Editing Quo Vadis (1951 film) (section)

===Filming===
Produced for $7 million, it was the most expensive film ever made at the time. It became MGM's largest grosser since ''[[Gone with the Wind (film)|Gone with the Wind]]'' (1939). Filmed at the sprawling Cinecitta Studios that had been opened by [[Benito Mussolini]] in 1937 as part of the dictator's master plan to make Rome the pre-eminent world capital. (Mussolini's son [[Vittorio Mussolini]] and Hollywood producer [[Hal Roach]] negotiated to form the R.A.M. ["Roach and Mussolini"] Corporation later in 1937, which was ultimately aborted. This business alliance with the Fascist state horrified 1930s Hollywood moguls and ultimately led to Roach defecting from his MGM distribution deal to [[United Artists]] in 1938.)<ref name="hollywoodreporter/167559">{{cite news |last1=Higgins |first1=Bill |title=BACKLOT: Long before Gadhafi, Mussolini tried to muscle into the movies. |url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/80-years-hollywood-reporter-167559/ |access-date=11 August 2024 |work=[[The Hollywood Reporter]] |date=16 March 2011 |quote=80 Years of The Hollywood Reporter}}</ref>

Filming in postwar Italy offered American studios immense facilities and cheap Italian labor and extras, of which thousands were required. Hollywood returned to Cinecitta often, producing many of its biggest spectacles there, including ''[[Helen of Troy (film)|Helen of Troy]]'' (1956), ''[[Ben-Hur (1959 film)|Ben-Hur]]'' (1959), and ''[[Cleopatra (1963 film)|Cleopatra]]'' (1963), with the latter two dwarfing ''Quo Vadis'' in scale. The studio would later be used by many Italian producers and directors, including [[Federico Fellini]]. The first use of the phrase "[[Hollywood on the Tiber]]", which has come to refer to a golden era of American [[runaway film production]] in Italy, was as the title of a ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' article in the issue dated June 26, 1950, published while ''Quo Vadis'' was being shot in Rome.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Wrigley|first1=Richard|title=Cinematic Rome|date=2008|publisher=Troubador|isbn=978-1-906510-28-2|location=Leicester|page=52}}</ref>

Composer Miklós Rózsa said that he wrote most of his score at the Culver City studios while the film was being shot in Italy:

<blockquote>[The] rushes were being sent back to Hollywood for cutting at the same time as they were being cut back in Rome ... I set to work so that at least something was ready, even if it had to be modified later. I worked with the chief supervising editor, [[Margaret Booth]], whose technical knowledge is incomparable ... Finally, the Rome contingent arrived home with their version. It wasn't so very different from the one that Margaret had put together, and there were no insuperable problems. Sam Zimbalist was amazed and delighted that I had all the music ready in three weeks, thanks to the work Margaret and I had already done.<ref name="Roz">Miklos Rozsa: ''Double Life'' (The Baton Press • Tunbridge Wells, UK • 1982) pp144-155/p216.</ref></blockquote>

Ten Italian locations were used in the film. With the exception of the [[Appian Way|Via Appia]],<ref name="Bro" /> most of these have not been identified, but the final stage of the chariot chase was filmed along the 2000-year-old ''Viale dei Cipressi'' (Avenue of Cypresses) near the village [[Bolgheri]]. This landmark in [[Province of Livorno|Livorno Province, Tuscany]], is easily recognizable.<ref>"The cypress tree-lined road of Bolgheri" on YouTube</ref>

In the summer of 1950, when ''Quo Vadis'' was in production, Rome was in the grip of an intense heatwave, as Peter Ustinov recalled: "Rome was in the throes of [[Holy Year]], and bursting with pilgrims. It was also one of the hottest summers on record."<ref name="Ust" /> The heat affected not only the cast and crew, but also the lions. Mervyn LeRoy recalled that because of the heat, the lions were reluctant to enter the arena.<ref name="LeRoy" />

Due to equipment shortages in Italy, MGM had to import a reported two hundred tons of generators, lights and other electrical equipment from [[Culver City]].<ref>Steinhart, Daniel. (2019). ''Runaway Hollywood: Internationalizing Postwar Production and Location Shooting''. University of California Press. p. 90. {{ISBN|978-0-52-029864-4}}.</ref>
The film holds the record for the most costumes used in one movie: 32,000.<ref name="Bro" />

At one point in the film, Nero shows his court a scale model illustrating his plans for the rebuilding of Rome as a new city to be called Neropolis. Studio publicity claimed that this was the model of Ancient Rome housed in the [[Museum of Roman Civilization]] and that it had been borrowed from the Italian government.<ref name="Bro">''M-G-M presents Quo Vadis'' (original film brochure • 20 pages, including covers) [ 1951 ]</ref> (This was originally constructed by Mussolini's government for a 1937 exhibition of Roman architecture.)<ref>{{cite book|last1=Wyke|first1=Maria|title=Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema, and History|date=1997|publisher=Routledge|location=New York|isbn=978-0-415-90614-2|page=140|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4vIHMdmVwtEC&q=%22Quo%20Vadis%22%20mostra&pg=PA140|access-date=5 April 2012|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Kelly|first1=Christopher|title=The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction |date=2006|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|isbn=978-0-19-280391-7|page=128|edition=1st|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ixUePMNx8BkC&q=%22Quo%20Vadis%22%20mostra&pg=PA128|access-date=5 April 2012|language=en}}</ref> However, the museum model is of fourth-century Rome, not of first-century Rome as it would have looked when rebuilt after the Great Fire of AD 64. The screen model looks nothing like the museum model. (It was almost certainly constructed especially for the film – perhaps by its special effects model-maker, [[Donald Jahraus]].)

[[Anthony Mann]] worked on the film as an uncredited second-unit director.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Boxwell |first=David |title=Mann, Anthony – Senses of Cinema |url=https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2003/great-directors/mann_anthony/ |access-date=17 March 2022 |language=en-US}}</ref> He spent 24 nights (four working weeks) on the Cinecitta backlot shooting scenes for the Burning of Rome sequence. However, he was not the co-director of the film, as some of his admirers have claimed.<ref>Jeanine Basinger: ''Anthony Mann'' (Wesleyan University Press • Middletown, Conn • 1979/2007) p. 11</ref> The soundstage scenes for the same sequence were directed by Mervyn LeRoy.<ref name="Ust" />