03-15-2006, 10:03 PM
Hi folks
Still has to be 'The Fall of the Roman Empire', for me, even after over Forty years. Cynics should remember that too when they carp about any inaccuracies.
This film was produced before the Internet before CGI, Deepeeka, Bishop and Coulston, Connolly or even Russell Robinson. No handy reference books on the subject no RAT forum either!!! And yet the production team came up with some pretty amazing stuff, which makes what was presented in Gladiator look second or even third rate and even less excusable.
A believable and beautiful Forum set so accurate you can pick out the individual buildings, never done before or since as far as I know.
Reasonable Imperial Gallic/ Italic type helmets, made of metal in North African workshops, many still in use today. mail shirts worn under arming doublets for most of the Western troops while the eastern soldiers wear different uniforms consistent with the costume research of the late Victorian scholars Hottenroth and Racinet.
Damn accurate Heddernheim helmets of Sports and Cavalry types. right period for the movie too.
Sets and storyline which reflect the vastness of the empire literally "from the deserts of Egypt, the mountains of Armenia the forests of Gaul and the prairies of Spain".
Images such as the funeral in the snow with the assembled troops wailing in despair,The victorious Roman troops marching past the Arch at Ctesiphon almost casually in the background. The fabulous dress and costumes of the courtiers and ambassadors sometimes on screen for seconds.The stunning Sophia Loren, who can forget that overhead shot of her in that pink dress. The feel for Baroque Roman art and Architecture, even the Terentius Fresco from Dura appears in the title credits!
And finally one of the most thoughtful debates ever in cinema about how the empire should deal with those it called Barbarians, allow them in and grow with them or exclude them and risk them smashing open the frontiers how relevant a topic even today.
"There was a movie, when comes such another!"
Graham.
Still has to be 'The Fall of the Roman Empire', for me, even after over Forty years. Cynics should remember that too when they carp about any inaccuracies.
This film was produced before the Internet before CGI, Deepeeka, Bishop and Coulston, Connolly or even Russell Robinson. No handy reference books on the subject no RAT forum either!!! And yet the production team came up with some pretty amazing stuff, which makes what was presented in Gladiator look second or even third rate and even less excusable.
A believable and beautiful Forum set so accurate you can pick out the individual buildings, never done before or since as far as I know.
Reasonable Imperial Gallic/ Italic type helmets, made of metal in North African workshops, many still in use today. mail shirts worn under arming doublets for most of the Western troops while the eastern soldiers wear different uniforms consistent with the costume research of the late Victorian scholars Hottenroth and Racinet.
Damn accurate Heddernheim helmets of Sports and Cavalry types. right period for the movie too.
Sets and storyline which reflect the vastness of the empire literally "from the deserts of Egypt, the mountains of Armenia the forests of Gaul and the prairies of Spain".
Images such as the funeral in the snow with the assembled troops wailing in despair,The victorious Roman troops marching past the Arch at Ctesiphon almost casually in the background. The fabulous dress and costumes of the courtiers and ambassadors sometimes on screen for seconds.The stunning Sophia Loren, who can forget that overhead shot of her in that pink dress. The feel for Baroque Roman art and Architecture, even the Terentius Fresco from Dura appears in the title credits!
And finally one of the most thoughtful debates ever in cinema about how the empire should deal with those it called Barbarians, allow them in and grow with them or exclude them and risk them smashing open the frontiers how relevant a topic even today.
"There was a movie, when comes such another!"
Graham.
"Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream" Edgar Allan Poe.
"Every brush-stroke is torn from my body" The Rebel, Tony Hancock.
"..I sweated in that damn dirty armor....TWENTY YEARS!', Charlton Heston, The Warlord.
"Every brush-stroke is torn from my body" The Rebel, Tony Hancock.
"..I sweated in that damn dirty armor....TWENTY YEARS!', Charlton Heston, The Warlord.
