Epic stories portray influential characters acting under extraordinary circumstances. As we can see it happens to Spartacus in this movie, the main character is forced to act in a way they never would have imagined a moment before the incident starts the plot. As is the case with this Spartacus, the historical situation causes the reason to act. Often, epic stories combine biography and historical backgrounds. The challenge is to tell such a life within a reasonable feature length story time.
Biographical and historical movies often are told in the dramaturgical tradition of epic storytelling, which is of global tradition and one well established film genre as well. With my chapter, I want to focus on the dramaturgical aspects of epic storytelling. One of the main aspects of this analysis is to discuss Kirk Douglas’ portrayal of Spartacus as epic hero in a Hollywood context. As we know, Kirk Douglas was the main actor and producer of the film.
In the tradition of epic storytelling, the hero is allowed to struggle, to make mistakes, to readjust their action to a changing situation which he has no influence over. To tell a biographical story, the creative team must decide on scenes and situations relevant for historical and personal developments intertwined. As Hegel already defined for an epic story, the action gets initiated by an incident, not a conflict. (cf. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 2003. Die Poesie. Stuttgart: Reclam) This incident occurs from historical events or catastrophes the main character and his close family has not caused by their behaviour – in contrast to a conflict-based, hero-driven narration. But, with Spartacus, all these basic aspects of the tradition got adapted to meet Hollywood traditions and the expectations of the producers as well as the anticipated interests of the audience of that time.
With this text, I want to discuss how the movie is situated within the tradition of Hollywood epics by applying a dramaturgical tradition of epic narration, as in the Western Genre and historic biographic movies, and how it addresses the Zeitgeist through its presentation, by using aspects of implicit dramaturgy.