“You’ve always got to keep your eyes open”: Ridley Scott’s favourite scene from ‘Gladiator’
Even though he’s become synonymous with the historical epic in the years since Gladiator breathed new life into a form of cinema that had largely faded into irrelevancy, the first flirtation with the genre for Ridley Scott was far from a rousing success.
To coincide with the 500th anniversary of the ‘new world’ being discovered, the age-old twin films phenomenon reared its head to pit Scott’s 1492: Conquest of Paradise directly against John Glen’s Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, which was released just weeks apart.
It was hard to declare a winner when they both flopped at the box office and took a pasting from critics and audiences alike, but technically, Scott’s could be named the victor by default when it earned more money and was subjected to a slightly less resounding bludgeoning. That would put most people off a return to the past, but he’s never been a filmmaker famed for his shy and retiring personality.
Instead, Scott steered Gladiator to a ‘Best Picture’ win at the Academy Awards, with Russell Crowe on ‘Best Actor’-winning form in a sweeping period piece that balanced political machinations and melodrama with visceral battlefield sequences and the close-quarters combat of the gladiatorial arena.
However, none of the above factored into the director’s favourite shot in the entire movie, with his preference instead being one of its smallest, most intimate moments. “The hand on wheat,” he said to IGN of the scene that stood out the most. “The hand was on the last day print of photography in Tuscany, and I’d finished the movie and I’d gone to Tuscany to do heaven. I couldn’t possibly have dry ice with people walking in 48 frames a second, right? Can’t do that. But what we found was a wheat field.”
Coming up with the shot on the day, Scott saw “this man wading through this high corn to meet his wife and child down the slope,” and his imagination immediately sparked into life. Intently watching his movements, the filmmaker saw the mysterious man gently brush his hand across the top of the wheat, and an idea was born.
“So you’ve always got to keep your eyes open for a shot,” he remarked on his favourite Gladiator scene being completely unplanned when he turned up for work that day. “We got the Steadicam and followed the hand. That became the opening shot of the movie. So, in a funny kind of way, it becomes a symbol, a metaphor for immortality, going to heaven.”
It’s far from being the splashiest moment found across Gladiator‘s 155 minutes, but it’s certainly one of the most evocative, even if it wasn’t on the shot list when Scott and his crew pitched up to celebrate their last day of filming.
