While Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was pulling itself together enough to finish and release BEN-HUR, the Italians, still master of the spectacle, had already released this movie. Scripted and co-directed by D'Annunzio, with with Emil Jannings playing Nero, and a real cast of, if not thousands, then hundreds shot to look like thousands, it had all the trappings of Henryk Sienkiewicz's novel on screen, with huge crowds trying to storm Nero's palace, and lions ripping apart Christians in the Coliseum.
The heartfelt religious fervor of the novel is reduced to people kissing crucifixes, the ghostly Christ on the road, and a race to save the beautiful Lillian Hall-Davis, but that's not what people came to see. They came to see Nero acting like a beast, which they do, and his immense vanity, which Jannings performs excellently. They certainly got what they came for!
The heartfelt religious fervor of the novel is reduced to people kissing crucifixes, the ghostly Christ on the road, and a race to save the beautiful Lillian Hall-Davis, but that's not what people came to see. They came to see Nero acting like a beast, which they do, and his immense vanity, which Jannings performs excellently. They certainly got what they came for!