El Cid 1961

El Cid 1961

Director: Anthony Mann

Cast: Charlton Heston, Sophia Lore

One of the most spectacular mega-productions ever made, El Cid stars Academy Award® winners Charlton Heston (Ben Hur) and Sophia Loren (Nine) in two of their legendary performances. Anthony Mann masterfully directs this classic tale of the 11th-century hero El Cid (Charlton Heston) who fought to unite Spain and drive out the Moorish invaders. Known as history’s ‘compassionate warrior’, the film follows El Cid’s remarkable journey from peace-broker accused of treason to the King’s fighting champion, and later from exiled hero to legendary martyr.

Unequaled in scope, grandeur and adventure, El Cid is an essential part of any film lover’s collection

In a sense, El Cid is the frothing crest of a wave that is poised on the verge of an imminent rolling crash. Its successors, the opulently mismanaged Cleopatra and The Fall of the Roman Empire, with its inwardly spiraling Penrose-like navel-gazing, both failed to make back their extravagant budgets, breaking the Hollywood machine’s formally unshakable faith in the format

At first glance, El Cid contains all that is required of a classic Hollywood epic and more. Banners flutter resplendently redolent on the wind, the camera sweeps across hundreds if not thousands of boisterously engaged extras and swashes are buckled with great zeal and enthusiasm. Meanwhile, our leads lock pleading eyes, brimming with barely contained emotion, as the orchestral score swells. Yet there are cracks in the edifice. Most notably, the core of the film, a character study of the titular El Cid, ably performed as it is, fits poorly within the framework of the surrounding epic. The tangle of tender-hearted impulses, stringent self-denial and scornful righteousness rattle around the film with a hollow ring, never quite meshing into an overall theme or thesis

The film, which was shot in a studio in Spain, with extensive location shoots, was directed by Anthony Mann. Mann, who had been raised a member of the neo-classical and semi-mystic Theosophical Society, had directed a raft of mid-budget war movies, historical features and above all else Westerns. Mann was also the initial director of Spartacus before he was replaced with Stanley Kubrick in the opening weeks of filming. El Cid then was Mann’s chance to prove that he could direct a film on the lavish scale of a Hollywood Epic and do so well

EL CID 1961

EL CID 1961

EL CID 1961