Quo Vadis?

What MGM and Mervyn LeRoy did in 1951 for two and a half hours, the Italian cinema did in 60% of the time, tell the tale of the Henryk Sienkiewicz novel Quo Vadis. For those of you who have seen the MGM classic with Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr you'll recognize quite a few scenes and lines.

This is an Italian production with a mostly Italian cast of names the American cinema viewer won't recognize. However it got some financing from the Germans and they got a co-director and a leading man for their contributions.

Unlike the American version where the story concentrates on the romance between centurion Marcus Vinicius and Lygia the Christian girl, this version has the Emperor Nero in the lead. That's a name you'll recognize, Emil Jannings of the German cinema soon to go to America and win the first Oscar for Best Actor.

It's a performance that dominates the film. You'll see bits of what both Charles Laughton and Peter Ustinov took, but Jannings makes the role all his own. Laughton was epicene, Ustinov narcissistic, but Jannings is positively mad.

The producer Gabriello D'Annunzio son of Gabriel D'Annunzio, Italian writer and adventurer created sets as opulent as any that D.W. Griffith or Cecil B. DeMille ever created in Hollywood. The Roman orgy scenes were pure DeMilleian. D'Annunzio even got his father's mistress Elena Sangro to play Poppaea, the courtesan Empress.

This silent Quo Vadis stands up well against MGM's Quo Vadis or DeMille's Sign Of The Cross. I recommend you see it to see how Jannings as Nero stacks up against Laughton and Ustinov.

It was apparently more about finance than anything else that led to Emil Jennings being cast as Nero in this adaptation of the acclaimed Sienkiewicz novel about the rise of Christianity despite the best efforts of the Roman Emperor Nero. And lucky it did, for he turns in quite a decent performance in this quickly paced adaptation. The supporting cast work quite well too as the tale of decadence and depravity at the Imperial court gather pace. "Vinicius" (Alphons Fryland) - an erstwhile loyal soldier, falls in love with "Ligia" (Lillian Hall-Davis) but when she is discovered to be a Christian and invites the enmity of the Emperor he must use all his wits and guile to save her for from his megalomanic master who needs a scapegoat after he famously fiddled while Rome burned. The cinematography here is pretty good, the scenes flow well and the inter-titles are frequent and concise enough to support the clear narrative of the story. It's even got it's own chariot race - with a difference - at the end.

Immediately after Henryk Sienkiewicz got the Nobel Prize for his brilliant novel QUO VADIS, there were attempts to bring the story of the 1st century Rome to screen. In 1912 an Italian director Enrico Guazzoni made a colossal (for that time) epic which focused primarily on huge spectacle. The results at the box office quickly proved a smashing success. Throughout the world, QUO VADIS became popular not only among readers but also among fans of a new phenomenon, cinema. Big, gorgeous premieres in the various metropolises and soon QUO VADIS compared by the critics to other great epic productions of the time, like CABIRIA, INTOLERANCE or THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. The film became so important that among many film lovers it still constitutes the QUO VADIS of the silent era, though some regard the movie as a "lost" one.

However, 1924 brought the next screen adaptation of the book, this time not from the Italians but the Germans. One of the directors was Georg Jacoby, the cast and crew also moved the production works to Italy in order to achieve authenticity and in this case, a great help was offered by Gabriellino D'Annunzio. However, one fact was the most promising: a great German silent star, Emil Jannings, known and loved for such marvelous portrayals like in Murnau's LAST LAUGH, was cast as infamous emperor Nero. Yet, despite wonderful chances, the filming soon occurred unfortunate for the cast and crew. Financial problems caused condensations and, according to some reports, one actor (while allegedly playing Seneca) was accidentally consumed by hungry lions. Moreover, the stills from the movie show that sets leave much to wish when compared to the original 1912 silent classic. Therefore, it failed to repeat the great success of the 1912 version. Although Jacoby's movie was later (in the late 1920s) supplied with musical score, its fate was similar to another very unfortunate production of history, I CLAUDIUS (1937) by Josef Von Sternberg (strange that both deal with Ancient Rome). As for silent movies, I don't know if this QUO VADIS will ever be appreciated.

