Spartacus (1960)

This movie has what is considered to be the best movie score ever made. Stanley Kubrick was the director, and according to the reading my youngest son has been doing, he is the director who is best known for his use of music in film.  He's an aficionado of classical music in film, and is credited with introducing music by Mozart to a new generation.  The potential downside of it is that for some people, that music is forever associated with a particular film.  In any case, the musical score for this movie is a monster, with long stretches of music without much action beyond troops marching.  It is dated in the way that epics of the era are, and a bit histrionic, but definitely worth watching if you are a film buff who wants some literacy across the 100+ years of film making.

Here is the story:  Kirk Douglas is Spartacus, an uppity Roman slave who escapes captivity and leads a rebellion that goes on for quite some time before being squelched by a revived Roman army, all of whose commanders are really despicable.   The movie has a young Tony Curtis playing a young slave who has a homosexual liaison that was cut from the first film but has been restored in the current version.  The remake reinserted it, but Sir Lawrence Olivier was dead by then--his wife, Jane Ploughman, noted that once at a party she had heard Anthony Hopkins do a dead on impression of her husband, and they used him for the scene--note he is mentioned in the special credits.  The slaves prevail for a time, and then they are crushed--there are tragic elements, but Hollywood had to pull a bit of happiness out of their hat, so it is more of a bittersweet ending.