I am Spartacus!
Paul Screeton wonders where the famous cry of solidarity in Stanley Kubrick’s film actually originated
When it was made in 1960, Spartacus was the most expensive film ever. It was also perceived as one of the most politically subversive, successfully breaking the infamous Hollywood blacklist.
The screenplay by controversial screenwriter Dalton Trumbo portrayed the rebel Thracian slave leader of the Third Servile War of 73-71BC as a pied piper of the disaffected. Although director Stanley Kubrick saw Spartacus as a pathfinder for liberation, the historical record shows that he was unable to control the excesses of his divided army of warmongers from committing rape upon young girls and married women, not to mention hungry, angry men killing for revenge and pleasure. In his excellent travelogue following in Spartacus’s footsteps, Peter Stothard grimly observes: “Those that the slaves could not rape themselves, they raped with spears and spikes.” 1
Writer Arthur Koestler had written a similar treatment to Stothard’s, but his first novel, The Gladiators, sought parallels between the Spartacus revolt and the success of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent failure of the global Communist dream; it was a book less about Spartacus and more about Lenin and Stalin, in which Spartacus crucifies 30 men from a breakaway group, including the leader Crixus, before taking them down and banishing them instead.
Another case of dubious history and revisionism was Howard Fast’s novel, on which the Trumbo screenplay was loosely based. Here, the thrust focused upon the slave army leader’s dreams of a just society without cruelty or exploitation. When the final, inevitable battle came, historians of the time describe how Spartacus killed his horse, fought on the ground in the front line, was wounded, fought on one knee, and was slain, his body lying unidentified among the slaughtered mass. Using poetic licence, Koestler has Spartacus fall from a blow between the eyes; his last sight being of his adversary Crassus’s eyes with brows “slightly raised”.
So where did the mass crucifixion in the Kubrick film come from? And what was the inspiration for the ‘I am Spartacus’ expression of loyalty? It is not in Fast’s novel, so did the left-wing screenwriter subvert the narrative? Or did Kubrick introduce it?
While puzzling over this conundrum, I happened to be visiting Carlisle and called into the JD Wetherspoon chain’s Woodrow Wilson pub, the walls of which are lined with the books literary fashion forgot. A ‘library angel’ led me to one in particular and caused me to open it at a random page. What I found in the essays there by William Hazlitt was what may be the first example of the trope so umbilically attached to the Spartacus legend. Here it is.
There are some droll instances of the effect of proper names combined with circumstances. A young student had come up to London from Cambridge, and went in the evening and planted himself in the pit of the playhouse. He had not been seated long, when in one of the front boxes near him he discovered one of his college tutors, with whom he felt an immediate and strong desire to claim acquaintance, and accordingly called out, in a low and respectful voice, ‘Dr Topping!’ The appeal was, however, ineffectual. He then repeated in a louder tone, but still in an under key, so as not to excite the attention of anyone but his friend, ‘Dr Topping!’ The Doctor took no notice. He then grew more impatient and repeated ‘Dr Topping, Dr Topping!’ two or three times pretty loud, to see whether the Doctor did not or would not hear him. Still the Doctor remained immovable. The Joke began at length to get round, and one or two persons, as he continued his invocation of the Doctor’s name, joined with him; these were reinforced by others calling out, ‘Dr Topping, Dr Topping!’ on all sides, so that he could no longer avoid perceiving it, and at length the whole pit rose and roared, ‘Dr Topping!’ with loud and repeated cries, and the Doctor was forced to retire precipitately, frightened at the sound of his own name. 2
At this juncture, I was unaware of Kubrick’s voracious appetite for knowledge, but I did know that his personal assistant was also a novelist. So, I pondered: had Anthony Frewin spotted this particular text and suggested it be modified for the film? To add to this wild speculation was the fact that Tony – as he signed himself – subscribed to my publication Folklore
Frontiers. The resubscriptions would arrive promptly over the years, paid for by cheques from Harrier Films. My reverie about a possible link was dashed when I discovered that Tony would have been only 13 years old in the year Spartacus was filmed and would not meet Kubrick for a further six years.
I was saddened to hear of Kubrick’s death in 1999, but that wasn’t quite the end of the story. After the great man’s demise the cheques ceased. So, was Frewin fronting an actual purchase for Kubrick? Did Stan the Man lie in a hot bath drinking Krug, cigar in one hand and Folklore Frontiers in the other? I’d like to think so. It is certainly well known he left a vast archive in boxes.
But back in the present, the fictional expression of solidarity seems likely to live on in many ways, perhaps best expressed by the outpouring of support seen after the jihadist atrocity in Paris and the mass ‘Je Suis Charlie’ peaceful demonstration. We can also expect a Spartacus revival in 2016 when the veteran of the Hollywood Golden Age Kirk Douglas reaches his century.