The Sword and Sandal Drama, The Revolt of the Slaves
La Rivolta degli schiavi (1960), directed by Nunzio Malasomma, has English dialogue written by Daniel Mainwaring, author of Build My Gallows High, the novel from which the great film noir, Out of the Past (1947), is based. I mention this only because it shows that a writer can create a great crime novel and write movie dialogue for a mediocre film and be the same person.
It's not that The Revolt of the Slaves, a widescreen Italian color semi-epic with some historical veracity, is a bad film; it's just not as moving as the filmmakers wanted it to be. At least it didn't stir my emotions as it was meant to. Persecutions of Christians, before Emperor Constantine legalized the religion in A.D. 313, occurred depending on who was emperor. Some of them went after Christians fiercely enough that in the late first century A.D. the author of the Revelation to John, last book of the New Testament, assigned the number 666, derived from Hebrew numerology, to the Emperor Domitian and called him "the Beast."
This film covers a period during the last decades before 313, putting in St. Sebastian (Ettore Manni), martyred during the reign of the Eastern Roman Emperor Diocletian in 288, but for some reason having his persecution and death occur during the reign of the Western Roman Emperor Maximian (Darío Moreno). According to the story of Sebastian, Diocletian ordered him tied to a post and shot full of arrows. Sebastian had been Captain of the Praetorian Guard, but was secretly a Christian--like being a Communist in Hollywood in 1950, or a Russiagate skeptic these days. Leading a dual life, Sebastian was dangerous to the status quo. In the film, Maximian, feeling justifiably betrayed by one of his top men, wants the arrows to not strike any vital part of Sebastian's body. Paintings of this cruel act were a popular subject in the Renaissance. How many arrows can a man's semi-nude muscular form hold? seems to have been the challenge. Yukio Mishima, the great gay twentieth century Japanese novelist and weirdo had himself photographed as St. Sebastian, a striking beautifully wrought image you can look up and marvel at for its bravado and apparent reveling in masochism. Sebastian has become popular as a gay icon, a reason Mishima was drawn to him.
In the film, he's a stern dude often on horseback, speaking with an English voice that doesn't sound right coming from his face. The martyrdom scene lacks conviction. He takes five arrows, two of them almost mere grazes on his arms. According to the legend, Sebastian survived this execution and was healed by St. Irene. He went to his persecutor, Diocletian (Maximian in the movie), and made a last statement about the power of faith and all the usual stuff. He was clubbed to death, perhaps by some of his former colleagues in the Praetorian Guard.
In the film, Sebastian, in blood-soaked bandages, approaches a freaked out Maximian, who orders the man's death, but none of the Praetorian Guard make a move, for they too seem perplexed--the guy should be dead. Corvino (Serge Gainsbourg, with his bulging Serge Gainsbourg eyes), head of the secret police, draws his gladius, running Sebastian through without hesitation. The man's dead body, slumped on beautiful marble steps in the imperial courtroom, provides reassurance to pagan spectators that nothing further, in an unacceptable supernatural sense, is likely to occur.
The arena scene of Christian persecution, passive and happy-seeming people put up on crosses with fires below them before a jeering crowd of thousands, is spectacular, overdone, even possessing a degree of ridiculousness. Did this kind of shit happen? Probably, although I recall my English professor father saying that early accounts of numbers of Christians martyred by Romans in the arenas and elsewhere were greatly exaggerated. Ancient historians tended to use statistics for propagandistic effect. Well, that still happens, but if an historian writes, "On that day in the Coliseum 5,000 Christians were put to death," that's probably not true. Even if they were killing for twenty-four hours straight, it would average out to 208 Christians per hour, three per minute. Let's say the place is open for twelve daylight hours of fun, snacks, beverages, and mass murder. That's on average 416 Christians killed per hour, seven per minute, about one every ten seconds.
Similar kinds of unbelievable statistics are given regarding numbers of human sacrifices in the Aztec Empire. Those (winners) who write the histories later on tend to exaggerate the evil, the moral failings of those they have vanquished: the Tudor Myth about the Wars of the Roses and the Yorkist Dynasty that included the alleged bad guy Richard the Third a strong case in point.
