Fresh
Bernard Shaw's satirical comedy on Romans and Christians provides the basis for a fair film offering. Picture is a curious mixture of basic comedy and Shavian wit.
Variety Staff, Variety
Androcles and the Lion
SPECTACLE, ROMANCE, COMEDY!...as only Shaw could write it and the screen show it!
1952 · 1h 38m · Approved
Comedy
Directed by
Chester Erskine
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Androcles and the Lion
Overview
George Bernard Shaw’s breezy, delightful dramatization of this classic fable—about a Christian slave who pulls a thorn from a lion’s paw and is spared from death in the Colosseum as a result of his kind act—was written as a meditation on modern Christian values. Pascal’s final Shaw production is played broadly, with comic character actor Alan Young as the titular naïf. He’s ably supported by Jean Simmons, Victor Mature, Robert Newton, and Elsa Lanchester.
Director and cast
- Chester Erskine Director
- Victor Mature as Captain
- Jean Simmons as Lavinina
- Alan Young as Androcles
- Robert Newton as Ferrovius
- Maurice Evans as Caesar
- Elsa Lanchester as Megaera
- Reginald Gardiner as Lentulus
- Gene Lockhart as Menagerie Keeper
- Alan Mowbray as Editor of Gladiators
- Noel Willman as Spintho
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
43%
Tomatometer
Rotten
[A] pompously stagebound and unhappily cast spectacular.
Tom Milne, Time Out
Rotten
The intellectual content of the drama suffers from staging that is dull; the fantasy and drollery of it seem curiously clumsy and slow.
Bosley Crowther, New York Times
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