There are many stereotypes and recurring motifs in films that depict the ancient world: gladiators and wicked emperors, virtuous heroes and fantastic mythical beasts. Studies of such characters, the inhabitants of screen antiquities, are certainly useful, but equally worthwhile is a consideration of the physical settings of these reimagined worlds. To seduce and convince a viewer with the notion that the distant past has been fully resurrected for their viewing pleasure (or indeed to challenge them with the suggestion that such resurrection is impossible), the actors need a world to inhabit – and in very many ‘classical’ films that world is predominantly an urban space. Moreover, the urban setting is no mere backdrop: it frequently contributes to the narrative by motivating key moments of dramatic action, such as arena fights, or by reinforcing characterisation, as when monumental, grandiose architecture conveys imperial greed or ambition.
If the cinematic city is as much a movie star as flesh and blood (or CGI) protagonists, then it deserves careful examination, in order to understand the full extent of the ways in which modern receptions of antiquity operate. This is the aim of the volume under discussion, an ambitious assessment of hundreds of films (and a few TV series) which locate themselves in a variety of ancient cities. Read from start to finish (though readers are probably more likely to dip in into individual chapters), and you will be on a dizzying whirlwind of a tour through Babylon, Jerusalem, Ithaca, Mycenae, Troy, Sparta, Athens, Alexandria, Carthage, Pompeii, Rome and even Atlantis, from the earliest promise of a civilisation's foundation to its ruin and replacement at the hands of barbarians. Across the thirteen essays a remarkable breadth of material is covered, arranged around the core theme of cinema's depiction of these ancient cities. A promising introductory chapter by G.M. and H. raises several important issues that have some bearing on what follows. They deftly dismantle the assumption that historical authenticity is a key criterion for analysis, and argue for the cinematic city's contribution to antiquity's wider ‘legibility’. The ancient city, they demonstrate, is an important example of how antiquity today exists more powerfully in our imaginations than in reality.
The most successful chapters are those that directly engage with this concept of the city as idea over the city as physical entity. This approach works particularly well when the physicality of the city in question (from a modern perspective) is so minimal as to be practically invisible – as with Sparta, for example. T. Blank's essay on Spartan-themed films shows how, in the absence of an established visual identity or aesthetic tradition for this city, filmmakers have more creative opportunities to make their setting convey a message. The Cold War-era The 300 Spartans (1962) ‘allegorises a call for contemporary Western unity in NATO’ (p. 74) by privileging shots of the (modern) Greek landscape (and indeed Athens) over any attempt to recreate Sparta itself; while for the more recent 300 (2006), Blank astutely points out that the most memorable feature of the cinematic city is the well into which Persian ambassadors are mercilessly pitched, a ‘structural void’ (p. 81) that neatly represents the absence of recognisable Spartan urban imagery. In a similar vein, H.’s chapter on Athens highlights the importance of seeing it as a city of men and ideas as much as it is one of (albeit more recognisable) urban structures. She also makes an important case for considering the city in its broader context; the dualism of city and countryside is an important component of a film like La battaglia di Maratona (1959), in which corrupt villains are mainly associated with the city, and virtuous heroes with the countryside. G.M.’s discussion of cinematic Carthage is persuasive and engaging, too, arguing for a close relationship between the reimagined city and a series of powerful female figures, Dido, Salammbô, Sophonisba and the wife of Hasdrubal.
It is a little disappointing, then, that not all chapters pack quite the same analytical punch. In some instances, the sheer weight of material tends to obscure the identification of important (and recurring) themes and searching analysis. Rome is as much an example of ‘city as idea’ as Sparta, despite (indeed because of) its abundant and multilayered physical presence, but the lengthy chapter on Rome struggles to keep hold of the myriad films under consideration and to organise them into a cogent argument. Fascinating examples of cinema's capacity to imagine ancient cities in unique and challenging ways – such as the displacement of ancient Rome onto the Fascist structures of Mussolini's EUR in Titus (1999) or onto modern Belgrade in Coriolanus (2011) – receive fairly brief consideration and leave the reader wishing for more. The formulaic approach in a number of chapters, which process through an array of cinematic cities and identify the variety of aesthetic traditions informing their approach, can also be repetitive and bury more profound analyses. In the case of Jerusalem, for example, it is fascinating to learn that the city carries more significance in films where the figure of Jesus Christ is marginalised (as was customary for much of cinema's history), and is hence sidelined in recent works which fully depict the Christ figure – but L. Gregoratti's observation of this emerges only at the chapter's end.
Taken as a whole, then, the collection functions well as a fairly systematic and descriptive overview of the aesthetics and production design of ancient world films, and is perhaps less effective as an analytical interrogation of modern views of the ancient city qua city. With a focus more on surface than on substance, one might wonder why other design aspects are not brought into the equation – particularly costume – but that is perhaps a subject for another volume. Readers might also wonder, with some justification, whether the format of this kind of publication can really do the subject matter justice. The illustrations, of which there are not overly many, are all black and white, often screengrabs, and while the quality of reproduction is decent enough, they are a poor substitute for the filmic reality of most of the subjects under discussion. It is obviously beyond the remit and resources of this particular volume – and indeed most (academic) publishers – to provide lavish colour plate illustrations, but the paucity of the images remains tantalising, and indeed frustrating, given that many of the films are not easily accessible. Indeed, the lengthy ekphrastic descriptions of sets necessitated by the minimal illustrations may be one reason why contributors end up with less space for analysis.
The cinematic ancient city remains a legitimate subject for study: as the editors point out in the introduction, the city is both inherently modern and inherently symbiotic with cinema, circumstances which make its appearance in reimagined antiquities so interesting. The volume as a whole may suffer from an overambitious scope, but there are many individual contributions which explore this topic with considerable success, and much of the volume is sure to be of use to reception scholars and to those with an interest in ancient urbanism and architecture more broadly.
