El Cid (1961)

Directed by Anthony Mann. Starring Charlton Heston, Sophia Loren, Herbert Lom, Raf Vallone, John Fraser, Geneviève Page, Michael Hordern, Douglas Wilmer, Frank Thring, Gary Raymond, Ralph Truman, Andrew Cruickshank.

Myth-making in the grand tradition can be found in this large-scale medieval action-drama, as a loyal and ordinary Spaniard, Don Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (Heston), is transformed into a rebellious and heroic legend known as “El Cid” among Christians and Muslims alike in 11th-century Spain during the Moorish invasion. You may not see him as a Spaniard, but this is the sort of role Heston was born to play—larger than life, yet stubbornly human, and a man of action with a soft spot for romance (a count’s daughter played by Sophia Loren will do, even if she and Heston don’t exactly set the screen aflame together). Intelligent scripting is inconsistent—the chivalric romanticism belongs in the likes of “Ivanhoe”, not this, and the political content sometimes reeks of self-importance—but there are very few boring patches when duels and jousts and battles are on the back burner. Vivid production and costuming elements combined with the fluid camera movements and striking compositions from director Mann and lenser Robert Krasker contribute to the film’s success as one of the better historical spectacles of its age. Co-written by blacklisted screenwriter Ben Barzman, but even though the blacklist had effectively ended by the time this film was released at the end of 1961 (thanks to Dalton Trumbo’s credited work on a pair of 1960 epics, Spartacus and Exodus), Barzman wasn’t officially credited until almost forty years later.

73/100