Customer Reviews

Constantine and The Cross

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The vast majority of this movie that centers on Constantine's personal life is pure fiction. However, that is not so bad; "Gladiator" re-wrote history, too, but was nonetheless a great movie. And this movie does not fabricate history just to fabricate, but rather it does so with the objective of tying Constantine and Christianity together.

One of the more notable scenes in which historical fact comes together with a fudging of Constantine's life is the arena scene. In this segment, Constantine jumps down into a pit where Christians are maliciously being slaughtered. Historically, the feeding-the-Christians-to-the-lions motif is right on. Under the emperor Galerius (ruled 305-311 A.D., shortly before Constantine ascended to the throne), Christian persecution was at its height. While it is untrue that Constantine slew lions to save Christians, the arena scene nevertheless serves as an excellent depiction of incidents which really happened.

The really notable quality of this movie lies in its portrayal of major historical happenings. As a previous reviewer noted, Diocletian and Maximian really did abdicate the throne in 308. It is also true that his mother, Helena, was a Christian (although the details re: his relationship w/her in the movie are fictional). He did marry Fausta (although he had her and his eldest son Crispus put to death for treason in 326 - long after the time period covered in this movie). The inclusion of Constantine's "divine vision" before his battle with Maxentius is essential; perhaps one of the defining moments in the entire history of Christianity. The actual battle itself is also given accurate treatment as Maxentius' cavalry was ambushed and trapped by Constantine's forces, just as the film claims.

Now, for the bad news. I found the acting of the females in this movie quite well done, but the male actors were stilted, overly-dramatic & pretty much downright awful. The quality of the film itself also leaves quite a bit to be desired. All of the scratches and skips are amplified by the DVD picture.

All in all, this film is most definitely not for everyone. However, it is well worth the time for anyone who is interested in Roman history, world history or the history of Christianity.

I first saw "Constantine and the Cross" when I was maybe 8 years old, 34 years ago. The scene where Constantine sees the flaming cross in the sky became imbedded in my memory, and from then on I had a fascination with Roman history that led to my current career (I sell Roman coins and write historical novels for a living!). Ever since then, I've wanted to see the movie again, but to my immense frustration, it seemed to disappear completely from any TV playlists. I also could never find it on VHS videotape. Imagine my delight when a friend picked up a newly released DVD of "Constantine and the Cross" and loaned it to me! "Don't expect much," he told me. "It's pretty awful." Despite this warning, my hands were almost trembling as I slipped the disk into my new DVD player...

Well, how does it stack up 34 years after the first viewing? Suprisingly, not as badly as I would have thought. It's an Italian-American co-production starring Cornel Wilde as Constantine and a bunch of Italian sword-and-sandles stock players, made circa 1960 to cash in on the "Ben Hur" biblical epic craze. The budget was obviously pretty slim, and the cinematography, costumes and sets all have the standard Italian budget production look. Despite this, the script is suprisingly literate. I was amazed at the amount of real history the makers crammed in, resisting the temptation to "dumb down" one of the most complex and fascinating eras in history, the early 4th Century AD. At any one time, there were as many as six Emperors ruling different parts of the Empire, and the scriptwriters make a creditable stab at sorting through this confusion. My favorite was the scene where the co-Emperors Diocletian and Maximian jointly abdicate their thrones and name four new rulers--an event that actually took place pretty much as depicted!

They even had enough extras to field a pretty good size Roman army, although the battle scenes are all pretty hokey by "Spartacus" or "Braveheart" standards. Cornel Wilde gives a suprisingly nuanced performance as Constantine, starting out as an arrogant young hothead and maturing into a man bent on creating a free and just Roman Empire. The actress who plays Constantine's love interest, Fausta, is pretty luscious, and the Italian actor who plays Maxentius, the bad guy, is silkily effective (and looks pretty much like the real Maxentius, whose face is still recognizable from his coins--likewise for Wilde as Constantine). Anyway, I watched this whole film with a huge grin on my face, reliving the spark that had set me on my life's course. My only real complaint is the state of the film itself--the color is very washed out, and there are numerous scratches, blips and color blobs--this looks like a print that was scored from a High School AV closet.

