Major Dundee (1965)

Even Sam Peckinpah fans are rather divided over the merits of his 1965 western Major Dundee. It was a commercial flop and critics at the time were uncomplimentary. The legend became established that the movie would have been a masterpiece had it not been for studio interference although there is a dissenting view that Peckinpah found himself hopelessly out of his depth directing his first big-budget film and was himself responsible for its flaws. And it does have flaws.

In the later stages of the Civil War a US Cavalry troop and numerous civilians are massacred by Apaches led by Sierra Charriba (Michael Pate). Three young boys are taken away by the Apaches. In accordance with tribal customs they will be reared as Apache warriors.

Major Amos Dundee (Charlton Heston) is in charge of a military prison. He is determined to rescue the boys and take revenge on Sierra Charriba. He will need a much larger force than the handful of men at his disposal. He raises a private army composed of cowboys, thieves and drunks. What he really needs are more real soldiers. Confederate prisoners would be ideal and he has lots of those but they are not going to join him without their commander, Captain Benjamin Tyreen (Richard Harris). That’s awkward because Dundee is just about to hang Tyreen.

Dundee and Tyreen were once friends. Tyreen blames Dundee for getting him cashiered from the regular army and Dundee considers Tyreen to be a traitor. Eventually Dundee’s private army is assembled, including the Confederate prisoners under Tyreen.

Dundee pursues Sierra Charriba deep into Mexico. Of course he has no authority to enter Mexico. Things start to go wrong. Heavy losses are suffered in an ambush. And most of their supplies are lost.

Dundee’s command is now short of almost everything. But there are French troops stationed in Mexico. Why not steal what they need from the French? This is obviously a crazy idea but the whole mission is getting increasingly crazy and Dundee is so obsessed that he’s willing to do anything rather than give up the whole mad scheme.

Dundee’s command is increasingly torn by dissension. The loyalty of the Confederate prisoners was dubious right from the start and it’s getting steadily more dubious. And Major Dundee is starting to unravel as well.

The real focus of the film is on Dundee’s obsession and on the uneasy relationship between Dundee and Tyreen. Both men have tangled motivations that are not entirely rational. Both men are to some extent deluded about themselves.

Tyreen sees himself as a southern gentleman but as Dundee points out to him he’s fighting a war on behalf of rich plantation owners but he doesn’t belong to that privileged class. He doesn’t own a plantation and he never will. His loyalty to the South is based on delusions. And Tyreen knows that he is fighting for a lost cause (the story begins in November 1864 by which time the South’s prospects were very grim indeed).

Dundee is driven by ambition and by dreams of glory. His plan to track down Sierra Charriba is unrealistic. He lacks the necessary resources and the mission (which was from the start a personal project with no official backing) is beyond his abilities. Dundee possesses some of the qualities of a good commander. He is prepared to make tough decisions and stand by them. He is energetic. His strategic and tactical abilities are however not as well developed as he thinks. Turning his motley command into an efficient reliable fighting force would require outstanding qualities as a leader and an ability to inspire loyalty which he doesn’t quite possess. He never does solve the problem of inspiring the necessary loyalty on the part of the Confederate prisoners. Dundee just isn’t the hero and military genius of his own fantasies. He’s ludicrously out of his depth and he makes terrible mistakes and he insists on pressing on regardless. He’s an extraordinary man but he’s a failure.

Charlton Heston gives one of his finest performances as the arrogant deluded obsessive Dundee. Richard Harris is excellent as the proud but equally deluded Tyreen. James Coburn as the scout Samuel Potts and Jim Hutton as the prim do-it-by-the-book Lieutenant Graham also give fine performances with Hutton being especially impressive.

Both Dundee and Tyreen are deeply conflicted characters. Their internal conflicts mirror the conflicts within the command.

This is certainly a flawed movie and most of its flaws were the result of two unfortunate decisions by Peckinpah. Firstly, due to his inexperience at making really large-scale productions, the locations he picked were widely scattered which led to logistical nightmares, chewed up unnecessary time and money and made the shoot more difficult and more exhausting than it needed to be. This exacerbated the other mistake, which was to begin shooting without a completed script. Peckinpah hoped to be able to complete the script on the fly but inevitably the movie ended up losing direction and focus.

There was also the studio’s insistence on having a romantic sub-plot. That sub-plot feels wrong and out of place and just makes an overlong movie even longer.

