The Moviegoer

"Fabiola" drags along slowly until the very end. But a rip-roaring finale in which literally hundreds of Christians are burned, tortured, and easten by lions in the Roman Coliseum makes the film worth easily three times the price of admission.

A French film with English dialogue dubbed in, "Fabiola" stars Michele Morgan, Michel Simon, and Henri Vidal. Mlle. Morgan has a terrible part and does little to improve on it. She walks sultrily through most of the script and only rarely rises even to the level of hamming.

Simon is a master at mugging, but his untimely death removes him from the scene less than halfway through. The main burden then falls on the young and robust shoulders of Henri Vidal. That is where it stays, however, for Vidal's dramatic talents are about limited to exhibiting his superb physique and cat-like agility.

But the sly prefect of Bome is in a hurry to get rid of some Christians before the newly elected emperor, Constantine, can arrive and ease their plight. The prefect herds several hundred Christians from the catacombs to violent death before a packed Coliseum. Roman soldiers and gladiators chop off their hands, string them up by their thumbs and by their toes, and burn them alive. Then they unleash a pack of hungry lions, and the stands go wild. So do the lions. So does the movie audience. There hasn't been anything like it in cinema history. If only it were in glorious Technicolor!