Spartacus
1960
***½
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Peter Ustinov, John Gavin, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Tony Curtis
This entertaining and visually stunning swords and sandals film about Spartacus, a slave who leads a doomed revolt against Rome, is long and pompous like many of the big historical epics produced in the 1950s and 1960s. Kirk Douglas recruited Stanley Kubrick to direct, and this indeed seems like one of the director's least personal works. Peter Ustinov, who plays a slave trader, won an Academy Award for his performance. The film won three additional Oscars for costume design, art direction, and cinematography. Based on Howard Fast's 1951 novel.
