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 They note that this movie was nominated for five Oscars and it won a few in
technical categories. Burton lost out to William Holden (Stalag 17) and would go on to be nominated a total of seven times, never winning.
Co-star
Jean Simmons (called "Jeans" on the back cover of the DVD) would be nominated
twice in her career and also never win. The guy who played Justus though did
win one for his role in Twelve O'Clock High which I'm sure made both Burton and Simmons feel better. 1953, 135 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
This one basically boils down to a story of a boy and his blankie. Now, it's a
very important blankie, but still a blankie nonetheless. In this case the guy
is Richard Burton and he develops a fetish for the robe that Jesus wore up on
the cross. I'm a fairly strong Christian around Easter time and such, but I
wasn't really familiar with this story from the Good Book. They might have had
to leave it out of the Classics Illustrated Bible that I regularly consult when I don't like what my horoscope says, so my
ignorance is really not only understandable, but probably expected. In any
event, I'm confident that the story of the haunted robe is nestled in there
along side such valuable Bible lessons as the one about how old folks are
really crabby (see Barabbas) and how Jesus had very nicely conditioned hair (see King Of Kings). I will confess to being a tad bit concerned that my on again off again faith
(Easter is over, so I'm sliding back into paganism and reverting to watching
movies about hookers getting slashed by Italian perverts) was going to be
mocked since this was a movie about Jesus' clothes. It was bad enough when
Donny Osmond had that show about Jesus and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,
but now I was in the middle of something like Jesus and His Incredible
Cinemascope Toga. We've all seen what these left-wing (and by extension,
Satanic) Hollywood dope smokers do to ridicule this country and its faith as
often as they can. I think that all these box office duds (can you even name a
movie that Tim Robbins has been in in the last five years) need to listen up to
what Jesus was saying during his Easter special (and I'll have to paraphrase a
bit, because I was switching back and forth between him and the Laci Peterson
case): love it or leave it, pinkos! Well, he was saying something about love
and we all know what comes after that part of the slogan, don't we?  I needn't have worried though, because this movie was made back in the early
fifties when everybody's goal was to build this country up instead of crying
about their rights and stuff. So things are treated with a reverence that you
would expect from a biblical epic and by that I mean that things are really
melodramatic and there are times that you can't help but laugh when Richard
Burton wakes up screaming after having a bad dream about his blankie. Of
course it goes without saying that we are all laughing with Jesus and Richard during all this and that sometimes when you become so
mentally deranged that you become convinced that you're being tormented by a
bathrobe or something, the only thing to do in the face of of this encroaching
mental instability is to chuckle a bit. Ahh, nothing like a little levity to
lighten the load, eh? Really though, if I was Richard, I'd be having
nightmares about the fact that I was playing dice with my fellow soldiers and
that somehow or other they managed to pay me in some dead guy's clothing
instead of cash or cigarettes. What does Richard look like he is? A pawnshop
or something? I also wouldn't have taken the robe because every time he touches
it or smarts off about being a strong Christian, it thunders or rains or his
car won't start or something along those lines. As those of us who have seen
our share of movies about possessed telephones and murderous dolls can tell
you, those are the kind of warning signs that aren't to be ignored. Luckily,
he has a smart mouthed slave to take the robe off his hands for him. And
double-luckily for us gladiator fans, the smart mouthed slave is played by tan
superhunk Victor Mature. Victor plays Demetrius and proves to be
such a bronzed meat slab that an entire sequel is constructed around his beefy
presence in spite of the fact that he delivers his few lines in a nasal
monotone usually reserved for Italian guys who don't know English and have no
friends in the dubbing community.  Burton's Marcellus Gallio is a tribune in the Roman army and we meet him as he
hangs out in the marketplace of some town or other. He peruses the slaves,
fights with his girlfriend, and meets up with a gal from his youth. Since she
is played by Jean Simmons ( The Big Country and Elmer Gantry) his fight with the
girlfriend understandably doesn't seem as important as it once did. If I
thought for one second that anyone from my childhood ended up looking like Jean
Simmons instead of Gene Simmons, I'd probably be booking my hotel room for my
high school reunion now instead of planning on egging my English teacher's car
that night. Marcellus also ends up purchasing the very lippy Demetrius on this
little excursion, but only after getting hosed out of some twins by Caligula.
Caligula being the superfreak that he is, also wanted Demetrius and was a bit
torqued that Marcellus bought him and the next thing we know Caligula is
sending Marcellus out to Palestine on "special assignment". I don't pretend to
know a heck of a lot about the ancient world or its hot-spots, but from the
reaction of Marcellus' dad, I can only assume that it's a bit like being told
you're being transferred to Arkansas or going to a Cuba Gooding, Jr. movie.