I ran this film (which was called CONSTANTINE THE GREAT here in the UK)in May, 1963, when I was a cinema projectionist. At the time, Italian historical spectaculars were very much the in thing, just as spaghetti Westerns would be a few years later. At the time, I thought it was quite good and a more elaborate example of the genre and particularly liked Mario Nascimbene's score. Looked at today, however, over forty years later, I have to agree with the sentiments expressed by the above reviewer. Despite amazon.com saying the film is in black and white, it's actually in Eastmancolor and TotalScope, an Italian form of CinemaScope. Unfortunately, this video transfer is one of the worst I have ever seen of a Scope film and whoever at VCI Home Video is responsible for it should be sacked. The ratio is all wrong and the anamorphic film has been transferred to video semi-squeezed, so that all the characters look tall and thin. It hurts your eyes after a while. The 35mm copy it was transferred to video from is a badly worn original exhibition print and full of splices, especially at the beginning and end of each reel, with scratched in queu marks jumping about all over the place. Presentation is everything with a film like this. It badly needs remastering properly from a brand new print and the picture correctly stretched out to its intended ratio of 2.35:1, so that there is no more image distortion. Conversely, the sound quality is excellent.

I am unable to rate this movie, because this Mac Filmworks DVD is virtually unwatchable. The picture quality is extremely poor. The colors appear washed out, and the picture is out of focus. If you taped this off of late night TV on an old VHS recorder and then copied it several times, you would still get a better product.

Now joining the crowded field of budget DVD makers is Diamond Entertainment Corp. And like some of their ilk, the results are mixed. Which is better than most of their ilk, who are just plain lousy.

I first saw Constantine and The Cross three years ago on an EP recorded videotape released by DEC. Now with the DVD, I've noticed a few changes. First, the main titles and prologue were rife with print damage: tears, scratches, etc. It looks like they've gone back and cleaned it up by running still images of each title card over the original music. The prologue text following it looks video generated, evidenced by the black dropshadow that wasn't there in the original text. Otherwise, the DVD is about the same as the tape, with the faded color and print damage mentioned by the first reviewer. Also worth mentioning is how the movie(both DVD and VHS) is letterboxed at a ratio significantly less than the 2.35 to 1 ratio of its Totalscope process. 2 to 1 at best, and everyone is a little on the thin side, suggesting then that the anamorphic print was not fully "unsqueezed".

The technical issues aside, I must say that Constantine and The Cross is a good movie that separates itself from other Italian spectacles with an intelligent script and capable actors. The production values seem higher than most of that era, though it does suffers from lethargic and poorly staged battles like other peplum.

I'm a picky sort of person. If I see something historically incorrect in a movie then I complain - aloud. There was very little to complain about in this film. For example, Hollywood will INSIST on showing horsemen of this period using modern stirrups whereas these were not known until a bit later (horsemen on the later FEL TEMP REPARATIO coins of Antioch are shown using a rudimentary stirrup). But this film shows the riders are they were - no stirrups. Also the cuirasses of the emperors and caesars are exactly that - cuirasses (= made of LEATHER and not of Hollywood's beloved, shiny chrome which looks like it could be part of some US glam car)..
And all this rubbish which Hollywood spreads, about C. making his troops paint their shields with a chi-rho (something which is not documented anywhere in historical papers)? Not in this film, they don't.
Lots of other similar examples of historical accuracy and obviously directed or written or produced or whatever by someone who knew his onions (well, not exactly, because the Romans didn't know about onions)
Well done that man !

