Quo Vadis
April 2009 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: Blu-ray	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

The novel Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz was published at the end of the 19th century, and its epic tale of Nero’s crumbling Rome and the struggle between Romans and early Christians attracted Hollywood right away. There were three silent-film versions before this best-known one, and two after it: a TV miniseries and a Polish version. Though the others have merit, it is this 1951 movie that one thinks of as definitive. It was actually planned in the 1940s with a much different cast and director. Gregory Peck was originally considered as the Roman military commander Marcus Vinicius with John Huston directing. Various difficulties got in the way, and the movie emerged in 1951 as a Technicolor epic that was the epitome of MGM’s production values. It boasted 30,000 participants, which certainly justified it being deemed a spectacle. Robert Taylor, originally considered to play Vinicius before Gregory Peck, reemerged to be chosen for the lead, and the young Deborah Kerr, virtually unknown in the US at the time, was selected to play his love interest, the Christian woman Lygia.

The two leads do a credible job, though Taylor looks a bit wooden and brutish as the only obviously American actor, but it was the casting of Peter Ustinov that was a real coup. Ustinov plays Nero as a total madman who one could believe would go so far as to burn Rome just so he could write a song about it and then rebuild the city as he wanted. Others in the cast refer to him as a monster and don’t have many nice things to say about him but don’t call him mad. Ustinov plays the role in such a deliciously layered manner, moving from sly to obvious in a heartbeat. He was nominated for an Academy Award but did not win. Leo Genn also makes a fine contribution as Vinicius’s uncle Petronius, the all-too sane Roman at the opposite end of the scale from Nero. At the beginning of the film, Petronius knows how to manipulate Nero to a point, but the crazed emperor crosses that line about midpoint through the movie.

The movie is truly spectacular, achieved without our modern CGI effects but crafted with the best tricks of the day, which still largely hold up to 21st-century scrutiny. The interesting documentary that accompanies the film gives a few of these away. There were a lot of matte paintings, and in a scene showing three balconies of spectators at the arena where Christians are being sacrificed to lions, we find out that only the first level contained real extras. The second and third levels were painted and then composited in, but little sections were cut out so that anything passed behind the painting would make it appear as if microscopic crowd members were moving. I don’t think the lions were a cheat in any way, though. They look quite real, and there are a lot of them.

The image for the Blu-ray is quite good. Colors are vivid and the look is entirely like three-strip Technicolor at its best. The picture is quite detailed and sharp much of time, so much so that it is easy to see the blue line around characters that are shot with traveling mattes. I suppose this period artifact could have been cleared up with digital techniques, but it wasn’t. The sound is a bit tinny and definitely monaural. Dialogue is clean and clear, but Miklos Rozsa’s score needs greater dynamic and frequency range.

Quo Vadis is an important epic in the history of cinema. It paved the way for the great, sweeping spectacles to follow in the late ‘50s and through the ‘60s: Ben-Hur, King of Kings, El Cid, The Ten Commandments, and The Fall of the Roman Empire. Without it and its box-office success, I doubt any of the others would have been made. The Blu-ray Disc is not perfect, but it is better than I would have thought possible and a good representation of the original.

• Go Back