Demetrius and the Gladiators

Another Fine Messalina!


Demetrius and the Gladiators US 1954
Directed by Delmer Daves
20th Century Fox Region 2

This review is dedicated to @muttivon2 (Petra Cahill), one of my new twitter followers who has been patiently waiting for me to get on and watch and review this movie. Thanks for the prod! 

Warning: There are some spoilers in this one so tread cautiously. They do follow a standard Hollywood formula, though, so I suspect I’m not telling you anything you wouldn’t already guess.

Demetrius And The Gladiators, made in Cinemascope, carries on from The Robe (reviewed here) just a few minutes before it left off and uses the last scene in that movie as its prologue... with a quick insert shot of some new, important characters, such as Claudius and Messalina, who are spliced in to watch the two lovers from the previous film, Richard Burton and Jean Simmons, walk towards their death sentence. This is only fair, of course, because... since The Robe was already assumed to be a sure-fire succes when it was to be released, this sequel actually started shooting only three weeks after the previous film was shot and, as a result, some of the establishing shots of the gladiator school used in the earlier sequences here were borrowed to use as establishing shots in the opening sequence of The Robe... which was presumably still being edited while the daily rushes from this movie were coming in.

Question to my readers: Is this the only film in cinema history to have footage from its sequel already in it (prequels don’t count)? Please enlighten me.

Okay, so once again in this movie, The Robe of Christ is still a prominent artefact in that it holds power in the minds of both the Christians and Emporer Caligula, once again played by Jay Robinson. Most of the important, original cast of The Robe are back for this one, including Michael Rennie as Peter, who is mostly in this one at the start and at the end of the movie as a framing character who pretty much comes to the rescue of the title character, again played by Victor Mature, when Demetrius has renounced his faith and principles. But I’m getting ahead of myself...

Caligula is getting more and more outrageous in this movie and wants to find The Robe for himself, since he is convinced by the comments of Messalina , Claudius’ wife (and future lover of Demetrius) who wants Caligula dead, that he is a God on earth, and therefore could use the supernatural powers which he believes are to be found in The Robe. Meanwhile Demetrius is captured and put in gladiator school when he punches out a Roman for mistreating his “girlfirend”. Messalina is fascinated by him and wants to see if, as a Christian, he’ll fight to the death. He doesn’t, at first, kill any of his human combatants but proves his mettle by killing off a lot of tigers (presumably tigers are less important than men in the Christian faith) and after he sees his girlfriend die (or so he thinks) at the hands of some of the gladiators, he renounces his Christianity and takes bloody vengeance in the collisseum against those responsible. He then takes Messalina as a lover and rises in the ranks.

However, when Caligula’s madness forces Demetrius to confront his former fellow Christians, including Peter, to retrieve The Robe, he discovers that his girlfriend was just in a coma and has been seeking comfort in this inmportant piece of cloth. With Demetrius’ arrival, she is made well. So Demetrius takes up his Christianity again, as suddenly and as unconvincingly as he renounced it earlier in the film, but is sentenced to more carnage in Caligula’s collisseum when the Emporer of Rome cannot get his head around the idea that The Robe does not do him any good and is only any use as a symbol of a lifestyle, and not the supernatural magic wand he’d hoped for.

Things are at the worst possible situation? Will Demetrius have his throat cut in the arena? Will Caligula’s madness never cease? Well, if you’re familiar with the standard Hollywood 50s movie then you’ll probably have already figured out the answer to that one but, just remember, the last movie ended with the death of the two lead protagonists so... well you may yet be surprised. Probably not but, after the last movie, anything could happen.

This was a pretty good and entertaining flick. A good, work-a-day director keeping everything on track and to the predictable Hollywood formula but, you know, that’s no bad thing and not always so easy to do, either. You’ll be rooting for Demetrius and his chums all the way through and shaking your fist at the antics of Caligula... and one scene right near the end may even have you cheering with anticipated blood lust... but I’ll leave you to discover that for yourself.

The score for the former movie was handled by legendary 20th Century Fox studio composer Alfred Newman and it was considered at the time (and now too, I believe) to be one of the great, classic soundtracks. So it annoyed a lot of people that The Robe was one of the few Newman scored pictures to not receive an Academy Award nomination for that year (I believe Newman won another oscar that year anyway, for another film score, but his outstanding work on the score to The Robe was not officially recognised... although I understand the studio heads were well pleased with it).

