him to swallow when after Nero burns Rome, the Rome he loves and has dedicated his life to. He could have prevented it by taking a righteous stand against the tyrant. But instead he played the cynic once too often and decides what he deems to be the only course of action open to him.

Finlay Currie is a strong and hearty, but aged St. Peter. My conception of St. Peter has always been that of Finlay Currie and in his youth that of Howard Keel in The Big Fisherman. Peter's a hands on kind of pastor used to hard work. After all he was a fisherman in his younger days and that certainly is outdoor work.

Whether people are confirmed Christians or not will depend on how they take this film. We all can certainly admire the spectacle and the talent of the players. And nobody questions the atrocities committed by Emperor Nero against the early Christians.

But at one point after Taylor realizes his love for Kerr, he makes what I consider a quite reasonable offer to allow her to continue in her faith and he'll even put up whatever kind of chapel on the house grounds for that purpose. Not so says Kerr, it's going to be all or nothing. That all or nothing attitude today has got a few people upset with organized religion for various reasons. But that's in the distant future from the First Century AD.

In his waning days as head of MGM, the tyrannical Louis B Mayer gambled on costly costume dramas to combat the scourge of television competition. Quo Vadis was perhaps the best of those. Robert Taylor was his most convincing in mature Western roles later in his screen career, but he is also believable in this role as a Roman Centurion. The best acting performance in the film is the great Peter Ustinov in the role of Emperor Nero. An interesting supporting character is Buddy Baer as Ursus, which is Latin for "Bear", portraying a "Good Guy". He was the younger brother of former boxing Heavyweight Champion Max Baer and, at 6-7" and 250 lb., even bigger than his older brother . He was also a highly ranked Heavyweight, who twice fought Champion Joe Louis for the Heavyweight Championship. The story itself is pretty standard for the time in which it was made, but less offensive in the religious aspect than Cecil B DeMille ever was.

Ancient Rome never looked so good--especially in the gorgeous MGM technicolor of 1951. Costumes, sets, photography and music are all of a high order--and all of the performances are competent with two outstanding ones by Leo Genn (Petronius) and Peter Ustinov (Nero). Ustinov reminds me of an overbaked Charles Laughton in some of his mad scenes, but he is a convincing weakling as Nero. Leo Genn has some of the wittiest dialogue and handles his lines with professional ease, his eyes flashing with humor as he pretends to agree with Nero on certain points. Robert Taylor is stalwart in the lead giving his usual dependable performance and Deborah Kerr is lovely (if a bit British in manner) as Lygia.

All the action and excitement you want from a spectacle--the burning of Rome, Christians in the arena thrown to the lions, the triumphal marches accompanied by Miklos Rozsa's mighty score--and scenes with sentimental and religious overtones (sometimes too extended and talky) --all combine to make the kind of lush spectacle MGM knew would be popular at the box-office. Although discriminating critics found fault with certain factors, it won eight Academy Award nominations with Ustinov and Genn both nominated for supporting roles.

Grand scale spectacle--but don't expect anything deep.

Henryk Sienkiewicz was one of Poland's great historical novelists, and one of the first recipients of the Nobel Prize for literature (1905). It has only been in the last decade or so that translations of other novels by him have appeared in English, but his major work, QUO VADIS?, has been known since it appeared over a century ago. It was a study of the early days of the Christians in Rome, and their first persecution by the Emperor Nero (54 - 68 A.D.) It concentrates on the burning of Rome and the persecution of the Christians (including the death by crucifixion of St. Peter). So the background is identical to Cecil B. DeMille's THE SIGN OF THE CROSS. Inevitably comparisons between the two films, their plots, and the performances of the two Neros (Charles Laughton and Peter Ustinov) result.

But the two stories are not the same. Sienkiewicz threw in far more of the history of the Rome of that period than the author of the play THE SIGN OF THE CROSS did. And because of his deeply felt commitment to his faith, Sienkiewicz showed the destruction of Nero's rotten regime and the first triumph of Christianity. THE SIGN OF THE CROSS does not do that - my comment there was that DeMille never made such a pessimistic and tragic film in his career, with all the good people being destroyed and Nero (at that time) triumphant. This does not happen in QUO VADIS, where the corruption and incompetence of the regime finally loses the support of the people (and ... ironically worse ... the army!).