The first half of the movie is great. It totally falls apart in the second half. There are still superb moments in the second half. The fact that Dundee’s command ends up fighting a full-scale battle against the French adds a pleasingly crazed touch.

Visually it’s brilliant at times and it has a grittiness and grunginess that hadn’t really been seen before in westerns.

That legend that the movie would have been a masterpiece without the interference of the studio and producer Jerry Bresler seems to be just that - a legend. It seems more likely that Peckinpah, like Major Dundee, lost his grip as a result of inexperience and excessive ambition.

Major Dundee might be a failure but it’s an interesting and strangely impressive failure. It’s worth seeing in spite of its huge flaws.

Sony's DVD release offers the original extended cut of the movie.

Secret of the Incas (1954)

Secret of the Incas is a 1954 adventure movie from Paramount starring Charlton Heston. The movie was shot widescreen in Technicolor with some location shooting in Peru and looks spectacular and exotic. The subject is the search for a fabulous Inca treasure, lost for four hundred years. It’s a large gold starburst studded with countless precious stones.

The resemblance between this movie and the Indiana Jones movies is no accident. Secret of the Incas was a major inspiration for the Indiana Jones movies and Heston’s performance most definitely influenced Harrison Ford’s later performances. The whole look of Indiana Jones was lifted directly from Secret of the Incas.

Heston plays Harry Steele. Harry makes his living as a tour guide and taxi operator in the Peruvian city of Cuzco, high in the Andes. He makes out OK financially but he hopes to do much better. He’s not overly worried if he makes his fortune in a strictly honest way. Money is money and Harry likes money. Harry has an interest in archaeology although that interest is focused entirely on the financial rewards.

Harry might have stumbled onto something big. He has found a small piece of a larger stone carving. Put the two pieces together and you have the secret of the location of that Inca starburst.

What Harry doesn’t want is for Ed Morgan (Thomas Mitchell) to get involved. He’s an even bigger crook than Harry and he knows the stories about that Inca treasure. If Ed thinks there’s a chance of finding the starburst he’ll want in.

What Harry needs is a plane. A light plane. Of course he can’t afford to obtain one legally, but Harry doesn’t intend to obtain one legally. That’s where the girl comes into the picture.

The girl is Elena Antonescu (Nicole Maurey) and she’s escaped from behind the Iron Curtain. She has come to Harry for help. She needs to get to Mexico. She appeals to his better nature, she appeals to his sense of fair play, his sense of chivalry. She makes bedroom eyes at him. She cries. Harry isn’t interested. Those things don’t work on Harry.

Then Harry realises that Elena could be the key to getting hold of a suitable plane. There’s a Piper Super Cub that could be stolen with her help, and the owner won’t be in a position to do anything about it. Suddenly Harry is willing to help Elena. Elena isn’t stupid. She doesn’t trust Harry but she doesn’t have much of a choice. And maybe she can work on Harry so that he really will get her to Mexico.

Harry and Elena get to Machu Picchu, which is where the starburst is to be found. No-one has any chance of finding it there without that vital fragment of stone in Harry’s possession. Unfortunately there’s a major archaeological dig in progress there, under the supervision of Dr Stanley Moorehead (Robert Young). Harry was hoping to be able to find the starburst without having an audience watching him.

The locals still speak the Inca language, still think of themselves as Incas and still worship the old gods. They’re not likely to be thrilled about Harry’s plan to steal the starburst.

Thomas Mitchell gives a typically seedy sinister performance. Robert Young gives an equally typical straight-arrow nice guy performance. Nicole Maurey is OK as Elena.

But this is Charlton Heston’s movie. Harry Steele is like a cynical, selfish, dishonest criminal version of Indiana Jones but with the same daredevil spirit and the same resourcefulness. He’s actually a much more interesting and complex character than Indiana Jones. Heston is at the top of his game here.

The movie itself is like a grown-up version of Raiders of the Lost Ark and it’s much more cynical and much more honest about the motivations of those who search for hidden archaeological treasures. It doesn’t have the non-stop action of Raiders but in its own way it’s every bit as good. Highly recommended.

Heston made this movie in the same year that he made of the all-time great adventure movies, The Naked Jungle.

Secret of the Incas wasn’t the only proto-Indiana Jones movie. There was also Valley of the Kings, also made in 1954, and it’s very much worth seeing as well. And if you can’t get enough of 1950s treasure-hunting movies I also recommend Plunder of the Sun (1953).

Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray release of Secret of the Incas looks lovely.

The War Lord (1965)

The War Lord marked a new departure for historical costume epics. This 1965 Universal production starring Charlton Heston took a much grittier and more realistic look at the Middle Ages.

Chrysagon (Charlton Heston) is a Norman knight who has just arrived to take possession of his newly granted lands on the Normandy coast. It’s a bleak depressing place but Chrysagon doesn’t care. It’s his and that’s all that matters. His father lost all his lands, having been captured and forced to sell everything he had to pay the ransom. Chrysagon has served the Duke of Normandy well and his new lands are his reward. If he holds them successfully he may perhaps eventually be given a more attractive reward.

He soon makes a very disturbing discovery. Christianity has not much headway here. The people are still firmly in the grip of pagan superstitions. Chrysagon, who is a reasonably devout Christian, does not approve.

He has other problems. His lands are subject to regular sea-borne raids from Frisians. Protecting his new possessions and his people will present serious challenges. 

Chrysagon is determined to treat the locals fairly and kindly. Unfortunately another problem presents itself. He has become obsessed with a girl from the nearby village, Bronwyn (Rosemary Forsyth). Bronwyn is betrothed to the son of the village headman. 

At this point the film, sadly, resorts to the hoary old myth of the droit de seigneur - the supposed right of a feudal lord to have sex with a girl on her wedding night. There is no evidence that any such right existed in medieval Europe but I guess it makes a good story. In fairness the film does explain this right as a pagan custom and does point out that the Church firmly opposes it.

In any case Chrysagon is determined to avail himself of this right. He does however only intend to do so if Bronwyn is willing. In fact Bronwyn is very willing indeed. She has fallen in love with him, as he has with her. The villagers are perfectly happy about the arrangement as long as it is for one night only after which she will return to her husband. Bronwn has no intention of doing so and Chrysagon has no intention of giving her up. This not only precipitates a revolt - the villagers ally themselves with the Frisians and Chrysagon now has a full-scale war on his hands.

There is yet another complication. Chrysagon’s Normans captured a young Frisian boy after defeating an earlier raid. The boy is the son of the Frisian prince and the Frisians want him back. Chrysagon’s small force of Normans, ensconced in their forbidding but not very defensible tower, will now have to withstand a determined siege. Chrysagon also has problems with his ambitious younger brother Draco (Guy Stockwell).

The movie devotes a great deal of time to the Chrysagon-Bronwyn love story but luckily there’s also plenty of time for some marvellous action sequences. The Frisians come up with some very impressive-looking siege engines which provide exciting battle scenes as the Normans have to try to destroy these siege engines before the Frisians are able to use them to destroy Chrysagon’s tower.

Visually this film offers superb spectacle as well as atmosphere. The War Lord is a long way from the romanticised idealised vision of the MIddle Ages seen in earlier Hollywood epics such as The Knights of the Round Table (although it’s not quite as gloomy or as squalid as many later period films). One thing I certainly appreciated is that these Norman knights actually look like Norman knights of around the 11th century - they aren’t wearing the anachronistic 15th century full plate armour that appears in virtually every earlier Hollywood film about the Middle Ages.

Charlton Heston gives one of the best performances of his career as the complex and haunted Chrysagon - he’s just as good as he was in Anthony Mann’s magnificent El Cid a few years earlier. Rosemary Forsyth is adequate but rather insipid. Richard Boone is splendid as Chrysagon’s faithful retainer Bors. Guy Stockwell is suitably cynical as the untrustworthy Draco. It’s great to see the underrated Henry Wilcoxon, the star of so many of Cecil B. DeMille’s epics, giving a fine spirited performance as the Frisian prince.

Eureka’s Region DVD is barebones but offers a pretty satisfactory transfer in the correct 2.35:1 aspect ratio. I believe there is now a Blu-Ray release.

Director Franklin J. Schaffner was trying to make an emotionally nuanced and intelligent costume epic and he succeeds fairly well. He certainly handles the action scenes with a great deal of confidence and gusto. The War Lord might be more pessimistic and morally ambiguous than most previous films of its type but thankfully it doesn’t succumb entirely to the fashionable nihilism of the 60s. Highly recommended and Charlton Heston’s performance is a very major plus. 

