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Spartacus
List Price: $19.98Our Price: $13.99 You Save: $5.99 (30%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 2.20:1
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
DVD Layers: 2
DVD Sides: 1
EAN: 9780783226033
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0783226039
Label: Universal Studios
Languages: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 SurroundEnglish (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled),
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
MPN: D20181D
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Publisher: Universal Studios
Region Code: 1
Release Date: March 31, 1998
Running Time: 196 minutes
Studio: Universal Studios
Theatrical Release Date: October 07, 1960
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Editorial Review:
Stanley Kubrick was only 31 years old when Kirk Douglas (star of Kubrick's classic Paths of Glory) recruited the young director to pilot this epic saga, in which the rebellious slave Spartacus (played by Douglas) leads a freedom revolt against the decadent Roman Empire. Kubrick would later disown the film because it was not a personal project--he was merely a director-for-hire--but Spartacus remains one of the best of Hollywood's grand historical epics. With an intelligent screenplay by then-blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo (from a novel by Howard Fast), its message of moral integrity and courageous conviction is still quite powerful, and the all-star cast (including Charles Laughton in full toga) is full of entertaining surprises. Fully restored in 1991 to include scenes deleted from the original 1960 release, the full-length Spartacus is a grand-scale cinematic marvel, offering some of the most awesome battles ever filmed and a central performance by Douglas that's as sensitively emotional as it is intensely heroic. Jean Simmons plays the slave woman who becomes Spartacus's wife, and Peter Ustinov steals the show with his frequently hilarious, Oscar-winning performance as a slave trader who shamelessly curries favor with his Roman superiors. The restored version also includes a formerly deleted bathhouse scene in which Laurence Olivier plays a bisexual Roman senator (with restored dialogue dubbed by Anthony Hopkins) who gets hot and bothered over a slave servant played by Tony Curtis. These and other restored scenes expand the film to just over three hours in length. Despite some forgivable lulls, this is a rousing and substantial drama that grabs and holds your attention. Breaking tradition with sophisticated themes and a downbeat (yet eminently noble) conclusion, Spartacus is a thinking person's epic, rising above mere spectacle with a story as impressive as its widescreen action and Oscar-winning sets. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - A Parable For Today
The name Spartacus has a long and honorable history in the annals of the modern international labor movement, most notably, as used by Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and their comrades as the early name for their ill-fated revolutionary organization the Sparatacusbund in the 1919 German revolutionary working class uprising. Why would a 20th century revolutionary labor organization use the name of a pre-Christian era Thracian slave-general for their organization? To state the question is to provide ... Read More
Rating: - Well-made Epic but very Fictionalized
Spartacus is a well made epic from the days when Hollywood specialized in Roman epics. It presents the story of a slave who becomes a gladiator before rebelling and launching the most famous of the great slave rebellions in the Roman Republic (The Third Servile War). Lawrence Olivier plays Marcus Crassus, a wealthy Roman leader determined to crush the rebellion. Overall the acting from Douglas, Olvier, Simons, Curtis, and Ustinov is quite good. The musical score is adequate. The epic battle scene ... Read More
Rating:  - Non-anamorphic widescreen
If you have a widescreen TV, get the criterion version. This version sports new packaging, but it's the same print from 10 years ago...which is to say it is NOT enhanced for correct display on widescreen TVs.
Rating: - Great Movie - Inaccurate History
Entertaining film, well worth the time. But Hollywood history. To begin with Sparticus was a Roman not a Thracian. Marcus Licineus Crassus trapped Sparticus in the Toe of Italy, not the Heel. Pompey "The Great" (The "Great" part not mentioned in the film) returned from Spain where he had helped defeat a Roman rebel named Quintus Sertorius, by the land route through France, not by sea. Also, there was no such thing as "The Garrison of Rome". But again a fun film and a classic.
Rating:  - Words fail me
I'm one of those people who cries easily in movies. I cry at sad parts, I cry at happy parts, I have no problem with turning on the water-works. I have seen a lot of great movies in my time, many of which have indeed caused me to tear up, but NOTHING prepared me for the emotional battering I received in Spartacus. Not since Mel Gibson's The Passion, has a film moved me so profoundly.
My husband and I watched this together the other night, neither of us knowing any thing about it. Probably ... Read More
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