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Rating:  - There is still one scene missing...
I agree totally with all you guys who left reviews of this DVD before.
You actually do see every dollar spent on this production! The more often I watch this movie the more I love it, meanwhile preferring it even to Ben-Hur!
However the print used for this transfer was a 35mm print (as it was with El Cid), not a 70mm Ultra-Panavision print that would have presented the movie in all of its ribbon-like glory (as shown in the DVD release of the above mentioned Ben Hur, another Ultra-Panavision movie).
Unfortunately there is still one scene missing I saw years ago in a movie theater: after Livius' and Commodus' celebration of their first encounter (the wine-drinking contest) and their dilemma-discussion they climb a staircase. The lost scene shows the two men entering a viewing platform to look down into some kind of hurdling containing captured barbarian women. The next scene shows Commodus molesting one of these women. It is just a one-minute scene but it contains some cold-blooded dialogue by Commodus and its loss is indicated by an odd break in the music. There is one special feature contained in this disc, a simple text card with an apology referring to one recently found scene that could not be put back into the picture before the DVD release; I am positive it is that very scene and I am looking forward to a later release of this wonderful movie with that scene intact.
Rating:  - Excellent historic performance
This, as Stephen Boyd said, "one of the best movies of its kind". It is suberb in the first part, during the life of Marcus Aurelius(Alec Guinness), but does not develop too well later. Still it is a great spectacle, even if not free of the preaching of modern morality which is foreign to the world depicted in the film.
Rating:  - Pure Decomposition
Warning: spoilers.
How could "The Fall of the Roman Empire" miss? It came from the producer of "El Cid" and "55 Days at Peking." And the stars! Alec Guinness, Christopher Plummer, Sophia Loren, James Mason, Anthony Quayle - not just stars, but solid actors. Add to that superb sets and a spectacle worthy of wide-screen treatment. How do you go wrong?
First, when Charlton Heston opts out, you plug in Stephen Boyd. No matter how big the spectacle, Heston always managed to be the focal point with his tremendous screen presence. A competent actor of limited range, Boyd was best in support. He could nail a small film, but he drowns in the spectacle washing over him here.
Then you cobble together, ostensibly from Gibbon a la Will Durant, a dreadful script of characters seemingly aware they're talking in stilted epigrams. You stretch this script out twice as long as the capacity of the human bladder - oh, and make sure you kill off the film's moral center and most interesting character half-way through.
Guinness' Marcus Aurelius may not be historically accurate; in fact, he appears to be in a try-out for Ben Kenobi. But he does anchor the film. And he is interesting. When he dies, the film becomes an exercise in tedium. Partly, this is because the film is divided between the insufficient Boyd and Christopher Plummer's wacky turn as Commodus -- who, as one of the historians in the extra features says, was "bonkers." Plummer is a superb actor; but he and Boyd normally create characters who keep their feelings internalized, so they may come off as cold and inaccessible. (How much more interesting might it have been if Boyd and Plummer had been put in support, and Quayle and Mason moved up to Boyd's and Plummer's starring roles, respectively! Maybe, like Guinness, they could even have risen above the script)
Then there's Sophia Loren, who is remarkably beautiful. But beauty only stretches so far. She has to say the lines, too. And in an accent.
I had seen this movie on television. Usually, when I don't like a widescreen movie on tv I rent or buy the DVD widescreen version and I realize I was missing two-thirds of the movie. This usually turns me around. In this case, it just means the movie is three times as dreadful.
I often forgive bad movies for good features. I love seeing how things are made, and I have movies I don't like on DVD because their "making of" features are so well done I can watch them repeatedly.
In this case, the "making of" feature is about half-an-hour, done through interviews. It fully explains how this movie lost so much money through waste (unnecessarily accurate sets constructed to scale, for instance; and the usual graft). A couple of featurettes on the movie's "accuracy" and so forth take up another ten minutes or so each. And there's a vintage promotional piece narrated by James Mason.
The most disappointing special feature is the commentary. It's by a man who wrote a book on the producer and the producer's son. Commentaries are wonderful when they give you details on how the movie was made, etc. One likes the inside dope. Unfortunately, the director's son seems fixated on comparisons of aspects of this flick to aspects contemporary geopolitics. I don't know the man but he seems a thoroughgoing liberal who cavalierly airs his opinions without caring how he spoils things for those who don't agree with him. I don't know what he's like as a doctor, but he has misguided notions of history, and his strained comparisons of the events of this movie to current geopolitics are sadly trite. He has all the talking points down (even those that have been proven erroneous) and has his political scalpels sharpened. I've been the token conservative (and history student) in my department a major eastern university system for nearly twenty-five years, and I found his attitude all too sadly familiar. No Golden Rule here, treating others as you would like to be treated (how'd he like to listen to a commentary of me, pressed eternally on a film he's desperately trying to enjoy even against the odds, talking tirelessly in support of the second amendment and drilling for oil and building nuclear power plans, and the evils of income taxation and the capital gains tax?). I watch movies to be entertained and listen to commentaries for edification and enjoyment, not to hear a lot of mendacious cant. If, however, you are one of his fellow-travelers, you'll probably enjoy it FAR more than the movie.
Yet the movie, dreary as it is, does answer the all important question: Why did the Roman Empire fall? It died of boredom.
Rating:  - RELEASED AT LAST
"THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE" for many years, this hard to find motion picture, was released at last. Remastered video and audio, resurrects this epic film shooted in Super Technirama 70mm, produced by Samuel Bronston (King of Kings, El Cid, 55 Days at Peking, Circus World) also.
Starring Stephen Boyd (Messala in BEN-HUR), Sophia Loren (Doña Ximena in EL CID) another picture of the Miriam Collection of Genius Products a subsidiary of the Weinstein Company. Very ellegant the case!
Rating: - The first modern screen epic, still impeccable and timely today
"Fall" was incorrectly regarded during the 1960s as a coda to thunderous
cinematic Roman clunkers such as "Quo Vadis?" and "Cleopatra." In fact, and in retrospect, "The Fall of the Roman Empire" is the screen's first modern epic: literate, thoughtful, contemporary in its themes and flawlessly acted. Only "Spartacus" and the epics of David Lean rival it today. The four primary leads, Stephen Boyd, Sophia Loren, Christopher Plummer, and Alec Guinness, deliver Oscar worthy performances. They remind us that today's "A List" of screen actors is a very anemic bunch when compared to their 1960s counterparts. Dimitri Tiomkin's score stands alone as a masterpiece. When the score is blended with director Anthony Mann's visuals of the cast and incomparable sets, the results are breathtaking. The modern resonance of the movie's themes is emphasized within Alec Guinness' speech about the Pax Romana, and the struggle of the two principal characters (Boyd and Loren) to establish thoughtful government over brute force is a noteworthy reminder of a current and everlasting conflict. Boyd got his heroic role in "Fall" thanks, in part, to his magnificent work in William Wyler's "Ben-Hur." It was inevitable that Boyd's chariot race against Christopher Plummer would be compared to the spectacular Roman Circus sequence in "Ben-Hur." Whereas the race in "Hur" is added for spectacle, the chariot race in "Fall" advances the plot. Therefore, the two should not be compared, and the chariot sequence in "Fall" must be applauded for its contribution to the movie's complex dramatic canvas. The race represents the eruption of tempers and differences between Boyd (Livius) and Plummer (Commodus) with an action sequence that is both essential and entertaining for the audience. It is merely one example of the many components that make "Fall" a superior motion picture experience today. The Miriam Collection is also to be applauded for preserving and restoring this definitive classic of the 1960s, the only Roman film epic of the era that endures with themes of critical, current importance.
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