55 Days at Peking (1963)

For a short period Samuel Bronston was the king of the epic movie. He built a formidable movie-making empire in Spain, only to see it all collapse within a few years. The problem was that Bronston had ambition and vision but his judgment was not always all that it might have been and his business methods were, to put it charitably, unconventional and insanely risky. He did however manage to produce one of the finest epics ever made, El Cid, in 1961. El Cid had a great story, an intelligent script, a charismatic star (Charlton Heston) and in the person of Anthony Mann a director who understood the epic genre. 55 Days at Peking, released two years later, has the same charismatic star but unfortunately it lacks the other qualities that made El Cid such a superb film. Having said that, it still offers considerable entertainment value.

The idea certainly had potential. In 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion the foreign legations of the great powers in Peking found themselves under siege with only a handful of soldiers  to defend them. The political background to these events is mind-numbingly complex and although the script tries to fill in enough of the backstory to make the tale comprehensible it’s likely that many viewers will still be rather perplexed.

Suffice to say that when it is clear there is going to be major trouble the leader of the British legation, Sir Arthur Robertson (David Niven), persuades the other foreign legations to stand firm and stay put. It’s a courageous decision although whether it’s wise or not may be debated. 

Major Matt Lewis (Charlton Heston) commands the US Marines defending the American legation. For the purposes of the movie Robertson and Lewis became the mainstays of the epic defence.

While trying to fight off massed attacks by Boxers Lewis also has some personal complications to deal with. He falls in love with the Russian Baroness Natalie Ivanoff (Ava Gardner), a woman of great beauty but with a dubious moral reputation. He also has to figure out what to do with Teresa (Lynne Sue Moon), an eleven-year-old half-Chinese girl who is the daughter of one of his Marines.

The love story between Lewis and the Baroness doesn’t really work. Ava Gardner was a talented actress but could be difficult to work with (to put it mildly) and she and Heston did not hit it off.  This may be the reason that the chemistry between them just isn’t there. It’s also fairly clear that while the writers wanted a romance they weren’t really clear how they wanted it to develop and they really had no idea what to do with Gardner’s character.

David Niven wasn’t thrilled by the script either but he does his best in a rather awkward role. Robertson has to be stubborn and stiff-necked, and also brave and noble, and also troubled by self-doubts. It’s to Niven’s credit that his understated and dignified performance works quite well.

The problem for Charlton Heston was, once again, the muddled script. Heston ends up having to rely entirely on charisma, which luckily he has in abundance.

The supporting players are in some ways more fortunate. Their roles being less central to the story meant that writers Philip Yordan and Bernard Gordon had fewer opportunities to mess things up for them. Harry Andrews, one of the great British character actors, has plenty of fun with his role as a resourceful priest. Australian Robert Helpmann always enjoyed himself playing perfidious or sinister characters and he makes Prince Yuan, the man pulling the strings of the Boxers, delightfully sly and malevolent. Flora Robson does fairly well as the dowager empress, a woman who knows her country is in crisis but who also knows that she has few good options.

Nicholas Ray was signed to direct but left the production under something of a cloud. Guy Green took over but soon followed Ray out the door, with Andrew Marton eventually finishing the picture. Given that this was a massive and unwieldy production to start with the constant turnover of directors obviously contributed to the film’s rather ramshackle structuring. Ray was an overrated director with no experience making this sort of picture and was possibly a poor choice in the first place. One can’t help thinking that if only Bronston had been able to persuade Anthony Mann to direct the results might have been much more satisfactory.

Despite these problems 55 Days at Peking does have some major strengths. Bronston built what was at the time the biggest standing set in cinematic history. The money spent on this project was astronomical and it has to be said that it was, from the point of view of spectacle, money well spent. The sets really are magnificent. The costumes are exquisite. Everything looks real because it was real. That was the Samuel Bronston way. He had no interest in trying to achieve spectacle by using matte paintings or miniatures. If he needed a whole city for a movie then he built the city. This approach paid off. Visually this movie is breath-taking.

And even with a creaky script there is still plenty of excitement.

There is no point in trying to impose modern values on a film like this. This is not a politically correct movie, but then history has an annoying habit of not always being politically correct. The characters behave in ways that were consistent with the moral values of their time. You can disagree with their actions but by their own lights they acted with courage and decency. And the movie was made the way movies were made in the early 60s. If you wanted someone to play a Chinese dowager empress you found someone who could handle the role. You didn’t worry about whether she was Chinese or not. That’s the way things were done in 1963.

