It's a guy thing: charging chariots, clanging swords, testosterone-fuelled fight scenes and buff boys in uniform. The sword-and-sandals film is back for the first time in four decades courtesy of the first blockbuster of the year, Gladiator.
Ridley Scott's Roman epic, produced at a cost of £120 million, slayed the opposition when it opened in the US last month, taking $35 million over its first weekend. Although 96 per cent of audiences professed themselves "thrilled" with the film, the producers are worried about the make-up of the viewers. So far, more than two-thirds are male.
A better gender balance is vital if the film is to go into the anticipated mega-million profit. Part of the concern is the latent homoeroticism of sword-and-sandals films. Musclemen in pleated Roman skirts, strong male bonding and the lack of convincing male-female relationships are a cinematic turn-off for most women.
According to US columnist Renee Graham, of the Boston Globe, "My female friends looked at me as if I was a `gender traitor' when I told them I was going to see Gladiator, and challenged me to find anything in it that would appeal to women." Although Graham found Gladiator to be far from a chick-flick she did take solace in the fact that the lead actor, Russell Crowe, was a bit of all right and that there was "an intelligent female character" in between all the flexing of muscles and the waving of swords.
In the film, which opened here yesterday, Crowe (last seen to great effect in The Insider and LA Confidential) plays the part of Maximus, a once-great general whose family are killed by a jealous rival. Barely escaping death, he is forced into slavery and trained as a gladiator. He arrives in Rome determined to avenge the killing of his family. Cue much fighting in the Colosseum . . .
With some magnificent special effects and none-too-bad performances from a cast that includes Joaquin Phoenix, Richard Harris, Oliver Reed (he died during the making of the film) and Derek Jacobi, Gladiator cost so much to make because of the producers' insistence on authenticity. The Colosseum (where most of the action takes place) was rebuilt in Malta, and every dollar they spent shows on the big screen.
Crowe himself rented a video of Cleopatra before he began filming. "Sword and sandals and Liz Taylor, baby," he replied when asked what attracted him to the role.
"I just love the epics and that great tradition of following in the footsteps of Spartacus, Ben-Hur and Fall Of The Roman Empire. The thing about these movies, they didn't just stop at the bangs and crashes. They gave you a story that just went on and on. And at the end, you're still going `Don't stop, man: Rule Rome for bloody sake!'. I just love all that stuff."
Naturally, the fight scenes are the highlight of Gladiator. As Crowe steps into the Colosseum with his sabre and shield he is not only fighting for his honour but also for the rehabilitation of an entire movie genre. Tales of togas and sagas of slaves stretch back to the 1951 smash hit, Quo Vadis?.
That film was styled as a Cecil B. de Mille extravaganza, and its unprecedented portrayals of sex and violence, which openly flouted the puritanical Hays Code (a restrictive set of "moralistic" guidelines for the US cinema) were allowed because they were somehow historically valid. Quo Vadis? established the genre's format, a format which was as rigid and stylised in its own way as that of the Spaghetti Western.
Loosely speaking, the films were either religious dramas, gladiators-and-decadence spectacles or mythological fantasy. These biblical blockbusters made stars out of Victor Mature (The Robe etc) and the gun-loving Charlton Heston (Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments).
An entire B-movie industry grew up around the genre, and no matter how hammy the acting, how dodgy the location (ancient Rome situated very close to Las Vegas) or how anachronistic the content (Centurions with watches), as long as there were enough orgies and bloodshed no one seemed to mind.
The high-water mark of sword-and-sandal output was the 1960 epic Spartacus. The film gave Stanley Kubrick his directorial debut and caused controversy by openly crediting a McCarthy-blacklisted screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo. The film is also remarkable for defying cinematic convention of the time and ending on a downbeat note.
Surprisingly, Spartacus signalled the end of the genre. three woefully bad knock-off-scum-unoffical-sequels, Son of Spartacus, Spartacus And The 10 Gladiators and, most chillingly, The Revenge Of Spartacus, exhausted the format, and when it was mercilessly parodied by The Three Stooges in The Three Stooges Meet Hercules, it was time to toss away the toga.
However, the main reason Hollywood has steered clear of the once very profitable genre for the last four decades is the still-legendary financial flop of the budget-busting Richard Burton-Elizabeth Taylor vehicle, Cleopatra.
But now that authenticity and historical accuracy can be generated digitally on computers (Gladiator used a state-of-the-art system called WAM!NET to keep costs down), expect a cinematic toga party over the next few years as variations on the Gladiator theme clutter up the multiplexes.
Rome rules.
