Many films have attempted to capture the artist’s creative technique. It’s a challenge because making art is by nature usually a solitary act and a very internal one, and it’s hard to find drama in that; as a result, a lot of artist biopics try to mine their drama from the turbulent relationships the artist has. The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965, dir. Carol Reed, based on the novel by Irving Stone) tries to dramatize Michelangelo’s painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by focusing on the tense relationship between the artist and his patron, Pope Julius II.
Before we start, I feel obligated to explain that the Sistine Chapel was so named because it was built on the orders of Pope Sixtus IV, Julius II’s uncle and the holder of one of my favorite papal names simply because it’s amusing to say.
Charleton Heston’s Michelangelo is a brooding man with a profound sense of artistic integrity. He sees himself as a sculptor and resists the efforts of Julius (Rex Harrison) to force him to work in fresco, but having given in, he gradually embraces the project. He refuses to follow Julius’ plan (which just involved painting the 12 Apostles in the triangular pendentives that support the vault, and instead eventually hits on a more sweeping vision. The ceiling will depict scenes from Genesis, the pendentives will depict men and women who prophesied the birth of Jesus, and the zones above the windows will depict the ancestors of Christ.
From that point on, Julius impatiently presses him to finish the work, or at least take the scaffolding down so that people can see whatever work has been done, while Michelangelo defiantly declares he will finish when he finishes. He doesn’t want to take a break because he wants to get the project over with so he can get back to his work as a sculptor.
Julius II
That’s not really enough to hang a 2 hour and 20 minute movie on, so the film has to invent more drama. Michelangelo has a chaste romance with Contessina de Medici, the daughter of his Florentine patron Lorenzo, who chides him for obsessing about the work and not attending gatherings in his honor. Later he falls ill and she has to nurse him back to health. Julius tells Michelangelo that he is going to transfer the commission to rival painter Raphael, but this turns out to be a ruse to goad Michelangelo to getting back to work. (In reality, according to Ascanio Condivi, one of Michelangelo’s students, Raphael attempted to replace Michelangelo on the project, forcing Michelangelo to plead his case before Julius.) Julius periodically threatens to or actually does revoke Michelangelo’s commission, before the two men gradually come to understand each other. Although Julius certainly did lean on Michelangelo to speed up the work, the film seems to be exaggerating the number of obstacles the artist faced, and the relationship with Contessina appears entirely fabricated.
On the other hand, first-hand descriptions of Michelangelo’s process describe how physically grueling the work was. Giorgio Vasari, who wrote an important collection of biographies of Renaissance artists, discusses how hard the work was on Michelangelo’s neck, arms, and eyes, and the film captures that quite well. The film is rather interested in the mechanical process of the frescoing, and it gives the viewer a fairly good sense of the basic technique that Michelangelo used.
The other source of tension in the film is Julius’ military campaign. The film provides virtually no explanation at all of these events, but in 1508, Julius sought to counter the rising power of Venice in Italy by forming the League of Cambrai with France, Aragon, and the Holy Roman Empire. By 1510, the League had succeeded in its goals, but then the alliance collapsed and Julius found himself allied with Venice against France in a Holy League. In 1512, Julius was able to temporarily force the French to withdraw from Italy. He died the next year, and thus did not see the French return to Italy triumphantly in 1515.
Rather than delving into this conflict as a subject in its own right, the film simply depicts Julius as struggling to create a Papacy independent from outside control. He fights unsuccessfully against the French, suffering a wound that gradually weakens and presumably kills him. Thus the film contrasts Michelangelo’s successful effort to complete the frescos with Julius’ unsuccessful efforts to create a political order that will outlast him. It’s an interesting idea, but it’s not developed well enough to be really compelling, since the film just milks Julius’ defeats for more obstacles to Michelangelo’s work. Will Julius find the money to pay for the frescos? Will the French destroy the Sistine Chapel as Julius predicts?
Probably the biggest problem, however, lies in its two stars, who are both miscast. Heston’s famously histrionic acting style leaves no room for subtle characterization, and he is unable to convey any sense of an artist finding his inspiration. The thing that finally gets him on-board with Julius’ project is seeing a cloud formation that rather absurdly suggests that famous Creation of Adam fresco. What drives this Michelangelo is unknowable because Heston can’t show us his process beyond what the script tells him to say.
Heston failing mightily to demonstrate nuance
Harrison does a better job as Julius, coming off as a highly-cultured and ambitious man, but ultimately he seems too much a 20th century Englishman to be a 16th century Italian pope. I kept expecting him to tell Michelangelo about the precipitation on the Spanish plains. Harrison bears a striking resemblance to Iain Glen, who certainly could have pulled off what the film was going for with Julius. So maybe it’s time for a remake?
