Review of Quo Vadis (1951) by Ricardo Junior S — 21 Apr 2011

I was still a biy when I read " Quo Vadis Domine?" wrote by the polack Henryk Sienkiewicz whey back in 1905. Its a fenomenal novel to say the least. It serves social and religious purposes, nontheless is trully magnificent as a historical recreation with an incredible accuracy for detail in every level of Rome in the beginning of the empire, in first century AD.

To talk about this movie its quite relevant to know the novel, otherwise the espectator will assume that this is just an huge epic religious film, Its not just that. It has also the power of deliver quite accuratly the emotion, drama, profoundness and cultural richness of the novel itself, wich is no easy task at all, For me it honors the book and his author all the way trought. The set are trully beautifull and amaising, the wardrobe so magestic and historical accurate, in his visual richness this is a film to inspire filmmakers. We can feel the greatness of Emperial Rome in this sets, the greatness of the Coliseum, the opulence and wonder of roman emperial palaces, everything was constructed to the last detail. We must bare in mind that this a 1951 MGM production, not a moderm film built in CGI. In this film everything is authentic - the people, the sets, the clothes . this is real artistic achievemt shot in front of a camera, So its important also to understand the undetaking that was demanded to build something of this magnitude, this is certantly a project that took several years to built - wich make him even more valuable and incredible as an artistic endeavour.

The actors and dialogues are quite close to the book. athow in my opinion Peter Ustinov is indeed the great actor of this film, personnating the mad and spoiled emperor Nero. Robert Taylor in my opinion was too immersed in his ego during this film that he was not capable of personifying the sensibility of General Vinictius. Deborah Kerr was a belivable Lygia, althow lacked a little bit of agressiveness, Lygia was a daughter of a barbarian King, helded by the romans as a hostage, she was a woman of caracter and strenght not just a fragile doll like Deborah Kerr show us.

One last detail: there is a scene when Vinictius discusses with Lygia and in anger, destroys a wooden cross held in the wall on top of the bed. This scene is not on the book and could never be because in those days the cross was not the symbol of the Cristianity, the cross was only adopted as a symboll 3 centurys later by Contatine Magnus, in the time of Nero the symbol of the early cristians was a fish. There are other historical mistakes in this film and althow they dont undermine the greatness of this artistic achievemt, they certantly give the viewer a less accurate ideia of historical facts.