Spartacus

This 1960 Movie won four Oscars. Directed by Stanley Kubrick this movie was a good representation of the famous story of a Roman slave revolt.

The movie is a three hour epic and I watched it over a period of a week. However the length the movie moved quickly. The cast was very strong. Kirk Douglas plays Spartacus, Lawrence Olivier plays Crassus, Jean Simmons ( a very pretty woman ), Tony Curtis as an excaped slave, Charles Naughton as Graccus who in Roman history was the advocate of the Plebes.

Winning the Oscar for Supporting Actor in this movie was Peter Stinov who plays a slave trader. It was a winning role and he was very beleivable as one who always seeks a financial advantage no matter which side he plays. As a person watching the movie fifty years out it was strange to me as Ustinov in his accent and tone reminded me like nothing so much as David Ogden Stiers from Mash.

A great movie

The Defiant Ones

Continuing my movies from the fifties week, TCM is a great channel, I watched this the other night. Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier play two convicts that escape after a car accident takes their transport vehicle off the road. They are chained together and being black and white in fifties Mississippi are not enamored of each other.

Curtis is wonderful in his role, much better to me than his celebrated performance in Some Like it Hot and Poitier is telling and sharp in his role as well.

Shot in black and white but very effectively this is a very good movie. Lon Chaney has a small role that for his few moments fills the screen.

Talking to my wife about the movie I commented that remade today it would be all bloody violence and with streams of profanity. I am not a prude but this movie had no profanity and felt no less realistic to me.

A very good movie.