Heston and Harrison arguing about Eliza Doolittle the Sistine Chapel
The film also makes the bizarre choice to open with a 13 minute lecture about Michelangelo’s work as an artist. I certainly applaud the film’s desire to educate the viewer about art history and give them a context for the film, but honestly, just fast forward past this bit; it’s deathly dull and nearly kills the whole film.
As I have said before, movies about the past are very often movies about the present. Screenwriters and directors often shape their stories about the past to reflect the concerns and interests of the present, either consciously or unconsciously. The 300 Spartans (1962, dir. Rudolph Maté) is a good example of this principle.
Maté made his film at the height of the Cold War. In October of that year, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world pretty much literally to the brink of nuclear war. The United States and Western Europe were deeply at odds with the Soviet Union and the states of Communist Eastern Europe, and many in the West saw the Communists as being hell-bent on conquering the West and exporting Communism around the planet. There was a sense that the Soviets possessed a nameless vast throng of troops willing to do anything for their ruthless masters.
That made the Persians an ideal stand-in for the Soviets. Xerxes (David Farrar), with his army that Herodotus claims was 2.5 million men (and which modern historians have estimated to be a more plausible 200,000) suggested the immense Soviet army. And Xerxes was launching an unprovoked invasion of Greece, exactly as Americans expected the Soviets would do to Europe.
In contrast, the Greeks are disunited at the start of the movie, with the Spartans, Athenians, Corinthians and others arguing and refusing to acknowledge the threat Xerxes poses. Leonidas (Richard Egan) and Themistocles (Ralph Richardson) are capable of seeing the situation and rising above their traditional rivalries. But back in Sparta, the ephors resist his effort to raise the Spartan army. This would seem to parallel the political debates in Europe about following the American lead, and the debates within America about being “strong on defense”. Indeed, less than a year after the film was released, France took its initial steps at withdrawing from NATO.
The McCarthite Red Scare imagined a fifth column of Communists within the United States betraying the country, just the way that the villainous Ephialtes (Kieron Moore) betrays the Spartans by showing Xerxes how to get his troops around the Spartan position.
There is constant talk in the film about how Greece needs to unify and become one people in order to deal with the threat. Themistocles dreams of a united Greece, and Leonidas seems to think it is a reasonable idea as well. While their city-states are opposed to each other, the two men show no sign of hostility. The film assumes that the unification of Greece was an obvious, almost foregone, conclusion, if only the various city-states could see it.
Greeks debating what to do about Persia
In reality, however, unification was far from obvious to the ancient Greeks. Ancient Greek culture was built around shared cultural identity, not political unity. The topography of Greece made political unification from within almost impossible; no Greek city-state could build up a large enough territory to truly subjugate its neighbors, because travel by land was difficult and Greece was resource-poor compared to the great territorial states of the Ancient world, such as Egypt or Persia.
Instead, the Greeks found their unity in a shared language, the worship of common gods, the celebration of the Olympic Games, and other similar cultural features. It would be as if all English-speaking, Christian countries were one people, regardless of what government they had. So the idea of all Greek city-states achieving some sort of political union was simply alien to the way Greeks understood their society. The film makes little sense within an historical Greek context.
But as a coded plea to American society (or perhaps Western society more broadly) to unify against the Soviet threat, the film makes a good deal of sense. It highlights the need for the Republicans and Democrats to work together to oppose the Communist threat, and for the various Western countries to work more closely together. The epilogue describes Thermopylae as “a stirring example to free people throughout the world about what a few brave men can accomplish once they refuse to submit to tyranny.” Given that non-Communist society was frequently referred to as “the Free World” in this period, the message is obvious. We can end Communism’s threat if we just stay together. It will require bravery and sacrifice, but it will work.
The opulent Persian camp
Unlike 300, The 300 Spartans at least acknowledges that Thermopylae didn’t stop the Persians. Themistocles discusses his plans for winning the naval battle at Salamis, although the film doesn’t show Salamis at all (perhaps because of the challenges of depicting Greek naval combat with the film technology of the time).
The 300 Spartans offers a nice object lesson that historical movies are frequently coded messages about the period in which they were made. It was as much about the Soviet threat as science fiction films of the period such as Invaders from Mars were.
Most people assume that 300 (2007, dir. Zach Snyder) was the first movie made about the battle of Thermopylae. But in fact there is an earlier version of the story, The 300 Spartans (1962, dir. Rudolph Maté). Frank Miller was deeply impressed by the latter film when he saw it while growing up, so in some sense his 300 is an homage to Maté’s film. And from a standpoint of basic accuracy, it’s a better film.