Anchor Bay’s Region B Blu-Ray is superb. This is a movie that relies entirely on its visual impact and that absolutely has to be seen on Blu-Ray and on the biggest widescreen TV you can find. 

55 Days at Peking truly is the kind of movie they don’t make any more. It’s grandiose and it’s insanely extravagant and it celebrates old-fashioned heroism. With all its faults it’s thoroughly enjoyable. Recommended.

The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)

Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth seems to be almost universally regarded as the worst movie ever to win the Best Picture Oscar. This is absolute nonsense. I could easily name a dozen worse Best Picture winners. The Greatest Show on Earth might not be Citizen Kane but it’s fine entertainment.

DeMille was able to secure the enthusiastic co-operation of the Ringling Brothers-Barnum and Bailey Circus in the making of the movie and the results are nothing if not spectacular.

The movie covers one season in the life of the circus, focusing on the drama of the circus itself as well as the behind-the-scenes tragedies, joys and heart-breaks.

Brad Braden (Charlton Heston) is a circus boss with a big problem. Times are changing and the circus faces stiff competition for the public’s entertainment dollar. The owners want  to cut down the season for the coming year to a mere ten weeks, concentrating entirely on the big cities. To them such a decision seems like a prudent way to avoid financial risk but Braden knows that circuses just can’t work that way. You can’t attract the best performers and you can’t keep such a complex organisation together if you can only offer ten weeks’ work in a year. In a desperate attempt to convince the owners to risk a full season he has taken a huge risk himelf. He has hired the Great Sebastian (Cornel Wilde) as the circus’s number one attraction. The Great Sebastian is the greatest trapeze artist of them all but he has a reputation for being difficult and for causing chaos wherever he goes. 

He also only ever plays the main ring. That’s a problem since Brad has promised that honour to his girlfriend Holly (Bettty Hutton). Holly is a great trapeze artist herself but as he tries to explain to her the Great Sebastian is an established drawcard. For the sake of the circus he has to give Sebastian the centre ring. This establishes one of the movie’s main themes - Brad always puts the circus first, no matter what. Initially this seems to be a flaw in his character but by the end of the movie his dedication will appear in a much more favourable light.

Holly vows to win back her top spot by proving she can outperform even the Great Sebastian. The competition between the two performers proves to be great publicity for the circus and it really draws in the crowds. This is not the only competition going on - there is also a fierce romantic rivalry between Brad and Sebastian. They’re both in love with Holly and neither is the sort of guy who likes to finish second. To complicate things further Angel (Gloria Grahame) is waiting in the wings. She’s always had a thing for a Brad but she’s not the kind of girl who goes around stealing other women’s men. On the other hand if Holly were to decide to choose Sebastian then she’d be more than happy to make a play for Brad. This four-way romantic rivalry provides the movie’s central plot.

There are a couple of sub-plots, one of which will almost destroy the circus. But circuses turn out to be rather difficult to destroy.

It’s very easy to focus on this movie’s flaws but if you do that you’re missing the point of it all. The plot is a bit thin for a two-and-a-half hour movie. Some of the sub-plots don’t go anywhere. The acting is rather hammy. The structure of the movie is very loose with the plot frequently coming to a complete standstill while the focus switches to a documentary style look at the circus behind the scenes, and the action also stops for lengthy performance scenes. What you have to remember though is that DeMille did not want to make a movie set in a circus, with the circus providing a colourful backdrop. The circus itself is the subject of the movie, and it’s the star of the movie as well.

And of course a circus performance doesn’t rely on plot. It’s a series of unconnected spectacles. The structure of the movie follows a similar pattern. Criticising the movie for being episodic and disjointed is like criticising a circus performance for being episodic and disjointed. 

Like a circus, what this movie lacks in tight structuring it makes up for in spectacle. And it really does deliver on the spectacle. It looks magnificent. Some process shots are used but in 1952 when movie cameras were very very heavy, especially Technicolor cameras, and Steadicams had not been thought of, it’s hard to imagine how some of the scenes could have been shot any other way. What matters is that most of the dazzling trapeze performances look very real indeed. 

