Director Anthony Mann brought this literate epic in on schedule, inside its $16million dollar budget and to critical and public approval. With its bleak settings and towering central story, dwarfing personal relationships, it was inevitable that this should emerge as a director's and photographer's film, rather than relying on acting for its impact. Robert Krasker's hard-edged photography brings an added magnetism to a chariot race, a wintry funeral, a lovers' tryst and a savage pitched battle in a cave. Mann's handling of the tumultuous crowd scenes constantly makes one aware that this important period of history is being filmed with the care, and on the scale, it deserves. The battles are sufficiently muddled - as indeed they must have been - without depriving us of the knowledge of who is who. Especially memorable is a battle set in a stiflingly cramped German forest. Despite the scale of the action, there are several performances to admire, too - especially from Alec Guinness as the warm, wise, dying Marcus Aurelius, gentle but firm, the last of the great Roman emperors, and from James Mason, articulating and acting impeccably as his Greek philosopher friend.

©ipc tx. Film content from TVTimes