BklynMagus wrote:
>> And that scene where the black gladiator kills the roman
>>
> senator instead of his supposed enemy is everything you
> ever need to know about class warfare.
>
> All the scenes at the gladiator school were shot by Anthony
> Mann who was then fired by producer/star Kirk Douglas.
>
> Douglas brought in Kubrick wih whom he had worked on PATHS
> OF GLORY to complete the shoot, and one of the reasons for
> the split personality of the film is that you have the mise
> en scene of Mann and Kubrick (not natural allies) wrestling
> with Trumbo's script and the nuances of all three confronted
> by the bombast of Douglas' performance (he was starting to
> evince the inflexibility that become the defining hallmark of
> his later career).
>
> Brian
>
>
In the commentary track of the Criterion release, Kirk Douglas states that Mann only directed the opening quarry scenes - Peter Ustinov and others have repeated that elsewhere. Whether Mann was fired or not is debatable - producer Edward Lewis claims that that Mann quit.
Greg gboozell at juno.com