{"title":"Quo vadis on the Stage","authors":"D. Mayer","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"In contrast to the applause and attendance figures generated by the several film adaptations which followed from 1913, theatrical renderings of Quo vadis were ridiculed, and stage runs were conspicuously brief. Theatre was not able to realise the strongly physical episodes the novelist had imagined and that motion pictures could supply. Although posters advertising the play depicted Lygia’s ordeal in the arena and her rescue by the strong-man Ursus grappling with a maddened aurochs, this crucial ‘sensation scene’ was never brought before theatre audiences. At best, stage versions of Quo vadis were disappointing, at worst they were dismal failures. On the English-speaking stage, three separate iterations of Quo vadis, not adapted until 1900, followed Wilson Barrett’s 1895 play The Sign of the Cross by five years and followed William Young’s theatrical version of Ben-Hur by a year. It wasn’t merely that these earlier plays had consumed the oxygen that might have given life to Quo vadis, it was also that stage versions of Quo vadis relied on similar configurations of characters found in The Sign of the Cross, of Christian-Pagan conflict, and of plots of martyrdom at the whims of despotic Roman emperors and their lubricious wives. Even Wilson Barrett’s adaptation failed to generate much enthusiasm and was readily replaced by his money-spinning biblical dramas and toga-plays. This study will consider adaptations by Jeanette L. Gilder, by Stanislav Stange, and Wilson Barrett. It will account for more successful stage versions of the novel performed in the Roman Catholic countries Italy and France.","PeriodicalId":154048,"journal":{"name":"The Novel of Neronian Rome and its Multimedial Transformations","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116885800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘A more permanent world’","authors":"Jonathan Stubbs","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0012","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter traces the long production history of Quo Vadis at MGM, beginning in the mid-1930s and including an unsuccessful attempt to bring Sienkiewicz’s novel to the screen during the Second World War. It examines the predominantly economic factors which led to the film being made as a ‘runaway’ production, initially bound for locations in Italy and studios in London but ultimately realized as an all-Italian production based at the revived Cinecittà studio. MGM’s need to repatriate revenues which had been temporarily blocked by the Italian government was instrumental in this decision: their money could not be withdrawn from Italy directly, but it could be invested in local production and then exported back to America as materials for a film. This chapter also considers the legacy of Quo Vadis, both in Italy and America. The film’s success not only propelled a cycle of highly profitable epic movies set in the ancient world but also established a model for relocating big-budget film production overseas. Giulio Andreotti later claimed that the film ‘did more for Italy than the Marshall Plan’, but others have been less sanguine about the industrial restructuring which occurred in its wake. More than sixty years later, overseas production (buttressed by an array of tax-incentive schemes) remains a key element in the American film and TV industry’s global reach. In this context, the transnational production history of Quo Vadis is perhaps more relevant than ever.","PeriodicalId":154048,"journal":{"name":"The Novel of Neronian Rome and its Multimedial Transformations","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128659187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dangerous Liaisons: Quo vadis? (1913, dir. Enrico Guazzoni) and the Previous Theatrical Adaptations of Sienkiewicz’s Novel","authors":"S. Dagna","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Quo vadis?, directed by Enrico Guazzoni in 1913, is still one of the most faithful film adaptations of the novel by Sienkiewicz. When the silent feature came to cinemas around the world, the story was already familiar to the majority of the audience, due to the popular success of the book and a proliferation of many derivative works, especially theatrical. In various ways, these adaptations developed audiences’ previous knowledge of the plot and the characters. Some of them were set in an openly illustrative relationship; others focused on a single narrative thread of the novel. The most complex examples, especially the 1909 opera by Jean Nouguès, offered a skilled concentration of the plot in a few scenes that were complex both in terms of narrative and staging. The director Guazzoni was quite familiar with the ‘horizons of expectation’ that adaptations of such a popular novel created, but he decided to use them differently. In his film, faithfulness to the original text became the most important trait of a new, ambitious staging strategy: the protection of the plot’s complexity and its spatial fragmentation. Performing a comparative analysis of the narrative spaces in Guazzoni’s film and in a few theatrical adaptations, this chapter delves into two different examples of interaction between the original novel, the adaptation, and viewer expectations: the centripetal model, in which the most important quality is the ability to synthesize, and the centrifugal one, based precisely on fidelity to the original text and to historical accuracy.","PeriodicalId":154048,"journal":{"name":"The Novel of Neronian Rome and its Multimedial Transformations","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130291717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Illustrating Quo vadis in Italy (1900–1925)","authors":"R. Berti, E. Gagetti","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"In Italy, from the beginning of the twentieth century, illustrated editions of Quo vadis multiply, starting from that of Treves with drawings by Minardi (1901), down to the popular edition by ‘Gloriosa’ (1921). Related paratexts from the novel and its two cinematic adaptations by Guazzoni (1913) and D’Annunzio–Jacoby (1924) flank these numerous illustrated editions, such as a series of photosculptures by Mastroianni and postcards displaying scenes from the films. Sienkiewicz’s novel itself works on several levels, each one involving a large audience: from a popular one to educated readers. The illustrated editions