7. Quo Vadis

Well, I love the way Peter Ustinov [playing Emperor Nero] sings and plays the harp. I love that and that it’s such a crazy story, and a real story of the fall of Rome. But Peter Ustinov especially is just so incredibly insane and then the enormous spectacle of the film itself and the music.

I noticed when I was reading about this, that the music is apparently an attempt to approximate Roman music, which we don’t have a record of, by combining Greek melodies and Jewish melodies.

Ah, and who was the composer?

Miklós Rózsa

Yeah he did a lot of great music. No I didn’t know that. Well like I said, a lot of my choices are intuitive so, I mean, I’m not surprised. There is something sort of Slavic Jewish in there; a lot of music, like Shostakovich for example, used Jewish melodies too.