A sweeping, intelligent film that was perhaps intended more for lovers of Hollywood epics than for historians. The Fall of the Roman Empire was the next-to-final film produced by Samuel Bronston, a latter day Cecil B. DeMille, whose previous credits included King of Kings and 55 Days at Peking. It was an attempt to recapture the box-office gold enjoyed by a previous collaboration between Bronston and director Anthony Mann, 1961's El Cid. Empire is even grander in scope and ambition (besides being an infinitely better film), but it's failure, combined with the similar fate that awaited Circus World, ruined Bronston. Ironically, Empire is far more entertaining than William Wyler's over-Oscared, much-lauded, and interminable Ben-Hur. The once-in-a-lifetime cast includes Alec Guinness, Anthony Quayle, Sophia Loren, James Mason, Omar Sharif, and Christopher Plummer (in a delightfully evil turn as the Emperor Commodus). The recreation of Rome is still the largest set ever built for a motion picture.