Free Listening to Stanley Kubrick by Christine Lee Gengaro Page B

comes to a close—with Galino’s death—the music surges to a crescendo. Drums and cymbals accompany the entrance of Spartacus and Draba to the arena. North scored the music for the opening of the actual fight with percussion, harp, and woodwinds. The theme is complex and integrates snare rolls with the previous music North associated with the slaves. After the fight, in which Draba does not kill Spartacus, whom he has bested, the music takes a brief pause. It returns as the gladiators file back to their quarters and pass Draba’s corpse, which is hanging upside down as a warning to the others (Draba had attacked Crassus and his friends rather than kill Spartacus; Crassus stabbed him). The musical cue here is appropriately called “Brooding,” 27 as Kubrick treats us to close-ups of individual characters, each seeming pensive.
    The music that accompanies the gladiators’ rebellion has low, fast-moving notes played by the strings. Once most of the gladiators begin to escape, there is more percussion and brass. Within this cue, the fanfare associated with Spartacus can be heard. As the slaves run from the compound, the music becomes triumphant, and this music bleeds over into the title card that announces we are now in Rome. The scenes in the Senate are unscored; music might have been too much for these dialogue-heavy scenes. The next cue was written for Crassus’s arrival at his home. 28 It is a short cue, similar in spirit to the cue that heralded the character’s first appearance. A scene of the slaves burning houses and looting is accompanied by drums.
    Spartacus returns to the abandoned gladiator school. As he enters his old cell, we hear Varinia’s theme. Spartacus then goes out to see the other slaves, who are watching two older men, patricians, fight for their enjoyment. Unwilling to watch such a spectacle, Spartacus puts forth the idea that the slaves should travel to the coast and escape the country by sea. Their journey is accompanied by North’s triumphant music from the overture. At one point, a group of escaped slaves meets up with Spartacus’s group, and one of them is Varinia; her theme appears just as Spartacus realizes she’s there. North combines her music with the music of the gladiators, almost as if Spartacus’s feelings are torn between his duty to his men and his desire to be with Varinia. Varinia’s theme takes over when Spartacus lets the men go on without him to reunite with Varinia. As they travel on horseback across a ridge in front of an orange sky, Varinia’s theme is played by the trumpets, no longer relegated to a quiet solo. Varinia and Spartacus are free and in love, and the music is suitably joyful as they ride away.
    The next musical cue is the one that Kubrick described as “exotic shimmering music,” and it accompanies the scene between Crassus and his young Sicilian slave, Antoninus. This scene was cut from the film because of its suggestion of Crassus’s bisexuality. 29 Crassus, who is being washed by Antoninus in a large bathtub, attempts to seduce Antoninus by engaging him in a metaphorical discussion about oysters and snails. In the intervening years since Spartacus was released in 1960, the dialogue track was lost, so the scene was re-dubbed in 1991 for the restored edition of the film. Tony Curtis, who had portrayed Antoninus in the film, dubbed in Antoninus’s lines, while Anthony Hopkins—who knew and worked with Laurence Olivier—provided Crassus’s dialogue (Olivier died in 1989). North achieved a shimmering effect in the score by using innovative instrumentation. Henderson lists the instruments in this cue as: vibraphone, marimba, crotales, tuned bongos, Novachord, guitar, piano, harp, lute, and Chinese bells. 30
    The following scene shows Spartacus on horseback touring his camp. This music has as shifting metrical pulse, which seems to propel it forward. It is a buoyant cue, full of hope and promise. The scene shows many aspects of the camp, the men