Obviously glad Marcellus won, but I think I would've held onto my sword before letting Paulus have his back after the fight. Even though Marcellus had won a fair fight, when he let Paulus have his sword back, I thought for a second that Paulus was going to do the dishonorable thing by going back on his word and killing Marcellus and then the Christians. Glad he didn't.
"The storm cannot be stopped, but it can be survived.'"
I saw part of this movie last nite, and picked up on it right around this scene. I thought it was an epic turning point, that kept you on the edge for a moment, in this old movie i missed somehow. Thankfully the description also let me know that Jesus-looking guy was in fact, a disciple, as in that scene he's seen holding a man's head in his lap.
I don't know why the Paulus guy would all of a sudden turn honorable and pick up his sword and do what Marcellus wanted. He had just ordered the village destroyed and had the defensless old man killed.
sharePaulus was a tough guy who turned into a jerk based on his perceived abuse by the Roman advancement system. He watched Marcellus get into the Emperor's favor, have Simmons as girlfriend, etc. By and by Paulus became bitter, then a bit psychotic. But what makes him ... interesting ... is that come what may, even in a sword fight he himself provoked, he still had enough personal integrity to acknowledge that Marcellus won the fight "fair and square", and to take the consequences "like a man". He was not a "cookie-cutter" villain ... AND hats off to Jeff Morrow's nuanced performance, enhancing by example all his other great character work, e.g., his gentlemanly portrayal of the bulge-headed alien "Exeter" in This Island Earth.
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