The Fall of the Roman Empire, Anthony Mann, 1964

[Belle]

The last completed film by Anthony Mann, "The Fall of the Roman Empire" has been stunningly restored. Photographed by renowned (Australian) cinematographer Robert Krasker in Ultra Panavision, the film suffers the fate of many wide-screen films; the characters are static and lack vibrancy and the screen is difficult to fill. You just cannot have actors standing around - literally - doing nothing and waiting to deliver lines. Wyler, Ford and Hawks would never have settled for that.

The epic promise with the opening credits and Tiomkin's excellent score is not fulfilled; grandeur and set pieces of 'stage' acting don't go together. The studios needed to compete with television and bigger had to be better; if that meant stranding actors in widescreen this was something they were obviously willing to tolerate. This film demonstrates the limits of that thinking. Also, the score during the picture sounded very much like a pre-recorded studio offering of the generic variety, sans any thematic material characteristic of film music, and it soon becomes a nuisance.

A connoisseur like myself could say with credibility and a straight face, "this film is actually all about ultra-Panavision"!!

Some notable identities in the credits. George Korngold, Sound Editor and son of Eric Wolfgang Korngold, David Hildyard, brother of the great British cinematographer Jack Hildyard and Yakima Canutt on Second Unit direction; those chariot scenes in "Fall" are virtually identically choreographed with those he directed for 'Ben Hur'.

Sophia Loren couldn't and still can't act; I'll never know why she lasted in the business, let alone earn top billing in this picture. It's embarrassing to see her standing around, occasionally emoting - particularly in a film where she is up against acting giants like Guinness, Plummer, Mason, Quayle and Stephen Boyd!! The early scenes between Plummer and Boyd are stunning; both are painfully believable in all their scenes. Hats off to Krasker for a memorable image experience. Those sensual and graceful crane shots up and over the troops and the settings always create a frisson for me. Unforgettable; no matter the questionable merits of the film.

Anthony Mann was more famous for those blistering revisionist westerns of the 1950s with James Stewart. He was reluctant to take on "Fall" and it may have contributed to his death; just imagine the stress and management issues of a project like this. It would be impossible to convey within the space of 3.5 hours just how the Roman Empire fell, but the clues - impossible to dramatize and discussed in tomes - are found in the opening monologue; eloquent, devastating and very relevant to the USA today.

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it is destroyed from within"; this is the prescient and devastating last line of the "The Fall of the Roman Empire".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OG83i7dtQk