As for the acting, this is not a movie about angst-ridden urban intellectuals. It’s about circus people. People expect circus people to be larger-than-life and in general the actors deliver precisely the kinds of performances that the movie requires. Betty Hutton plays Holly like a hyperactive kid suffering from a serious sugar rush. She’s bouncing off the walls but while her performance would have been a bad one in most movies in this movie it works. As for Charlton Heston, he’s playing a circus boss and it’s impossible to imagine how anyone could hold an organisation as complex and chaotic as a circus together unless he was the sort of character that Charlton Heston just happened to be very very good at playing. Cornel Wilde pulls out all the stops as the wildly extravagant and exuberant Sebastian and again it’s just exactly the right sort of performance. Gloria Grahame, being the superb actress she was, manages to make Angel very sympathetic and even to hint as a certain amount of acting subtlety while also going just as over-the-top as the other main stars.

James Stewart plays the clown Buttons, a clown with a dark secret. For certain crucial plot reasons he plays the entire movie in clown makeup, quite a challenge given that he’s the most tortured of all the characters. Stewart rises to the challenge. The criticism has been made that it’s easy to guess what his dark secret is but in my view the audience is supposed to figure it out. Because we know his secret we share his anxiety when he’s threatened with exposure.

Despite the movie’s disjointedness DeMille knows what he’s doing. He knows the movie is corny. It’s supposed to be. Circuses are corny. They’re supposed to be. You don’t approach this kind of subject matter with any attempt at subtlety. It’s not a Bergman movie. It’s a circus movie. DeMille knows what is required and that’s what he delivers. The Greatest Show on Earth is as garish as a circus and it’s just as much fun.

The Region 4 DVD is barebones but it’s a reasonable transfer. This is a movie that really needs a Blu-Ray release.

If you accept this movie on its own terms it’s very enjoyable viewing and despite its length it can never be accused of dullness. Recommended.

El Cid (1961)

A Spanish-Italian-US co-production, El Cid is both very much in the tradition of grand Hollywood epics and also points to a newer style of epic. While the Hollywood epics of the 50s were (mostly) done in the studio El Cid makes very extensive use indeed of location shooting. In fact there are very very few process shots, and I can’t recall seeing a single obvious matte painting. Everything here looks real because for the most part it is real. In spirit however it’s in line with the heroic 50s Hollywood approach to epics (which is in my view no bad thing).

Director Anthony Mann had not done an epic prior to this but he had done some much-admired westerns and that experience proved to be extremely useful. There’s a great feel for the landscape an there are quite a few scenes that would not be out of place in a western. And they work extremely well in the context of the picture.

Rodrigo de Vivar, known as El Cid, is Spain’s national hero. The situation in Spain in the 11th century was exceptionally complex with a variety of Christian and Moorish kingdoms fighting among themselves and also facing the threat from the North African Almoravid empire. The movie, like most epics, plays fast and loose with history but what the story may lack in historical accuracy it makes up for in entertainment value.

The movie version of Rodrigo de Vivar (Charlton Heston) is a minor nobleman who rises to the heights of power. He frees a number of Moorish emirs after a battle and as a result finds himself accused of treason. This is awkward enough but it will lead him into greater difficulties with his bride-to-be Jimena (played by Sophia Loren), her father, and the king. To regain his honour means facing almost certain death but Rodrigo has a destiny and it proves to be inescapable. He then finds himself caught in the middle of a nasty little dynastic squabble as the old king’s two sons Sancho and Alfonso and daughter Urraca carve up the kingdom. Finally he must save Spain from the invading hordes of the fanatical Almoravid king Ben Yussuf (Herbert Lom). This involves him in yet more difficulties with Alfonso, a king who seems incapable of behaving like a king but to who he has sworn his fealty.

Rodrigo does not do any of this as a result of his own ambitions, or his own desires. He keeps finding himself in situations where his honour will only allow him to do one thing, and that one thing always has the effect of bringing him a step nearer to his destiny. He will eventually have a crown for the taking but again his honour intervenes. He has a destiny but that is not always a comfortable thing to live with.

The title character has to be a larger-than-life hero with a definite mythic quality and no-one could do that sot of thing better than Charlton Heston. However the character has to be someone we can empathise with even when his motivations are foreign and unfamiliar to us, as they often are given that he is very a medieval hero and a man of his time. Heston does a pretty good job in this respect, managing to convey the idea that this is a man who does not think the way we think but at the same time making him quite sympathetic. Heston was never given to excessive emoting but he does enough to bring the character to life. And he has the stature and the charisma to make convincing hero. Heston has been seriously underrated as an actor. He had a particular style that wasn’t suited to every part or to every movie but in the right part he simply had no equal.