and postcard series will be dealt with as paratexts, analysed not in terms of their aesthetics or fidelity to the plot but as elements widening the interpretation of Quo vadis in the context of Italian society and culture of that time, and taking into consideration the expectations of an Italian audience. Placed in editions of the novel, the iconographic choices displayed in the illustrations play the role of glosses, or even act as the voices of readers/viewers. Thanks to these paratexts, the novel gains new meanings. Our inquiry has been limited to the period 1900 to 1930, to coincide with the end of the silent-film era and the fading of the echo caused by D’Annunzio and Jacoby’s film. The two films will be the constant iconographic reference point because of their accumulation of all the preceding illustration strategies for Quo vadis and their influence on the subsequent typology of illustrations in a continuous circulation of media.","PeriodicalId":154048,"journal":{"name":"The Novel of Neronian Rome and its Multimedial Transformations","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127053455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘O omnivorous powers, hail!’","authors":"M. Woźniak","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0014","url":null,"abstract":"Dialogue in historical films is often the weakest component of the presumed ‘authenticity’ of the vision of the past to which they aspire. Its artificiality is especially evident in productions about ancient worlds, because the historical characters typically speak in a language which has nothing to do with the reality presented on the screen, yet somehow needs to convey the idea of diachronic distance and diversity. This chapter will examine the stylistic strategies used by the screenwriters of Quo Vadis in order to create a dialogue functional to the film’s ideological message, but at the same time sufficiently credible and ‘authentic’. Special attention will be paid to the way the scripts deal with forms of address and with military or honorific titles, as these are usually the most important and evident signals of ‘historicity’ in film dialogues. From this point of view, the verbal strategies of Mervyn LeRoy’s Quo Vadis (1951) are rather complex and multilayered, and they will be the focal point of the analysis. Produced in the aftermath of the Second World War, the film relied heavily on the strategy of presentism, clearly audible in large chunks of the dialogue. On the other hand, as part of a ‘trustworthy’ reconstruction of classical antiquity, its cinematographic speech had to be at least superficially compatible with the image of imperial Rome. Finally, Quo Vadis also drew generously on its literary source and adapted for the screen some of the novel’s elegant, literary dialogues. The chapter will also examine the relation between the cinematographic and literary dialogue in two later adaptations to screen: Franco Rossi’s 1985 TV miniseries and Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Polish heritage production (2001).","PeriodicalId":154048,"journal":{"name":"The Novel of Neronian Rome and its Multimedial Transformations","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127853592","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"MGM’s Quo vadis","authors":"M. Winkler","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0013","url":null,"abstract":"The 1951 epic Quo Vadis, directed by Mervyn LeRoy, is the most famous adaptation of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel and eclipsed all earlier and later versions made between 1912 and 2001. This chapter is intended to illustrate the complexity of the Quo vadis (novel)/Quo Vadis (film) phenomenon by examining a few representative strands. To a large extent, credit for the impact of Quo Vadis belongs to actor Peter Ustinov, who made Rome’s most notorious emperor more familiar to viewers than any other actor has managed to do, especially through his portrayal of Nero as poet and musician. Ancient sources commenting on Nero as performer differ from what cinemagoers saw and heard in 1951. The spectacular climax of novel and film is set in the arena. Quo Vadis radically changed Sienkiewicz’s conception, which had been preserved, albeit in abbreviated form, in earlier films and would be presented at length only in 2001. By contrast, the Italian television adaptation of 1985 is a variation on the MGM version. The parallels to Sienkiewicz’s strongman Ursus in and beyond all these films are particularly illuminating. The title of Sienkiewicz’s novel, which quotes the Apostle Peter’s question to an apparition of his Lord, became a household phrase and has been applied in countless contexts since; a few telling instances are considered here. The chapter concludes with brief comments on the recent parody-plus-homage to Quo Vadis in the Coen brothers’ Hail, Caesar! (2016).","PeriodicalId":154048,"journal":{"name":"The Novel of Neronian Rome and its Multimedial Transformations","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125240973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sienkiewicz and the Topography of Ancient Rome","authors":"A. Ziółkowski","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Sienkiewicz, who in Quo vadis strove to render as accurately as possible the topography of ancient Rome—knowledge of which was increasing dramatically thanks to archaeological finds, especially in the catacombs investigated from 1842 by Giovanni Battista De Rossi—as a rule did not disclose his modern authorities. The only glimpse at the novel’s eruditional aspect is his retort to a charge, repeated in the Polish weekly Słowo after unnamed Roman archaeologists, of having committed an anachronism locating St Peter’s first teaching in Ostrianum, the cemetery founded in the third century, in which he emphasized that some leading Roman archaeologists date it to the first century. Neither party realized that they had different cemeteries in mind. Sienkiewicz’s critic thought that he followed De Rossi’s universally accepted identification of Ostrianum with Coemeterium Maius on Via Nomentana, founded in the third century; yet Sienkiewicz surely identified it with the newly discovered ‘hypogeum of the Acilii’ in the Cemetery of Priscilla on Via Salaria, seemingly datable to the late first century. From whom did he get this identification if its acknowledged author, Orazio Marucchi, five years after the novel’s publication still identified Ostrianum with