Rather than going into the basic facts about Thermopylae, I’ll just direct you to my first blog post ever, where I discuss both the 3rd Persian War and Greek hoplite warfare.
The 300 Spartans does a fairly good job of following the facts of Thermopylae as we know it. The film opens with the Persians marching into Thrace. Xerxes (David Farrar) has a chat with the exiled Spartan king Demaratus (Ivan Triesault) in which some of the dialog is draw straight out of Herodotus. In fact, the film repeatedly uses famous Spartan comments reported by the Greek historian, which right there puts it a whole level above Snyder’s work in terms of basic accuracy. And there’s a good deal more concern to depict the Persians wearing things actual Persians wore (although there are a lot of generic Hollywood belly-dancers too).
David Farrar’s Xerxes
The various Greek city-states debate what to do about the invasion. Themistocles (Ralph Richardson) and Leonidas (Richard Egan) are both forward-looking enough to realize their two states, traditionally rivals, must work together to find a solution, and they are repeatedly thwarted by small-minded men who simply don’t want to acknowledge the scale of the problem facing them. In particular, Leonidas is opposed back home in Sparta by a group of unspecified “elders”, who seem to be the ephors, a council of five elected men who shared political authority with the two Spartan kings. (Although the film generally has only a vague sense of what life in Sparta was like, it does understand that Sparta had a dual monarchy and a governing council, which again puts it a step above 300.) The ephors insist that Sparta cannot respond to the Persian invasion until the Carnea festival is over. Leonidas, however, feels that the matter cannot wait, and departs with his bodyguard of 300 men, who are not subject to the ephors’ authority on this. Again, this is loosely following Herodotus’s account, although modern scholars are a little skeptical about this.
Richard Egan as Leonidas
Where the film digresses is with the insertion of a invented Hollywood romance. Whereas in 300, the love relationship is between Leonidas and his queen, Gorgo, in this film, it’s between Gorgo’s niece, Ellas (Diane Baker) and Demaratus’ son Phyllon (Barry Coe). They want to be married, but because Demaratus has been accused of helping the Persians, Leonidas refuses to allow Phyllon to marry or fight with the other Spartans. This sets off a tedious sub-plot in which the two lovers chase after Leonidas’ army, and then stumble across an elderly couple whose lecherous son Ephialtes falls in love with Ellas, thus providing him with a motive to betray the Spartans to the Persians by showing them how to get around the pass at Thermopylae.
Meanwhile, Xerxes is consorting with Queen Artemisia (Anne Wakefield). In contrast to Eva Green’s man-hating fury, Wakefield’s Artemisia is a fairly traditional evil woman for the period. She uses her feminine wiles to get what she wants, and Xerxes’ libidinous dalliance with her is used to demonstrate that he’s a lousy ruler who ignores the good advice of his generals. But this Artemisia isn’t that important to the plot; once the fighting starts she is almost completely forgotten.
Apparently old shower curtains are the latest thing in women’s fashion at Thermopylae
One thing The 300 Spartans shares with 300 is a general disinterest in recreating actual hoplite warfare. Both the Spartans and the Persians are dressed more accurately in The 300 Spartans (for example, the Persian Immortals are correctly shown carrying wicker shields), but when it comes to combat the film either doesn’t know how to depict a hoplite phalanx in action or it simply doesn’t care. The Spartans just stand in long lines, single file, with the next line standing 30-40 feet behind them doing nothing. Instead of showing how the Spartans successfully employed the hoplite system to maximum effect for the terrain available (and chose Thermopylae because it would maximize the power of the phalanx by negating the Persian advantage of numbers), the Spartans in this film are just better fighters.
They repeatedly repulse waves of Persians who employ ludicrous tactics. In the first attack, Xerxes orders his cavalry to advance behind the concealment of his infantry. The plan is that at the last minute the cavalry will ride through the infantry, catch the Spartans by surprise and capture them all so Xerxes can publicly execute them. None of that makes much sense, and it doesn’t fool the Spartans at all. When the cavalry charges, the Spartans just fall down and let the cavalry ride over them, and then stand up and turn around to trap them between two groups of Spartans. The fact that the front row of Spartans are now standing with their backs to the Persian infantry is just ignored. Here, see for yourself:
Then Xerxes sends in chariots, which the Spartans defeat with arrows and javelins. When the Spartans use their spears, it’s mostly to throw them, and they prefer to fight with what look to be Roman short swords instead. Then the Immortals get sent in and the Spartans trick them into advancing past a flammable pile of hay which they then light on fire, trapping the Immortals. The film exhibits absolutely no idea about how phalanxes actually worked.
