Babylon revisited

I was fascinated to see details of a German Blu-ray of Oliver Stone's 2004 opus ALEXANDER. There were several versions released - with the 'gay stuff' taken out, or ramped up - depending on what one heard, including a Director's Cut, but this promised to be something else: ALEXANDER - REVISITED (The Final Cut), and indeed it is. Having recently acquired Blu-rays of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, THE LEOPARD, GANDHI, CLEOPATRA, 55 DAYS AT PEKING etc. I simply had to add an Alexander blu-ray to the collection.

Was it really ten years ago that Oliver Stone delivered his magnum opus? - a visionary director giving us his view of the great ancient conqueror, and the howls of derision and incomprehension with which it was received (there are over 1,300 conflicting opinions on it over at IMDB). A lot of the critics panned it too, so I knew it would not be around for long, but caught it on a giant screen and got the later dvd. As an Alexander and ancient world and epic/peplum fan from way back, there were lots in it that I loved. I had no problem with Colin Farrell who looked the part, and the CGI reconstructions of Babylon and Old Ptolemy's Alexandria were terrific. 

Richard Burton though in his 1956 rather turgid ALEXANDER THE GREAT had Fredric March and Danielle Darrieux as his warring parents Philip of Macedon and Olympias, here Val Kilmer and Angelina Jolie are not quite in the same league, but it all looks stunning, and the likes of Brian Blessed and Christopher Plummer also pop up, and Jared Leto is an interesting Hephaistion. 
America though it seems was not ready for a gay or at least bisexual hero - but hey things were different in the ancient world, and Stone was not going to give them another Superhero comic strip. This is a movie made with passion, and a feel for the ancient world (respected historian and Alexander expert and author Robin Lane Fox was advisor, his biography of Alexander remains the best for me), as I have detailed in my previous reports on the film - Alexander label. Right: Darrieux and Burton in the 1956 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 

Looking at it again now, it is fascinating to see the changes. It is no longer a linear narrative as the giant battle of Gaugamela comes right at the start, after Ptolemy's introduction at Alexandria, before the flashbacks to Alexander's youth in Macedonia, and we go backwards and forwards from Alexander's childhood to events in the Hindu Kush and India, with that other mesmerising battle. 

As Old Ptolemy begins the narration: "Our world is gone now. Smashed by the wars. Now I am the keeper of his body, embalmed here in the Egyptian ways. I followed him as Pharaoh, and have now ruled 40 years. I am the victor. But what does it all mean when there is not one left to remember - the great cavalry charge at Gaugamela, or the mountains of the Hindu Kush when we crossed a 100,000-man army into India? He was a god, Cadmos. Or as close as anything I've ever seen". 

Vangelis's score is still terrific - there is even an intermission with music, the battles are amazing and more visceral, the scenes in Babylon and in far off India amaze too. Its a film of astonishing riches, which one can return to ..... 

Helen, Aphrodite, Ulysses, Attilla .. oh, and Alexander

 Italian week: 1 - Peplums  "If you want something visual, thats not too abysmal, we could take in an old Steve Reeves movie" - The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Some early classy peplums - those sword & sandal mini-epics of the '50s and early '60s, the heyday of the genre. 1955's HELEN OF TROY is a Warners film made in Europe by Robert Wise (who has turned his hand to most genres after editing CITIZEN KANE, with films like I WANT TO LIVE, THE HAUNTING, THE SOUND OF MUSIC and his STAR! which I posted about here recently, see below). His HELEN is one of the better epics with great sets and is very visual and utilises a great cast even if the leads are rather blank.

Rosanna Podesta is quite lovely as Helen, there is something otherworld about her - is her voice dubbed perhaps? but Jacques Sernas as Paris is rather dull. But there are British stalwarts Stanley Baker (Achilles), Harry Andrews (Hector), Ronald Lewis, Cedric Hardwicke and Nora Swinbourne add gravitas as Priam and Hecuba, and Janette Scott impresses as Cassandra - it all impressed me as a child and I still like watching it now. Oh, there is also young Brigitte Bardot being very amusing as Helen's man-mad slave ... something for everyone then. The fall of Troy is nicely depicted too ...