Sophia Loren has an equally challenging task. Jimena is a woman to whom honour is every bit as important as it is to Rodrigo and what she yearns to do as a woman often conflicts with what her honour forces her to do. Sophia Loren would probably not have been most people’s first choice for such a demanding rôle but she carries it off rather well. She never lets us forget that Jimena is a proud Spanish noblewoman but she also never lets us forget that she is a woman.

John Fraser has mostly worked in television and he also has a tough acting assignment as the weak, treacherous and cowardly Alfonso who slowly and painfully learns what it means to be a king. Geneviève Page is splendid as the dangerous and duplicitous Princess Urraca. Herbert Lom overacts outrageously and delightfully as Ben Yussuf and gives his character some real menace as well.

As an Australian I cannot neglect to mention Frank Thring’s deliciously over-ripe performance as the treacherous and villainous Al Kadir.

Anthony Mann’s considerable reputation as a director rests mainly on his early film noir work and on his classic 1950s westerns with James Stewart. The two epics he made late in his career are not generally quite so well regarded. This may well be quite unjust since El Cid demonstrates a rather consummate mastery of the historical epic genre. He handles the spectacle side of things confidently while some of the more intimate scenes are even more impressive. His compositions are inventive and accomplished and rather painterly while he and cinematographer Robert Krasker make skillful use of colour not just for magnificence but for emotional impact. The production design by Veniero Colasanti and John Moore adds further lustre. 

It’s worth pointing out that not only do the action scenes look great, they are never there purely to provide spectacle. Every action scene advances the plot and advances the trajectory of the development of the characters involved. 

There are so many memorable scenes in this movie but there are several that really stand out. There’s the scene with the two women rivals looking out through slatted windows, almost a film noir scene. There’s the cinematically gorgeous scene of the horsemen riding along the beach at dusk carrying torches. There’s the wonderful moment with the traitor meeting King Sancho, with the wind howling outside, and directly following that the scene of murder outside the walls. In that last scene, as so often in this film, Mann and Kranker make superb use of deep focus photography. Mann’s compositions are not only meticulous in the horizontal frame but in depth as well, a very unusual and effective feature for this type of film in 1961. Also worth mentioning is the scene with the shaft of sunlight coming through the cupola when Rodrigo and Jimena meet early in the movie.

The audio commentary by William Bronston (the son of the film’s producer) and academic Neal Rosendorf is marred by a desperate and excruciating attempt to apologise for the fact that a movie that is already very politically correct wasn’t even more politically correct. It’s frankly embarrassing to listen to. Once they get back to talking about the movie itself things pick up and they do have some worthwhile information to impart. One interesting anecdote from Rosendorf concerns an interview he did with Charlton Heston in the 1990s. Heston showed him the sword he’d used in the movie, and it was a real sword and it was very very heavy. In fact this movie is virtually unique in that everything is real. If armour was supposed to be made of metal and leather then the costumes were made of metal and leather. The attention to detail and to capturing the sense of reality was obsessive but it pays off.

Another intriguing point made in the commentary track is that Anthony Mann was very enthusiastic about the idea of making epics. You can’t make a truly satisfactory movie in any genre unless you have a respect for the genre and that’s one of the reasons this movie works - Mann did have that respect for the epic genre.

While modern audiences will be inclined to see the movie in terms of the clash of cultures between Moslem and Christian Spain Bronston and Rosendorf suggest that it can also be viewed as a Cold War parable and that Rodrigo’s struggle against the Moors can be seen as representing General Franco’s successful struggle to save Spain from the Communists during the Civil War. 

Of course the movie can also be read as a story about the nature of heroes and the challenge of living with honour.

This is not the kind of movie that should ever be seen on television in butchered pan-and-scan prints. It probably really needs to be seen at a cinema but Anchor Bay’s Blu-Ray presentation is the next best thing. And it really is superb. It’s not just the spectacle that is important in this movie. Just as important is the use of colour, at times very bright colour, at other times very subdued. This Blu-Ray presents the movie in all its glory and the transfer is just about flawless. Anchor Bay have also included a host of extras on a second disc. Considering the very reasonable price this two-disc set is great value.

El Cid, a huge box-office hit in its day, is a complex multi-layered film and a visually stunning epic. Very highly recommended.