But there is one nice detail I have to commend, because I complain about it in other war scenes. When the Spartans are finally outflanked and surrounded at the end of the film, refusing to surrender Leonidas’ body, Xerxes does the smart thing. He doesn’t send in his infantry to fight them. He lets his archers pick them all off, because a unit of infantry in stationary formation is vulnerable to missile fire. It’s refreshing to see a movie that actually understands this.
The 300 Spartans has not aged particularly well. The acting is the usual turgid 50s style, the female characters are good for nothing except being love objects, the soundtrack is obnoxious, and the stunt-work is thoroughly unconvincing. But in terms of its ability to recount what actually happened, it’s hands down better than 300.
Happy Easter! My first look at 1953’s The Robefocused on the film’s treatment of religion. But I thought I’d toss in a few thoughts about its attitude toward the Roman Empire, which is, shall we say, negative.
The film opens with scenes of Rome while Richard Burton’s Marcellus Gallio provides an opening voice-over. He begins by emphasizing how the empire is “master of the earth” and has “the finest fighting machine in history.” But then the mood shifts. He tells the audience that Rome receives tribute from the peoples of 30 lands: gold, silk, ivory, frankincense, and above all slaves, so many there are more slaves than citizens. Some say that Rome does nothing but loot, that it makes nothing for itself. As he tells us this we see the tribute arriving, and then finally Marcellus walks through the slave market, where whole families are being sold.
The scene serves three purposes. First, it establishes Marcellus as being somewhat jaded and cynical about Rome. Second, it sets up the conflict between Marcellus and Caligula (Jay Robinson), who gets angry because Marcellus gets the winning bid on a slave Caligula wants.
Finally, the scene tells the audience that the Roman empire is an evil empire. It establishes that Rome is essentially parasitical, producing nothing but soldiers, which enables it to dominate other peoples and live off what they produce. The slave market is, by 50s standards, decadent and cruel. The slaves are physically exposed; the female slaves mostly wear skimpy chainmail bikinis and similar outfits that expose a great deal of their bodies, in contrast to 50s norms that a woman’s torso and upper legs should be covered. The slaves are scared, but their owners are hawking them like cattle.
Two girls for sale in the slave market
When Caligula appears in the market, he does so in a procession of perhaps 50 soldiers and courtiers, who are simply there to herald him. Everyone fawns over him and defers to him, except Marcellus, who clearly disdains Caligula even though he’s going to be the next emperor. Marcellus’ refusal to kowtow is intended to establish him as a virtuous man, even though he’s also a playboy womanizer.
When Marcellus gets home from the market, his father, Senator Gallio, chastises him for provoking Caligula. Gallio says that he is “fighting for what’s left of the Republic against the tyranny of the emperors.” So he’s like an earlier version of Gladiator’s Senator Gracchus (in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if The Robe had some minor influence on Ridley Scott’s film). This idea doesn’t go anywhere. We barely see Senator Gallio again and his resistance to the emperors is never mentioned again. But it tells the audience that the emperors are tyrants and anti-Republican.
This criticism of the Roman Empire is repeated in various ways throughout the film, to build the contrast between Christian morality and Roman corruption, but by the time Marcellus and Demetrius (Victor Mature) get to Jerusalem, the film settles into its major critique of the Empire, that it’s unjust. In the Jerusalem baths, Marcellus humiliates a wine merchant he owes money to, throwing the man’s money into a pool so that one of the other soldiers can push the man in for the amusement of the crowd. When Demetrius tells Marcellus that Jesus will be executed even though he is innocent, Marcellus’s response is essentially that this doesn’t matter; if the governor has condemned the man, he must be executed regardless of his guilt or innocence.
The Crucifixion, however, causes Marcellus to begin doubting, and when he puts on Jesus’ robe afterward, he is immediately wracked with guilt. Demetrius pulls the robe off, condemns the Empire and Marcellus for their injustice, and flees. His growing sense of the Empire’s fundamental injustice is the hole through which Christianity slowly enters his heart.
This theme of injustice climaxes in the trial scene, in which Caligula accuses Marcellus of sedition against the Empire. The charge is absurd; Marcellus has literally done nothing seditious except rescue Demetrius for the torture chambers under Caligula’s palace (because, of course, emperors must have a torture chamber in their basement; a separate building for it isn’t evil enough). All Marcellus has done is act as a missionary. He tells Caligula that he is indeed a Christian, but they are not seditious. He says that Jesus is a king, but not of this world; rather he is a king of men’s hearts. He points out that the empire is run by men, and men make mistakes, an observation that horrifies Caligula, who apparently thinks that infallibility is an inherent trait of emperors. Marcellus kneels and swears loyalty to Caligula but refuses to renounce Jesus, for which Caligula sends him to a firing squad (an arching squad?).
