The centerpiece of BARABBAS: a big thingamajig in the middle of the Arena di Verona.
To this day I still don't know what that's supposed to be.
As a PEPLUM fan I'm usually lenient on every film of said genre. Generally speaking, except for few definite titles I love all of them but I'm a realist and of course I have my preferred ones and my least preferred ones. It's only normal no matter how much I love the genre. And BARABBAS falls into the least preferred ones, for many reasons, including that odd structure that defies description and looks like it's made of papier-mâché. Logistically speaking they wouldn't have been able to built something like that in the arena during the period. Had it been built differently or with different stuff I wouldn't have paid attention to it but as it is, eh, no way. They tried to made it look old and in the process making it look more fake. It just stands out for all the wrong reasons.
The good thing about BARABBAS is the numerous appearance of PEPLUM actors which I'll list tomorrow.
I liked this movie because it is more Biblical type movie. BARABBAS is more of a revisionist story. You have to admit that it was spectacular and I didn't mind the structure in the arena. I also think that De Laurentis wanted a more impressive look to the arena then most Gladiator Movies offer. This is just my opinion.
ReplyDeleteOf course it's spectacular. It was conceived just for show but it doesn't make much sense when you look at it....having gladiators fight on a structure that they can fall into fire or lions while there are elephants performing nearby, etc. It's quite silly. IMO, the film feels less authentic because of it.
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