This mini-series, finally out on DVD, has a lot going for it. Director Boris Sagal's thirty year career in television went back to the earliest days of commercial broadcasting. Some affecting melodies are contributed by Jerry Goldsmith, another Hollywood veteran whose pen has given us dozens of memorable movie themes. But most unique is the script: literate, with touches of real erudition. Nice to be reminded what network television was like before the Great Dumbdown.
Jewish Peter Strauss from Albany, NY gives a sincere performance as the leader of the Zealots. Unfortunately he comes off as too sensitive, too Ivy League, to be credible as a man who could command 900 people to commit suicide.
Tall, exotic Barbara Carrera is captivating as Sheva, the Roman general's Jewish concubine--her indefinable accent so appealing. It's emphasized that she is from sophisticated Alexandria and has nothing in common with the Jewish defenders of Masada, who are a scruffy collection of ultra-orthodox fanatics and out-and-out thugs. Yet there is no chemistry between her and O'Toole. It is as if each found the other physically repellent. Granted, Silva wanted to behave toward her in a civilized, gentlemanly way--as is proper for a Roman patrician. But that is a virtue here taken too far. He is so dispassionate that any sense of male and female is lacking. Before him is a young and beautiful woman, his for the taking, yet all he does is talk, and talk, and talk.
She, too seems to have a submitting problem--at least so far as Silva is concerned. The more they come to know each other, the colder she acts! It's no surprise that in the end Sheva chooses to return to the same shadowy world from which she came.
Jewish Peter Strauss from Albany, NY gives a sincere performance as the leader of the Zealots. Unfortunately he comes off as too sensitive, too Ivy League, to be credible as a man who could command 900 people to commit suicide.
Tall, exotic Barbara Carrera is captivating as Sheva, the Roman general's Jewish concubine--her indefinable accent so appealing. It's emphasized that she is from sophisticated Alexandria and has nothing in common with the Jewish defenders of Masada, who are a scruffy collection of ultra-orthodox fanatics and out-and-out thugs. Yet there is no chemistry between her and O'Toole. It is as if each found the other physically repellent. Granted, Silva wanted to behave toward her in a civilized, gentlemanly way--as is proper for a Roman patrician. But that is a virtue here taken too far. He is so dispassionate that any sense of male and female is lacking. Before him is a young and beautiful woman, his for the taking, yet all he does is talk, and talk, and talk.
She, too seems to have a submitting problem--at least so far as Silva is concerned. The more they come to know each other, the colder she acts! It's no surprise that in the end Sheva chooses to return to the same shadowy world from which she came.