In CONSTANTINE AND THE CROSS director Lionello de Felice brings to the screen a period of time in Western history that is much misunderstood and even less recognized in history texts. The Roman Empire in the early 300s was a strange and unwieldy quilt of multi emperors all of whom ruled various subsets of what had once been a unified empire. There was an emperor for the Eastern provinces and another for the western. And in both there was a sort of junior emperor called a caesar. Cornell Wilde is Constantine, son of one of these caesars. His father is killed in battle, and Constantine is soon elevated to the emperorship as a result of a smashing victory over a barbarian army. The film is historically accurate in many areas, but suffers from an inexcusably poor job of transferral to DVD which includes blotches and blips aplenty. De Felice captures the historical sweep of events that must have seemed confusing even to contemporaries but due to a deft hand behind the camera never manages to lose the interest of the viewer.

Wilde begins the film as a hothead, who seems to be unwilling to heed the advice of his caesar father. As event follows event, we can see his slow maturation on several levels. As he moves to Rome to get embroiled in the power struggle that will later elevate him to emperor, Wilde becomes more astute as one who gets on the job practice as a young emperor to be. He meets and later marries Fausta, fetchingly played by Belinda Lee, who in real life died in a car accident just a few months before the film was released. Fausta is a woman who is torn between her love for Constantine and her knowledge that her brother and he must soon collide in a lethal duel for the crown. The film has several dramatic highlights. The much discussed scene of the moon morphing into a cross stands out. Further, De Felice had to stretch a tight budget so that a few hundred extras could sub for the tens of thousands that were seen in other films like Ben Hur and Spartacus. The film does not mention that in real life Constantine executed Fausta for fear that she had cuckolded him with a son from a prior marriage. The historical Constantine is mostly remembered as the first Roman emperor who made Christianity as the empire's official religion. Wilde is convincing as a ruler who slowly comes to value acknowledging a faith that places peace over mindless war. CONSTANTINE AND THE CROSS is one of those rare films that entertains even as it instructs. It succeeds well enough for one to overlook the admitted flaws. Recommended

The Roman Emperor Constantine who was responsible for making Christianity the official religion of the previously pagan Roman Empire has strangely enough been rarely the subject of movies set in Roman times. While this early 1960's Italian produced epic does play around heavily with historical fact, in particular with the details of Constantine's personal life and character, it does however make an earnest attempt to retell many of the significant historical moments in the period of Constantine's battle to become sole emperor of the crumbling Roman Empire in the 4th century A.D. For this kind of production which enjoyed great popularity in the early 1960's "Constantine and the Cross", is an elaborate entry and benefits from the presense of American actor Cornel Wilde who takes the lead roel of Constantine and does bear a good resemblance to the Emperor from the statues preserved from his time. Despite having to act many fictional events Wilde does an excellent job in the lead and manages to combine well with the Italian cast who make up all the supporting roles

I am not an expert on movies, but I do enjoy most biblical dramas. A long time ago, I recorded this movie off TV; (not a very good recording), so I was very thrilled to find that it is availlable on DVD. When it arrived in the mail, I sat down to watch it right away. I was surprised at the poor quality of this reproduction. The colours are kind of pale and keep fading in it out. However, I did enjoy the story and it is still watchable. Hopefully, some day they will release a better reproduction of this movie. Be aware of low priced DVD's, I will be in the future.

Most of the movie centers around political intrigue between Constantine and those in Rome who want to usurp his power and prestige. There is a good amount of Roman battle scenes (Civil war). A very small part of the movie is also taken up fighting the barbarians.

However, it is a good example of just what Christian Martyrs by the tens of thousands had to endure (death) before Constantine came on the scene. Some here say that it is not factual. Yet evidence from antiquity is strong that Constantine did have a conversion due to divine intervention. He was alone among emperors to fight for religious freedom. Constantine did not convert immediately after seeing the cross in the sky. But the stage was set. His mother (Helena/to Catholics: St Helena) is portrayed very well in this movie.

In this movie, I was glad to see that we see in the Christians of the time, a sincere, unwavering love for Christ. How else could they go so willingly to their deaths.

At such a very small price for this fully restored and digitally enhanced film, you just can't go wrong.