Quo Vadis?

At the time, Quo Vadis? was the highest grosser for MGM after Gone With the Wind. Between the acres of heaving muscle in the arena, half of Italy starring as the Roman troops, and sets that dwarf even Ustinov, you may detect a story about a Roman commander under Nero who falls in love with a Christian girl and gets them both thrown to the lions. It does last virtually three hours, and along the way does have stretches of tedium, but LeRoy invests most of it with pace, true spectacle, and not a little imagination (like the camera craning acrobatically over thousands of festive Romans before coming to rest on Robert Taylor's face; or an 'orgy' viewed by Nero through a piece of red glass). They won't make them like this any more.