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The Fall Of The Roman Empire (Two-Disc Deluxe Edition) (The Miriam Collection) Posters
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Rating:  -
I have been waiting for this title for some time now. In fact a few years ago I found out that none other than Disney, that is Buena Vista, had the rights to this title as well as El Cid, and 55 Days. I was calling up their 800 number in Wisconsin about every 6 months or so to see if any thing was in the works for the release of this title. The answer was always NO, not yet. And they STILL don`t seem to know anything about it, when I called them again after I saw El Cid on a shelf at Walmart. Well, anyway, Me so HAPPY that it is finallllly coming out, a week from today. I just went to dvdempire.com to check out the details on the Collector`s Edition, and was surprised to see that there is a THIRD disc, that is only included in the Collector`s Edition, which includes clips from other historical Roman films that used the same sets as this film.(?). Does anybody know anything about about this extra disc, and what it might include? I was going to purchase the less expensive Deluxe Edition, because I was going to pass on the reproduction of the original release booklet, and the lobby cards, but if there is a third disc involved, I might just shell out the extra $ for it. I went to read the reviews of the Collector`s Edition of El Cid, and it seems that nobody was raving about the extras in that Collector`s Edition (was there a third disc in that set also?), so a booklet reproduction and some lobby cards alone just don`t do it for me. Can someone please shed some light on the special extras that are included not only for The Fall Of The Roman Empire, but also on the El Cid Collector`s Editions. Thank you.
Rating: -
NOTE: THIS IS THE COLLECTOR'S EDITION OF THE SAME FILM COSTING $10.00 LESS.
You should also note that there has been a number of blogs on the internet that suggest 30 minutes of lost film of the movie have been discovered. Whether or not this Collector's Edition will include that footage is unknown. It is highly doubtful that the lost footage is included in this edition as the running time indicated on the DVD is exactly the same as the standard version. Nevertheless, the film does not need additional footage to change my rating of this film. 5-Stars.
If you enjoyed Gladiator with Russell Crow you will undoubtedly enjoy this film for the simple fact that the story line is the same.
Story Line: Decadence of Rome after the death of Marcus Aurelius (Alec Guinness); the fall from grace of Rome's greatest general (Stephen Boyd); romance between the general and the emperor's daughter (Sophia Loren); and the struggle for power between the general and Commodus, (Christopher Plummer).
There is a lot more attention to detail in Fall of the Roman Empire with more plot twists and character development than Gladiator, although slower in pace. By no means is the story slow or uninteresting, just more drama and less video action - for the mature adult who appreciates plot development before the action begins.
This film was made with the same mindset as films like Ben-Hur, Spartacus, and Ten Commandments, meaning; huge budgets, a massive sets, cast of thousands and costume designs that surpasses any film of its time. Along with all this you get one of the finest casts ever assembled. There are no computer generated images in this film so the thousands and thousands of extras you see in this film are real!
See this film on the largest TV screen you can get your hands on and get ready to be impressed.
MORE INFORMATION ON THE DVD:
The Fall of the Roman Empire is also available on a three-disc Limited Collector's Edition, including exclusive bonus materials such as commentary by the producer's son Bill Bronston and film expert Mel Martin, a reproduction of the original 1964 souvenir program, a behind-the-scenes look at the real fall of the Roman Empire and much more.
Special Features:
* Reproduction of original souvenir program (Collector's Edition only)
* Six color production stills (Collector's Edition only)
* Feature commentary by the producer's son Bill Bronston and film expert Mel Martin
* Rome in Madrid featurette
* Fall of the "Real" Roman Empire featurette
* Making of Fall Of The Roman Empire featurette
* Hollywood vs. History featurette
* Encyclopedia Britannica on the Roman Empire -- 5 featurettes (Collector's Edition only)
* Original theatrical trailer
Rating: -
FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE is one of the most underrated film epics of all time. It has a very intelligent script, witty dialogue and an insightful sense of humor (the intellectually amusing banter between Alec Guinness as Marcus Aurelius and James Mason as Timonides is far above that found in biblical type epics). The cast is impressive including Sophia Loren, Anthony Quail, John Ireland, Omar Sharif and Mel Ferrer (probably his best screen performance as the blind and deceitful Cleander). James Mason gives a lesson in histrionics giving yet another brilliant performance unlike anything he had done previously.
Robert Krasker's cinematography especially filmed on the frozen frontier with the ominous forest in the background and snowflakes blustering across the screen are astonishingly atmospheric combined with one of Dimitri Tiomkin's most impressionistic, elegiac and enigmatic scores. Dimitri Tiomkin's score is lush and beautifully haunting throughout. The action sequences are impressively staged. The chariot chase on the frontier road and downhill through the pines between the stoic Stephen Boyd (Livius) and a very flamboyantly psychotic Christopher Plumber (Commodus) is a highlight. Most impressive are the outstanding and unbelievable sets by production designers Veniero Colasanti and John Moore.