Marcellus on trial before Caligula
In his few scenes, Caligula is depicted as a sneering, deranged lunatic who cannot tolerate any opposition. He gleefully shows Diana (Jean Simmons) the torture chamber in which Demetrius is being tortured in an absurdly complex machine designed to press boards against different parts of his body. Diana is, as 50s heroines must always be, too delicate to bear the sight of any suffering whatsoever, which is intended to reinforce Caligula’s inhuman cruelty. When he learns that Demetrius has escaped, he rages so much I was wondering if he was going to have a fit of apoplexy right there on the screen.
Would you trust this man to run your country?
The film makes no effort to understand how Roman society saw itself. There’s no sense of the various social forces that caused the collapse of the Republic, and the Republic is, at least in Senator Gallio’s mind, still a viable alternative to the tyranny of the Caesars. Diana comments that perhaps at one point the Caesars had noble blood, but by Caligula’s day that noble blood has turned to poison.
As Tiberius makes clear, Christianity is a threat to the empire, not because Christianity is seditious but because the Empire is founded on corrupt principles that Christianity will wash away. By teaching men to share, to be honest and just, and to act on virtue rather than vice, this new religion is a threat to Rome’s predatory relationship with other peoples.
It’s clear that 1950s audiences were expected to identify with the Christians and, more subtly, with the now lost Roman Republic, America being a Republic after all. The film could have been written as a warning to Americans that Republics can be lost to injustice (remember, 1953 was the height of McCarthyism and the Red Scare), but it seems more likely that audiences were expected to see the Roman Empire as a stand-in for the Soviet Union. In American minds, both were non-Christian, immoral, unjust societies built on political tyranny and the refusal to respect the rights of others, and which engaged in show trials whose verdict had nothing to do with guilt or innocence. The film doesn’t explicitly make the connection; Jay Robinson looks nothing like Josef Stalin, for example. But it seems likely to me that the comparison was at least vaguely intended, if only because the Cold War tended to influence everything in 1950s culture one way or another. But it’s also possible that audiences might have seen a shadow of Nazi Germany in this version of the Roman Empire. But the fact that the film wants to de-emphasize Judaism leads me to think that wasn’t the main comparison.
As I’ve emphasized before, movies about the past are almost always movies about the present. They comment on trends of the day, they critique social practices, they reassure the audience that its values are good, and so on. The theme of the Crucifixion made Roman justice or lack thereof an obvious issue in the story, and that resulted in a film that makes statements about 20th century societies and their relationship to justice even without trying to.
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It’s Holy Week, so I figured I would take a break from Salem’s witch trials and tackle one of those old Hollywood Biblical epics. I settled on The Robe (1953, dir. Howard Koster), mostly because I’d never seen it before. It’s based on former Lutheran minister Lloyd Douglas’ 1942 bestseller of the same name; he wrote the novel after receiving a fan letter asking him what he thought had become of Christ’s seamless robe after the crucifixion.
The film tells the story of Marcellus Gallio (Richard Burton), a libertine Roman tribune who crosses Caligula (Jay Robinson, chewing the scenery like he hasn’t eaten in a week) and gets sent to Jerusalem just in time to preside over the crucifixion of Jesus. He’s accompanied by a Greek slave, Demetrius (Victor Mature), who witnesses Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and immediately finds himself drawn to Jesus, despite not knowing anything about him. During the crucifixion, Marcellus wins Jesus’ robe in a gambling match but finds himself becoming increasingly distressed about what’s happening right above him. During a rainstorm, he tries to put the robe on to keep dry, but finds himself tormented by it. Demetrius takes the robe off him, denounces him and the Roman empire, and flees.
Victor Mature as Demetrius, having just seen Jesus’ entering Jerusalem
Back in Rome, Marcellus remains tormented, and the Emperor Tiberius concludes that he has been bewitched. He commissions Marcellus to return to Judea as a spy and find both the robe and the followers of Jesus, because he senses that these people will destroy the empire (apparently he’s read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in galley proofs). Marcellus eventually makes contact with the Christians and finds them to be wonderful, loving people. He hears a crippled woman Miriam (Betta St. John) sing a song about Christ’s resurrection (basically, the Gospel narrative of Mary Magdalene at the tomb). When he points out that the so-called healer Jesus didn’t heal Miriam, she explains that he healed her of her hatred and malice, which she considers a far greater gift. Marcellus find Demetrius and demands that he burn the robe, but then he accidentally touches it and finds his sense of fear disappearing. He meets St. Peter (Michael Rennie). But then Marcellus and the Christians are betrayed to the Romans. Marcellus defeats the Roman centurion in combat (because apparently that’s how Romans resolve disputes), but refuses to kill him. At this point, Peter and the now-Christian Demetrius invite him to become a missionary with them and he accepts.
