Development The development of
Spartacus was partly instigated by Kirk Douglas' failure to win the title role in
William Wyler's
Ben-Hur (1959). Douglas had worked with Wyler before on
Detective Story (1951), and was disappointed when Wyler chose
Charlton Heston, instead. Shortly after,
Edward Lewis, a vice president for Douglas's film company, Bryna Productions (named after Douglas's mother), had read Howard Fast's novel,
Spartacus, which had a related theme—an individual who challenges the might of the Roman Empire. Douglas was impressed enough to purchase an option on the book with his own finances. He proposed the project to
Arthur B. Krim, the head of
United Artists, which was set to distribute
The Vikings (1958), which also starred Douglas. Krim turned down the project as
Yul Brynner had been developing his own
Spartacus film, tentatively titled
The Gladiators.
Martin Ritt was set to direct, and he was incensed after learning about Douglas's rival project. Lewis then proposed merging the two projects, with Douglas and Brynner in leading roles. Brynner declined the offer, and proceeded to film
The Gladiators after Ritt had finished editing
The Sound and the Fury (1959). Douglas's agent
Lew Wasserman suggested he try having his film produced for Universal Studios. With Dalton Trumbo's screenplay being completed in two weeks, Universal and Douglas pulled ahead of Brynner's rival project. Brynner's project was later placed on hold as the weather conditions in Europe grew unsuitable for filming. Brynner then chose to film
The Magnificent Seven (1960) instead. By the fall of 1958, Universal Studios eventually agreed to finance the film after Douglas persuaded Olivier, Laughton, and Ustinov to act in it. Olivier was also to direct the picture. Lewis became the producer of the film, with Douglas taking executive producer credit. Douglas originally offered the role of Varinia to French actress
Jeanne Moreau, but she did not want to leave her boyfriend in France. German actress
Sabine Bethmann was then cast. The studio gave her the anglicized name of "Sabina Bethman" for use in the film's publicity, but she was replaced by Jean Simmons after only two days of filming.
Writing Howard Fast was initially hired to adapt his own novel into a screenplay. After 60 days had passed, Kirk Douglas read Fast's first draft, which he described as a "disaster, unusable." Pressed for time, and in competition with Brynner's rival project, Douglas turned to
Dalton Trumbo, who had been
blacklisted as one of the "
Hollywood 10". Trumbo did not like Fast as he found him to be narrow-minded in his Marxist views, but agreed to write a
treatment. Trumbo submitted his treatment, which Douglas and
Edward Lewis then gave to Fast stating this was their preferred direction for the screenplay. Fast refused to follow Trumbo's treatment, so Douglas hired Trumbo to write the final screenplay. Lewis was to serve as the front for Trumbo, with the latter receiving payments directed to his
pseudonym "Sam Jackson". Douglas insisted that Trumbo be given screen credit for his work, which helped to break the blacklist. Trumbo had been jailed for
contempt of Congress in 1950, after which he had survived by writing screenplays under assumed names. Douglas publicly announced that Trumbo was the screenwriter of
Spartacus. Further,
President John F. Kennedy publicly ignored a demonstration organized by the
American Legion and went to see the film. In his autobiography, Douglas states that this decision was motivated by a meeting that Edward Lewis, Stanley Kubrick, and he had regarding whose names to list for the screenplay in the film credits, given Trumbo's shaky position with Hollywood executives. One idea was to credit Lewis as co-writer or sole writer, but Lewis vetoed both suggestions. Kubrick then suggested that his name be used. Douglas and Lewis found Kubrick's eagerness to take credit for Trumbo's work revolting, and the next day, Douglas called the gate at Universal saying, "I'd like to leave a pass for Dalton Trumbo." Douglas writes, "For the first time in 10 years, [Trumbo] walked on to a studio lot. He said, 'Thanks, Kirk, for giving me back my name.' In reality, the public announcement of Trumbo's screenwriting credit for
Spartacus did not come until August 1960, seven months after producer-director
Otto Preminger's January 20, 1960, announcement that he had hired Trumbo to adapt
Leon Uris' novel
Exodus for the screen. Douglas later successfully denied Trumbo credit for the film
Town Without Pity, as he worried that his continued association with the screenwriter would hurt his career.
Filming David Lean was offered but turned down an offer to direct
Spartacus.