Director Anthony Mann has a great ability to use outdoor landscapes to full advantage enhancing the drama. He contrasts the beauty of nature with unscrupulous men's desires to control their environment through manipulation and deceit against other men of greater moral fortitude. The tranquil outdoor settings are the stage for this conflict of good and evil. Unsung and most forgotten is producer Samuel Bronston who gave us great epic films as this. He had a penchant for producing grand epics (EL CID and 55 DAYS AT PEKING) that were not only opulent and stirring but were elevated to higher cinematic and artistic prominence for their intellect and thought provoking scripting and images.
Rating: -
This is a wonderfully evocative film of the period, not loud and over-scored with soundtrack. Stephen Boyd and Sophia Loren, and Christopher Plummer are all excellent, as is Alec Guinness as Marcus Aurelius.
The settings are very bleak, and the conditoin of the Roamn Empire is, like the weather, associated with the dead and with tombs. This is the portrayal of an empire falling gradually into a maze of diversity. Rome was not prepared for this, because the empire existed by outsourcing its economy and enslaving every country or territory they occuopied. Certainly, Christianity has great significance, as the military and the barabarians the Romans war against begin to rsist and assimilate into Roman life, under the banner of Christ, because Chritianity is for all people, especially the poor.
The portrayal of the non -hero, not the anti- hero, is a trade mark of Anthony Mann, who directed this film with great artistry and breathtaking visual beauty and ugliness. Mann's characters in his superb westerns often ride off guilty, repentant, or are killed. So too here; there is a longing for peace and order that is elusive and perhaps unobtainable for Rome, given its past history of violence and enslavement of other poeples.
Empires all fall, because people don't want to be occupied and bullied, as is clearly stayed by John Ireland in the film. We hear this today in the Middle East and in Tibet. Mann knows this tendency in rich countries to becomne empires, and subsequently lose everything as culture gives way to genocide.
This is a very meditative film, not about epic incidents, although there is a chariot race, but with nothing in common with Ben Hur.
See this film, and watch the slowness of movements in it, the tiredness of empire, the absudity of power and the results of violence.
Rating: -
There's an old saying that you leave the best until last. With roman epic movies this is certainly true of "The Fall of the Roman Empire".
Every other modern roman epic you can think of (Ben Hur, Gladiator, 2 different versions of Spartacus, The Robe, Demetrius & the Gladiators, Quo Vadis, Caligula, Cleopatra, Barabbas, Greatest Story Ever Told and the Rome tv series) have all been released on dvd long ago (most with 2 disc special versions). Well in my opinion this film is the very best of this genre in terms of sheer spectacle and intelligence if not entertainment value. It was the last (released in 1964) gigantic epic spectacular in the roman epic genre (until "Gladiator" in 2000) with the possible exception of "The Greatest Story Ever Told" one year later in 1965 but that film was more a biblical epic than roman epic. Both films were shot in 70mm Ultra Panavision widescreen format (65mm negative & 2.75:1 aspect ratio) & Technicolour with gigantic sets purpose built especially for the production. Both films seemed to suffer the same fate at the box office and, whilst popular in some regions of the world, they overall failed to recoup their production costs at the box office. Both films grossed tens of millions of dollars at the world box office and certainly much, much more than the 1/2 million dollars one reviewer suggested ("Fall" grossed nearly 5 million dollars in USA alone so 1/2 million dollars gross is just wrong---source: IMDB). "Fall" was much more popular and indeed a financial success in Europe (especially Great Britain where The Rank Organisation had been a large investor in the movie and obviously gave this movie a premium release there) and Australia /New Zealand but not in USA where it needed to be successful to recoup its enormous cost.
"Fall" has also been dubbed "The Fall of the Roman Epic" by some cynical critics as it was the film that virtually bankrupted its producer Samuel Bronston due to its enormous cost ($20 million USA dollars which in 1964 was the equivalent of approx. $200 million USA dollars now) & its box office failure convinced every other Hollywood studio to stop making roman epics. "The Greatest Story Ever Told" in March 1964 (when "Fall" was released) had nearly finished shooting so it was too late to stop production of that film. Again "Greatest Story's" box office failure convinced every Hollywood studio to stop making roman-themed biblical epics. Some people (myself included) regard "The Fall of the Roman Empire" as Bronston's very best film. However the enormous budget was extremely well spent with absolutely awe-inspiring sets, stunning cinematography, superb production design & costumes plus excellent performances from the impressive cast (though this is extremely debateable depending upon your preferences). Most notably (in my opinion) Alec Guinness as emperor Marcus Aurelius who gives a very shakespearean feel to his performance in the earlier part of the film with his very Hamlet-like soliloquies (basically a stage device where an actor talks out loud to him or her self to give the audience some idea of their thought processes). Guinness's dialogue here used the actual words from the meditations of the real emperor Marcus Aurelius. This shakespearean influence is hardly surprising as a younger Alec Guinness understudied the great Laurence Olivier as "Hamlet" on the London stage earlier in his career.
