All the Money in the World|The Colosseum — Arriving at the Centre of the Empire

A car moves through Rome at night. The younger children are asleep across the back seat. Someone looks out and there it is, floodlit and enormous, and the film lets the shot run a beat longer than it needs to. The Getty family have come to Rome to live near a grandfather who is buying up the ancient world by the crate, and Scott plants the Colosseum in the frame like a price tag.

The building is the argument the whole movie is having. J. Paul Getty spent his fortune on antiquity while refusing to spend it on his own grandson, and the Flavian Amphitheatre is the largest surviving object of the civilisation he was collecting — begun by Vespasian around AD 72, opened by Titus in 80, 50,000 seats, and no single owner since the emperors. Nothing on the market could match it. That is the joke the composition makes without a word of dialogue.

Come at night to see what the film saw. The lighting comes on after dusk and the north side, the one with the outer wall still standing four storeys high, is the face used in the movie. Walk the loop along Via Celio Vibenna toward the Arch of Constantine and the crowds thin out fast.

Daytime entry is timed-ticket only. The night view from the pavement costs nothing and is the better shot.