Coemeterium Maius and was unaware that Sienkiewicz located it in the Cemetery of Priscilla? This chapter tries to find out who may have been Sienkiewicz’s informant and why the location of Ostrianum figuring in Quo vadis published in 1896 was first proposed in a scholarly publication only in 1901, by the archaeologist who a few months before had still held the rival view.","PeriodicalId":154048,"journal":{"name":"The Novel of Neronian Rome and its Multimedial Transformations","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131494686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The (In)discreet Charm of the Romans","authors":"E. Ostrowska","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0016","url":null,"abstract":"Made in 2001 by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, the Polish film Quo vadis represents a vernacular variant of ‘heritage cinema’ which has flourished in the country since 1989. Mostly consisting of adaptations of Polish literary classics, whose action takes place in a relatively distant past, they feature protagonists who are preoccupied by matters such as love, honour, and patriotism that are always linked with Catholicism. As demonstrated in this chapter, Kawalerowicz’s film also condones regressive gender norms, patriarchal order, and the hegemonic discourse of Catholicism. Most importantly, the chapter will argue that Quo vadis follows other novels by Sienkiewicz in developing a vernacular colonial fantasy. In Kawalerowicz’s Quo vadis colonial fantasies merge with contemporary discourse about Poland’s Europeanness. Arguably, Lygia’s romance with Marcus Vinicius, who decides to convert to Christianity, implies a symbolic union between (Eastern European) Poland and the (Western European) Roman Empire. Kawalerowicz’s decision to frame the ancient story with two contemporary images of the Roman Colosseum seems to suggest that, ultimately, Poland has ‘returned to Europe’—as the post-communist slogan claimed. The chapter will also pay special attention to the film’s melodramatic mode of representation and its affective power, as well as to its potential to present a utopian world of moral potency and transparency. Melodrama in Quo vadis provides a textual space through which viewers could channel the emotions they had experienced during the stark time of transition.","PeriodicalId":154048,"journal":{"name":"The Novel of Neronian Rome and its Multimedial Transformations","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126200291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Paradoxes of Quo vadis","authors":"Jerzy Axer","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198867531.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Both the manner in which Sienkiewicz constructed his vision of ancient Rome and the way it affected contemporary readers appear paradoxical. This chapter presents four examples of these contradictions. The topographical vision of the Eternal City constructed in the novel reflects the perception of a pilgrim tourist visiting it in the late nineteenth century; nevertheless that vision restored the sense of connection held by native Italians with the tradition of Urbs Roma. The characters endowed in the novel with the greatest freedom of movement belong to Sienkiewicz’s world rather than to classical antiquity. As for the historical characters, they are passive and essentially form part of the novel’s mock-up of Neronian Rome. The book turned out to be very attractive to European readers, giving them an impression of genuine contact with their Roman heritage. Yet this effect was achieved by an author who drew upon the tradition of a Latinity imported into Poland and who, in addition, gave a central place to the motif of a Slavic martyr evangelizing her Roman oppressors. Readers who were completely unaware of the slogan ‘Poland, the Christ of Nations’, and understood nothing of the book’s patriotic codes, could nonetheless feel the authenticity of the author’s experience of something that can be called a ‘totalitarian system’. In this way, thanks to a Polish writer, European readers were given a vivid and impressive vision of Nero’s time, told from the point of view of the weak and oppressed. It was a historical and religious vision that seemed more believable than anything the writers of the West could offer them.","PeriodicalId":154048,"journal":{"name":"The Novel of Neronian Rome and its Multimedial Transformations","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130056442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Word and Image","authors":"M. Wyke","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198867531.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198867531.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"The pioneering Italian film Quo vadis? (1913, dir. Enrico Guazzoni) is widely recognized as a turning point in both film history and the popular reception of the ancient world. Its feature-length adaptation of the Polish novel sought to nationalize the Italian public through the presentation of a common cultural heritage in the Roman past, to raise the commercial prestige of the Italian film industry in global markets, and to increase the artistic status of cinema and legitimate it as a respectable form of entertainment. Its use of nineteenth-century historical fiction also provided a radically new way of experiencing Neronian Rome, related to but distinct from the reconstruction of the Roman past in other high cultural forms. The film achieved substantial success, reaching spectators of all classes throughout Italy and across the world. Yet when it was first released, some critics deplored it as cheap, facile ‘wordless images’—a harbinger of a ‘cinema age’ that would threaten the survival of theatre, the book, and even literacy itself. This chapter draws on recent work in adaptation studies to reconceptualize the relationship between the Italian film and the Polish novel as more complex than image to word. And, through its analysis of the afterlife of Sienkiewicz’s novel on screen, this chapter explores cinema more broadly as a mode of expression that is not inferior to the book but more varied, and in possession of extensive ideological and aesthetic, as well as mass-market, reach.","PeriodicalId":154048,"journal":{"name":"The Novel of Neronian Rome and its Multimedial Transformations","volume":"65 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127689245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}