One of the people who was particularly annoyed that Newman didn’t get an Oscar nod for The Robe was skilled composer Franz Waxman (The Bride Of Frankenstein, The Spirit Of St. Louis etc.) who was tapped to provide a score for Demetrius And The Gladiators. As a result, and since Waxman wanted to use some of Newman’s themes and work them into the lietmotif of this movie, Waxman insisted that Newman get a “themes” credit on his own credit card alongside him. Nice move and Waxman’s score certainly serves the film well, with Newman’s motiffs for The Robe worked in whenever the garment is being talked about or is seen on screen. In many ways, in fact, this is almost (but not quite) a better score than the original in that the music all works together more appropriately than it did a few times in the former picture where there were, at least in my opinion, some jarring musical choices during certain scenes which did not blend well in their juxtaposition to certain other scenes.

That being said, though, the music is more keyed into a more stable environment on this one because it’s not the globetrotting, Biblical road movie its predeccessor was... this one is pretty much all set in Rome (barring the odd reused footage flashback to the previous movie) and so, in some ways, perhaps the less cosmopolitan nature of the second movie informed the musical limitations to a less jarring result?

Demetrius And The Gladiators is a fine film. True, it’s 1950s Hollywood style Christian propoganda at best, but there’s really nothing wrong with enjoying that kind of movie and this one will certainly hold your interest while you’re waiting to see if Demetrius will let go of his passive nature long enough to take vengeance against those who would set themselves up as his enemies. It’s also got a very young, pre-Marty Ernest Borgnine in it as the tough, but kindly, head of the gladiator school. He doesn’t do much in this one but he’s always a comforting actor to watch on screen. A friendly face if ever there was one.

This one’s definitely worth a watch if you liked the first one and have never seen it before but, a word of caution. While it probably works just fine as a stand alone movie experience, you’ll get a much richer entertainment from it if you watch the The Robe first. Obviously, it’d make a heck of a good double bill.

The Robe

A Robe By Any Other Name...

The Robe USA 1953

Directed by Henry Koster

20th Century Fox Classics Region 2

Warning: Some spoilers in this one.

Wow. Okay then... The Robe.

I thought I’d try to get into the swing of the whole Easter celebration thing this year by watching one of those big and glossy pseudo-Religious epics from the fifties and was originally intending to watch the William Wyler version of Ben Hur for the umpteenth time, when a record label I quite like decided to release an expanded edition of the score to The Robe and I liked the sound samples on this one so much that I ordered both the scores and the films (the films were dead cheap on Amazon, the scores less so) of The Robe and its sequel, Demetrius And The Gladiators and figured I’d watch these two for Easter instead.

Unfortunately, Amazon have been uncharacteristically slow in getting my copy of Demetrius And The Gladiators to me (indeed, at time of writing this review, it’s still not been shipped... although it was ordered at the same time as this film) and so I’m having to settle with just watching this one for now and saving the follow up for when Amazon can rustle me up one of the copies they had advertised on their site as being “in stock”.

Now then... I’d not seen this movie before but I was quite taken with the premise when I read a plot summary of this one (I’ve not read the book on which this one is based). It’s famously known, and indeed it shouts it out in the very first sentence on the back of the DVD cover, to be the “first movie to be filmed in cinemascope”. Actually... I did a little research on that one and, frankly, it’s not strictly true. I’d be less inclined to call the 20th Century Fox marketing team out and out liars if they’d perhaps reworded their claims a little but since they didn’t, I’ll just remind everyone of the facts that it was actually the second film to be shot in the new cinemascope technique... it just happened to be the first released. I think you’ll find the Marilyn Monroe vehicle How To Marry A Millionaire actually went before the cameras in cinemascope first... although that one was actually released a few months later.