HELEN gets a hommage of sorts in 1957's APHRODITE, GODDESS OF LOVE as Jacques Sernas again is lying in the surf as a beauty approaches - he calls her Aphrodite in HELEN, but she really is Aphrodite here, or rather Iride the model for the statue of Aphrodite being created by the famous scuptlor Praxitiles who lives nearby.
Iride is Rank Organisation starlet Belinda Lee, who looks terrific here. Sernas is the macedonian  on the run whom the army is looking for, but she and Praxitiles take him in and shelter him - but as Iride and Sernas fall in love Praxitiles (Massimo Girotti) gets jealous and betrays them .... it looks great with good production values and there is a happy ending for our lovers overlooking the sunlit sea. We also get lots of waves crashing on the beach .... (more on Belinda at Belinda Lee label).

ULYSSES is a De Laurentiis-Ponti production in 1954 which is also a great view now, Kirk Douglas as the wandering Ulysses, Silvana Mangano as his wife Penelope and the enchanteress Circe, Anthony Quinn (on a busy trip to Europe for ATTILA and LA STRADA also features) as does Helen, Rosanna Podesta. 

Quinn scores again as ATTILA, also 1954, who he plays as a blood-thirsty savage who kills his own brother who wants to make peace with the Romans. Henri Vidal is the Roman general Aetius and Sophia Loren is Honoria the greedy ambitious Roman who allies with Attila [her death scene was a vivid memory since I first saw it aged 12], and Irene Papas is good as Attila's discarded woman who can see the trouble Loren will bring .... it is splendid stuff, again with great Ponti-De Laurentiis production values.  The blurb says: Attila, the leader of the barbarian Huns and called by the Romans "The Scourge of God", sweeps onto the Italian peninsula, defeating all of the armies of Rome, until he and his men reach the gates of the city itself. They are then defeated by the power of Christianity and turn back as a giant cross illuminates the sky - peplums don't get more mind-boggling than that! Talk about De Mille's SIGN OF THE CROSS (see below!) Sophia (then 19) was, like Quinn, churning them out that great year 1954 (and of course they did 2 later in Hollywood: BLACK ORCHID and HELLER IN PINK TIGHTS. Quinn must have been one of the 50s busiest actors, along with Vincent Price.

Jack Palance also essayed a frightening Attila that year in Sirk's delirious SIGN OF THE PAGAN with Jeff Chandler, as well as his Simon the Magician who thinks he can fly in Warners THE SILVER CHALICE, which I also loved as a kid in 1954. [Gerard Butler's ATTILA in 2001, complete with eye-liner and wearing what looks like a big nappy, is nowhere near as good, though Alice Krige as usual impresses as a very tough Roman].

By the late '50s Steve Reeves had arrived with all those HERCULES movies which Joe E Levine shrewdly packaged for international audiences and soon other like Gordon Scott and Ed Fury were heading to peplum-land. I have just seen Steve Reeves in THE GIANT OF MARATHON (which seems to be his best, direted by Jacques Tourneur and lensed by Mario Bava, with Mylene Demongeot),and still have THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII and THE WHITE RUSSIAN to catch as well as Palance and Anita Ekberg in THE MONGOLS, Jeffrey Hunter in GOLD FOR THE CAESARS, while Belinda was a terrific MESSALINA, and in JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS and CONSTANTINE AND THE CROSS with Cornel Wilde; and Jeanne Crain as NEFERTITI QUEEN OF THE NILE as well as Jeffrey Hunter and Debra Paget in the hilarious PRINCESS OF THE NILE.

Steve and the boys in whities at Marathon

These peplums are sometimes cheesy, made on a shoestring but have humor with action and drama along with kitsch and camp plus the beefcake and cheesecake - qualities lacking in humourless recent attempts like TROY with its unreal CGI effects and a cast with no idea how to play this material - apart from O'Toole as Priam (or Russell Crowe in GLADIATOR which at least re-invented the genre).  More on these later then ...

One I like a lot is Oliver Stone's take on ALEXANDER and his determination to get it made and then the reaction to it (as middle America did not want a gay or bisexual hero). Its a splendid looking film with some staggering set-pieces - even the CGI recreation of Babylon looks stunning. Its not really a peplum as such but a major work by a visionary director. More on this at epics label. By contrast Fox's 1956 ALEXANDER THE GREAT is rather turgid with a blonde Burton, but Claire Bloom, Stanley Baker and Harry Andrews again and Peter Cushing all command attention. This impressed me as a kid though - Andrews as the fleeing Persian king Darius, and those great shots of Danielle Darrieux as Alex's mother Olympias on the castle battlements ...

