One day last week I renewed my Pittsburgh Carnegie Library card and checked out the 1951 MGM/UA movie Quo Vadis directed by Mervyn LeRoy and staring Deborah Kerr, Robert Taylor and Peter Ustinov as the mad Emperor Nero.
There is something very attractive about old movies that claim to be spectacles and really are.
Taylor plays a dashing, handsome, victorious and very pagan Roman general who falls in love with the beautiful Deborah Kerr who is a Christian. Being a Christian in 64 A.D. Rome was not a healthy thing to be, especially since the Emperor was suppose to be a god.
The story of the film is well told and the acting is emotive but not over the top. The sets: crowd scenes in the Circus Maximus where the Christians are fed to the lions, the burning of Rome and the military victory parade are rightly vast spectacles with thousands of live extras.
The movie also has a happy ending and Christianity survives.
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