Anthony Mann, best known for his
Westerns which included ''
Winchester '73 (1950) and The Naked Spur (1953), was instead hired. Filming started on January 27, 1959, in Death Valley, California for the opening sequence in the quarry. As filming continued, Douglas felt Mann had lost control of the film, writing in particular: "He seemed scared of the scope of the picture ... He let Peter Ustinov direct his own scenes by taking every suggestion Peter made. The suggestions were good—for Peter, but not necessarily for the film." On February 13, Mann left (or was fired from) the production. Mann did not discuss the reasons for his departure until shortly before his death in 1967, in which he stated: "Kirk Douglas was the producer of Spartacus
: he wanted to insist on the message angle. I thought the message would go over more easily by showing physically all the horrors of slavery. A film must be visual, too much dialogue kills it ... From then, we disagreed: I left." A year later, Mann directed another epic of similar size, El Cid'' (1961). Principal photography ended in August 1959, although several battle scenes were filmed through October. Large parts of the film were shot at
Wildwood Regional Park in
Thousand Oaks, California. Parts were also filmed at nearby
California Lutheran University, where an army can be seen storming off
Mount Clef Ridge. Additionally, scenes set in Marcus Licinius Crassus' villa were filmed at
Hearst Castle. Stanley Kubrick, then 30 years old, was hired to take over. He had already directed four feature films (including
Paths of Glory, also starring Douglas).
Spartacus was a bigger project by far, with a budget of $12 million (equivalent to about $million in ) and a cast of 10,500, a daunting project for such a young director.
Paths of Glory, his previous film, had only been budgeted at $935,000. Kubrick immediately fired
Sabine Bethmann, who had only worked two days on the film. He and Douglas felt that she was not right for the role, so she was paid $3,000 to go home. Bethmann was replaced with
Jean Simmons, who had been campaigning for the role. Douglas had originally chosen to cast Bethmann over Simmons because he imagined Varinia having a strikingly different accent from the aristocratic Romans, who were to be played mostly by actors with British accents. Simmons was still available and took over the role in the film with only a day's notice.
Spartacus was filmed using the
35 mm Super Technirama 70 format and then blown up to
70 mm film. This was a change for Kubrick, who preferred using the standard
spherical format. This process allowed him to achieve ultra-high definition and to capture large panoramic scenes. Kubrick had wanted to shoot the picture in Rome with cheap extras and resources, but
Edward Muhl, president of Universal Pictures, wanted to make an example of the film and prove that a successful epic could be made in Hollywood itself, and "stem the flood of 'runaway' producers heading for Europe". A compromise was reached by filming the intimate scenes in Hollywood, and the battle scenes, at Kubrick's request, in Spain. Kubrick found working outdoors or in real locations to be distracting, and he believed the actors would benefit more from working on a soundstage, where they could fully concentrate. To create the illusion of the large crowds that play such an essential role in the film, Kubrick's crew used three-channel sound equipment to record 76,000 spectators at a
Michigan State –
Notre Dame college football game shouting "Hail, Crassus!" and "I'm Spartacus!" The battle scenes were filmed on a vast plain outside
Madrid. About 8,000 trained soldiers from the
Spanish infantry were used to double as the Roman army. Kubrick directed the armies from the top of specially constructed towers. However, he eventually had to cut all but one of the gory battle scenes, due to negative audience reactions at
test screenings. So precise was Kubrick, that even in arranging the bodies of the slaughtered slaves he had each "corpse" assigned with a number and instructions. Shooting locations also included the countryside near
Guadalajara and
Iriépal. Disputes broke out during the filming. Cinematographer
Russell Metty, a veteran with experience working in big pictures such as
Orson Welles'
The Stranger (1946) and
Touch of Evil (1958) and
Howard Hawks's
Bringing Up Baby (1938), complained about Kubrick's unusually precise and detailed instructions for the film's camerawork, and disagreed with Kubrick's use of light. On one occasion, he threatened to quit to
Ed Muhl, to which Kubrick told him: "You can do your job by sitting in your chair and shutting up. I'll be the director of photography." Metty later won the Oscar for
Best Cinematography. Kubrick wanted to shoot at a slow pace of two camera set-ups a day, but the studio insisted that he do 32; a compromise of eight had to be made. Kubrick and Trumbo fought constantly over the screenplay. Kubrick complained that the character of Spartacus had no faults or quirks. Despite the film being a huge box-office success, gaining four Oscars, and being considered to rank among the very best of historical epics, Kubrick later distanced himself from it. Although his personal mark is a distinct part of the final picture, his contract did not give him complete control over the filming, the only occasion he did not exercise such control over one of his films.
