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FOOFS’ GOLD Anthony Mann’s El Cid remains the roadshow 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 continual 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. It’s also the only epic in which as actor he’s pretending to be more in love with his leading lady, in this case Italy’s prized export Sophia Loren, than with his enemies or horses. 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. In re-viewing the 1959 MGM spectactle today in deluxe 4K, there’s plenty of evidentiary hoot in sets, leper makeup and cures, whereas, restored in 1993 by a team Martin Scorsese supervised, El Cid is re-wrapped in stoney glam authenticity, admirably decorative with 11th Century scale and detail and smashingly effective are the King’s Court; the rotunda wherein Heston and Sophia 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. (Oddly, King Ferdinand’s crown and cape of arms lack persuasion, looking like hurriedly stitched together car decals.) 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 have only seen 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: catching facial reactions of the ladies-in-waiting, or watching troops build seige towers, giggling at nellie Frank Thring’s earrings or sense the ominous in Ben Yussuf’s black-robed armies (courtesy of Franco) capped in turbans in succession resembling mushrooms and peanut shells, or getting to see Heston’s facial scar and Raf Vallone’s blooded-up chest with its skin peeled back. 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 a power to penetrate our modern cynicism to redeem the phony lingo of historical spectaculars. And little quarrel his shadow eclipsed those in Hollywood spectacles who came before him, especially the excessively American Robert Taylor (eager to take 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 appear weathered and flawed yet not oversized, as with 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 the highly attractive virtue of this Cid’s celebrated righteousness. In El Cid, it’s assumed to be true that, when recapturing Valenica from the Emirs, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar didn’t accept the city’s crown as his followers demanded and instead, in order to unite Spain against the invaders, took it in the name of King Alfonso, who previously exiled him for supposedly being humiliated into swearing he had no part in the (real) assassination of his brother Sancho but in every likelihood much more for Rodrigo’s uninvited incursion into Toledo, Alfonso’s vassel state. As historical fact, with Spain under years of strain from multiple wars with its Muslim enemies, Alfonso for practical purposes implored Rodrigo to re-conquer Valencia and as reward the king would and did give the city to him as his own province. Handicapped by the roughly one hundred real bloody battles he engaged in requiring the format of a season or three of episodes not yet on the horizon back in the early 60s, this Cid follows the usual Hollywood solution of condensing dizzying intricacies and travails, which became living mythological twists and turns in his own time, and immortalized for the ages by El Cantar de mio Cid, which allows him to strut as incorruptible. That isn’t altogether true: he was known as a soldier of fortune taking advantage of opportunity—fighting and refighting again and again on the sides of both Christians and splintered Muslims and well-rewarded. However, chronicles of his exploits, many of them thought to have been concluded in an unusual fairness, are alternately skimpy of day-to-day minutia of battles or mazelike to get through, heavy with nationalist, separatist and Muslim complications, complexities, contradictions. To this day Spaniards continue to debate lack of details, such as what exactly killed the Cid, often seeking El Cantar de mio Cid as comfort from uncertainties, despite the uncertainty of the poem’s and scribe Per Abbat’s origins. Abbat might have heard the poem being performed as a song and then transcribed it into manuscript form, or came upon the manuscript in an unknown fashion and, its condition precarious, copied it. Locked away in archives, Abbat signed and dated the manuscript in 1207. Irresistibly, El Cid emblematizes the poem’s fairytale finale—that having been felled as a result of a battle-inflicted arrow in his chest, he rode off into history strapped open-eyed but dead on his beloved white horse Babieca to spook enemies. Historians believe his death some years after defeating the Emirs in Valenica had been hastened by festering unhealed injuries, depleted energy and the grief and shame over the immense numbers of casualties on both sides. (The Emirs would re-take Valencia three years after the Cid’s death in 1099 and kept control until 1238.) As Chimene, Sophia seems equally at home in antiquity as Heston, her emphatic English befitting the fakespeak of epics, her prominent persona emitting a celluloid authority, with the extra plus that on the large screen we can’t escape the force of her swaying hips as she struts through the King’s Court in blackened remorse. Peripherally the script is factual about Chimene’s lineage and offspring: she’s the daughter of a highly revered Count (who wasn’t the king’s champion, therefore not needing avenging); gives birth to two daughters (not as twins, and one son who dies in battle goes unmentioned in the movie); later a real imprisoned pawn by Alfonso to coerce the Cid into reluctant heeding; and excepting the last years in Valencia, hadn’t spent much of a married life together with the