In the last act, Marcellus’ true love, Diana (Jean Simmons) learns from the now-emperor Caligula that Marcellus has returned to Rome to spread sedition. She learns that Demetrius has been captured and is being tortured, and she is able to find Marcellus and Peter hiding in a cave with a large crowd of Christians. Marcellus and the Christians bravely rescue Demetrius, but as they are trying to smuggle him out of Rome, Marcellus is captured. He stands trial before Caligula and the Roman people. He explains that he is a Christian now, but not a traitor, but Caligula refuses to hear it. He offers Caligula the robe, but Caligula panics and instead Diana takes it. When Marcellus is sentenced to death, Diana announces that she wishes to die with him and go to his kingdom. As they are escorted out, the Roman palace fades into clouds and a chorus sings “Alleluia!”, signifying that they are going to Heaven.
The Robe is a typical 1950s sword-and-sandal epic, with a religious twist. There are lots of people wandering around in generic Olde Timey robes, lots of fearful slaves and oppressed Christians, and lots of the slightly histrionic acting that was fashionable before Method acting became the standard. Burton is Burton, stalwart, moral, and troubled, and Jean Simmons is the female lead whose only purpose is to mirror the righteousness of Burton’s cause by converting. Every moment of drama is underscored with swelling music. But if you like that sort of thing, it’s a decent film, although Douglas was quite disappointed in it, and refused to allow his sequel, The Big Fisherman, to be adapted as a sequel to the film. (It was eventually adapted after his death.)
The film basically weaves its story around the Gospel narratives of the Crucifixion. We see Jesus’ entry on Palm Sunday, and watch as Demetrius frantically tries to warn the Christians that the Romans plan to arrest Jesus, only to learn that he’s too late. The guilt-stricken man he hears the news from turns out to be Judas (cue thunderclap). Pilate is a haunted man, obsessed with washing his hands. We see Jesus trying to carry the cross and then being crucified, and watch Marcellus’ sense of guilt sink in as he goes from drinking and gambling to looking up at the cross as Jesus bleeds on him and says “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” It’s a surprisingly powerful moment even if it’s a little over-determined and lacking in subtlety.
This is probably the smartest part of the film, taking a story that most viewers of the day would have been familiar with and showing it from a fresh, unusual vantage point. Jesus is never clearly shown, as befitting a man who, in this film, is a powerful enough presence to convert people without even speaking to them.
After that, however, the film slowly goes wrong. The film opens in 33 AD, and perhaps a year passes between Marcellus’ conversion and his confrontation with Caligula at Rome, at which point Caligula has become emperor. But Caligula didn’t become emperor until 37 AD, so the film is compressing the facts because it wants Caligula to be the chief bad guy.
Simmons as Diana and Robinson as Caligula, during the trial
That’s a small issue, and I suppose one that can be forgiven. However, the film paints a picture of the Roman authorities as being instantly hostile to the Christians. The moment Tiberius learns about the Christians he orders Marcellus to root them out and destroy the robe. A year later, the Christians have already arrived in Rome in substantial numbers and are in hiding, because Caligula considers them traitors, and he orders the execution of Marcellus and Diana. In order for that to be true, Christianity would have to have enjoyed pretty much overnight expansion halfway across the Mediterranean, when the evidence suggests that in 40 AD there might have been a total of perhaps 1,000 Christians anywhere. Acts 1:14-15 says that in the months after the Crucifixion, there were only 120 Christians. So the idea of an underground community of several dozen Christians operating at Rome a year after the Crucifixion is pretty much an impossibility. Nor had Peter gotten there by that point; St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans was written around 56 AD, given or take a year, and he makes no mention of Peter despite greeting many people he knew of at Rome.
Just as unlikely is the film’s picture of Christians as immediately falling under imperial disapproval. Whereas popular imagination views early Christianity as being illegal the way that drug-dealing is illegal and therefore forcing Christians to live in hiding all the time, the reality is that in the first century AD, Christians were mostly seen as Jews, and Judaism was a legally tolerated religion, albeit one with a rocky relationship to the Empire. The earliest evidence of a Roman persecution against Christians comes from an early 2nd century author Suetonius, who says that Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome because they were making disturbances “at the instigation of Chrestus” (Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit). Most historians take this to a slightly confused reference to Christ’s Jewish followers being expelled (although there are other ways to understand the passage); this would have happened around 49 AD. The fact that Suetonius garbled “Christ’ and thought he was still alive during Claudius’ reign demonstrates that even half a century later, well-educated Romans could be completely ignorant of what Christianity was. Later, Suetonius tells us that Nero punished Christians, and the Roman historian Tacitus links this to the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD. The late 2nd century Christian author Tertullian seems fairly clear that Nero was the first emperor to execute Christians.
