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FOOFS’ GOLD Anthony Mann’s El Cid remains the movie most of Charlton Heston’s fans (and the sizeable number of ex-admirers) enthusiastically embrace. For good reason: he’s at his most chivalrous. In this present age of misogyny, in this screamingly dysfunctional period of hate as a value, and long before he came to believe he was as important as the historic personages he portrayed, watching his Cid be neither vanquished by nor turn ugly over wife Chimene’s avenging duty is more than reassuring, it’s downright noble and honorable. The movie is also the only epic in which he isn’t more in love with his enemies or horses than with his leading ladies, in this case Italy’s most prized export Sophia Loren. When originally released in 1961, El Cid received some good reviews—even ending up on Time and the N.Y. Times’ “Ten Best” lists when lists mattered—but, without a chariot race, it came nowhere near the domestic box office of Ben-Hur. It also met with unjust comparisons: looking at Ben-Hur today, there’s plenty of evidentiary hoot in sets and set-ups, whereas, restored in 1993 by a team Martin Scorsese supervised, El Cid is re-wrapped in the look of glam authenticity. The settings are huge and admirably decorative with 11th Century scale and detail and smashingly effective are the King’s Court; the rotunda wherein Heston and Loren perform the greatest nonkiss in widescreen movie history; the quarters of the King’s Champion; Sophia’s bed chamber and the spiral staircase leading to it; the tents of Sancho and Lord Moutamin; the barn in which the two icons first make love; the Arabic-influenced interiors of the Valencia stronghold. The restoration gives us the chance to ooh and aah at not just the tapestries, murals, flags and other regalia but also the real leathers and chain mail used for the costumes, being so rich we can practically reach out and touch the textures and metal. (Only King Ferdinand’s crown and cape of arms, looking like badly stitched together car decals, lack persuasion.) The use of Spain’s real castles—Ampudia, Belmonte, Peñíscola, and Torrelobatón—add immeasurable weight, underlining the geo-flimsiness of Ben-Hur. For those who see only the pre-restored El Cid on TV or tape or cheap DVD, there must be disappointment because not only is the color washed out, and no overture, entr’acte or exit music, they miss entirely the sweep, the grandeur and a lot of interesting tidbits: watching troops build seige towers, or catching facial reactions of the ladies-in-waiting, or getting to giggle at nellie Frank Thring’s earrings or at Ben Yussuf’s armies capped in turbans in succession looking like mushrooms, those candied jujubes, peanut shells and the Elephant Man’s head, or getting a good look at Vallone’s blooded-up chest with its skin peeled back, or Heston’s facial scar and the arrow embedded in his chest. El Cid’s refurbishment also reaffirms no American actor was born to play historic figures more than Heston—the undisputed monarch of epics. The genre has continued on its loony, chaotic way without him, but as its center, he gave it and still does a quasi-legitimacy; somehow his mid-Western Voice of the Ages and the handsome physical stature imposingly fuse, having the odd power of penetrating our modern cynicism to redeem the phony lingo of historical spectaculars. And little quarrel his shadow eclipsed those in Hollywood epics who came before him, especially the excessively American Robert Taylor, who always seemed to be waiting for a cigarette break in Quo Vadis, Ivanhoe and Knights of the Round Table. (Because we’ll never know what the real men of history he’s played will sound like, Heston’s legacy could be expecting them to come close to matching him; he certainly thought so.) Helping is Heston’s ability to look weathered and flawed and yet not oversized, such as the stockyard beefiness of misfit Victor Mature; there’s something reassuring about Heston’s masculinity remaining intact despite the furs, flowing capes and silks, somehow augmenting not just his own established personal rectitude but also the highly attractive virtue of the Cid’s righteousness. For example, it’s presumed fact, when recapturing Valenica from the Emirs, he didn’t accept the city’s crown as his followers demanded; instead, in order to unite Spain against the invaders, took it in the name of King Alfonso, who exiled him after being humiliated into swearing he had no part in the (real) assassination of his brother Sancho. As usual Hollywood custom, El Cid deepens the mythology of the Cid as incorruptible that’s not entirely true: he was a soldier of fortune in opportunity who fought on the sides of both Christians and Moslems and was well-rewarded. Only when the North African Emirs threatened to overtake Spain did he see his duty in uniting Spain. Though the movie emblematizes the oft-repeated fairytale of Rodrigo—felled as a result of a battle-inflicted wound and rode off into history strapped, dead