El Cid

Today we take a gander at another Samuel Bronston super-epic, Anthony Mann's El Cid (1961). Of the three Bronston epics I have perused (55 Days at Peking and The Fall of the Roman Empire), it's by far the best, although not entirely free of the bloat and pomposity of the other films. These movies succeed well-enough as flashy spectacle, but they're largely lacking in depth that makes the best epics great.

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (Charlton Heston) is a nobleman in a medeval Spain torn between Christians and Muslim Moors. The various provinces and factions of Spain are constantly at war with each other, which makes it an ideal time for bloodthirsty jihadist Ben Yussuf (Herbert Lom) to show up with plans of Muslim conquest. Diaz spares the lives of two Muslim noblemen (Massimo Serato and Frank Thring), and kills the King's right-hand man, Count Gormaz (Andrew Cruikshank), making his loyalty to Castillian King Ferdinand (Ralph Truman) highly suspect. He marries Jimena (Sophia Loren), the beautiful daughter of the late Count, only to find her love conflicted with thoughts of avenging her father. Nonetheless, while Spain hovers near civil war after the death of Ferdinand, Cid organizes an army of Christian and Muslim troops to oppose Yussuf's masses of holy warriors, leading to an epic confrontation outside the sea port of Valencia.

The problem with Bronston's epics is pretty easy to decipher. There are two major schools of historical epics: the bombastic specatcle epic of the Cecil B. DeMille school, where spectacle, set design, battle scenes and big stars are the attraction, and the "intimate epic", the province of Gone With the Wind, Ben-Hur, Spartacus and David Lean's best films (Lawrence of Arabia, A Passage to India), where story and characters are closely and carefully drawn and complement the purely cinematic aspects of the film. I generally prefer the second school, because it is much easier to become involved in a film whose story and characters. Bronston's work seems to fall in the former category - movies that are impressive as spectacle, but don't register on much any other level, leaving them curiously distant and empty, for all their superficial charm. This film's director is Anthony Mann, director of such Western character studies as The Tin Star and Winchester '73, and one might expect him to have the same character touches as a Lean or Wyler that came up through closely-observed dramas; but this movie suffers from the same flaws. Except for Heston's protagonists, the characters are broadly drawn and the narrative unimportant to the endless parade of swordfights, jousts, crowd scenes and battle sequences. This isn't in and of itself a flaw, but it prevents the film from achieving true greatness; it's good but fairly simple entertainment.

The film's conflict of Christians and secularists versus anti-intellectual Muslim fundamentalists is much more relevant today than in 1961. The film tries its best to avoid stereotyping either group, with some nice scenes as a campfire fraternization between Cid's Christian and Muslim followers - but again the film's seeming inability to be intimate handicaps such noble intentions. Brownfaced Herbert Lom and his faceless hordes are effectively fearsome, so perhaps it's pedantic to bemoan their simplistic portrayal. The Christian Spaniards, led ultimately by the dopish King Alfonso (John Fraser) are more than eager to slit Muslim throats at the drop of a hat, even when they pledge fealty to the crown; Cid's private army is a collection of peasants and outsiders who don't really fall under either category.

In its exploration of such themes, the movie clearly inspired many another epic, from Lawrence of Arabia and The Wind and the Lion (which used Herbert Lom's menacing black garb for Sean Connery's Raisuli and the impressive Moorish palace for the Bashaw's residence), to Ridley Scott's recent Kingdom of Heaven, which similarly posited religious extremists as the source of all the world's problems - a viewpoint which may please Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, but is too simplistic to really take seriously. The real problem is culture as much as religion (though, to be fair, the two are not mutually exclusive), with politics, perfidy and selfish power hunger inevitably playing their part in creating trouble. Even if we all had the same religion, there would still be greed, corruption and self-interest in the world, just in a more concentrated form.

All that blather aside, the film largely succeeds at what it sets out to do, however. For sheer spectacle, it's very hard to beat; Robert Krasker's 70mm cinematography is gorgeous, the set design and art direction without peer. Mann's direction is good enough, but most of the credit for the film's big scene must fall on second-unit directors like Yakima Canutt. The film contains some of the best action scenes ever filmed, including Heston's joust with an Aragonian knight and the bloody final battle. And Miklos Rosza contributes his usual rousing, bombastic score that adds thundering emotion to the proceedings. I am torn, however, as to whether the film's final sequence, with a mortally wounded El Cid triumphantly dispersing the evil Muslim army whilst scarcely raising a sword, is really cool or hopelessly anticlimactic. For the most part, though, the movie succeeds on the level of huge-scale, swashbuckling entertainment.

Charlton Heston is a fine Cid; he's always at his best playing larger than life protagonists and is perfect. Sophia Loren is lovely and has more to do than in her other Bronston film, but her performance is rather bland after her initial revenge scheming peters out. The supporting cast is mostly bland: Herbert Lom is given only a few brief scenes and is never as menacing as he should be, Raf Vallone and John Fraser are stiff as Cid's Spanish rivals, and few of the other cast members have enough time to register.

I like El Cid enough to recommend it with some reservations. It has some great moments and some of the best battle scenes ever put on film. But its characters and story have something to be desired, and what could have been a great film is merely a very good one. I guess I shouldn't complain too much, though.

Rating: 7/10 - Recommended