For some reason, Jerusalem is already in ruins. That’s a defensive wall behind them
The whole confrontation with Caligula is Douglas’ fabrication, apparently to give the ending of his novel some dramatic tension. While it is not impossible that Caligula executed Christians, it is highly unlikely, because it’s improbable there were enough Christians at any point during his rule for him to take serious notice of them, much less become obsessed that they are a threat to his rule.
Rather what Douglas is doing is imitating later accounts of Christian martyrdom and projecting that idea back to a period before the first martyrs. He’s essentially making Marcellus and Diana the first martyrs. Later accounts of martyrdom emphasize a confrontation between the martyrs and Roman legal authorities, and then typically go on to describe the manner of the martyr’s execution. Here we get the legal confrontation but the execution itself has been euphemized as an almost literal walk in the clouds.
The Part of The Robe that Doesn’t Play Very Well Today
As noted, the film avoids showing Jesus directly (or even calling him ‘Christ’), which focuses the camera on Demetrius and Marcellus and their reactions to what is happening to Jesus during his execution.But it might also have been intended to avoid having to cast a specific actor in the role and make a statement about what Jesus looked like. American imagination at the time liked to depict Jesus as basically Caucasian, but most of the Jews and Jewish Christians are played by white actors wearing swarthy make-up. The exception here is Betta St. John’s Miriam, who is lovely and fair-skinned and gets to sing a song about the Resurrection. (And now I’m suddenly haunted by the idea of a 1950s Hollywood musical number in which a crippled woman sings about the Resurrection, complete with a chorus line. God help me.) The tendency to put white actors in swarthy make-up when they play Middle Eastern characters looks rather awkward to audiences today, but it was standard practice in the 1950s.
Betta St John as Miriam
Somewhat harder to justify is casting Jewish actor Leon Askin as a money-grubbing servant who attempts to blackmail Marcellus and betrays him to the Romans, and then putting him in swarthy make-up and a curly beard. While the film calls him a Syrian in one line, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that he’s supposed to be a stereotypical greedy Jew. Given that all the good Jewish Christians are played by Caucasians like Michael Rennie, Dean Jagger, and Betta St. John, the contrast is rather striking. (Askin, incidentally, later went on to play the Nazi General Burkhalter in Hogan’s Heroes. He also played Martin Luther and Karl Marx. Now that’s a career with range.)
Askin as Agidor, with Burton. Note how differently he is portrayed than Jewish Christian Miriam
It’s also noteworthy that Jesus’ followers are always called Christians, never Jews, even though the term ‘Christian’ only developed somewhat later than the period of this film. There is no hint of Jewish rituals or the existence of a Jewish priesthood in Jerusalem and there’s barely any actual mention of Jews, except when a centurion comments that no one really knows what this ‘messiah’ of theirs is. Jews were still widely stigmatized in the 1950s, so the film is clearly trying to gloss over the Jewish origins of Christianity for a Christian audience that still looks down on Jews somewhat.
The Robe’s Version of Christianity
The Robe was made a time when the overwhelming majority of Americans were Christian but explicit discussion of religious belief was considered inappropriate in many parts of the country. Secularism was the dominant mode of public culture. So the film does a balancing act of presenting Christianity as something special and unique while not getting too specific about what Christianity is actually about.
Demetrius looking up at Jesus and holding the robe
Just as the film avoids showing us what Jesus looked like, it also avoids showing us what he had to say. Jesus gets only one line, spoken from the cross, and there’s no discussion of his sermons or parables. There’s a passing references to Jesus as the Messiah, but the centurion who mentions it doesn’t know what that means, except that it might be a king of some sort. He’s also called the Son of God once or twice, without any explanation. During his confrontation with Caligula, Marcellus says that Jesus “reigns in the hearts and minds of men in the name of justice and charity,” which is about as close to a statement of faith as the film ever gets.
Jesus’ followers are very honest, decent people. When Marcellus pretends to be a foolish cloth merchant in his effort to locate the robe, the Christian Justus (“justice,” get it?) shames the other Christians who let Marcellus over-pay them for their old clothes, and they all return the money. Marcellus gives Justus’ son a donkey, and gets angry when the boy gives the donkey away the next day so that his friend can have fun riding it. Miriam has somehow learned not to hate people after meeting Jesus on the way to the wedding at Cana. St. Peter is unwilling to let Justus claim that Peter stood by Jesus the whole time, instead admitting to Marcellus that he denied Jesus three times.
