Don't ask me. When I'm asked to list what actresses I find most attractive, I always say Sophia when she was in her prime.

Between her and Heston, apparently there was some issue with her being late one day to the set due to a wardrobe issue, and that miffed Heston who considered it "unprofessional." The friction built from there and is somewhat visible on-screen considering he can never look her in the eye, even during love scenes. Ultimately, I think is was a combination of miscommunication compounded by a conflict of personalities.

Yes, that seems an accurate assesment based on my reading thru Heston's journal book (GREAT reading). His -impatience would be more accurate- stemmed from some non-professional behaviour on the set...not "star" stuff but just arriving late and leaving early, etc. He seems to think she was a genuinely sweet lady.

He wasn't a big fan of her idea to not use age makeup in "El Cid" either.

Yeah...his journal said he thought it was odd the the Cid aged while his wife didn't....but the upside was she DID look terrific.

However, the difficulties with Loren were NOTHING compared to Ava Gardner on 55 DAYS AT PEKING. She apparently DID exhibit a bit of the "star" kind of problems. The pressure of making that film contributed to the original directors collapse from a massive heart attack. Heston thought David Niven was a terrific guy though.

I think what makes this film truly great and above and beyond the spectacle expected of the era is in the details... Personal touches and intimate scenes that were never attempted before on the widescreen or off an opera stage:

* The spectacular seemingly real-time sunrise that opens the film.
* Alec Guinness' interior monologue on his illness and his fear for the future of Rome, which is to say humanity.
* The mysterious intrigue leading up to Marcus Aurelius's death. The blocking of the faces in the death room.
* The high strangeness of Marcus Aurelius' funeral under falling snow and the mournful dirge of the soldiers.(1)
* The great surges of Dimitri Tiomkin's music in dramatic moments, especially Livius' reunion with Drusilla in her bedroom - shot from above - with the love theme sung in...Latin.
* The end of Part I with the newly crowned Christopher Plummer/Commodus looking up to Jupiter as a surrogate father/partner in crime, topping one of the most spectacular crowd scenes of all time (and making everyone in the audience more than a little uncomfortable).
* Drusilla's interior monologue as she runs through a Roman carnival predicting the fall of Rome, a scene that is truly worthy of a Greek tragedy or an over-the-top art film.

(1) Anthologized in A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies

Fantastic points! Those are all great moments.

I suppose everyone has seen this vintage featurette, wrong aspect ratio and all:

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DVDTalk's review:

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=32996

DVD Savant's review:

http://www.dvdsavant.com/s2556fall.html

Savant says the colour is "excellent" whereas the other reviewer nit-picks about the browns, forgetting that brown was the official colour of the sixties, at least until 1967 - where it turned orange under the influence of Flower Power.

DVD Beaver also liked it: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDRev...dvd_review.htm

Japanese edition:





Genius edition:

Mine came in by mail from Amazon.ca yesterday - just two days after I ordered it. Of course, I had to retrieve it one day later from the office of the Superintendant in my building where it had been consigned without notification. Thank God for Amazon's order tracking option!

I have been wondering what the sound options were on this disc, since the reviewers don't seem to agree. Some say 2.0 Dolby Surround, some have mentioned 4.0 (DVD Beaver) and some have said 5.1.

I'm happy to report that if the outside packaging is any indication of the contents the sound is Dolby 5.1! Although, the marketers may have written that because they think the public can't handle the concept of 4.0... I'll know for sure tonight when I go home to play it.

Recieved my copy a few days ago. The sound is a great. 5.1 . As for the movie I would of liked a few more battle scenes in it. But the movie is good.
Sophia looks great also, as already mentioned.

Just played it on the office screen. It's 5.1 all right. Or 3/2.1 as Sony puts it...

"a few more battle scenes" Where would you have put them? I think two major battles,
a chariot race, and a gladiatorial fight to the death was enough for a three-hour film.

The whole film can be viewed as one long unending battle...