Cid. (They are buried at the Cathedral of Saint Mary of Burgos; whether the Cid ever had a horse name Babieca, he is honored with a bronze statue in the city’s Plaza el Mio, and said to be buried at the Monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, near Burgos.) The screenwriters made up all the nasty friction between the couple as plot devices, which in turn assisted what is now the well-known spats between Sophia and Heston on set. She pulled star numbers like tardiness, a ten-week shooting schedule and was pampered by producer Sam Bronston with a million dollar salary; paid less, Heston the constant mannerist of rules who snitched about her conduct in his book-diary An Actor’s Life, self-admittedly tried not to look at her during takes. Inarguably calculated, her ploys spark a much appreciated antagonism to charge up sexual chemistry. Heston would belatedly honor chivalry by apologizing for his slippage of decorum on set and in his book just in time for the national 1993 re-release. 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 efforts of cast and crew because too often those clichés are central to the movie’s dependence on conventionality. (There’s a lot of Knights of the Round Table lurking.) The action scenes defy the audience’s common sense: when Chimene’s father, as 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 Doña Urraca—isn’t as large-scale as it is overwrought, re the not so subterranean rumors 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 slamming swords, for scabbard tossed to the floors, galloping horses, etc., convinced Mann to eliminate at least half an hour of music. Excluding the reliance on Spain’s persistent mythologizing by scripters Philip Yordan, Fredric M. Frank and Ben Barzman (who finally got screen credit in 1996 and who by most reports rewrote most of the dialogue, with Sophia getting the better lines), the movie’s most troublesome element was in the on-set sound recordings: about seventy percent had to be redone, “something to do with inconsistent Spanish current,” said Heston. Inspite of concern over the lack of integrity which often happens from looping, the results aren’t harmful, in the way they definitely are in Barabbas, due to Fields and master re-recordist Gordon K. McCallum painstakingly disguise the hollow of voices by blending with music and sound effects. Editor Robert Lawrence offers a remarkable feat: during the joust for Calahorra, he not only has to avoid showing Heston’s 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. (Telltale: the studio lighting & fan-powered wind in the King’s grand stand don’t match the outdoor shots.) The binding used to wrap it all up is Robert Krasker’s photography, 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; Urraca’s abandonment in the king’s court. Not a single shot in Ben-Hur equals them. There’s clever 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 9/2025) All Rights Reserved.
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The critics gave the 1993 reconditioned El
Cid high marks, though audience response was disappointing,
primarily because its re-release was marred by insufficient funds for advertising and 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 the void with barely acceptable widescreen versions
still absent the hardticket accoutrements. Excepting the French release,
the DVDs remained bleached, had bad sound synchronization and came loaded with player/format irritations, requiring unlocking
regional restrictions by keying in codes through remotes, which didn’t always work. Taking 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 (frequently deafening); the second is the still-shocking amateurish charcoal 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 had nearly disappeared into the faux stone walls. The
rehabilitation enriches Robert Krasker’s lighting as well as enhancing the
rivalry of the fabrics for the costumes. The roadshow 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 scars 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 very apparent—the “old fashion” conformity to the obligatory and clunky pageantry interspersed within the plot dramatics—may now seem to be slightly less intrusive than Miklós
Rózsa’s often heavy-handed trumpeting. (In supplemental material on
disc two, we’re reminded Rózsa was mighty 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 cast extras, as their 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—perhaps to avoid robbing due for his major role as King Herod in Bronston’s King of Kings the same year. Yet his lispy-femi Al Kadir provides the otherwise humorless El
Cid its precious few laughs and a bit of historic foundation in that real Al Kadir, a notoriously duplicitous foe, tried to escape his own death by dressing as a woman, which isn’t far from how Thring is dressed when ensconced in Valencia. (If there’s any footage missing, it likely pertains to Thring.) 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 startling 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. In Scorsese’s restoration, the colors are warm and eye-pleasingly smooth, even for the flashes of minimally subdued reds and burnt orange walls. I’m among those who like how the DVD doesn’t bray Technicolor’s gaudiness. (The restored Ivanhoe is example of just how gaudy, as the male costumes hideously pop out.) Claims have been made the original camera negative remains in a London vault, but all these years later no confirmation. El
Cid still awaits an American Blu-ray edition. Blu-rays from Germany, Italy, Sweden and Japan are currently available.
