Pompei

Forbidden love blossoms in the city of Pompeii, which until the eruption of volcano Vesuvius in 79 AD, is one of the empire's most powerful cities.

Victor and his little brother Jimmy manage to get by in an environment where their romantic misfortunes seem to be never-ending. But the arrival of Billie and her unbridled romanticism will shake both of the boys' beliefs to the core.

This seven-hour British-Italian adaptation of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1834 epic, set against the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. and previously filmed in 1935, and in 1960 was a vehicle for muscleman Steve Reeves, was trashed by the critics as the campiest of sword and sandal sagas to emerge in years. This despite its reported $19-million price tag, the nobility of its cast that includes Laurence Olivier, Siobhan McKenna and Anthony Quayle, and its rather unspectacular special effects. The central figures are Nicholas Clay as Glaucus, the noble Athenian; Olivia Hussey as the high-born Ione, his love, who is seduced by the Egyptian, Arbaces (Franco Nero), a religious fanatic; Duncan Regehr as Lydon, the champion gladiator; and Linda Purl as the blind slave Nydia, who is torn between Glaucus and Lydon.

Glaucus, a demobilized centurion returns home to Pompeii to find his father murdered by a gang of black-hooded Christian robbers that terrorizes the city and he decides to investigate the matter while the nearby volcano threatens to erupt.

On 17 October 79 AD, the city of Pompeii was buried under lava after the sudden eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Today, the mythical site has yet to reveal all its secrets. A new excavation campaign is being conducted, the most significant in 70 years and one of the major archaeological investigations of the twenty-first century. The film unveils the sumptuous frescoes and mosaics that adorned the excavated villas and uses historical reconstructions in natural settings to show, hour by hour, how the city and its inhabitants were buried under a mantle of ash.

Epic drama of Pompeii at the city’s height of glory, up to the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, this film is one of titanic proportions, recounting on the grandest scale, its untimely destruction which killed 20,000 people in a matter of hours.Pompeii was a world where men and women had slaves, where gladiators fought to the death to provide entertainment to the bloodthirsty crowds. Helpless against a succession of apocalyptic events (a great earthquake,tidal waves, thunder and lightning), the inferno continued for three days and then all was silent.

In 79 A.D., Milo, a slave turned gladiator, finds himself in a race against time to save his true love Cassia, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant who has been unwillingly betrothed to a corrupt Roman Senator. As Mount Vesuvius erupts in a torrent of blazing lava, Milo must fight his way out of the arena in order to save his beloved as the once magnificent Pompeii crumbles around him.

Pompeii 79AD, mere days before the Vesuvian eruption. Glaucus and Jone are in love with each other. Arbaces, the Egyptian High Priest, is determined to conquer Jone. Glaucus purchases Nydia, the blind and long-suffering slave. Nydia falls in love with Glaucus and asks Arbaces for his help. He gives her a potion to make Glaucus fall in love with her-- In fact, a poison which will cause violent insanity.

In Pompeii in the year 79, Lycias and Helen fall in love. Helen's guardian, the high priest of Isis, wants to separate them. To do so, he tries to make Lycias drink a love potion, but a young slave threatens to reveal everything. The high priest, unable to silence her, kills her and arranges to have Lycias accused...

Carmine Gallone and Amleto Palermi’s The Last Days of Pompeii 1926 stages in sumptuous colour tinting the epic fall of the ancient city buried by Mount Vesuvius’ eruption. Adapted from Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s love story, the film was innovative in its special effects and an early major box-office hit. A beautiful tinted restoration print was prepared using photochemical processes by Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia-Cineteca Nazionale in the mid-1990s and the premiere screening of the restoration print was held in the amphitheatre in Pompeii, followed by a screening at the major restoration festival ‘Il Cinema Ritrovato’ in Bologna in 1998.

A story of eternal romance and inevitable disaster recounting the tale of this once majestic city.

A story about one of the most famous and mysterious archaeological sites in the world.