This film is an inaccurate portrayal of the fall of the Roman Empire, one of the first Italian spectacles. The film uses no close-ups at all, just the usual tableaux idea which was used by earlier filmmakers. This gives it a stagy feel, like watching a play on TV. The acting is also very stagy too: the actors wave their arms and make gestures to try to tell what is happening, but the whole film could be a bit confusing for any modern viewer who didn't know about the fall of the Roman Empire. I at least could understand what was happening because of the subtitles throughout the film.
The set-up starts with Nero hearing of a beautiful woman named Poppea so he discards his other wife Octavia and marries her. Poppea then convinces Nero to kill Octavia. When this happens word gets out and Nero is forced to set Rome on fire. Here is where their history is wrong, because after some reading on the fall of the Roman Empire I found there was indeed a fire but I didn't read anything about Nero having been behind it at all, which was totally made up. There is then a dream sequence of Nero's remorse of having supposedly burnt Rome. The film ends suddenly when Nero takes flight from the people--and according to the IMDb summary, he commits suicide!
Worth watching if you're interested in the fall of Rome or early cinema. I actually don't find it that bad of an epic, just flawed and very stagy. The tints look pretty good and the visual look of the film was very nice.