There is also the addition of the leading poet-courtier of the day, Petronius Arbiter. A man of wit and taste, Petronius was one of several figures of literary note in Nero's court, and one of several to meet tragedy by being near that egomaniac. The others were led by Nero's original chief minister Seneca, the stoic philosopher and dramatist. Seneca's nephew Lucan was also a leading figure in the court. Both men were eventually turned into foes of the regime, especially as Seneca fell from his ministerial position after the murder of Nero's mother Agrippina. Petronius managed to avoid the political conflict that involved the other two, but the Emperor's irrational jealousy helped link the three. Lucan wrote a savage epic poem against the Imperial family (PHARSALIA) which signaled his rejection of the regime. Lucan joined a conspiracy against Nero led by a Senator named Piso. It was discovered, and Lucan and Seneca implicated. Both were forced to commit suicide (by opening their veins). Tigellinus, Nero's leading adviser, insinuated that Petronius was involved too (he wasn't). Petronius also committed suicide the same way, but wrote a witty and accurate denunciation to Nero which was given to the Emperor after the writer's death.

Petronius' major surviving work, THE SATYRICON, was a wonderful look at the rot at the center of the regime of Nero. It (by the way) was turned into a film by Fellini in the late 1960s.

Leo Genn brought Petronius and his delicate wit and taste out in the film, and merited the Oscar nomination he got for this - his best remembered role (aside from Dr. "Kick" in THE SNAKE PIT). Ustinov brings a degree of frailty to Nero - an uncertainty as to the acceptance of his public persona. He flails about between seeking the approval of the artists like Petronius and those who manipulate the tyrant in him (Poppeia and Tigellinus). Despite his vicious evil one sympathizes with him - he is a sick man. And his reconstruction program (he burns down old Rome to create "Neropolis") is on par to that of another tyrant of more recent vintage, who planned to build a world capital called "Germania" over Berlin's bones. He too left many bones, but it is hard to consider him at all sympathetic.

As spectacle and history QUO VADIS? is quite rewarding. It may telescope the events of 64 - 68 A.D. (when Nero committed suicide with assistance), and avoid the three brief Emperors who ruled after Nero within the year (Galba, Otho, and Vitellius) before Vespasian came back from the war in Israel to take the throne for a decade - but it does show how Nero's regime collapsed. DeMille never tackled it. But despite those two omissions the film does do the period pretty well.

Robert Taylor is more effective as a military commander / hero than Fredric March had been in SIGN OF THE CROSS. Deborah Kerr is more believable as an early Christian convert. And Finley Currie is wonderful as Simon Peter - who realizes that he must die for the Lord that he once denied. His end is based on a legend that Peter was crucified upside down, supposedly at his request that he did not deserve to be crucified in the same way as the Lord he briefly failed. Altogether a superior religious - historic epic.

A fellow IMDb-er from Poland, defending Henryk Sienkiewicz's monumental, Nobel Prize-winning novel (which I HAVE read, by the way) calls this M-G-M Technicolor spectacle "CRAP"!

Please! The novel is incredibly dense and detailed; possibly a lot truer to what was known in the early part of the twentieth century of the actual events of the time of its plot; with lots of references to the cruelty and luxury of Nero's Rome; frequent mentions of the pervasive nudity under all kinds of circumstances among the Romans of the time; and, given its length, a perhaps more respectful view of the emergence of Christianity at a time when its converts risked their very lives to admit their beliefs. There is no way that even a multi-part TV mini-(I mean, maxi-)series could come close to approximating the novel's overwhelming complexity.

But, as a piece of filmed entertainment, this cinema extravaganza is not at all worthy of being consigned to the proverbial garbage heap. The cast, yes, including Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr, but, especially the supporting actors (Peter Ustinov, of course; plus Leo Genn, in particular, as well as Patricia Laffan, Marina Berti, Finlay Currie, Felix Aylmer, Rosalie Crutchley, et al.) all take full advantage of a script that had many witty as well as dramatic moments and, for its day, a fairly reverent (though not historically accurate) rendering of Christianity's emergence in a hostile Roman world.

In addition its production values have never been surpassed; in fact, they've never been equalled. One understands how beleaguered those of Polish descent often must feel (I, for one, have never been a fan of so-called "Polish jokes."), but let's not set impossible standards for a translation of one of Poland's most memorable literary achievements! This production is an example of Hollywood marshalling some impressive resources, while avoiding more than a modicum of the cliches that can sabotage such a project. It may not honor its source as some might wish, but it's still a quite grand and opulently eye-filling way to enjoy close to three hours.