How many times has cinema thought about the Roman Empire?

"How often do you think of the Roman Empire?" was the trending topic that most characterized the period between late summer and early fall on social media. A question asked out of context, it attracted the most disparate responses. Much of the stated frequency was probably exaggerated, in an attempt to wring a smile and a few more views. But that the Roman Empire, taken between the top as a single monolith and without considering the enormous variations within it according to period or place, has a very prominent role within the Western collective imagination is undeniable. For us in Italy, the reasons are quite intuitable. We study it at length in our schooling, admire its legacies within our cities and perceive it, with ill-concealed nationalist sentiment, as the last period when Italians were great, united and not fragmented or dependent on foreign powers. As for the rest of the Western countries, however, the ties are more indirect. Partly of a linguistic nature because of the use of terms of Latin origin and the legacies of certain authors in the philosophical-literary field. Then because of all the times ancient Rome has been represented in written and/or audiovisual form. Because the cinema has really thought about the Roman Empire many times, and it is precisely its representations that have most built our contemporary collective imagination on the subject.

Cabiria: where it all started

The peplum is the cinematic subgenre that groups together historical costume films set in ancient Greece, the period of the Roman civilization (not limited to the imperial era), or in biblical contexts, with these latter two subsets often intersecting. It can take the form of drama, action, fantasy, or epic productions. It's a theatrical legacy that cinema embraced from the very beginning. Just think that the first adaptation of Ben Hur is a short 15-minute film made in 1907. It was precisely during this period, when cinema had not yet found its way, and short films were still the most common form, that a title destined to change not only the peplum but also the rules of the game arrived.

This title is Cabiria, an Italian feature film from 1914 directed by Giovanni Pastrone and based on the story of a child during the Second Punic War. It was a silent film (synchronized sound wouldn't arrive for another ten years) interspersed with grandiose intertitles written by Gabriele D'Annunzio. Cabiria was the longest and most expensive film ever produced in Italy. An investment that was more than justified given its resounding success, which even led it to become the first film ever screened at the White House. But Cabiria's legacy goes far beyond immediate triumph. David W. Griffith, the filmmaker responsible for conceiving the cinematic grammar as we understand it today, drew inspiration from the Italian film for his The Birth of a Nation, released in 1915. Martin Scorsese himself has stated that the epic genre, as we understand it today, was invented by Pastrone's work.

The Roman Empire in the Hollywood Golden Age.

For the real explosion of the peplum in American cinema we had to wait until after World War II, at the height of Hollywood's Golden Age. Then again, this is a genre that, especially in the case of the epic tale, requires substantial funds for the scale of the sets, the reconstruction of sets and costumes, and the large number of on-screen extras. It is therefore no coincidence that the greatest popularity occurred between the 1950s and 1960s, at the height of the economic boom. Likewise, audiences, having put the long wartime period behind them, were hungry for great stories. And the peplum was not only capable of providing them to a middle-class audience as well as a popular one, but it was also capable of filling the great gap in American culture: the lack of myth. Up to that point, cinema had attempted to create it, with some great historical films (such as the aforementioned but racially charged Birth of a Nation or the kolossal Gone with the Wind) and especially with the genre par excellence, the Western. From the 1950s onward, however, attempts were made to steal it or, rather, to appropriate that of other cultures.

The idea behind it was that if the United States is composed of people from all backgrounds, any kind of myth can underlie the United States. A reasoning that (did not) conceal a certain kind of cultural imperialism, ironically similar to Roman imperialism, and that was the basis of American soft power policy in the Cold War period. This was the context in which peplum (and specifically films about the Roman Empire) began to invade the Western market. Gigantic productions, unthinkable to replicate today, with the majors showing off their ideas and resources and the best actors in the world ready to lend body and soul to the great characters of history. Thus Marlon Brando becomes Mark Antony in Mankiewicz's 1953 Julius Caesar, Kirk Douglas the revolutionary Spartacus in Stanley Kubrick's movie, Elizabeth Taylor the iconic Cleopatra in the film of the same name also directed by Mankiewicz, and Charlton Heston the Judas prince Ben-Hur who gives his name to what still represents the quintessential kolossal and holds the record of 11 Oscars along with Titanic and The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King.