By the way the forum set built especially for this film still holds the world record for the biggest "purpose-built" set for a movie (these buildings were 3 dimensional with roofs which allowed many varied camera angles & not just a frontal facade with scaffolding at the back. This forum set (the largest of the sets built in Madrid, Spain especially for this film) was mostly demolished soon after filming finished although "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to The Forum" (filmed in 1964 but released in 1965) utilised some of the still standing smaller sets (which were muddied up to look "lived-in"). Bronston apparently didn't want another lesser, inferior movie production to use his magnificent forum set. This dvd contains some encyclopaedia brittanica short films made on these sets shortly after the feature finished filming. However the difference in quality of these films and the actual movie is significant and may be the reason Bronston did not want his forum set used again. The sets in "Troy" (2004) embellished an existing fortress in Malta to stand in for the city of Troy and the set was not "purpose built". Of course most of the soldiers in the TROY battle scenes were computer generated. This "Fall" dvd is worth buying just for the sheer magnificence of the real sets & production design as well as the huge crowd scenes (real people not CGI special effects). In the battle of the 4 armies sequence (after intermission) more than 10,000 extras ( a large portion of the mounted soldiers being from General Franco's Spanish Army) portrayed the soldiers. That's TEN THOUSAND REAL PEOPLE IN ONE SEQUENCE which was a record for that time later surpassed by "Gandhi". Obviously the costume budget was a large part of the overall budget.
"Fall" especially has been very sadly neglected in terms of dvd release with mainly cheaply produced & inferior quality Asian versions available (except for the French & Australian versions which are reasonably high quality discs but with little or no extras in english). Finally and at last the Weinstein organisation of USA has seen fit to give the remaining Samuel Bronston productions that are still not on dvd (i.e. most of them) the quality dvd release that they deserve especially "The Fall of the Roman Empire" with outstanding extras & the very exciting prospect of an additional 30-35 minutes of unseen footage (rumoured to be on the "55 Days at Peking" dvd. I do hope that any extra scenes include the long deleted & little seen "trilemma" sequence (if you're a fan of this particular film you'll know exactly what scene this is and what the significance of this scene in the film is---it explains why emperor Commodus always uses the words "if you listen carefully you will hear the gods laughing"). However there's also evidence of some missing footage (stills of Finlay Currie's senator being murdered by Eric Porter's senator in the latter part of the film) in the original souvenir program and it would be fascinating for film buffs to see the restored scenes on dvd in what would be a nearly 4 hour "Fall". But unfortunately this version could become the sort of 4 hour plus endurance test that the current complete version of "Cleopatra" remains (apparently there are still 2 hours of missing footage from "Cleopatra" in addition to the current 250 minute version). Perhaps they were correct to edit out the rumoured 30-35 minutes of now missing footage from the original "Fall" 70mm roadshow version. But it is a fascinating prospect for most film buffs to see this complete version who I'm sure would all buy at least one copy.
I expect that the Weinstein organisation will be surprised & delighted to discover that this film perhaps more than most of the other Samuel Bronston productions has many more fans than expected who will hopefully all support what looks like a first class, quality dvd release of this film by buying at least one copy & perhaps the collector's edition as well. As the title Collector's LIMITED EDTION implies there will only be a certain number of this LIMITED EDITION available and once they are all sold no more can be obtained (except for second hand). With extras like 6 lobby cards (i.e. film stills usually displayed in the movie theatre lobby) and a reproduction of the original souvenir program this LIMITED EDITION (like "El Cid" as well) will be worth more & more money as movie memorabilia in the near future (especially the lobby cards & program). This is definitely THE EDITION to buy and a great investment for the future at $34.99 because once they're sold they aren't obtainable again except for second hand.
If sales of the 2 different dvd versions of this film are beyond expectations fans of this film could well expect the eventual appearance of the "ultimate" version--a blue-ray dvd version with all the extras (hopefully including deleted scenes). That would be simply stunning-- both in quality terms and to make up for the shameful neglect and lack of respect over the years for a truly great film producer--Samuel Bronston. Hooray for the Weinstein organisation for having the courage and business sense to release these films in quality versions!
By the way the official running time for this film in its original roadshow version IS 188 minutes (including overture, intermission & exit music) and the aspect ratio of Ultra Panavision (in which format this film was photographed) is 2.75:1 not 2.35:1 (I have the original pressbook) so let's hope that this version does justice to the pristine images of the original roadshow version. I'm sure it will.
Lastly no mention of Sophia Loren, Christopher Plummer and Omar Sharif has been made by anyone discussing this dvd. Their insights into the production would be absolutely fascinating (although Bill Bronston & Mel Martin's insights into the movie's production are fascinating). After all these 3 actors are the principal living actors that appeared in this movie (Mel Ferrer died recently in his 90's) and were there during most if not all of the movie's shooting schedule so they above all others should know the movie's background. One item being that Sophia Loren hosted spaghetti parties for the cast & crew at her apartment when not filming (this anecdote is in the original press book).
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