I've just watched the first part. Imagine a film where Alec Guinness plays a Roman emperor whose son is Christopher Plummer and whose daughter is Sophia Loren. His best friend is James Mason and he wants to leave it all to Stephen Boyd... This is a superb presentation. What a relief to finally see the Roman forum scenes without aliasing!

I thought the Dolby Surround on the laserdisc was wonderful but the 5.1 mix is even more surprising, as much for the sound effects as the magnificent music. The chariot race really tries to outdo the one in Ben-Hur to a point bordering on the ridiculous. (How many trees were cut off, exactly?)

While rewatching this, I was thinking how much courage it must have taken to make an expensive epic film with thousands of extras that was so different from the norm, with complex characters, unlikely scenes, an unpredictable plot, a subtext, atmosphere, mystery, a heartfelt homage to grand opera and frankly artistic staging.

In the film, Marcus Aurelius appears to be suffering from a kidney stone and his physician recommends fruit (an apple) to alleviate the pain.

My mother was once in the hospital to have a kidney stone removed and her nurse suggested she drink a lot of apple juice to get rid of it the natural way. She did and passed the stone during the night making surgery useless. I guess these "old wives' tales" have been around for a long time...

The best feature of Roman Empire is Christopher Plummer's terrific villain. Plummer is an underappreciated actor who will unfairly be remembered primarily as the guy from The Sound of Music. He's never even gotten an Oscar nomination. Hopefully, they will rectify it with an honorary Oscar while they still can.

He should have received a supporting nod for The Insider.

Finally

I just watch it last night and I love it--will watch it again somewere down road and that music is a must have in it's own right(soundtrack collector).

How many people got the limited edition?

Hey Giles have you watched all the features?
I have all but the 3rd disc and the Tiomkin feature.

Count me in, since I got the Limited Edition of El Sid, I think I will try it on all of the Miriam Collection.

I hope they make a Limited Edition Of Control (the Ian Curtis Bio).

Superior picture on the second disc as it didn't look as overexposed as the
"German" based first half. I love the Senate debate about allowing the barbarians to
become Roman citizens. Sounds rather familiar to events going on in this country these
days and in the 60's. You could write term papers on all the issues brougt up in this
film, which is very unusual for an epic. Plummer is a standout (his best film performance
by far), Alec Guniness' monologue in the first half is another great sequence, James
Mason steals every scene he has a large role in, Boyd does what he can with a limited
hero part (due to the nature of the plot, he couldn't have been too strong and his
loyalty to the Empire is missed by some critics), Loren delivers when she's given a chance to in a smaller part than the one she had in "El Cid."
Overall, it's a great cast used extremely well.

Of course, it has THE BEST production design in film history! Bottom line! Nothing made
today could match it. That's worth the price of the three-disc set alone.

As much as I was entertained by the DVD commentators' sometimes amusing parallels between the careers of Commodus and George W. Bush throughout the film (born into a ruling family, inherited title, early alcoholism, misspent youth, effective draft-dodging, cheerleading for a manly sport, conspicuous displays of public piety, contempt for democratic institutions, delusions of grandeur, misplaced pride, illiteracy, administrative incompetence in times of disaster, imperviousness to criticism, manipulation of image and information from abroad, dilapidation of public treasury, over-reliance on war-mongering and sometimes profiteering counselors), I was less amused by at least one instance of ignorance on their part.

Which is which?

After the death of Timonedes (James Mason), a pendant is found on his body that Bronston Jr. (unchallenged by "historian" Mel Martin) insists is a Celtic symbol of the Germanic tribes (he pronounces the word "seltic") when it is clear to anyone in the audience who has had more than 6 years of Catholic schooling that it is in fact one of the world's best known and earliest symbols for Christianity, the chi-rho cross (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_Rho; http://www.seiyaku.com/customs/crosses/chi-rho.html), comprised of the first two letters of the Greek word "Christos", sometimes transliterated in Latin as the word "Pax" (peace). If you miss that, you pretty well miss one of the film's main points...

not yet, I have to admit I haven't seen the movie before, so I'm trying to find a block of time to really experience this on my home theatre system. Watching a smidgen of the film upconverted to 1080i on my downstairs tv was very impressive.