QUO VADIS (1951) C 171m dir: Mervyn LeRoy

w/Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Leo Genn, Peter Ustinov, Patricia Laffan, Finlay Currie, Abraham Sofaer, Marina Berti, Buddy Baer, Felix Aylmer, Nora Swinburne, Ralph Truman, Norman Wooland, Peter Miles, Geoffrey Dunn, Nicholas Hannen, D.A. Clarke-Smith, Rosalie Crutchley, John Ruddock, Arthur Walge, Elspeth March, Strelsa Brown, Alfredo Varelli, Roberto Ottaviano, William Tubbs, Pietro Tordi, Robin Hughes, Walter Pidgeon

From The Movie Guide: "One of MGM's biggest box-office hits, the epic QUO VADIS offers a spectacular cast to enjoy, but don't look for greatness. Over it all looms a loony Ustinov as Emperor Nero, despite director LeRoy's best efforts to keep him from chewing the scenery as he enjoyably steals the show. Taylor is the nominal star, playing Marcus Vinicius, a Roman army commander who returns victorious to the Eternal City in the 1st Century A.D. After receiving a hero's welcome from the empress (Laffan), Marcus meets Lygia (Kerr), a hostage who is the Christian daughter of a defeated king. He lusts after her, but is put off by her oversized pal Ursus (the aptly named Baer), and further rejected by Lygia because he is a pagan. Angered, Marcus makes Lygia his slave, but is still unable to make her his mistress. How he manages forms the core of the story.

"The acting is good, especially that of Kerr, Taylor, and Genn (as the gentle advisor to the emperor), but it's the wild Ustinov who scoops up every scene he's in, giving one of the most outlandish performances ever filmed. Ustinov tested for the role of the lyre-playing little arsonist in 1949, but the film was slow to develop. A year later, MGM wired Ustinov that they were still interested in him for the part but they were worried that he might be too young for the role. Ustinov wired back, 'If you wait much longer I shall be too old. Nero died at thirty-one.' (Tony Thomas, Ustinov in Focus.)

"Shot in six months at a cost of almost $7 million, QUO VADIS gleaned $25 million in world rentals and became the second all-time grosser after GONE WITH THE WIND. It led the way for all those crazy religious epics which dominated postwar production: SALOME, IVANHOE, THE ROBE, DAVID AND BATHSHEBA, THE SILVER CHALICE, and BEN-HUR, which would surpass its box-office take. Enhancing this epic's success was the fine score by Miklos Rozsa, who, along with MGM librarian George Schneider, located all the known instruments of the period and then, although no clear record of the era's music remained, pieced his score together through slave songs, Christian hymns, marches, and fanfares played on modern instruments (using the Scottish clarsach to approximate the sound of the ancient lyre, for example). QUO VADIS was nominated for eight Oscars, but the lions were passed over. Imagine that."

From the Turner Classic Movies website (www.tcm.com), this article about the film by Celia M. Reilly:

"At the time it was produced, Quo Vadis (1951) was the highest grossing movie from MGM after Gone With the Wind (1939). This remarkable epic takes place during a fascinating period in ancient history. It offers as spectacular a cast as it does sets, costumes, and everything else that could rightly be construed as colossal. Between the slaughter of innocent Christians in the arena, half of Italy starring as Roman citizens, and sets that dwarf even Ustinov, is a story of Roman commander Marcus Vinicius (Robert Taylor) serving under the berserk Emperor Nero (Peter Ustinov). While Vinicius at first seems indifferent to the plight of the persecuted Christians, he soon sympathizes with them when he falls in love with a Christian girl, Lygia (Deborah Kerr), causing them both to be thrown to the lions.

"The production of Quo Vadis came at the height of an executive power struggle at MGM (Dore Schary replaced former mogul Louis B. Mayer) and at a crucial time in the history of U.S. motion picture production because of the new competition from television. Director Mervyn LeRoy believed that motion pictures should offer larger and better spectacles in order to compete with the new medium. Whether this opinion was the result of prescience or hindsight, Quo Vadis was indeed the greatest spectacle ever made up to that time.

"The logistics involved in producing a film of this magnitude were staggering. There were over two hundred speaking parts, many hundreds of workmen, and tens of thousands of extras. The company was managed in a paramilitary fashion, with group captains assigned to a specific number of extras, for whom they were responsible for everything from make-up to wages during the length of the shoot. As the first color film made at Cinecitta Studios in Rome, there were problems with lighting and equipment that was unfamiliar to Roman technicians who only had experience working in black and white film.

"Imagine building a huge set only to see it burn? For scenes of Rome burning, dozens of workmen labored for months to construct a four-block area of ancient looking buildings, placing pipe throughout the sets for the flames. It took LeRoy and his technicians 24 nights to burn down the Rome they created for the cameras, when historically it only took Nero six days. Incredibly, all 2,000 extras moved through the fires without a single mishap. And somewhere in that swaying, moving mass of humanity, look for Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor who have bit parts.

"Managing people is one thing, but working with one hundred and twenty lions for the coliseum scenes proved to be the biggest problem for the production. The lions did not like the sun. When the gates opened, the lions charged forward until they saw the bright rays of the sun. Even when starved for weeks the beasts still did not behave like voracious man-eaters. Finally, on the advice of lion-tamers, meat was stuffed in "dummies" dressed like Christians and the lions tore them to pieces quite savagely. Unfortunately, the dummies were too brutalized to use in the final film.

"Another arena scene that prompted serious apprehension was when Lygia was tied to a post while waiting to be attacked by a bull. The athletic prowess of Ursus, played by actor Buddy Baer, was the only thing protecting Lygia from being mauled by the charging bull. In fact, the wrestling scenes between man and bull are some of the best in Quo Vadis because they seem so realistic.

"When the Academy Award nominations were given out for 1952, Quo Vadis received eight including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actors (Leo Genn and Peter Ustinov), Best Color Cinematography, Best Color Art Direction, Best Dramatic Score, Best Film Editing, and Best Costume Design. However, it didn't win in any category since An American in Paris, A Streetcar Named Desire, and A Place in the Sun claimed most of the major awards."

QUO VADIS' eight Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Supporting Actor (Genn, Ustinov), Cinematography (Robert Surtees, William V. Skall), Editing (Ralph E. Winters), Score (Miklos Rozsa), Art Direction (William A. Horning, Cedric Gibbons, Edward C. Carfagno, Hugh Hunt), and Costume Design (Herschel McCoy).