Caesar the Conqueror (1961)

I'm not sure what they were going for with this one.  Caesar conquers the Gauls and watches a boxing match.  He is so entertained he puts the winner, Vercingetorix, in charge.  He promptly rebels.  There is an argument in the Senate about whether or not Caesar has too much power.  Then Caesar decides to marry his ward to his friend, an important general.  He sends her through rebellious Gaul where she naturally gets captured an Vercingetorix holds her for ransom.  She escapes, there are some battles, and Caesar wins.  I'm not sure where they were going with the character of Vercingetorix.  One moment he's being very noble, talking about fighting for the rights of the Gauls, the next he's chopping off a guy's hand because the guy didn't have enough horses.  The fight scenes and costumes are terrible.  This movie also ends with what may be the worst closing line ever.  Caesar thinks to himself, "I've conquered men but I'll never conquer their spirit, which is indomitable, like those clouds." Camera pans to clouds.  THE END.

Agora (2009)

Agora is about Hypatia of Alexandria.  Historically, she was a learned woman who gave advice to Orestes, the Roman governor of Alexandria.  She was either beaten to death or flayed alive by a mob of angry Christians.  Unfortunately, none of her works have survived.  The movie itself is beautiful to look at.  The costumes and scenery are gorgeous.  The plot is something I would describe as historical-ish.  We don't really know a lot about Hypatia, so a lot of embellishing had to be done to create a complete character.  I really enjoyed this movie, and it gives me a break from the tired Christian Martyr narrative.

Angels in America

Check out Hadrian's Villa.

Roman Holiday (1953)

Continuing with our not-quite-period reviews, Roman Holiday has lots of great scenery, full of Roman ruins.  It also counts as the 1950s, but that's skipping way ahead.  The costumes are gorgeous and Audrey Hepburn manages to keep a character that could be cloying very like-able.  It is available to stream on Netflix.

Some Spartacus for Fun!

Cleopatra (1963) Revisted

This movie is still great to look at.

The Sign of the Cross (1932)

The Sign of the Cross is a pre-code Cecil B. DeMille movie, and I loved it.  The first half is relatively dry, but things get crazy in the second act.  The movie takes place during the reign of Nero.  A Roman soldier falls in love with a Christian woman, and rescues her when a meeting of Christians gets broken up and everyone is arrested.  He then has an orgy where a woman does a sexy dance for her.  The movie also feature a Colosseum scene that gets progressively more ridiculous, culminating in battle between Amazons and black dwarfs.  I got the feeling that we were supposed to feel sorry for the Christians, but they all seemed pretty eager to die to me.  They knew that their meeting wasn't a secret anymore, but held it anyway.  As far as costuming goes, the Christian woman is dressed like someone from the 10th century, while Claudette Colbert as the empress is pure 1930s glamour girl.

Satyricon (1969)

Satyricon is difficult to describe.  It's strange, but not exactly alienating.  It follows the bizarre and often sexual adventures of a young Roman man and his frienemy.  It's taken from an ancient book by Petronius that has only survived in fragments, and so the plot itself is very fragmented.  It's not always clear how one scene leads into another, and the movie ends in mid sentence.  (Which I think turns out to be a nice metaphor for life.)  It can be hard to find, but I highly recommend watching it.

A Funny Thing Happened on The Way to The Forum (1966)

For this entry I decided to set aside my hatred of Sondheim (Broadway's most repetitive composer) and watch A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.  And much to my surprise, I actually kind of enjoyed it.  The score is sort of pleasantly forgettable, and they don't repeat songs too much.  It's loosely based off the work of Plautus.  The main plot revolves around a young man trying to woo the hooker next store with the help of his slave.  It's a farce, so mistaken identities abound, but everything gets sorted out in the end.  As far as historical accuracy goes, they weren't really trying.

Titus (2000)

Titus probably doesn't really belong on this list, but I like it so much I couldn't resist.  It uses the text of William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and isn't based on any actual historic event.  It is, however, wonderfully weird and very gory.  The acting is superb.  It takes place simultaneously in ancient Rome and the present, and tells the sad tale of a formerly great man caught in a horrible cycle of revenge, with almost everyone losing in the end.

