Although superbly filmed in 70mm, The Fall of the Roman Empire feels cynical compared to the bombastic emphasis on scale and spectacle employed by Ben-Hur (1959) and Cleopatra (1963) – which should come as little surprise, given the proclivities of its director, the great Anthony Mann.
Not that the film wants for scale or spectacle either, both of which remain plentiful in Mann’s wintry widescreen vistas.
It’s more that it actively suppresses any triumphalism in favour of a masochistic sense that the epoch’s end is predetermined.
To which end, its sensibilities feel strikingly modern, even as it possesses a tactility of design that could never be replicated in our CGI-reliant era.
Narratively speaking, it shares a kinship with Gladiator (2000), but Mann’s poised frames, encompassing an increasingly desolate strangeness, knock that young upstart’s pretensions for six.
Lucilla
Sophia Loren
Livius
Stephen Boyd
Marcus Aurelius
Alec Guinness
Timonides
James Mason
Commodus
Christopher Plummer
Verulus
Anthony Quayle
Ballomar
John Ireland
Sohamus
Omar Sharif
Cleander
Mel Ferrer
Julianus
Eric Porter
Caecina
Finlay Currie
Polybius
Andrew Keir
Niger
Douglas Wilmer
Victorinus
George Murcell
Virgilianus
Norman Wooland
Cornelius
Michael Gwynn
Marcellus
Virgilio Teixeira
Claudius
Peter Damon
Lentulus
Rafael Luis Calvo
Helva
Lena von Martens
Director
Anthony Mann
