Again, great costumes, very comfortably worn. The arrangement of figures within the frame, the movement of figures through and across the frame, is very capable. You can’t over-emphasize how important this kind of thing is, how central it is to the craft of film directing, however much it may derive from the stage.
The camera continues inflexible, but look at this burgeoning dynamism. A man is thrown to the lions, runs out of frame, and the lions follow him. Terrific!
There isn’t much of an orgy here, of course. We’ll have to wait for Messieurs von Stroheim and Gance to do that task proper justice. The lions are released into the precincts of this not-quite orgy. They are strapping, good looking creatures, moving right through those sets and those people. Here’s a thing that we’ve been saying, over and over again. Authentic things can upset the contrivance of the calculated film, but the disturbance is worth it.
The enactment of this drama gets quite large, quite semaphoric toward the end. It’s the historical subject, no doubt: a heightened manner for heightened material. Our tyrant is stabbed, and the action is obscured by the framing, and by the figures in the foreground. Then there’s a decapitation, which actually takes place outside of the frame, and which still registers powerfully because of the very well executed reactions of the rest of the characters. Again, we’re not all the way there, but here come the movies.