Spartacus is notorious for being the only Kubrick film that the director ever disowned on account of what he deemed an insufficient level of creative control. Upon release, the Universal Studios mega-production received more attention for its unprecedented price tag (12 million) and for breaking the Hollywood Blacklist (by crediting screenwriter Dalton Trumbo) than for any of Kubrick’s contributions. At first glance, the film even seems to downplay the director’s personal stamp. A grandiose historical epic with an uncomplicated hero (producer-star Kirk Douglas’ titular slave-turned-revolutionary), an earnest love story and an emphasis on broad emotions over moral ambiguity, it nonetheless remains one of the most jaw-dropping productions to emerge out of Hollywood’s mid-century run of fantastically scaled 70mm event films. Much of this has to do with Kubrick’s painterly landscape photography and his adept handling of the large-scale battle sequences, both of which anticipate Barry Lyndon.