''Kampf um Rom'' (English language title: ''The Last Roman'') is a West German-Italian historical drama film starring

Laurence Harvey Laurence Harvey (born Zvi Mosheh Skikne; 1 October 192825 November 1973) was a Lithuanian-born British actor and film director. He was born to Lithuanian Jewish parents and emigrated to South Africa at an early age, before later settling in th ...

Orson Welles George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...

, Sylva Koscina and

Honor Blackman Honor Blackman (22 August 1925 – 5 April 2020) was an English actress, known for the roles of Cathy Gale in '' The Avengers''Aaker, Everett (2006). ''Encyclopedia of Early Television Crime Fighters''. McFarland & Company, Inc. . P. 58. (1962 ...

. It was produced by Artur Brauner and was the last film to be directed by Robert Siodmak. It was originally released in two parts (''Kampf um Rom 1. Teil'' and ''Kampf um Rom 2. Teil: Der Verrat'') in 1968 and 1969 as a late installment of the

sword-and-sandal Sword-and-sandal, also known as peplum (pepla plural), is a subgenre of largely Italian-made historical, mythological, or Biblical epics mostly set in the Greco-Roman antiquity or the Middle Ages. These films attempted to emulate the big-budget ...

genre. ''Kampf um Rom'' shows the 6th-century power struggle between Byzantine emperor

Justinian Justinian I (; la, Iustinianus, ; grc-gre, Ἰουστινιανός ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was the Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565. His reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized '' renova ...

, the descendants of the

Western Roman Empire The Western Roman Empire comprised the western provinces of the Roman Empire at any time during which they were administered by a separate independent Imperial court; in particular, this term is used in historiography to describe the period ...

and the

Ostrogoths The Ostrogoths ( la, Ostrogothi, Austrogothi) were a Roman-era Germanic people. In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Gothic kingdoms within the Roman Empire, based upon the large Gothic populations who ...

. The film is based on a novel by Felix Dahn.

Plot

In the 6th century AD, the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Roman Republic, Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings aro ...

has been shattered by Germanic invasions.

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

is ruled as an independent kingdom by the

, while the surviving, eastern remnant of Roman civilization is fast taking on a new identity as the

Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

. The aristocracy of Rome, led by the crafty and arrogant Cethegus Caesarius, dream of overthrowing the Goths and reclaiming their city's ancestral glory. When the Ostrogothic king

Theodoric the Great Theodoric (or Theoderic) the Great (454 – 30 August 526), also called Theodoric the Amal ( got, , *Þiudareiks; Greek: , romanized: ; Latin: ), was king of the Ostrogoths (471–526), and ruler of the independent Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy ...

dies, Cethegus takes advantage of the struggle for the succession that erupts between

Amalaswintha Amalasuintha (495 – 30 April 534/535) was a ruler of Ostrogothic Kingdom from 526 to 535. She ruled first as regent for her son and thereafter as queen on throne. A regent is "a person who governs a kingdom in the minority, absence, or disabili ...

and Mataswintha, the king's savage daughters. Having played on Amalaswintha's paranoia to build his own power, Cethegus makes a secret pact with

Narses , image=Narses.jpg , image_size=250 , caption=Man traditionally identified as Narses, from the mosaic depicting Justinian and his entourage in the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna , birth_date=478 or 480 , death_date=566 or 573 (aged 86/95) , allegi ...

, Byzantium's greatest general. The two will pool their armies to recapture Italy, meanwhile trying to undermine one another. Whoever emerges alive and victorious will claim both armies and power over a reconstituted Roman world. Meanwhile, Cethegus' hatred of the Ostrogoths is counterbalanced by his daughter Julia's romance with Totila, a distinguished young Gothic warrior. The ensuing war causes upheavals in all three competing governments and ravages Italy itself. When the Ostrogothic state falls, Rome's hopes of reviving the past die with it.

Cast

as Cethegus *

* Sylva Koscina as Theodora *

Robert Hoffmann Robert Hoffmann (30 August 1939 – 4 July 2022) was an Austrian actor, best known to British audiences for his title role performance in '' The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe'' (1964). Hoffmann was born in Salzburg. ''Crusoe'' was his screen d ...

as Totila *

Lang Jeffries Lang Jeffries (June 7, 1930 – February 12, 1987) was a Canadian-American television and film actor. Biography From 1958 to 1960, Jeffries starred as Skip Johnson in the adventure television series ''Rescue 8''. He starred in several American ...

as Belisarius * Michael Dunn as

* Florin Piersic as Witiches * as Teja *

Harriet Andersson Harriet Andersson (born 14 February 1932) is a Swedish actress, best known outside Sweden for being part of director Ingmar Bergman's stock company. She often plays impulsive, working class characters. Film actress Harriet Andersson began her a ...

as Mathaswintha *

Ewa Strömberg Ewa Strömberg (13 January 1940 - 24 January 2013), was a Swedish actress. She appeared in a number of Swedish films before her international career. She is possibly best known for her appearance in a number of films by Spanish director Jesús ...

as Rauthgundis * Ingrid Boulting as Julia * Friedrich von Ledebur as Hildebrand *

