Film · 1960 · Historical epic
Spartacus
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
1960
★ 6.1 editorial score
Kirk Douglas helped break the blacklist by putting Dalton Trumbo's real name on this film: a slave revolt against Rome staged at enormous scale, with Laurence Olivier and Charles Laughton circling the politics.
“Though pre-Christian, Spartacus prefigures and provides historical context to the Gospel story in intriguing ways — most obviously in the bold climax, the film’s greatest strength. Spartacus doesn’t entirely escape the melodrama, cheesiness, and anachronistic hairstyles that afflict the genre and period, but the comparative frankness of the politics, sexuality, and violence...give it a dramatic heft beyond its predecessors.”
Time
1960Depicts Ancient World
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