Gladiator Winkler Notes PDF

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Notes from Winkler's Gladiator...

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Gladiator (2000) Martin Winkler book notes Gladiator and the Traditions of Historical Cinema Film and Historical Authenticity - It was criticised for its distortions in historical fact even though they hired an Ivy League expert as a consultant - Films are by necessity a mixture of fact and fiction, the same is true for any recreation of any era of the past in any medium, be it literature, painting or opera. - Appeal of authenticity is limited, visceral appeal of climactic arena sequences. - The story takes precedence - Thucydides admits that parts of his account are invented - E.H. Carr What is History? (1961) ‘To learn about the present in the light of the past means also to learn about the past in light of the present. The function of history is to promote a profounder understanding of both past and present through the interrelation between them.’ - Just as Thucydides had identified usefulness as the chief goal of historiography, so Sorlin points to ‘the use of historical understanding in the life of society’ in regard to film’ (The film in History: Restaging the Past) - To A. Mann, the most crucial aspect of film-making is the successful combination of fact and fiction, something that it equally true for all kinds of artistic re-creations of the past in any medium. ‘The most important thing is that you get the feeling of history’ - The plots of such films tend to follow certain patterns that are able to make almost any period of history or any locale familiar to viewers, even to those with little or no first-hand experience of different times or places. From this perspective, one might say, historical film is the greatest leveller of past and present. Plot Patterns: ‘A Hero Will Rise’ - The lone hero’s fight against great odds is as old as the story of David and Goliath or Homer’s Odyssey. - Such protagonists are more effective figures of audience identification if they exhibit and then overcome an initial reluctance to heroism. - About Scott – ‘his films project a set of values that at once reflect left-wing liberalism and an essentially neoclassical conservatism that insists on tempering passion with reason, choosing wise and intelligent courses of action, and acting with honor, virtue, and concern for the good of society at large as well as for the individual’ - The plot is indebted primarily to The Fall of the Roman Empire whose story it lifts wholesale. - The plot of Gladiator contains little that is new. - The real Roman army never had the kind of fiery balls that we see flying through the air and exploding on impact. - The pillars on display in the Colosseum are metae, turning points for chariots in the Circus Maximus, and are out of place here; their appearance is due to historical paintings and earlier films, especially LeRoy’s Quo Vadis.

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‘Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too. Its pattern will be the same.’ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.49

Gladiator and the Colosseum: Ambiguities of Spectacle -

Like the Colosseum spectators in Gladiator, and in a number of its cinematic predecessors, we, too, belong to a society that watches. Olivier Hekster calls Commodus an emperor at the crossroads of history. Cassius Dio ‘our history now descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust, as affairs did for the Romans of the day’. Gladiator is the first big-screen ancient epic in 35 years The Colosseum in Gladiator characterises the very nature of the Roman Empire as the film presents it. It serves as a major thematic function which we can better grasp if we consider how the Colosseum has come to be regarded over the course of time.

The Colosseum as Ambiguous Symbol - It has preserved its reputation as ‘the most renowned of Roman buildings’ - ‘As long as the Coliseum stands, Rome shall stand; when the Coliseum falls, Rome will fall; when Rome falls, the world will fall.’ Gibbon’s quote from the Latin of the Venerable Bede - On one side it is an architectural marvel, on the inside, it is a place of heroism. - Deadly games and martyrdom of Christians point up the Colosseum’s negative side, jaded crowds lusting for more blood and death. The Colosseum’s very size and height are proof of Roman hubris.

Gladiators and Blood Sport (David S. Potter) Gladiators were despised and exalted at the same time. Spectacles could reinforce or undermine the social order. Executions involving two men in mortal combat were not the same thing as the duels of gladiators. The soldiers who agreed to fight did so for money and, we may suspect, the desire for applause. They did not do so because they expected to be killed. Death in the Amphitheatre - Acting on a public stage was always regarded as a profession for people of servile of foreign background; so was gladiatorial combat. - Gladiators appeared in munera which were technically ‘gifts’ offered by individuals in their own name. - Gladiators rarely found themselves in a situation in which death was likely (Augustus had passed a rule that meant that no one could put on an exhibition of gladiators fighting to a definite conclusion). - Gladiators fought with dull weapons (Cassius Dio) - Fight to the death, a contest to which we have direct attestation only in two Greek texts and, possibly in a Latin rhetorical work of the early first century AD.

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Rules different for games that the Emperor put on at Rome. Usually with sharp weapons and sine missione. - Flogging = penalty for poor performance - Gladiators who were bought or rented were slaves, while those who were hired were free men (auctorati). - If they died, they never blamed the crowd (victims of Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, or that they were deceived or that their opponent cheated). In death gladiators wish to appear to have been masters of their fate and not to have been victims to the crowd or the cruelty of whoever had put on the games. Gladiatorial Combat and Beast Hunts Prior to Augustus - Caesar’s gladiators loyal to Caesar (suggests they were treated well) - Spartacus and his followers kept in close confinement ‘through the injustice of their owner’ which may have caused them to rebel. (Plutarch Crassus) After the escape his band gathered an enormous army from among slaves and the rural poor of Italy. - Some had been veterans of the civil wars that had ended in 82BC since they are described as being able to fight as legionaires. - Spartacus was defeated and killed in 71BC. Mass crucifixion of 6,000 of his followers along the Appian War was the final act of brutality in a war that had great cruelty on both sides. - Spartacus is said to have sacrificed 300 prisoners. - It did not inspire any effort to reform the system of gladiatorial combat; too deeply embedded in the Roman political system. - No permanent amphitheatres until the reign of Augustus. Emperors and the Arena -

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Commodus appeared in the arena in 192AD as both venator and gladiator. He tried to look like Hercules, and tried to re-create some of the labours of Hercules in the amphitheatre (Cassius Dio) Those victimised by Commodus were less fortunate, since he appears to have mounted a podium in the amphitheatre from which he could attack them with a club. ‘While very little in his scenes of gladiatorial combat resembles what actually happened in the amphitheatre, he succeeds, as no one else has succeeded, in bringing the experience of spectatorship alive. His Maximus is a gladiator in the Roman tradition in that he becomes a hero in the arena, and at the same time in a kind of theatre. The spectacle of a man inverting the social and political order through his ow courage – that is what the Romans went to see. And it is what Scott makes it possible for us to see and feel.

Scott. Dramatized gladiatorial combat....