but open-eyed, on his white horse Babieca—historians believe he died four years after defeating the Emirs in Valenica; they write his death at 49 had been hastened by grief and shame over the huge numbers of casualties it took to do so. (He and Chimene are buried at the Cathedral of Saint Mary of Burgos; while honored with a statue at the site, it may or may not be myth that Babieca is also buried there.) Sophia seems equally at home in antiquity; her stressed, emphatic English befits the fakespeak of epics. As with Heston, it’s her persona—emitting a celluloid authority. And only on a large screen can we appreciate her swaying hips as she struts through the King’s Court. The well-known friction between Sophia and Heston on set—she tardy but pampered, he constant mannerist of the rules—works to their advantage; probably calculated, she sparks antagonism to charge up some sexual chemistry. British author Derek Elley in The Epic Film writes of El Cid, “Script, acting, images and music all act in perfect harmony.” Not quite; the script’s clichés aren’t fully saved by the cast’s efforts because too often the clichés are central to the movie’s dependence on conventionality. (There’s a lot of Knights of the Round Table lurking.) Action scenes can defy the audience’s common sense: when Chimene’s father, the King’s Champion, and the Cid engage in a sword match, the duel to death takes place right beneath Chimene’s bedroom door. Wouldn’t she hear the clashing swords and wonder what the hell is going on? The audience is wondering about something else too—how her over-the-hill fatass daddy managed to remain champion. And sometimes the acting by the royal siblings—Gary Raymond’s Sancho, John Fraser’s Alfonso and Geneviève Page’s Urraca—isn’t as large-scale as it is anxious, overwrought, re the not so subterranean theme of incest. Miklós Rózsa’s orgasmic score was originally recorded to cover most of the film, but Mann discovered in Verna Fields (who’d later do the film editing for Bonnie and Clyde and Jaws) a gifted sound technician whose matchless ear for a slap with a glove, for dueling swords, galloping horses, etc., convinced Mann to eliminate at least half an hour of music. Excluding the Philip Yordan, Fredric M. Frank and Ben Barzman script dependent on Spanish myth, the movie’s most troublesome element was in the actual sound recordings: as much as seventy percent of the audio soundtrack had to be redone, “something to do with inconsistent Spanish current,” said Heston in The Actor's Life. What’s surprising, in spite of the common lack of integrity which often happens from looping, the results aren’t harmful, in the way they definitely are in Barabbas, most assuredly due to Fields and master re-recordist Gordon K. McCallum painstakingly camouflaging the hollow in voices to blend with music and sound effects. Film editor Robert Lawrence offers another remarkable task: during the joust for Calahorra, he not only has to avoid showing the double used when a sword is treacherously swinging away at the Cid’s saddle, he also has to splice in Sophia’s reaction shots, which were filmed weeks before. (You can tell: the studio lighting & fan-powered wind in the King’s grand stand don’t quite match the outdoor shots.) The binding used to wrap it all up is Robert Krasker’s photography, some of which could pass for high-priced prints, with glorious moments like the Cid, underneath the spiral staircase, bracing himself against the very sword he used to kill Chimene’s father; Chimene sitting in her bed chamber waiting to be plucked on her wedding night; the opening shot in the barn; the night scenes of Yussuf’s men riding their horses toward Valenica and his infantry banging drums. Not a single shot in Ben-Hur equals them. There’s the cleverly precise prescience in the opening sequence when Herbert Lom’s hammy, menacing Yussuf sets the religious-political stakes: “The Prophet has commanded us to rule the world. Where in all your land of Spain is the glory of Allah? When men speak of you they speak of poets, music makers, doctors, scientists. Where are your warriors? You dare to call yourselves sons of the Prophet? You have become women! Burn your books! Make warriors of your poets! Let your doctors invent new poisons for our arrows. Let your scientists invent new war machines. And then, kill! Burn! Infidels live on your frontiers. Encourage them to kill each other. And when they are weak and torn, I will sweep up from Africa, and thus the empire of the One God, the true God Allah, will spread, first across Spain, then across Europe, then the whole world!” Oscar nominations for best color art direction, song (something called “The Falcon and the Dove”), musical score for dramatic or comedy picture. DGA nomination for Mann. Earned best cinematography from the British Society of Cinematographers; won best sound editing from the Motion Picture Editors, USA. Roadshows were in 70mm SUPER-TECHNIRAMA prints. (Opened 12/21/1961 at Cinestage, running 22 weeks.)
