KinoLivres
  • Blog
  • Index
    • Auteurs
    • Ratings
  • Adaptations
  • Chronology
  • Gurglings
  • Touchpoints
  • Contact
  • Rating Scale

Helen of Troy (1956), directed by Robert Wise

8/28/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
+++

It is significant that this film credits screenwriters Hugh Gray, N. Richard Nash, and John Twist with the "adaptation" of Helen's story without mentioning any single source for their interpretation. As told by numerous authors throughout the years, Helen's story is a mythic mess, one that is so unclear that, for all we know, Helen may have been a fully-grown woman who was complicit in her own "abduction," or a 10-year-old child, the victim of kidnapping and rape. Robert Wise and his screenwriters, however, pull from a variety of sources (including their own imaginations) to give us a coherent version of Helen's story that hits a number of familiar passages and lines with pleasing regularity. The crux of it all is the abduction of Helen (Rossana Podestà), a Greek princess, by Paris (Jacques Sernas), a prince of Troy, an act that unites the rulers of the Greek city-states, who set sail (in a thousand ships) to lay seige to Troy. In this version, Paris is sailing on a mission of peace to Sparta when he is tossed overboard in a storm. He is found washed ashore by Helen, who, along with her slaves (including a young, suggestively randy Brigitte Bardot), nurse him back to health. In less time than that, Paris and Helen have fallen in love. When Helen's husband, the king Menelaus (Niall MacGinnis), imprisons Paris, Helen helps him escape, and it is ostensibly to protect her from advancing soldiers that Paris takes her with him back to Troy, and inadvertently starts the Trojan War. (One major departure here from earlier stories of the war is the idea that Helen's abduction simply provides a convenient pretext for the Greeks to attack, they being more interested in Troy's gold than Helen's honor.) As historical epics go, this is not an exceptional film, but it is a solid piece of work, with good (if uninspired) acting and direction, and a well-paced story that covers a lot of ground in two hours. If some of the sets and props fail to capture the poetry of romantic myth, this is off-set by one that does: the famous Trojan horse. Perhaps the best shots in the film occur just after the departure of the Greeks, as the bacchanalian celebration of the citizens of Troy gives way to a slowly emptying courtyard where stands the giant wooden horse that will be their destruction.

"Sir Cedric Hardwicke as King Priam, Torin Thatcher as Ulysses, Niall MacGinnis as Menelaus, Stanley Baker as Achilles and many more make broad sweeps and eloquent gestures. But they are strictly two-dimensional -- like the film." - Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, January 27, 1956

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    KinoLivres

    Books. Movies. Mostly.

    Archives

    July 2017
    June 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015

    Categories

    All
    1 Star
    2 Star
    3 Star
    4 Star
    5 Star
    Action
    Book
    Comedy
    Comics
    Crime
    Detective
    Drama
    Fantasy
    History
    Horror
    Movie
    Musical
    Mystery
    Paranormal
    Romance
    Science Fiction
    Thriller
    True Crime
    Western
    Young Adult

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.