Music The original score for
Spartacus was composed and conducted by six-time
Academy Award-nominee
Alex North. It was nominated by the
American Film Institute for its list of greatest film scores. It is a textbook example of how
modernist compositional styles can be adapted to the Hollywood
leitmotif technique. North's score is epic, as befits the scale of the film. After extensive research of music of that period, North gathered a collection of antique instruments, while not authentically Roman, that provided a strong dramatic effect. These instruments included a
sarrusophone,
Israeli recorder,
Chinese oboe,
lute,
mandolin, Yugoslav flute,
kythara,
dulcimer, and
bagpipes. North's prize instrument was the
ondioline, similar to an earlier version of the electronic
synthesizer, which had never been used in film before. Much of the music is written without a
tonal center, or flirts with tonality in ways that most film composers would not risk. One theme is used to represent both slavery and freedom but is given different values in different scenes so that it sounds like different themes. The love theme for Spartacus and Varinia is the most accessible theme in the film, and a harsh trumpet figure was created for Crassus. A soundtrack album was released on LP in 1960, containing selections from the score totaling 41 minutes. This album was released on CD in 1990, to coincide with the film's restoration. Soon after, Varèse Sarabande Records attempted to re-record 75 minutes of highlights from the score personally chosen by North, to be conducted by his friend and fellow film composer
Jerry Goldsmith, but the project was delayed multiple times and remained unrecorded when Goldsmith died in 2004. In 2010, Varèse Sarabande released a limited collector's edition of 5,000 copies, containing six CDs, one DVD, and a 168-page booklet. The first disc contained all 72 minutes of the score that survived in stereo, including all music from the 1960 album. Discs two and three featured the entire score to the film, in mono. Disc four contained alternate and preliminary cues from the original recording sessions. Discs five and six contained re-recordings of the film's iconic love theme, adapted by numerous modern film composers and other musicians. The DVD contained a documentary interviewing those same musicians about the score's impact.
Political commentary, Christianity, and reception The film parallels 1950s American history, specifically
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings and the
civil rights movement. The HUAC hearings, where witnesses were pressured to "name names" of communists and communist sympathizers, mirror the climactic scene as the defeated slaves, ordered by Crassus to identify their leader from the multitude, individually stand up and proclaim, "I'm Spartacus". Howard Fast, author of the original novel, had written
Spartacus while in prison for refusing to name names to HUAC investigators. The fight to end segregation and to extend equality to African Americans is symbolized in the racial mixing in the gladiatorial school, as well as in the army of Spartacus, where all must battle for freedom. Another allusion to the political situation in the United States is hinted at in the beginning, when Rome is described as a republic "fatally stricken with a disease called human slavery", describing Spartacus as a "proud, rebellious son dreaming of the death of slavery, 2000 years before it finally would die". Thus an ethical and political vision becomes a philosophical framework for the ensuing action. The introductory voice-over also describes Rome as destined to collapse with the rise of
Christianity: In the last century before the birth of the new faith called Christianity, which was destined to overthrow the pagan tyranny of Rome and bring about a new society, the Roman Republic stood at the very center of the civilized world. "Of all things fairest" sang the poet, "First among cities and home of the Gods is Golden Rome." Yet even at the zenith of her pride and power, the Republic lay fatally stricken with the disease called human slavery. The age of the dictator was at hand, waiting in shadows for the event to bring it forth. In that same century, in the conquered Greek province of Thrace, an illiterate slave woman added to her master's wealth by giving birth to a son whom she names Spartacus. A proud, rebellious son, who was sold to living death in the mines of Libya, before his 13th birthday. There, under whip and chain and sun, he lived out his youth and his young manhood, dreaming the death of slavery 2000 years before it finally would die. Thus, Rome is described as an oppressive state suffering from its own excesses in the years before the adoption of Christian beliefs begins to end Roman oppression and slavery. While the film's release occasioned applause from the mainstream media, it sparked protest from right-wing and anticommunist groups such as the
National Legion of Decency, which picketed theaters exhibiting the film. The controversy over its "legitimacy as an expression of national aspirations" continued until newly elected US President
John F. Kennedy crossed a picket line set up by anti-communist organizers to attend the film. == Release ==