In The Revolt of the Slaves the Christians mostly are meek, peaceful and compliant, dedicated to not fighting back agains the massive power of the state, which, historically, nevertheless, enabled the rapid spread of Christianity on its excellent and extensive system of well-built Roman roads. The relative stability of the Roman Empire assisted the proselytizing movements of Christianity. St. Paul's Roman citizenship, too, got him places and allowed him access to Romans occupying levels of society above the bottommost.
Rome's tolerance for all religions allowed Christianity to thrive. What Roman authorities frowned upon were Christians' attempts to assert their religion over others. Eventually, in 381, Christianity was made the only legal religion in the Empire. Christian powers connected peacefully to politics is a contradiction in terms. Thus, as I watched the film, I didn't like seeing Christians depicted in such a homogenized wholesome manner. Practitioners of this religion have laid waste to the planet. Crusades, the War on Terror, anti-environmentalist practices, a disdain for the natural world, belief in the world's end and wanting that; it adds up to a dangerous combination that in Roman times started out as an irritant but became a real threat to that polytheistic society, hence the persecutions.
I've written not much about the film itself, but I'll say that Rhonda Fleming, red-headed Hollywood star doing a movie in Italy, was a beautiful woman. She plays a Patrician who converts to Christianity as she helps one of her former slaves (Lang Jeffries), a handsome dude who's a fighter-type, in contrast to many of the Christians in the film. Serge Gainsbourg gives the best performance as the nasty cop, Corvino. He's treacherous and dedicated fully to his job. In his first scene he's on a rack, having it tested on his own body to make sure it's working properly, since the last man they used it on, a Christian, didn't answer questions, but died, probably with that beatific godly smile on his face, which probably pissed off Corvinus no end.
Darío Moreno as Emperor Maximian has facial blemishes that look as if they've recently been popped of their pus. Every time he's on screen he's scratching some part of his body. A fundamentally unhealthy, overweight creep with a booming voice, he's also paranoid, putting his trust not in his Praetorian Guard, but in a company of Black African mercenaries he allows to move through Roman society like they work for Erik Prince's "security" corporation, Blackwater. It's these men who shoot arrows at Sebastian. I don't know if the real Maximian had Africans working for him, but this group, with its emperor-approved authority, presents a striking feel and look to some of the scenes, providing some of the film's best action.
A so-so film, but it did make me think about some interesting historical angles.
Vic Neptune
La Rivolta degli schiavi (1960), directed by Nunzio Malasomma, has English dialogue written by Daniel Mainwaring, author of Build My Gallows High, the novel from which the great film noir, Out of the Past (1947), is based. I mention this only because it shows that a writer can create a great crime novel and write movie dialogue for a mediocre film and be the same person.
It's not that The Revolt of the Slaves, a widescreen Italian color semi-epic with some historical veracity, is a bad film; it's just not as moving as the filmmakers wanted it to be. At least it didn't stir my emotions as it was meant to. Persecutions of Christians, before Emperor Constantine legalized the religion in A.D. 313, occurred depending on who was emperor. Some of them went after Christians fiercely enough that in the late first century A.D. the author of the Revelation to John, last book of the New Testament, assigned the number 666, derived from Hebrew numerology, to the Emperor Domitian and called him "the Beast."
This film covers a period during the last decades before 313, putting in St. Sebastian (Ettore Manni), martyred during the reign of the Eastern Roman Emperor Diocletian in 288, but for some reason having his persecution and death occur during the reign of the Western Roman Emperor Maximian (Darío Moreno). According to the story of Sebastian, Diocletian ordered him tied to a post and shot full of arrows. Sebastian had been Captain of the Praetorian Guard, but was secretly a Christian--like being a Communist in Hollywood in 1950, or a Russiagate skeptic these days. Leading a dual life, Sebastian was dangerous to the status quo. In the film, Maximian, feeling justifiably betrayed by one of his top men, wants the arrows to not strike any vital part of Sebastian's body. Paintings of this cruel act were a popular subject in the Renaissance. How many arrows can a man's semi-nude muscular form hold? seems to have been the challenge. Yukio Mishima, the great gay twentieth century Japanese novelist and weirdo had himself photographed as St. Sebastian, a striking beautifully wrought image you can look up and marvel at for its bravado and apparent reveling in masochism. Sebastian has become popular as a gay icon, a reason Mishima was drawn to him.