Attila (2001)

We are nearing the fall of Rome with Attila a made for TV mini-series starring Gerard Butler.  It is short enough to watch in one go.  I found it to be kind of cheesy but still entertaining.  Gerard Butler was sexy, but at times his accent sounded kind of odd.  I don't really know what the Huns wore, so I can't comment on their clothing.  The Roman look was creeping toward Byzantine, but at one point Honoria was wearing an absurd sea-foam green corseted number.  The battles were surpriseingly good, the Romans even held their lines for more than three seconds, and didn't instantly discard their spears.

Invincible Gladiator (1963)

Invincible Gladiator is available for free on YouTube.  It's one of many cheap peplum films made in the 60s.  It's about a gladiator who defeats a corrupt general or something.  I fell asleep about 20 minutes in.  I felt like I should try to review at least on of these movies, since they made so many, but it was really awful.  I'm not putting it on the list, because I'm not sure where it should go.

Gladiator

Gladiator is the 2000 spectacle starring Russell Crowe.  In the opening battle the Roman armor looks period accurate, but like most movies set in this era, wants they start fighting accuracy goes out the window.  The Roman soldiers hold their line for about 3 seconds before breaking off into 1-on-1 sword fights.  Do directors think a Roman battle where the soldiers actually hold the line would be boring?  Inaccuracies aside, it was refreshing to watch a movie a made during my life time for a change.  The movie is, of course, wonderful to look at, although the CGI looks a bit fake, and even though it is 2 and half hours long it never drags.

I, Claudius (1976)

I, Claudius is an excellent television series.  It took me a while to get through all of it, because I had to wait for some of the discs.  It covers the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius, but still manages to be surprisingly easy to follow.  I felt that some of the earlier episodes dragged, but once Caligula enters the picture it gets really interesting.  The characters tend to be color coded, with good guys in green and bad guys in blue and gold, but this isn't universally true.  Herod is always readily identifiable in purple.  Some of the fabrics used looked cheap in a very modern kind of way, and I don't believe Romans ever wore green togas, still it was very entertaining to watch and I recommend it.  The DVD also comes with a documentary about the failed attempt at a full length movie version of the book, which was also interesting.

Julius Caesar (1953)

Julius Caesar can be viewed online at amazon.com.  The script comes directly from Shakespeare.  It was directed by Mankiewicz who also directed Cleopatra, but being in black and white it lacks a lot of the pageantry of the later movie.  It more than makes up for it in substance.  Marlon Brando is hypnotic as Mark Antony, especially in the famous "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" scene.  The patterns on the men's clothing were very innacurate, many or them containg bold geometric designs.  Roman men of this period wore plain fabric with stripes indicateing their rank.  This innacuracy is fogivable however considering that period appropriate clothing would appear especially boring in black and white, with everyone wearing basicly the same outfit.

Cleopatra

Cleopatra (1963) is an orgy of beautiful clothes.  It is available for streaming on Amazon, but I suggest seeing it in the highest definition possible.  The acting is decent, if a bit stage-y, and the plot is interesting, although I feel it loses steam after the Navel battle, even when broken up into two viewings.  As for the accuracy of the costumes, it varies depending on the scene, as Elizabeth Taylor has a new dress on every time you see her.  Some of them look very appropriate and some are more fanciful.  One perfectly good dress was ruined by a visible zipper.  But all together if you have four hours to kill and a high definition television I recommend giving it a look.

Spartacus

We now enter the Roman Republic with Spartacus.  This was yet another movie that I broke up into two viewings.  I did not find Kirk Douglas as Spartacus to be very appealing.  I found myself a lot more interested in Antoninus.  I was completely bored by the Spartacus/Varinia love story/  The costumes were generally pretty accurate.  The climactic fight scene was ridiculous.  It looked a lot more like a medieval battle than a Roman one.  Roman soldiers did not march forward in a single line, and they had a man called an Optio standing behind them who held a big stick so that the soldiers couldn't back up like they did in the movie, where the Optio was completely missing.  Altogether it was pretty entertaining, even if the main character was a jerk who got a lot of people killed unnecessarily.