Spartacus: Film and History
Martin Winkler is the editor of 11 essays on various aspects of the making of the 1960 film of Spartacus. Also included are the source texts from Roman writers, which shows how sketchy the details are for the historical Spartacus, and how the film differs from them.
It is clear that the version we can now see of Spartacus, even the restored film, differs wildly from the story as envisioned by the writers of the book and the script. Both novelist Howard Fast and scriptwriter Dalton Trumbo saw Spartacus in a much wider context, as a hero who could reflect their communist outlook. The film’s director, Stanley Kubrick, wanted to make the film bigger too, including showing the slave army’s victories in many battles. There was, then, a ‘big’ Spartacus, but what survives is the smaller, more intimate Spartacus, emphasising the man and his family life, rather than the slave army which nearly conquered Rome.
This book ably explores the contextual aspects of the film of Spartacus, including Roman slavery, production, censorship, film guide, ideology, cultural significance, and marketing.