Constantine and the Cross

Worth seeing for fans of antiquity
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...

Not bad for a low-budget epic
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...

One of the more elaborate Italian epics
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...

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