Quo Vadis

301 Pages·2009·1.83 MB·English

Whither Quo Vadis?
Whither Quo Vadis? Ruth Scodel and Anja Be t tenworth
© 2009 Ruth Scodel and Anja Bettenworth. ISBN: 978-1-405-18385-7
Whither Quo Vadis?
Ruth Scodel and Anja Bettenworth
This edition fi rst published 2009
© 2009 by Ruth Scodel and Anja Bettenworth
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scodel, Ruth.
Whither Quo Vadis? : Sienkiewicz’s novel in fi lm and television / Ruth Scodel and Anja Bettenworth.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-8385-7 (alk. paper)
1. Sienkiewicz, Henryk, 1846–1916. Quo vadis? 2. Sienkiewicz, Henryk, 1846–1916–Film and
video adaptations. 3. Rome–In motion pictures. 4. Rome–On television. I. Bettenworth, Anja.
II. Title.
PG7158.S4Q77 2008
791.43´75–dc22
2008010445
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Set in Minion 10.5 on 13pt
by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong
Printed and bound in Singapore
by Fabulous Printers Pte Ltd
01 2009
Alors qu’on le préparait à sa première communion,
Mme de Coantré avait donné à son petit fi ls
l’édition pour la jeunesse de Quo vadis,
et depuis cet temps Alban était Romain.
Il avait sauté les pages consacrées à l’apôtre Pierre.
H. de Montherlant, Les Bestiaires
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments x
1 Novel and Film 1
2 Adapting the Narrative 16
Sienkiewicz’s Novel: Adapting the Story 16
Focalizers, Judgments, and Petronius 22
Petronius as Focal Character 28
Seeing and Mapping Rome 42
3 Gender and Ethnicity 55
Marcus and Lygia 55
Petronius and Eunice 57
Pomponia 61
Gender Roles in Public and Private Life 63
Ethnicity and Gender Roles in the 1985 Version 70
Adaptations in the 2001 Version 80
4 Political Institutions, Political Subtexts 88
Political Implications of the Silent Versions 91
Fascists and Communists: The 1951 and 2001 Films 94
The Complex Allusions of the 1985 Miniseries 97
Foreign Policy in the Films 116
The Military in the 1951 Version 118
The Arrival of Galba 124
5 The Roman People 139
viii Contents
6 Religion and Religious Authority in Quo Vadis? 173
Paganism 173
Judaism 178
Christianity: Ritual, Theology, and Confl ict in Sienkiewicz’s
Novel 185
Transmitting a Tradition: Sermons in Novel and Film 188
The Representation of the Scriptures 190
Radicals: Crispus 194
Mainstream Christianity: Peter and Paul 200
Conclusion 211
7 Conclusions 219
8 Exkursus: Chilo’s Mother 223
A Peculiarity of the German Translations of Quo Vadis? 223
Description of the Films 227
Synopsis of the Novel and the Film Versions of Quo Vadis 230
References 266
Index of Ancient Sources 275
Index of Personal Names 279
Index of Things and Places 285
List of Illustrations
Plate 1.1 Nero attempts to rape Lygia 6
Plate 1.2 Street performers 10
Plate 2.1 Lygia with Acte 31
Plate 2.2 Petronius advises Nero against scapegoating
the Christians 32
Plate 2.3 Petronius appeases the angry crowd 33
Plate 2.4 Emil Jannings as Nero 35
Plate 2.5 Petronius appeases the crowd 41
Plate 2.6 First view of Lygia 51
Plate 3.1 Lygia’s mosaic 71
Plate 3.2 Death of Petronius and Eunice 77
Plate 4.1 Peter enters Rome 96
Plate 4.2 Christians in sheepskins 106
Plate 4.3 Marcus’ triumph 119
Plate 5.1 Nero’s palace with litter 144
Plate 5.2 The arena 163
Plate 5.3 Ustinov’s Nero views the arena 164
Plate 6.1 Paul baptizes Chilo 182
Plate 6.2 Peter preaches 203
Acknowledgments
For helpful advice or for reading drafts at various stages of this project,
we thank the referees at Blackwell, Paolo Asso, Jürgen Fohrmann, and
Adolf Köhnken. Agate Dabrowska helped with Polish, Britta Ager with
proofreading and Anna Scodel and Angela Jöne with indexing. James
Barron kindly provided us with a copy of his dissertation (and Joshua
Scodel told us of its existence).
We are grateful to the British Film Institute, the UCLA fi lm archive, the
Library of Congress, and the Nederlands Filmmuseum for enabling the use
of their collections. The last provided videotapes of both a partial restora-
tion of the 1912 version with color and of the 1925 version. Stills of the
1912 fi lm come from the collection of the Library of Congress; those of the
1925 fi lm from Eastman House. Leone Film S.r.l. gave permission to create
frame captures of the 1985 miniseries.
Technical support for copying and frame capture was provided by the
Duderstadt Center, University of Michigan, and Institut für Kommunika-
tionswissenschaft, University of Münster.
We thank audiences at Temple University and at the Annual Meetings
of the Classical Association of Canada and of the Classical Association for
the Midwest and South for the opportunity to present and discuss earlier
versions of some chapters.
Our collaboration on this project was made possible by the support of
the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung.
1
Novel and Film
This is a study of fi ve adaptations – four feature fi lms, and a TV miniseries
– of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel Quo Vadis?, fi rst serialized in Polish news-
papers in 1895.1 The fi rst of the fi lms under discussion, Guazzoni’s, appeared
in 1912, and is sometimes said to have been the fi rst feature fi lm produced.
Its importance in demonstrating the powerful effects epic cinema could
achieve is fully recognized in the scholarship and among fi lm critics and
fans.2 For example, a recent article in the Sunday New York Times, defending
summer movies, says:
fi lm spectacle works more or less the same now as it did in 1912 when the
Italian epic “Quo Vadis” hit screens with a cast of literally thousands and
extreme action in the form of a chariot race. That fi lm’s pageantry, its gladi-
ators and sacrifi ced Christians earned an enthusiastic thumbs-up from the
sculptor Auguste Rodin, who declared it “a masterpiece.”3
The last, the most expensive Polish fi lm ever produced, appeared in 2001.
We are thus looking at a series of versions of this story from a period that
roughly encompasses the twentieth century.
Quo Vadis? is a historical novel, set in the reign of Nero. Most of its action
takes place in the years 62–64 ce, though the fi nal chapters and epilogue
continue the story until Nero’s death in 68 ce. At its center is the love story
of two entirely fi ctional characters, the Roman noble Marcus Vinicius
and the Christian hostage Lygia Callina. These fi ctional characters, however,
are embedded in a milieu populated by historical fi gures. Much of the
action takes place at the court of Nero and features characters relatively
well known from Roman historians: Nero himself, his second wife Poppaea
Sabina, and the praetorian prefect (that is, the commander of the only
military force in the city of Rome) Tigellinus. Many other characters are
historical fi gures about whom much less is known. The historians inform
Whither Quo Vadis? Ruth Scodel and Anja Be t tenworth
© 2009 Ruth Scodel and Anja Bettenworth. ISBN: 978-1-405-18385-7