Marcellus maintains that British stiff upper lip that ancient Romans were
famous for, takes a swig of his favorite brew and tells Demetrius to gas up his
Chevy chariot and heads off to the docks so that he can sail away to his new
post. Once he arrives, he gets his first job there and it turns out to be a
little something about supervising an execution of three guys who are about to
crucified. You get your classic dialogue at this point in time where one of
the guys asks Marcellus if it's first crucifixion and then gives him some
pointers on pounding the nails into the flesh. I have a buddy who never fails
to cite this moment of the movie with great glee, though he seems to have
forgotten that there is an additional one hundred and thirty four minutes to
navigate, thus lessening the impact of the potential humor of this exchange.  While Marcellus is busy trying to do his job, his ungrateful slave is out and
about getting turned into a Christian and is quite peeved that his boss is
going to execute his messiah. You know whenever I'm at the shoe factory and
the boss wants me to do something distasteful like work eight hours a day or
something, I just point out the bumper-sticker on my Monte Carlo that reads "my
boss is a Jewish carpenter" and tell him to stuff it and that if he don't like
it I'll slap a discrimination suit on his intolerant ass. Well, if you're at
all familiar with Good Friday then you probably won't be in a whole lot of
suspense as to the fate of Jesus, but after the dirty deed is done, Marcellus
and the boys are gambling and this is when he "wins" the haunted robe.
Marcellus demands that Demetrius give it to him so that he can cover up when
it's raining and this is when the robe starts laying the holy smackdown on him.
He ends up going to back to Rome without it, leaving it with Demetrius who
apparently has decided to just stay on in the Holy Land and hang out with his
new Christian buddies. Back in Rome, Marcellus is diagnosed as being nucking
futs (he constantly screams out "were you there?" whenever someone mentions the
robe) and he and the emperor decide that he should go back and get the robe so
that the curse can be lifted from him. Back in the Holy Land, Marcellus' big
plan is to buy up all the robes in hopes of getting back Jesus' robe. This is
when he runs into people like Justus and some crippled up types who babble on
about how great Jesus was and Marcellus is like "Great? Hell, I know that! I
crucified him and now I'm being haunted by his drawers!" Marcellus hangs out
with these people and sees that they are generous and at peace and don't
mind being all crippled up and thinks that this is a lot better than drawing
crappy assignments for buying up some tan hunk that Caligula wanted and starts
to see the light. Then Caligula becomes emperor and sends some troops out to
punk Marcellus and retrieve the robe for himself since it supposedly grants
eternal
life. Marcellus fights ands drives off the Romans and becomes one of the flock
in spite of his decidedly non-Errol Flynn-like fencing skills. Bible epics are really just the uppity cousins of gladiator movies so it
shouldn't come as any surprise that the climax of the movie involves Marcellus
breaking into a palace and rescuing Demetrius from being tortured to death
(those sword and sandal affairs are built on repeated capturing and resulting
rescues - that's in addition to the presence of the bearded tan studs that
seemed to
populate the old world). Somewhere along the way Marcellus finds time to fall
in love with Jean Simmons and she isn't really sold on his new found faith,
especially once he gets sentenced to death by Caligula. Suddenly though she
has a change of heart and cuts a promo on Caligula calling him out for being a
crappy guy and decides that she wants to be with Marcellus forever and that the
way to do that is to turn Christian right before their executions. This leads
us to the remarkably silly ending when they walk out of the palace together and
into the clouds, these crazy-braze expressions on their face while really
God-like music is playing (us strong Christians prefer Al Denson, but this was
before the Trinity Broadcasting Network so I can understand them going with
something a little more old school). Let's run down the list of Bible epic
attributes this one has or doesn't have: it's got pretty decent sets and the
costumes don't look too chintzy (though I was hoping that Burton at least had
his dry cleaned before he wore the exact same one years later in Cleopatra); Burton and Simmons added some class to the proceedings, but Victor Mature
and Jay Robinson, who played Caligula, seemed like they'd be more at home in a
movie where the hero was named Maciste or Goliath and starring Gordon Scott or
Brad Harris; the story was clearly silly with everyone's quick and unexplained
conversions to the new faith and the dialogue had you flinching on a fairly
regular basis; and finally the score was unmemorable at best. As the first
Cinemascope movie, it's nice to finally see it widescreen, but one wishes they
had managed to get a print that didn't show so many scratches and specks, but
it is a fifty year old movie so this might be as good as it gets (the trailer
included looks even worse). Burton spews forth his lines with full-throated
conviction and scowls his way through things that would make a lesser actor
giggle ("Were you there? Were you there? Get that towel off of me!"), but
Simmons doesn't really get enough screen time to make us care all that much
about whether she'll see the light so that she and Burton can die together
(things sure were dire in the old days, huh?). To fully appreciate what you do
get in this movie, I recommend watching the sequel, Demetrius And The Gladiators immediately following it. Imagine the worst aspects of The Robe taking center stage and then throw in Ernest Borgnine. That tends to put the
merits
of this one in their proper perspective and also makes the movie not seem as
stupid as it is, but I'm pretty sure that even Jesus would roll his eyes and
say,
"Christ, it's just
a freakin' robe! Get over it!"
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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