Word: nero
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...into the production of a piece that rivals "Ben Hur" in intensity of action and elaborateness. Fredric March, as Marcus Superbus, prefect of Rome, who goes to death in the arena because of his love for Mercia (Elissa Landi), one of the persecuted Christians, and Claudette Colbert, who plays Nero's wife, Poppaea, do very well, but Charles Laughton, as the fat, indolent Nero, gives the picture its life blood. See him reclining after a heavy night of delicious debauchery while he puffs for breath as slaves manicure him, listen to him say "go away now," watch his eyes...
...crypt beneath St. Peter's is the reputed tomb of the very founder of the Church. After Christ's resurrection Peter was delivered from jail in Jerusalem by an angel, went to Antioch and then, according to some Protestant and all Catholic opinion, to Rome, where during Nero's persecutions he was crucified head downwards near the spot where his basilica now stands. St. Peter's head is in St. John Lateran. His body is supposed to be in the crypt of St. Peter's, which was sacked by the Saracens in 846. The crypt...
Dogs are all things to all men. As they are, cur and hound, bitch and pup, Tray and Nero, the names that men apply to them betray the way that men think of them. No name for a dog carries less than the nasty meaning unconsciously given fragrant words like "stink," nor has any animal gained such universal, nay, such high praise. All who learn to read know the foul loathing for the hound which Shakespeare held, the fear and contempt which the beast inspired in the ancients; those who have no knowledge of the creature's filthy ways have...
...Mille directed his first cinema, The Squaw Man, 19 years ago. Since then he has directed 56 more. A director of the old school, he has retained his taste for grandiloquent language, pretentious sets, casts of 1,000 or more. This picture, a vast conglomeration about the Emperor Nero, Christian martyrs, Roman palaces, catacombs, lions yapping in the Circus, is a religious spectacle, like The King of Kings and The Ten Commandments, of the type De Mille likes best. Before starting it he said he had been waiting for ten years for the cinema to become a vehicle adequate...
...story of The Sign of the Cross, included in the repertory of every stock company in England since it was first played in 1895, is obvious devotional melodrama. Nero (Charles Laughton) orders his lieutenant, Marcus Superbus (Fredric March), to clear Rome of Christians. While doing so, Marcus falls in love with a Christian girl named Mercia (Elissa Landi). This makes the vicious Empress Poppaea (Claudette Colbert) jealous. Marcus Superbus tries to persuade Mercia to become a pagan. He fails. Nero wants to forgive her for being a Christian but Poppaea, to save Marcus from what she considers a misalliance, refuses...