Hacker Cinema
I, Claudius
1976 · TV series · 55 min episodes · 1 season
Created by Martin Lisemore, Herbert Wise, Jack Pulman
Acclaimed blackly comic historical drama series. Set amidst a web of power, corruption and lies, it chronicles the reigns of the Roman emperors - Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and finally Claudius.
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I just finished reading “I, Claudius” and “Cladius the God” this month. Didn’t know there was a series / movie, would you recommend it?
(I highly recommend the books FWIW, although I prefer the more modern writing style of the Cicero trilogy)
Mind if I pick your brain? I enjoy compelling era pieces, though some fantasy or sci-fi is also great. I dislike identity politics and infantilizing exposition. By contrast I enjoy subtle metaphor and stories with nuance.
My favorite films would include Das Boot, I Claudius, and Seventeen Moments of Spring. For something more contemporary, I also enjoyed The Expanse. Any recommendations? Films or series in any language are okay.
But implied translation into the language of the audience is a long-standing convention. We don't watch Ben Hur or Spartacus or I, Claudius and wonder why the Romans are all speaking English instead of Classical Latin.
But it might jar to hear a group of aliens natively speaking Dutch, for example. (Unless it's a Dutch film for a Dutch audience, of course, in which case it might equally jar to hear them speaking English.)
The production values of this Soviet Lord of the Rings strike me as quite similar to I, Claudius. And it's worth noting that the televised low-budget stage play production values of I, Claudius notwithstanding, it's one of the best television shows ever made.
For me, "Fellini Satyricon" is his most remarkable film, even if not his greatest and certainly not his most popular. No film about the Roman world has conveyed so graphically what must have been the actual, enormous strangeness of classical times. It's a disturbing film, both a picaresque sex comedy and a nightmare of everyday superstition and casual violence.
In comparison, the most famous works of cinema about ancient Rome -- Ben-Hur, Spartacus, I Claudius, and so forth -- are laughably sanitized and similar to our own world, which is the common failing of most historical drama of course. Fellini ditched the convention by, among other things, staying extremely faithful to the original source. The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter is a jolting and bizarre read. A lot of the humor and wordplay, I'm told, is lost in translation.
I recommend the TV series "I Claudius". Of course, you can read it as books as well, but I enjoyed the series. The books I have not read. Of course, it only covers a limited period of Roman history, but one that is quite famous.
You should look him up from about ten years prior to TNG. He was in several episodes of I, Claudius back in 1976, thereabouts, and aside from the hair, he STILL didn't look much different.
> Murphy Brown
Great catch. I think Sorkin followed that model in Sports Night, probably trying to emulate MB's feeling of crashing into a busy production room. Can't think of an earlier one though.
I, Claudius also just had a title card, a snake crawling across a mosiac, but it somehow dragged that out for a full thirty seconds according to YouTube, so I'm not sure that really counts.
In film apparently Lucas got in trouble for not crediting the director in his title-only opening for Star Wars, leading him to resign from the guild. The practice became more common though, Clint Eastwood has done title-only openings for everything he's made.
Brief history of the length of opening credits sequences here, with Family Matters as one of the most excessive examples: https://theweek.com/articles/632836/brief-history-tv-shows-opening-credit-sequences
Even that misses Murphy Brown though, so now I'm not sure anyone's thoroughly done the research. Where's Abed when you need him?
I knew that ancient architecture was usually vividly painted, but it didn't occur to me that the statues might be as well. The interesting thing is how nowadays we model buildings and statues after our notion of what classical art looked like, but the models were never intended to look like that. It's almost cargo-cultish, in its own way. Of course, the non-color elements like the shapes and the proportions still stand through, and those are definitely worthy of study. But painting such a sculpture or building like this would probably be outright offensive to some people.
The color-restored versions somehow look less... impressive with the colors on, but that could be just because I'm used to thinking of the colorless versions as more regal. On the other hand, black-and-white photographs look more artistic as well, so it could be something about the lack of color itself.
If you want to see how ancient classical buildings looked when they were in use, check out the old British TV series "I, Claudius." It's strange to see everything so bright and garish, but it's accurate in spirit, if not in detail.