Watch Pompeii Online The historical fable at the Center Theatre borrows its title from Bulwer-Lytton, together with such items of large-scale disaster as might contribute to the spectacle of Pompeii’s flaming end. Otherwise it tells an entertaining fiction of its own, introducing such biblical figures as Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate for the sake of pointing an instructive moral on the greedy success story of Preston Foster, an ambitious gladiator. History affirms that Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii in 79 A. D., which would make Mr. Foster quite an ancient gaffer and his adopted son a romantic juvenile of advanced years. In an effort to speed up their tale the authors bring the catastrophic date forward about thirty years, a kindness for which we should be grateful since “The Last Days of Pompeii” is a shade too long for complete comfort.
Watch Pompeii Online Although it is persuasively staged and excitingly narrated, the work is rather more absorbing in its straightforward melodrama than in the later phases when the defiant gladiator is getting religion. Marcus, the protagonist, is a lowly blacksmith of Pompeii who abhors the murderous sports of the arena until his wife and child are killed under the chariot wheels of a Roman nobleman. Embittered after that tragedy, he decides that only wealth matters in this world, and he accumulates a respectable pile, first by his gladiatorial prowess, and later by engaging in furtive transactions in Judea with the connivance of Pontius Pilate. Thereafter he rises to power in Pompeii by sending slaves and captives into the arena to be slaughtered for the amusement of the crowd. He reforms, though, as the city is crashing about his ears, and in the moment before his death sees the misty figure of Christ.
Watch Pompeii Online In its discussion of Pilata the film rejects the ironical theory of Anatole France which holds that the procurator of Judea in his later years had difficulty in recalling the Jew whom he had reluctantly given over to the mob. On the contrary, it declares that Pilate was forever haunted by the memory of the innocent and kindly man who died on Calvary. In one of the film’s most effective scenes the stricken procurator tells Marcus’s idealistic son about the Galilean and concludes his recital with the cold remark, “I crucified Him.” In discussing these matters the picture always remains in good taste despite its frankly fictional point of view.
Watch Pompeii Online This is, in fact, an ably managed historical work up to the time when it begins to bludgeon the moral and to drag in a foolish little romance between the ex-gladiator’s adopted son and one of the slaves whom he is bent on rescuing from the arena. Mr. Foster dominates the photoplay as the self-made man and performs his rôle with thoroughness and skill. But the hero of the occasion is Basil Rathbone, whose Pilate is a fascinating aristocrat, scornful in his hauteur and sly in his reasoning. Young David Holt is excellent as the boyish edition of the dreamy adopted son and John Wood, who seems to be a newcomer, reveals an engaging sincerity as the grown-up version of the idealist.
