Twelve years in the making! Filmed on the actual historical sites in Rome! One hundred and ten speaking parts! Thirty thousand extras! And the film is actually pretty good, almost despite all the excess. It's the story of the growing pains of Christianity in a decadent Rome subject to the whims of the mad emperor Nero. The story concerns a Roman general who falls for a Christian slave girl and, later, for her religion, but even though that's what provides the film its focus, the real attraction is the spectacle.

The biggest part of that spectacle is Peter Ustinov, who cemented the public's conception of the madman who "fiddled while Rome burned" (actually, in this film it's a lyre, as the fiddle hadn't been invented yet, but no matter) with his over-the-top scenery chewing. He preens and screeches like a spoiled rock star, alternately begging and ordering his subordinates to confess their adoration of him and his god-awful songs. I don't think it necessarily counts as good acting, but it's unforgettable. And miraculously, he's paired onscreen with Leo Genn, who plays court poet Petronius (who wrote Satyricon, which Fellini made into a movie of the same name). Petronius is Nero's opposite in every way: he's quiet while Nero bellows, he's austere while Nero dresses like a clown, and he's subtle while Nero is... not. His job is to manipulate his boss into second-guessing his most obnoxious and horrifying instincts, and he does this with an understated charm. Both actors were nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and while I can't really say they deserved the award more than Karl Malden did, I can say I wish they could have made a special award for Ustinov and Genn to share.

It's too bad the leads aren't nearly up to the standards those two set. Robert Taylor stumbles his way through the film as Marcus Vinicius, a Roman general who returns from three years on the battlefield to find his home city teetering on the brink of self-destruction, although it takes him a while to realize that. He's helped along his journey to understanding by Lygia (a particularly reptilian-looking Deborah Kerr), a slave who's been adopted into the family of a former general who secretly converted to Christianity, then just a marginal religious cult. At first Marcus tries to bully Lygia into giving in to him, calling in favors from his palace connections (Petronius is his uncle) to get her transferred to his custody. However, he relents when he realizes that she loves her savior, Jesus Christ, more than she does him. There aren't any sparks between Taylor and Kerr, likely because Taylor seems to lack any spark of his own. It makes his gradual conversion from savage soldier to proto-Christian difficult to accept, because he's incapable of showing us the grace that's supposed to be slowly suffusing him. Kerr is easier to accept, but she's weighed down by the banal script (it's no mistake that Writing wasn't among the film's Oscar nominations).

Meanwhile, we come to what attracted audiences to this film in the first place: the spectacle. The nutty Nero decides he wants to burn Rome down and rebuild it as Neropolis, where he won't have to deal with the noise and stench of his subjects because they'll all be dead. When he finally lights the match, Marcus rebels against him, traveling to Rome to save as many people as he can. The film's $7 million budget (that was a lot of money back then) is on display during the burning sequence, as thousands of extras parade before a rear-projection screen of a model city burning, and life-size sets for particular buildings burn and crash into the streets. In the aftermath, as the citizens angrily storm the palace under the correct assumption that Nero started the fire, his devious whore/wife Poppaea (Patricia Laffan, her expression stuck on "sneering evil" throughout the film) comes up with the idea of offering the Christian sects up as a scapegoat. Cue the savage lions!

And here we come to the film's moral quandary: the message is supposed to be one of tolerance, and the film is supposed to be on the Christians' side, but there must also be butts in theater seats. In the early 1950s, with television consuming the cinema's former audience like a pack of starving cheetahs, the studios decided that spectacle was what distinguished them from the glass teat. Thus, the 30,000 extras, the dozens of actual lions, and the huge budget went toward making a spectacle that pretty much encourages audience members to take pleasure in the mauling of the Christian martyrs. Hell, I enjoyed watching it, even though I felt a little bad about it. It's sort of the dilemma faced by war movies, even ones intended to be antiwar: you can't help but provide a visceral thrill by depicting what you're trying to argue against.

There's not a lot of subtlety on display here, but there are some moments of quiet grace (mostly of the religious variety) that are surprising, given the bombast of the film they inhabit. It's a little chill-inducing when St. Peter arrives onscreen, even though it's just Finlay Currie disguised by a big white beard. I mean, it's St. Peter, and you can feel how awe-inspiring it is for these early Christians to meet someone who hung out with Jesus; and Currie manages to inspire some more awe when he speaks out against Nero's feeding the Christians to the lions, even though he knows it will mean his own death. The martyrs sing while they're being devoured by lions and burned at the stake, and Nero's absolute bewilderment at their behavior is one of his few understated moments.

The film was nominated for eight Oscars, but failed to win any, losing most of them to An American in Paris or A Place in the Sun: Picture, Supporting Actor × 2 (Ustinov and Genn), Art Direction/Set Decoration–Color, Cinematography–Color (Robert Surtees and William V. Skall), Costume Design–Color, Film Editing, and Original Score.

—September 20, 2006