Like the corrupt and venal Rome it portrays, Spartacus was borne from the struggle of many creative and powerful people working against and in collaboration with each other. It’s an epic in every sense of the word, and it arrived in a period when the epic motion picture dominated American movie-going much as the summer blockbuster does today. For a Hollywood film, Spartacus has an unusually high artistic pedigree, including not just director Stanley Kubrick, but also its supporting cast (mostly British stage actors turned movie stars) and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, a blacklisted writer. All of this makes what went on behind the camera as interesting if not more so than the movie itself. The Criterion Collection has recently released Spartacus in a two-disc DVD set; the movie has been digitally transferred from the restored print used in the 1991 re-release. As breathtaking as the movie is, it’s fair to say that the extra features, which include several audio commentaries, interviews, and short documentaries, are the main attraction here. The making of Spartacus was its own epic struggle, a fact which this DVD release explores in exhaustive and fascinating detail. Adapted from the novel by Howard Fast, Spartacus concerns itself with the two extremes of Roman society: the slaves and the senators. Kirk Douglas plays Spartacus, a Thraecian slave by birth who gets recruited by a Roman gladiatorial school. There he learns to fight to the death for the amusement of pagan aristocrats. The training scenes at the school are choreographed like militaristic dances; one can see the beginnings of Kubrick’s man-as-machine obsession. Douglas, square jawed and block shouldered, hardly speaks. His Spartacus is both a savage and an automaton, able to perform with physical perfection but harboring deep, unspoken rage. Part of that rage runs over when he falls in love with the demure slave girl Varinia (Jean Simmons). Their first scenes together are beautiful, near wordless encounters. She is presented to him as a courtesan, and he, clearly a novice at romance, does not know what to do with her. They take to giving each other long, aching glances across courtyards and through iron bars. Later, when she’s callously given to another gladiator for the evening, Spartacus must endure the sounds of love making, and he paces his cell like a caged beast. His almost constant state of repression, emotional or otherwise, constitutes what screenwriter Dalton Trumbo calls in the audio commentary the "small Spartacus." It is the Spartacus we can empathize with and pity – a dark, brooding ex-slave plagued by self-doubt and a low self-esteem. It is the Spartacus who, in spite of his humble nature, leads a spontaneous revolt against the school. Letting out all of his repressed anger, Spartacus attacks the school guards with amazing savagery and leads his fellow gladiators on a rampage through the countryside.
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