Rent Quo Vadis (1951)
3.6 of 5 from 84 ratings
2h 47min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Rome burns. Nero (Peter Ustinov) fiddles. Christianity rises. Featuring 110 speaking parts, 30,000 participants and a filmed-on-location panoply of marching legions, magisterial pageantry and massive spectacle that includes the martyrdom of Christians thrown to the lions before cheering Coliseum throngs. Robert Taylor plays the Legion commander whose love for a Christian slave girll crosses the divide between Empire and a sect with a higher loyalty. Presiding over all is Nero. He is Caesar, madman, murderer - an imperial ruler of the spectacular, and spectacularly doomed, glory that was Rome.
- Actors:
- Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Leo Genn, Peter Ustinov, Patricia Laffan, Finlay Currie, Abraham Sofaer, Marina Berti, Buddy Baer, Felix Aylmer, Nora Swinburne, Ralph Truman, Norman Wooland, Peter Miles, Geoffrey Dunn, Nicholas Hannen, D.A. Clarke-Smith, Rosalie Crutchley, John Ruddock, Arthur Walge
- Directors:
- Mervyn LeRoy, Anthony Mann
- Producers:
- Sam Zimbalist
- Voiced By:
- Robin Hughes
- Narrated By:
- Walter Pidgeon
- Writers:
- John Lee Mahin, S.N. Behrman, Sonya Levien, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Hugh Gray
- Others:
- Cedric Gibbons, Miklós Rózsa, Robert Surtees, Edward Carfagno, Ralph E. Winters, Hugh Hunt, William A. Horning, William V. Skall, Herschel McCoy
- Studio:
- Warner
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama, Romance
- Collections:
- A Brief History of Classical Music on Film - Musicians, A History of The Classical World In Cinema, Acting Up: British Actors at the Oscars, All You Need to Know About Dump Month Movies, Award Winners, Getting to Know..., Getting to Know: Audrey Hepburn, Getting to Know: Sophia Loren, Introducing the Thesping Olympians, Oscar Nominations Competition 2026, Oscar's Two-Time Club, A Brief History of Film..., The Instant Expert's Guide, The Instant Expert's Guide to Yasujiro Ozu
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 02/02/2009
- Run Time:
- 174 minutes
- Languages:
- Castilian Spanish Dolby Digital 1.0, English Dolby Digital 1.0, French Dolby Digital 1.0, German Dolby Digital 1.0, Italian Dolby Digital 1.0, Latin American Spanish Dolby Digital 1.0
- Subtitles:
- Brazilian, Castillian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish
- DVD Regions:
- Region 2
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Full Screen 1.33:1 / 4:3
- Colour:
- Colour
- Bonus:
- Commentary by critic / film historian F.X. Feeney
- New featurette In the beginning: Quo Vadis and Genesis of the Biblical epic
- Theatrical trailer
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Reviews (1) of Quo Vadis
Worth watching for the crowd scenes and special effects - Quo Vadis review by MR
I rented this to see Peter Ustinov as Nero, and he was amusingly crazed, petulant, cowardly and stupid. Every scene in the film is far too long drawn out. The whole classical setting is unconvincing, but so it is in all these old epics, and Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr are just stars doing their thing. Leo Genn is rather impressive as a cynic, cleverly controlling Nero.
BUT the non-CGI crowd scenes are phenomenal - the arena, the burning of Rome. It would be overwhelming to see this as it should be seen, in the cinema.
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