SOURCE: “Roman Games,” in Sight and Sound, Vol. 1, No. 4, August, 1991, pp. 22-5.

In the following essay, Sheehan determines Kubrick's role in the creation of the film Spartacus.

“In Spartacus I tried with only limited success to make the film as real as possible but I was up against a pretty dumb script which was rarely faithful to what is known about Spartacus. History tells us he twice led his victorious slave army to the northern borders of Italy, and could quite easily have gotten out of the country. But he didn't, and instead he led his army back to pillage Roman cities. What the reasons were for this would have been the most interesting question the film might have pondered … If I ever needed any convincing of the limits of persuasion a director can have on a film where someone else is the producer and he is merely...