Dieter Eppler Dieter Eppler (11 February 1927, in Stuttgart – 12 April 2008, in Stuttgart) was a German television actor and director of radio dramas. He was an actor, known for ''Jonas'' (1957), ''The Country Doctor'' (1987) and '' The Last Winter'' (1960). He ...

as Thorismund

Production

After his domestic market success with '' Die Nibelungen'' German producer Artur Brauner planned to make another two-part movie, but one that would measure up to international standards and open up new markets in the US. Notwithstanding warnings that the public's interest in epic movies had already peaked, Brauner went ahead with his project to adapt the German novel ''

A Struggle for Rome ''A Struggle for Rome'' (alternatively A Fight for Rome) is a historical novel written by Felix Dahn (under the original title Ein Kampf um Rom which appeared in 1876). Plot summary After the death of Theodoric the Great his successors try to ...

'' (original German title: ''Ein Kampf um Rom'') written by Felix Dahn, which had been quite popular since it was first published in 1876. With an eye on the US market, Brauner hired director Robert Siodmak and actors Orson Welles, Laurence Harvey and Honor Blackman. For German audiences, the cast included Robert Hoffmann, Friedrich von Ledebur and Dieter Eppler. The novel was adapted for the screen by

David Ambrose David Edwin Ambrose (born 21 February 1943) is a British novelist, playwright and screenwriter. His credits include at least twenty films, four stage plays, and many hours of television, including the controversial '' Alternative 3'' (1977). He ...

, but the screenplay was written by Ladislas Fodor. Director Robert Siodmak was not comfortable with the project. In late 1967, he wrote a letter to Brauner in which he noted that after having read all the scripts he felt that the dialogue was "too simple (to put it mildly) almost throughout and barely up to the standard of ten-year-old children. The characters are not consistent, they have numerous breaks and even the heroes are becoming uninteresting and unlikeable towards the end of the movie. ..At the end of part 2 the historical facts have been changed so violently that we have to voice serious concerns. The doom of the Ostrogoths is not just a great drama of world literature but also a huge historical drama. ..Treason and exposure, guilt and atonement are constructed so primitively that they cause deadly boredom .. Filming took place between 6 May 1968 and September 1968 in

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...

and the Spandau Studios in Berlin. Brauner chose Romania as a low cost location — the Romanian army supplied several thousand extras for the film. According to one source, the production was at the time the most expensive German film after World War II, at 15 million

Deutsche Mark The Deutsche Mark (; English: ''German mark''), abbreviated "DM" or "D-Mark" (), was the official currency of West Germany from 1948 until 1990 and later the unified Germany from 1990 until the adoption of the euro in 2002. In English, it was ...

. However, Brauner himself put the production costs at 8 million DM. Due to a string of problems ( budget overruns, withdrawn guarantees, cancelled powers of attorney) he said he lost 4 million DM on the project. Robert Siodmak received billing as director in the credits, his collaborators

Sergiu Nicolaescu Sergiu Florin Nicolaescu (; 13 April 1930 – 3 January 2013) was a Romanian film director, actor and politician. He was best known for his historical films, such as '' Mihai Viteazul'' (1970, released in English both under the equivalent tit ...

and Andrew Marton were only mentioned as directors of the 2nd unit.

Release

Part 1 premiered on 17 December 1968 at the Zoo-Palast in Berlin. Part 2 went on mass release in West Germany on 21 February 1969. In Italy the two parts were initially called ''La guerra per Roma — prima parte'' and ''La guerra per Roma — seconda parte''. They were later edited into one movie entitled ''La calata dei barbari''. The one-part version was released to German movie theatres in 1976. It may have been originally re-cut in 1973 for release in the US.

Reception

The film was not well received by the critics. 'Evangelischer Filmbeobachter' gave the film credit for "much love, splendour and pathos" but criticised it for not even attempting to put it on a "historic foundation". 'Lexikon des internationalen Films' described it as "a spectacle of power struggles, intrigues and battles in an outdated historical and scenographical style" that "rigorously excluded the ideological element of Felix Dahn's novel". It also called the film "naive-entertaining", but "psychologically crude" and "too superficial". The Filmbewertungsstelle Wiesbaden, which handed out the ratings of "Wertvoll" and "Besonders wertvoll" to films, refused to give the film one of these ratings. It argued that "The colour cinematography ..is just as boring in its conventionality as the editing. Décor and costumes are obtrusively theatrical and do not make the viewer forget for one second that they are scenery and drapery. The actors are very much in line with this. Instead of dialogues they are reciting wooden texts."

References

External links

* *
Artur-Brauner-Archive at the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt (German), containing the production files for this movie
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kampf um Rom 1968 films 1969 films 1960s historical films German historical films Italian historical films Romanian historical films German epic films Peplum films West German films Films set in ancient Rome Films set in the 6th century Films set in the Byzantine Empire Films directed by Robert Siodmak Films directed by Sergiu Nicolaescu Films directed by Andrew Marton 1960s German-language films English-language German films Films based on German novels Films released in separate parts Cultural depictions of Justinian I Cultural depictions of Theodora I Sword and sandal films Films shot at Spandau Studios 1960s Italian films 1960s German films