Nero. Or the Fall of Rome.

Nero, or the Fall of Rome (1909)

** (out of 4)

The crazed Nero brings Rome down when he announces he's leaving his wife for a new woman. Historic changes are certainly made here but the biggest problem is that the film is downright boring and rather hard to get through. The one reason to watch it is for the dream sequence of Rome burning as well as the set design, which is very nice. The laughs are pretty stale though.

Policeman's Little Run, The (1907)

*** (out of 4)

A policeman sees a dog steal a piece of meat from a grocery so he gives chase and is soon joined by other police. An early slapstick comedy, this film doesn't have too many laughs but it's still quite entertaining and contains some nice effects including one where the dog and police climb up the side of a building. The twist where the dog starts chasing the police is nicely done.

This might be one of the earliest attempts to make a historical spectacle on film, and it's fairly interesting even though it's not really that good. It offers a look at the mad emperor Nero, with some settings and props that are rather lavish for its era. The sets and the characterization of Nero ring mostly true. The same cannot be said for the story; you don't have to know all that much about Roman history to realize that they took some liberties with historical events. At times it is also surprisingly slow. It's mostly worth watching to take a look at some of the means they used in trying to recreate the world of ancient Rome on film.

An early historical spectacle, Nerone is a forerunner of the likes of Cabiria which would five years later take the film world by storm. Today, it might look stagey, with some incredibly over-the-top acting at times, but it holds the interest more for what it signifies than the factually inaccurate story it tells. The costume and set design are far superior to most other contemporary films, giving at least some impression that the events we watch on-screen are actually unfolding in Ancient Rome rather than in a Turin film studio.

As you'd expect, Nero's a bit of a cad. He ditches his slightly dumpy wife Octavia when the younger Poppea catches his eye without a second thought, and then allows himself to be talked into killing the ex to clear the way for Poppea to become his new empress. So what we might possibly have here, in the form of Poppea, is cinema's first femme fatale - I certainly can't think of an earlier one.

As others have mentioned, the film is an uneasy mix of hokum punctuated by brief moments of artistic highlights. I certainly didn't find it as dull as some others seem to have done but, having said that, can see how this would chiefly be of interest to film historians and hopelessly completist film buffs like me...

Remarkable that five years from this film, "Nero", that "Cabiria", with its outstanding sets, would be released. In just two years, the production values in "Nero" were made dated by those of "L'Inferno". Additionally, Pathé's Film d'Art had already set the standard in production values for historical spectacles higher than that in "Nero" with the prior year's release of "The Assassination of the Duke de Guise". Yet, Italy's film industry had only recently begun. Rapidly, the national cinema led the world in historical and literary spectacles, longer films and grand set design. Thus, this film is historically noteworthy for being an early entry to the Italian spectacle—but it's not of much interest otherwise.

"Nero" contains the dated tableaux structure, with title cards preceding and describing static shot-scenes, and is theatrical as a result. The sets, which are just cardboard and backdrops, are also no better than what could be found on the stage. For what they are, though, they're not bad. Although the story is set in Ancient Rome, the sets are all Renaissance with their linear perspective. The positioning of the extras also adds to the deep staging and the illusion of a kind of artificial deep focus. If I recall correctly, the same tricks were used in "The Last Days of Pompeii", released four years later by the same company. In short, the sets here are better than most from the time, but are, nevertheless, artificial, theatrical and dated.

Another effect of note in this film is the vision scene. The special effect, however, is simply a superimposition (or double exposure), which had been used in films for over a decade even by then and in photography for longer than that. The real roots for the composition of these vision scenes in early films belongs to magic lantern slides.

This short version of the story of the Roman Emperor Nero suffers from being tediously slow - not a failing of every primitive silent but it certainly is of this one.

Rolling in at 14 minutes it seems much longer and doesn't keep to historical fact for very long. Some bits are interesting though - Nero has visions because of guilt (which echo the visitations to the king in Shakespeare's Richard III to some extent). Now and again a performance comes to life but not that often.

An interesting curio, especially when you watch early attempts to create a believable setting to make the viewer think they are really watching something set in Rome. An Italian production which is interesting in fits and starts.