In the film, he's a stern dude often on horseback, speaking with an English voice that doesn't sound right coming from his face. The martyrdom scene lacks conviction. He takes five arrows, two of them almost mere grazes on his arms. According to the legend, Sebastian survived this execution and was healed by St. Irene. He went to his persecutor, Diocletian (Maximian in the movie), and made a last statement about the power of faith and all the usual stuff. He was clubbed to death, perhaps by some of his former colleagues in the Praetorian Guard.
In the film, Sebastian, in blood-soaked bandages, approaches a freaked out Maximian, who orders the man's death, but none of the Praetorian Guard make a move, for they too seem perplexed--the guy should be dead. Corvino (Serge Gainsbourg, with his bulging Serge Gainsbourg eyes), head of the secret police, draws his gladius, running Sebastian through without hesitation. The man's dead body, slumped on beautiful marble steps in the imperial courtroom, provides reassurance to pagan spectators that nothing further, in an unacceptable supernatural sense, is likely to occur.
The arena scene of Christian persecution, passive and happy-seeming people put up on crosses with fires below them before a jeering crowd of thousands, is spectacular, overdone, even possessing a degree of ridiculousness. Did this kind of shit happen? Probably, although I recall my English professor father saying that early accounts of numbers of Christians martyred by Romans in the arenas and elsewhere were greatly exaggerated. Ancient historians tended to use statistics for propagandistic effect. Well, that still happens, but if an historian writes, "On that day in the Coliseum 5,000 Christians were put to death," that's probably not true. Even if they were killing for twenty-four hours straight, it would average out to 208 Christians per hour, three per minute. Let's say the place is open for twelve daylight hours of fun, snacks, beverages, and mass murder. That's on average 416 Christians killed per hour, seven per minute, about one every ten seconds.
Similar kinds of unbelievable statistics are given regarding numbers of human sacrifices in the Aztec Empire. Those (winners) who write the histories later on tend to exaggerate the evil, the moral failings of those they have vanquished: the Tudor Myth about the Wars of the Roses and the Yorkist Dynasty that included the alleged bad guy Richard the Third a strong case in point.
In The Revolt of the Slaves the Christians mostly are meek, peaceful and compliant, dedicated to not fighting back agains the massive power of the state, which, historically, nevertheless, enabled the rapid spread of Christianity on its excellent and extensive system of well-built Roman roads. The relative stability of the Roman Empire assisted the proselytizing movements of Christianity. St. Paul's Roman citizenship, too, got him places and allowed him access to Romans occupying levels of society above the bottommost.
Rome's tolerance for all religions allowed Christianity to thrive. What Roman authorities frowned upon were Christians' attempts to assert their religion over others. Eventually, in 381, Christianity was made the only legal religion in the Empire. Christian powers connected peacefully to politics is a contradiction in terms. Thus, as I watched the film, I didn't like seeing Christians depicted in such a homogenized wholesome manner. Practitioners of this religion have laid waste to the planet. Crusades, the War on Terror, anti-environmentalist practices, a disdain for the natural world, belief in the world's end and wanting that; it adds up to a dangerous combination that in Roman times started out as an irritant but became a real threat to that polytheistic society, hence the persecutions.
I've written not much about the film itself, but I'll say that Rhonda Fleming, red-headed Hollywood star doing a movie in Italy, was a beautiful woman. She plays a Patrician who converts to Christianity as she helps one of her former slaves (Lang Jeffries), a handsome dude who's a fighter-type, in contrast to many of the Christians in the film. Serge Gainsbourg gives the best performance as the nasty cop, Corvino. He's treacherous and dedicated fully to his job. In his first scene he's on a rack, having it tested on his own body to make sure it's working properly, since the last man they used it on, a Christian, didn't answer questions, but died, probably with that beatific godly smile on his face, which probably pissed off Corvinus no end.
Darío Moreno as Emperor Maximian has facial blemishes that look as if they've recently been popped of their pus. Every time he's on screen he's scratching some part of his body. A fundamentally unhealthy, overweight creep with a booming voice, he's also paranoid, putting his trust not in his Praetorian Guard, but in a company of Black African mercenaries he allows to move through Roman society like they work for Erik Prince's "security" corporation, Blackwater. It's these men who shoot arrows at Sebastian. I don't know if the real Maximian had Africans working for him, but this group, with its emperor-approved authority, presents a striking feel and look to some of the scenes, providing some of the film's best action.
A so-so film, but it did make me think about some interesting historical angles.
Vic Neptune
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