Stanley Kubrick always considered Spartacus his least personal film, but this combat scene allowed him to express a double violence: that which the rich Romans inflicted on gladiators by treating themselves to a fight to the death, and that of the combat between gladiators fighting for their lives.
The meticulously studied framings serve these two points of view in which priority is given to the characters. Stanley Kubrick exploits the wide screen (Super Technirama 70) for arranging in the same shot the combatants on the ground in the arena, the spectators in the stands, the patricians in the dress circle and Varinia and Batiatus on either side. The filmmaker plays with the colours of the clothing: the slaves blend in with the earth and wood of the arena whereas the Romans are distinguished by their brightly coloured costumes, each one contrasting sharply with the uniformly blue sky.
The combat between the Ethiopian Draba and the Thracian Spartacus lasts only three minutes. The camera alternatively adopts the dominant, static point of view of the Romans (high-angle shot) and an opposite point of view near the gladiators in motion (low-angle shot). The latter start from the level of the sand in the arena, the noise of the weapons, the blows and the sweat of the combatants with, in the distance, the gaze of the Romans. The violence is tactile and carnal. Sometimes the camera rises above the Romans profiting from the spectacle and for whom the duel is only a game. The inattentive men talk politics, whereas the women, merciless for the combatants, comment on the fight. The violence is all the crueller, even though it seems to be kept at a distance.