Kirk Douglas, who produced the film, effectively broke the blacklist by giving Trumbo screen credit instead of making him hide behind a pseudonym. The movie was inspired by a best seller by Howard Fast, and adapted to the screen by the blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo. There are also sexual intrigues Gracchus is a womanizer, and Crassus a bisexual who is attracted to a handsome young slave ( Tony Curtis) but is also driven by the desire to win the love of the slave woman Varinia ( Jean Simmons), who is the wife of Spartacus. Leading his men into battle against weak and badly led Roman legions, Spartacus stands on the brink of victory before his troops are finally caught between two armies and outnumbered.Īll of this takes place against a backdrop of Roman decadence, and we become familiar with the backstage power plays of the senate, where Crassus ( Laurence Olivier) hopes to become a dictator at the expense of the more permissive and gentler old man Gracchus ( Charles Laughton).
The notion of being forced to fight for the entertainment of spoiled women enrages Spartacus, who leads a slave revolt that eventually spreads over half of Italy. The spoiled women ask to be entertained by the sight of two fights to the death, and Spartacus is matched with a skilled black gladiator ( Woody Strode), who spares him and is killed. Spartacus is trained in the arts of combat at Batiatus’ gladiatorial academy, where one day two powerful men and their wives arrive from Rome. The film tells the story of the Roman slave Spartacus ( Kirk Douglas), who toils for the Roman Empire while dreaming, the narrator assures us, “of the death of slavery - which would not come until 2,000 years later.” He is sentenced to death after biting a Roman guard, but spared by Peter Ustinov, as Batiatus, a broker of gladiators.
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