Dean Jagger as Justus, watching Marcellus break down from guilt
While Miriam sings a song about Jesus’ Resurrection, the film avoids saying that the Christians take it as literally true. Jesus is alive with his father and in the hearts of his followers, but there’s no sense of the Resurrection as a factual truth, or that Christ was seen later on by his followers, or that he will return someday. Nor is there any mention of key Christian doctrines like Substitutionary Atonement or Original Sin (although in 33 AD it’s unlikely that Christians would have used terms like that). The film ends with a symbolic journey of Marcellus and Diana to Heaven, without actually saying that’s where they’re going, and there’s no mention of the concept of Salvation or the Christian notion of the afterlife. So basically, the film’s version of Christianity is that it’s a moral code in which people are just really nice to each other and practice a vaguely-defined “justice” that stands in contrast to the tyranny of Caligula and Rome in general.
While it’s vague about what being Christian involves, The Robe is certain that it’s better than being pagan. The film opens with a surprisingly long voice-over by Burton in which Marcellus describes Rome. As he puts it,
“Some say that we are only looters of what others have created, that we create nothing ourselves, but we have made gods, fine gods and goddesses, who make love, war, huntresses, and drunkenness. For their power lies not in their hands of marble, but in ours of flesh. We the nobles of Rome are free to live only for our own pleasure. Could any god offer us more? Today we traffic in human souls.”
As he says this, the film shows us statues of the Roman gods, and finishes with a sculptor carving a new statue of Bacchus. The message here is clear; the gods of the Romans are merely human creations designed to justify humanity’s baser urges. The film contrasts this with the higher moral calling of Christianity, which gradually wins over first Demetrius, then Marcellus, and finally Diana. First Marcellus and then Diana are confused by Christianity’s message of being nice to people; they insist that real people aren’t like that, but gradually have a change of heart. That the film ends with the conversion of a woman named after a Roman goddess seems more than a coincidence, especially since the film’s opening includes a statue of Diana the Huntress to remind the audience of that goddess.
The film also walks a fine line in regard to its supernatural elements. Christ’s execution is accompanied by a storm, rather than the Biblical darkness and earthquake. The Resurrection is mentioned only in a song, suggesting that it might be metaphorical. Miriam’s healing is spiritual rather than physical, and when Peter comes to heal the wounded Demetrius after his rescue, the scene shifts to outside the room, where a pagan physician is insisting that Demetrius will die, so his recovery is surprising but not explicitly a miracle. The closest thing to a formal miracle happens when Justus says that his young boy was born with a deformed foot but that Jesus healed him; we see the boy running and playing like a normal boy.
Jesus’ seamless robe is likewise ambiguous. When Marcellus first touches it, he is overcome with agony, and the second time he touches it he is healed of his fear, but the film presents these as more psychological than literal, the manifestation of a guilty conscience that later heals. Caligula’s fear of the robe is a sign of the inferiority of Roman society to Christianity, and Diana’s taking of the robe is a sign that she has converted, not the cause of it. So the film allows the viewer room to see the robe as a miraculous relic, but formally presents it only as a symbol of Jesus’ love and acceptance.
Marcellus fighting the centurion
Although St. Peter appears numerous times during the second half of the film, he gets only one scene of importance, in which he invites Marcellus to come with him and Demetrius. Justus claims that he was Jesus’ closest companion, but Peter later corrects the statement by admitting his denial of Jesus. He is repeatedly called ‘the big fisherman’, a term that implies leadership without actually saying it. There is a suggestion that Peter is responsible for Christianity coming to Rome, but nothing more than that. Catholics can view this Peter as the first bishop of Rome and Prince of the Apostles while Protestants can view him simply as an important Biblical figure. So the film can be watched with equal comfort by a secular American, a Protestant, or a Catholic, and thus represents a compromise meant to satisfy everyone. The only people likely to be offended by it are conservative Protestants like my Lutheran minister father, who would have been irritated by the film’s refusal to take a firm stance on what Christianity involves.
The film establishes a moral hierarchy in which Christianity is clearly superior to paganism, and implicitly superior to Judaism by virtue of its near-total removal from the context. But the film avoids anything that would mark it out as committed to a particular view of Christianity as anything more than a powerful but vaguely-defined moral system. In that sense, it’s the perfect Hollywood Biblical epic, religious without being religious.
Want to Know More?
The Robe is available in multiple formats through Amazon.
If you want to know more about the first generation of Christians, a good place to start would be Wayne Meeks’ The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, which seeks to reconstruct the early Christian community from clues in the writings of St. Paul. Another way to approach the subject is Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers (Classics), which collects the earliest extra-Biblical Christian texts, such as Clement’s Letter, the Shepherd of Hermas, and The Didache, the first summary of Christian doctrine and practice.
is a good introduction to the subject.