The absurd case of Caligola

As the 1960s come to a close, the American context changes profoundly. The loss of innocence of the Vietnam War and the assassination of JFK, the counterculture and 1968, the battles for social rights. A period begins in Hollywood, later renamed as New Hollywood, in which directors and authors gain greater prominence at the expense of the majors. This combination of factors, social and related to film dynamics, led to the peplum having less and less space. Audiences were no longer looking for the myth; they needed a type of cinema that could tell the absurdity of the world through new means of expression. And the 1970s, with all their array of young auteurs, were ready to respond. There is, however, one case in particular that deserves attention. A film that caused a sensation and from a certain point of view perfectly represents the concept of peplum declined in that unique and hallucinogenic way as only the 1970s could do.

This is about the 1979 Italian film Caligula, a cult classic worldwide except in Italy, where it received a treatment similar (if not worse) to Last Tango in Paris. It was subjected to a damnatio memoriae that still prevents it from being adequately recognized in our country. It all started with the screenwriter Gore Vidal (the same as "Ben-Hur"), who wrote a script about Emperor Caligula for a TV miniseries that Roberto Rossellini was supposed to direct. The series didn't materialize, but the script was optioned by the nephew of director Franco, who, in agreement with Vidal, decided to turn it into a film. Funding was secured from Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse, on the condition that the final result had a distinctly erotic (if not pornographic) tone to promote his magazine. The cast included major names like Malcolm McDowell (Alex from A Clockwork Orange) as Caligula, Maria Schneider, Helen Mirren, and Peter O'Toole, one of the greatest actors of all time. 

After some prominent directors declined, the choice for director fell on the King of Eroticism, the Italian Tinto Brass. However, the production was a disaster: Vidal disassociated himself from the project and later requested to have his name removed from the credits. Maria Schneider left the set midway through a scene and never returned. The divergent visions of Bob Guccione (who wanted explicit pornographic scenes) and Tinto Brass (who wanted to maintain an erotic tone) further complicated the production. The film was completed, but shortly after its premiere in Forlì, it was seized, leading to a protracted legal process. Caligula is a film with an absurd history, and all the participants distanced themselves from the final result. Yet, it's an incredible work still celebrated outside of Italy. It was even featured at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, and Leonardo DiCaprio stated that he drew inspiration from McDowell's Caligula for his portrayal of Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street."

The Roman Empire in contemporary cinema

In the decades following, the peplum genre, and consequently works about the Roman Empire, took a backseat, addressed only when certain authors felt the need, often leaning towards adjacent biblical themes, as seen in Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ or Monty Python's Life of Brian. The only case that managed to shake up the industry's approach to the genre, and one we are all familiar with, is probably the forebearer of our collective imagination associated with the Roman Empire, likely the reason behind certain TikTok responses. Naturally, we're talking about Ridley Scott's Gladiator, a film that doesn't merely adapt a myth for the cinema but, through the medium of film, transforms a character, Maximus Decimus Meridius, into a myth, disregarding history or plausibility.

The success of Gladiator was such that, for a brief period, Hollywood resumed investing in peplum films (e.g., Alexander, Troy, Kingdom of Heaven) but fell short of the expected success. Today, over twenty years after Scott's film, the genre lies dormant. Attempts have been made, many of which were unsuccessful. The only notable cases involve stripping away the epic and adopting an ultra-realistic approach, often filming in the languages of the time, as seen in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ or the Italian film The First King. However, genre lifecycles are cyclical, especially in a period of reviving past trends, like the present one. Cinema will, once again, turn its attention to the Roman Empire. In fact, it likely never truly stopped doing so.