Another puzzling thing I found out in my lazyish research on this one revealed that one of the establishing-this-is-Rome shots in the opening sequence actually comes from the film’s sequel, the aforementioned Demetrius And The Gladiators. How can this be, I thought to myself? Well, apparently, when I hunted further in my quest for cinematic knowledge and the means to appease my oafish curiosity, I discovered that the bean counters in Hollywoodland were already so sure of the success of The Robe that the sequel actually started shooting a mere three weeks after the shooting of the first movie had wrapped... and so were able to use footage already shot from the sequel in the first movie. There’s confidence for you. I don’t think any major studios would consider doing that today, before seeing any return on their initial investment. The closest I can think of this in living history is when they deliberately stored the sets from Stephen Sommer’s movie Van Helsing so they could rush out a sequel quick. However, I guess that tactic hammered a lesson home to them because that movie was somewhat a disappointment in terms of box office clout (if memory serves me correctly) and so a sequel was never made to that one... pity, since I actually enjoyed it lots.

Anyway, back to The Robe.

It’s really not a bad film with, as I said, an interesting idea behind it. It stars Richard Burton as the Roman Marcellus Gallio who, after reacquainting himself with his childhood sweetheart Diana, all grown up, angers Emperor Caligula by outbidding him on a slave he wanted (Demetrius, played by Victor Mature). As punishment, he is sent to Jerusalem and his last order while there is to crucify this rabble rouser know as Jesus Christ, which he duly does... and then wins his robe in a dice game he has behind the cross.

As Jesus forgives Marcellus, and all mankind, all hell breaks loose in the skies and, when The Robe burns Marcellus when he tries to wear it, Marcellus starts to go mad with remorse at what he has done. The rest of the film concerns itself with Marcellus' tracking down of The Robe and his former slave Demetrius, initially in order to destroy it but when he is confronted by it, he joins Demetrius and Simon (who Jesus called Peter and who is played here by everyone’s favourite fifties alien Michael Rennie) and becomes a Christian follower. I won’t give too much away about the ending of this one but I will say that intrigue and swordplay abound and it’s probably not letting on too much which won’t become obviously apparent by the trajectory the storyline takes as the movie progresses to reveal that both Richard Burton and Jean Simmons wouldn’t be needed for the sequel (which is just as well because Burton apparently hated making this movie above all his other work and wouldn’t sign a contract with Fox because of it).

The film is actually pretty good, I have to say. I was gripped right from the start and although Richard Burton’s performance in this was described as wooden at the time, it wasn’t wooden enough to prevent him securing an Oscar nomination for his performance here. Actually, my own impression of Burton in this one is that he’s the least wooden and most emotive I’ve seen him be in it... sometimes to the point of overreacting in one particular scene and making Victor Mature seem like a master of understatement in comparison (no easy thing, although I have to admit I have a soft spot for that big lug Mature). He’s pretty acceptable in it, I would have said, although I personally wouldn’t have thought his performance was particularly Oscar-worthy. But then again, I’ve never gotten along with the politics of awards ceremonies and the Oscars are something which really aren’t a blip on my radar, it has to be said.

There’s some great dialogue in this movie and, although I found the last third dragging a little more than the previous two thirds of the film, I’d have to say that I really enjoyed this one. There are some great shot compositions in this one with some great use of perspective and depth. One of the sequences in particular, when Demetrius regains consciousness after an incident and arrives on the scene of the crucifixion, looks absolutely stunning and made me realise how effective this film could have been if it had been shot in a 3D process.

Alfred Newman’s score was pretty cool too, although in one of the later action sequences it did suddenly go into a cue that seemed more than a little out of place with the general tone of the rest of the score, reminding me more of Korngold’s music to The Adventures Of Robin Hood in this particular scene, than what had come before. It’s interesting to note that Alfred Newman’s famous “Cinemascope extension” bars to the 20th Century Fox fanfare music was not actually used in this first cinemascope release... in fact, the actual score to the movie starts while the logo first appears on screen, strangely shown as a cut out of the famous moving searchlights against a red theatrical curtain. I don’t remember seeing anything similar being done with the actual logo before or since... although I’m sure stuff like this has been done with it many times (just musically speaking, for example, take a listen to the version of the Fox Fanfare which plays at the start of Alien 3... that’s pretty interesting).

All in all, this was a pretty entertaining film... more so than I thought it would be and definitely a good pick for my Easter viewing. Am looking forward to watching the sequel when it eventually arrives through my letterbox. If you like biblical epics like Ben Hur and The Egyptian, then you could do a lot worse than sticking this one on your DVD player. Definitely worth a watch.