IC Lecture: The Last Days of Pompeii

PROVO, Utah (March 11, 2014)—With the newest adaptation of the Pompeii tragedy recently in theaters, International Cinema is featuring the classic 1913 silent Italian film by Mario Caserini, The Last Days of Pompeii. In the weekly lecture, Roger Macfarlane of the Humanities, Classics and Comparative Literature (HCCL) Department offered several reasons why this overlooked silent film deserves more attention.

It’s been 100 years since the movie premiere on August 24th, the same day of the year as the famed explosion of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, which decimated Pompeii. The film employs  an older style of filmmaking that used a stationary camera to produce a cinematic experience similar to live theater. Macfarlane noted that by today’s standards the film’s special effects may seem outdated, but for its time it boasted special effects such as the appearance of melting red film stock to represent the heat of the volcanic eruption and lightning bolts that seemed to rain down from the sky.

Macfarlane suggested one reason why Last Days is overlooked today is because of Giovanni Pastrone’s famous sword and sandal epic Cabiria that opened in theaters the following year with far more advanced special effects and surprisingly modern film techniques. Cabiria also featured an elaborate volcano eruption and the largest special effects budget in early Italian film history.

That same year, D.W. Griffith’s masterpiece The Birth of a Nation also premiered, which scholars cite as marking the beginning of modern filmmaking. The result? These more technically advanced films left films such as Last Days in their dust. However, Pastrone and Griffiths do have Last Days to thank for the longer, full-length feature film, which audiences were just starting to enjoy when Last Days was released. 

Macfarlane said he appreciates the variation of methods authors use to compose Vesuvian eruptive narratives. Issues of moralizing and pacing steer writers to make interesting choices about when to admit the volcano will erupt, who is going to be killed by the natural disaster, what caused it, how and when the villains will die. Caserini’s film may be 100 years old, but its creator’s choices can still enlighten the audience.

Complementing this week’s showing is the annual J. Reuben Clark III Lecture in Classics & Classical Tradition entitled “The Last Day of Pompeii: its artistic and cinematic reception” by Adrian Stähli of Harvard University’s Department of Classics held on Thursday, March 13th at 6pm in the HBLL auditorium.  On Friday the L. Tom Perry Special Collections Motion Picture Archive series will show the 1935 version of The Last Days of Pompeii on March 14th at 7pm in the HBLL Auditorium.

The Last Days of Pompeii will be playing at International Cinema until Saturday March 15. For listings of other International Cinema films coming this semester, please view the schedule here.

–Ami Johanson B.A. Humanities ‘14