SOURCE: “The Fall & Rise of Spartacus,” in Film Comment, Vol. 27, No. 2, March-April, 1991, pp. 57-63.

In the following essay, Sheehan relates some of the controversial stories surrounding the filming and release of Kubrick's Spartacus.

Over the years, the stories surrounding the making of Spartacus have sometimes threatened to eclipse the movie itself. To be sure, this production exceeded the quota for behind-the-scenes complications and contrarieties: initial director Anthony Mann dismissed early in the filming by producer-star Kirk Douglas; ego-bruising battles between Douglas and replacement director Stanley Kubrick; maneuvering by screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and the producers to ensure Trumbo his first open credit since his blacklisting; rumblings of dissatisfaction from novelist Howard Fast (another blacklist victim, who had had to publish his ultimately bestselling novel himself) over Trumbo's screenplay; and so forth and so on.

But as the saga of offscreen squabbling grew in dimension over time, the film itself...