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Text COPYRIGHT © 2000 RALPH BENNER (Revised 5/2024) All Rights Reserved.
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The critics gave the renewed lease on life for El
Cid high marks, though audience response was disappointing,
primarily because its re-release was marred by insufficient funds for advertising and by the decision of many theatres to decline showing the
spectacle, or keep it around long enough for the interested to get a chance
to see it. Then came the idiot contractual obligation to issue a Best
Film & Video Corp version of the restoration in pan and scan, without
overture, entr’acte and exit music. A 1996 Criterion Collection laserdisc roadshow
edition was made available, but by that time laser was on life support, having
penetrated only about 2% of the American consumer market. Legal issues with
the Samuel Bronston estate and the many holders of distribution licenses further complicated American rights of the movie in DVD
format. Consequently foreign distributors, from China and Spain in
particular, filled in the void with minimally acceptable widescreen versions
still absent of the hardticket accoutrements. Excepting the French release,
the DVDs were washed out, had bad sound synchronization and came loaded with a lot of player/format irritations, requiring unlocking
regional restrictions by keying in codes through remotes, which sometimes didn’t work. Taking almost fifteen years to finally get an American DVD release,
El
Cid, under Scorsese’s guidance,
arrived and mostly worth the wait. The first thing
noticed is the return of the overture (and later the frequently deafening
sound and accompanying effects); the second is the still-shocking amateurish sketches used for the credits; third, the re-tooled-by-necessity
subdued color spectrum showcasing the production designs of Veniero Colasanti
and John Moore and the Maciek Piotrowski murals, which in previous tapes
and DVDs were faded or had nearly disappeared into the faux stone walls. The
rehabilitation enriches Robert Krasker’s lighting as well as enhancing the
rich rivalry in the fabrics of the costumes. The intermission is inserted
at the right point, though because of non-compressed space considerations
the entr’acte is played at the end of disc one instead of the beginning of
disc two, which opens with Heston’s battle scar in closeup. As exit music, we hear what we
haven’t heard in God knows how many years (and may wish not to hear again
for many more)—a vocal chorus version of the love theme. The nagging
problem always apparent—the “old fashion” conformity to the obligatory and clunky pageantry interspersed within the plot dramatics—may now seem to be just slightly less intrusive than Miklós
Rózsa’s often heavy-handed score. In supplemental material on
disc two, we’re reminded Rózsa was very upset
that a hefty amount of his music had been cut without his knowledge; today
you wish Mann and Fields had sliced away even more. Released under the imprimatur of the Weinstein Company’s Miriam Collection, this DVD also confirms Fields was using background sounds more inclusively,
especially with the extras, whose overlapping voices are much clearer now. The Limited Edition
release supplies both an unnecessary reproduction of the Dell comic book of the story
and the welcomed original souvenir booklet, which contains 90 color pictures. The
booklet’s photo credits of the cast excludes everyone’s favorite roadshow
fairy Frank Thring; why this omission no one seems to know, but he and his
lispiness provide this otherwise humorless spectacle its precious few laughs.
And I’d be remiss in not mentioning the hardcore technocrats and aficionados
of movie restorations, including Robert A. Harris, have carped
over the 35mm print used for the refurb being of disappointing quality. Having disbelieving recall in remembering exactly how Technicolor popped out in 1961, their biggest complaint seems to be “soft colors and off-color” hues and what should have been done to prevent the dimmed color spectrum. I’m among those who very much like how the DVD doesn’t bray Technicolor’s gaudiness. Some claim the original camera negative remains in a London vault, but no confirmation. Perhaps Harris is miffed because he wasn’t offered the chance to do the restoration. Inarguable, he isn’t an objective critic of movies; you only have to read his comments about The Alamo and My Fair Lady over at in70mm.com to gather that while he’s deserving of respect as a technical refurbisher he is often a movie star fawner. Should be noted he restored Spartacus and MFL twice: the first times, in the 90s, were downright lousy but the seconds, some years later and using updated technology, were big improvements, so he could still be called upon to restore El
Cid for the inevitable American Blu-ray edition. Blu-rays from Germany, Italy, Sweden and Japan are currently available.