One has to include 1962's camp delight SODOM AND GOMORRAH by Robert Aldrich (before he went on to BABY JANE...) with its sometimes hilarious moments as Anouk Aimee as the slinky lesbian queen, Stanley Baker as her hissably evil brother, Stewart Granger with Pier Angelia [pillar of salt], Rosanna Podesta again (rather wasted here) and the stunning Scilla Gabel are all great to look at. It looks like Sodom is hit by a nuclear explosion at the climax but what happened to Gomorrah?

Then of course the heights of the genre are BEN HUR (I really must watch that 1925 silent version), EL CID, SPARTACUS, CLEOPATRA, FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE and then the rather tatty GENGHIS KHAN and the still stunning THE VIKINGS - and of course studio fodder like Warner's LAND OF THE PHAROAHS, MGM's THE PRODIGAL, Fox's THE EGYPTIAN and 300 SPARTANS. 1961's COLOSSUS OF RHODES by Serio Leone is eye-catching too with Rory Calhoun and Lea Massari. DEMETRIUS AND THE GLADIATORS is huge fun for an American peplum in 1954, that great year for biblicals - I must find and include that posed shot of Susan as Messalina dragging a chained Ed Fury around on all fours.   more on all these at epics label. All these look terrific now on widescreen HD televisions.

A brilliant site by the way is:  http://peplums.blogspot.co.uk/

Movies I Love: Alexander

Has any recent movie polarised audiences as much as Oliver Stone's labour of love ALEXANDER in 2004? You would have to know your Alexander to undertake this mammoth enterprise, but Stone had renowned Alexander expert and biographer Robin Lane Fox as his historial advisor, so what could have gone wrong? When the movie finally opened here it was as if everyone was conspiring to make it a failure, the reviews were dreadful, it was not on many screens so it seemed like a self-fulfilling prophesy that it would limp away very soon - I therefore took an afternoon off work to see it on as large a screen as possible while I had the chance, and have to say that I was blown away. I am an Alexander person myself, having read lots of books from Plutarch to Mary Renault and Lane Fox, so at least I knew the background.

Colin Farrell seems quite adequate as our warrior prince, with Val Kilmer and Angelina Jolie perhaps lightweight as his warring parents Philip and Olympias [Frederic March and Danielle Darrieux had more gravitas in Robert Rossen's rather turgid 1956 ALEXANDER THE GREAT, which did have a good cast (apart from a blond Burton ranting as usual) and some great images - I saw it as a kid and loved that shot of Darrieux on the battlements]. Stone's version covers similar ground - Alexander's boyhood, his tutor Aristotle, his lifelong friend/lover Hephaistion, his marriage to Roxane, the flight and murder of the Persian king Darius, Alexander's men finally rebelling as they travel on and on through the known world to the Hindu Kush and Afghanistan .... then hubris is reached as Alexander dies and it all falls into disarray. We have the older Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) narrating the story from Alexandria (with that lovely panning shot over the harbour, surely a homage to the similar one in CLEOPATRA) as the likes of Christopher Plummer and Brian Blessed hone our hero for greatness. Jared Leto is the adult Hephaistion, Jonathan Rhys Meyers Cassander, and it all just looks marvellous, for me as good as EL CID, CLEOPATRA, SPARTACUS, BEN HUR or FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

Stone gives us just two battle scenes but they are both astounding - from the eagle eye view of the first battle (Gaugamela) to that final charge in the jungles of India with those elephants, it is truly spectacular stuff, as scored by Vangelis. I am not one for CGI effects which is why the recent TROY cut no ice with me, but here the recreation of Babylon is simply marvellous and really conjures up the mystery of it all. There are startling omissions though as a lot of the Alexander story is glossed over and we do not see enough of Persepolis or Bagoas, and Hephaistion was a brilliant warrior too, not just a mascara-wearing companion. Where the film fascinates is in being a new take on the classic epic and in sharing Stone's vision of Alexander. There have been several editions of the film since, with the gay element removed, and also heightened, so one can take one's choice. It seemed Stone's biggest task was making his epic palatable to Middle America and those students wilfully ignorant of history and what the ancient world was really like, and who could not get to grips (as it were) with a at least bisexual, if not mainly gay, hero. Even now the debate goes on - there are over 1,350 reviews on it on IMDB, too much even for me to wade through, so one either likes it or not. I certainly do. Below: the 1956 version.