As a result, fans of Henryk Sienkiewicz had to wait for another screen adaptation...this time already a talkie made in Technicolor - a colossal spectacle by Mervyn LeRoy, certainly up till now, the most famous and the worldwide popular QUO VADIS on screen...

This film (one I had given up for lost but which is actually readily accessible now – in nine separate installments – on "You Tube"!) is a testament to the development of early cinema from one decade to the next. While the 1912 version of this historical spectacle (watched a couple of days previously) today comes across as very primitive, in both cinematic technique and acting style, this shows considerable refinement in most aspects of production – emerging a fairly accomplished epic that can be seen to have influenced Cecil B. De Mille's THE SIGN OF THE CROSS (1932; which followed an almost identical plot line while sharing with it some of its leading characters!). The latter film is noted for its Pre-Code emphasis on brutality and eroticism; these elements, to a lesser extent, are also present even here (with, for instance, a couple of Nero's undesired minions being fed alive to his flesh-eating eels in the very first scene!). That said, apart from the obvious dominance of the great German star Emil Jannings (as Nero, who really takes center-stage here), the rest of the characters still receive underwhelming interpretations (with the biggest liability in this case being the rather fey hero Vinicius and his severely underwritten romantic interest Lygia!) – especially in comparison with the definitive 1951 Hollywood rendition (running almost twice as much as both previous adaptations!). Nevertheless, the essence of the tale is very much here (with even some figures, like the slimy Chilonedes, I had completely forgotten about from viewings of the later version{s} – which, to be fair, it has been some 20 odd years since). However, as with many of these solemn efforts, the plot begins to bore well before the end – given a central romance fraught with cliff-hanging situations at every turn, or it may simply be that I watched both Silents in too close a proximity! There are, however, a number of 'new' scenes involving Nero: the death of his son (mentioned but not seen in the 1912 film), his consulting with a mediumistic old hag and his own lecherous intentions on the heroine – which, given his frizzy hairdo and penchant for harp-playing, one could liken Jannings to a bloated version of Harpo Marx! The film's centerpiece, depicting the burning of Rome, is quite well done but, then, the climax in the arena (lions feasting on Christians and Lygia's burly protector Ursus – played by the same actor as the earlier adaptation! – battling a bull) still feels somewhat rushed. Bafflingly, rather than Miklos Rozsa's score for the 1951 QUO VADIS, the musical accompaniment for the copy I watched of the film under review unofficially borrowed several cues from the same composer's legendary work for another much-filmed spectacular about Ancient Rome i.e. BEN-HUR (1959) – albeit giving them an electronic makeover by being played on a synthesizer! For the record, although I have acquired a handful of other rare Silent epics – CABIRIA (1914), NATHAN THE WISE (1922), SODOM AND GOMORRAH (1922), SALOME' (1923), the two-part HELENA (1924), etc. – these will have to await their turn until next year's Holy Week (at the very least)...

While Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was pulling itself together enough to finish and release BEN-HUR, the Italians, still master of the spectacle, had already released this movie. Scripted and co-directed by D'Annunzio, with with Emil Jannings playing Nero, and a real cast of, if not thousands, then hundreds shot to look like thousands, it had all the trappings of Henryk Sienkiewicz's novel on screen, with huge crowds trying to storm Nero's palace, and lions ripping apart Christians in the Coliseum.

The heartfelt religious fervor of the novel is reduced to people kissing crucifixes, the ghostly Christ on the road, and a race to save the beautiful Lillian Hall-Davis, but that's not what people came to see. They came to see Nero acting like a beast, which they do, and his immense vanity, which Jannings performs excellently. They certainly got what they came for!