When Robert Siodmak returned to Germany after his very successful stint in Hollywood during and after the war, he scored some more successes, but also had a share of problematic pictures. In 1968 he took on his last project, a two-part epic called KAMPF UM ROM, a toga-filled epic “in Ultrascope and Eastmancolor, with actors from ten different nations and a ‘colossal’ budget of ten million Deutschemarks.”
It was not a happy shoot.
Interviewed by a journalist, Siodmak was asked the standard press-pack question, “Why did you choose to make this project?”
Reply: “That’s a question I ask myself every morning.”
Quotes from the magisterial study Robert Siodmak, by Deborah Lazaroff Alpi.
