Strangers in the Night: Anthony Mann

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/b-roll-anthony-manns-strangers-in-the-night-1944/.

8/10

Bend of the River: Anthony Mann

It's oddly appropriate that I watched Anthony Mann's Bend of the River on Halloween: James Stewart essentially becomes Michael Myers in the last twenty minutes. Slowly, in the dark of the night, he picks off a group of thieves who betrayed him and stole a wagon full of desperately needed supplies for homesteaders so they could sell them at inflated prices to prospectors. Stewart has perhaps never been so threatening. I love the film's focus on the idea of redemption; whether or not people truly can reform from a life of wickedness. This isn't just a Western intended to entertain: it's asks important questions designed to make its audience think. Also, just like Jacques Tourneur’s Wichita (1955), you could easily classify the film as an anti-capitalist Western since the heroes have to fight off corrupt capitalists who want to let a handful of innocent settlers starve so they can make a killing (pun not intended) on the market. I need to look further into whether or not there are enough anti-capitalist Westerns from the Classical Hollywood Studio System that they could count as an authentic sub-genre...

8/10

The Tall Target: Anthony Mann

We all know that president-elect Abraham Lincoln wasn't assassinated in Baltimore while en route to the White House. This is a basic fact of history. So it seems odd that Anthony Mann's film The Tall Target would bill itself as a suspense thriller about a New York Police Sergeant named John Kennedy (Dick Powell) who must race aboard a night-train to Baltimore to stop a secret cabal from killing Honest Abe. We know he will succeed. But oddly enough, The Tall Target is one of the most effective suspense thrillers of its era. In my opinion, it rivals anything Alfred Hitchcock did during the 50s. This is a film where atmosphere is more important than plot. Oh, it helps that the narrative is interesting enough, what with its double agents, suspicious characters, and plot twists. But...Well...Okay, what I'm about to say may not be the most astute observation, but it's the only way that I can think of to describe the atmosphere of the film: it feels like an old-school point-and-click adventure game. I'm serious. It reminds me of those 90s adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island, only it takes place on a midnight train. Each room and hallway seems like it occupies its own spatial void apart from the rest of the train. I feel like if Kennedy had tried to open the train windows, he would have discovered that nothing exists beyond them because nothing had been programmed there. The film has Key Items (like a gun with fake bullets) which can be used to solve Puzzles (who is trying to kill Kennedy?) which then unlock Cut Scenes (the double agent reveals himself). Certain characters will only help you if you have the right Key Item (the young boy and a coin) and others seem to be programmed to give automatic responses to questions (a brother and sister bound for their home in "Georgia"). You get the feeling that when Kennedy enters an empty room, everybody else on the train and all of the other compartments cease to exist until he uses the right Action Command. But I digress. The Tall Target is absolutely excellent. I have two small quibbles with the film, however. First, Powell just isn’t very charismatic. When something bizarre happens to him, he tends to look confused as if he can’t locate the source of a mysterious odor. And second, the film is rather glaringly uneven. The first half of the film is all shadows and intrigue. But by the second half, almost all of the puzzle's pieces are laid out on the table. As a result, the second half plays like a more traditional suspense film. But the good outweighs the bad by a long shot. And besides, I can't say that I've ever seen a film that used Abraham Lincoln as a MacGuffin before.

8/10

Men in War: Anthony Mann

What do you do when you want to make a Korean War film but don't receive support from the US military because they don't approve of your story's content? You do what Anthony Mann did in Men in War and make a film that dives into the psychology of a group of infantrymen trapped behind enemy lines as they seek to reunite with the rest of their side's troops. Armed with his experience doing film noir and psychologically charged Westerns, Men in War is a remarkable examination of men under fire. If Samuel Fuller's The Steel Helmet (1951) tried to create a more truthful depiction of the Korean War, then Men in War seems to almost predict Apocalypse Now (1979) in its feverish, fantastical atmosphere. While searching for reinforcements, Lieutenant Benson and his men encounter two shell-shocked soldiers driving a jeep in the middle of a war zone. One is a Colonel who has lost his mind after seeing almost all of his men massacred by North Koreans. The other is an unhinged Sergeant nicknamed "Montana" who treats the Colonel like his father. When asked what they were doing, they respond that they were driving "home." When Benson commandeers their jeep and forces the Colonel and Montana to join with them, Montana demonstrates an almost psychic ability to detect enemy snipers and booby traps like North Koreans dressed like American GI's. Later, one soldier is killed when, incredulously, he stops to pick flowers and put them on his helmet. This is a film where none of the soldiers act like they are quite well in the head. Also like Apocalypse Now, the enemy soldiers are almost never seen. This leads to the greatest sequence in the film where an unseen artillery unit bombards the American infantrymen, forcing them to charge across an open field two at a time in-between shell-bursts. Another fantastic sequence occurs near the end of the film right before the Americans attack a North Korean stronghold. For the longest time all we see are the soldiers loading their weapons and getting into position in complete silence. Such scenes are perhaps common enough in war films. But under Mann's direction and Ernest Haller's cinematography, it almost enters the realm of the surreal. The unsettling score by Elmer Bernstein is just the cherry on top of this excellent film.

8/10

He Walked By Night: Alfred L. Werker, Anthony Mann

Years ago, I watched films for actors. Then I watched films for directors. Now I increasingly find myself watching for cinematographers. My love for the cinematography of John Alton probably had just as much to do with my watching He Walked By Night as the direction by Anthony Mann. Much to my satisfaction, the team that gave us such classic film noir as T-Men (1947) and Raw Deal delivered once again in this film. A true crime police procedural, the film follows the Los Angeles police department as they try and track down a burglar and killer who was responsible for the death of a police officer. Complicating the investigation is the fact that the killer is both diabolically clever and resourceful, even going so far as to own a custom-made radio to keep track of police broadcasts. Mann's stripped-down, hard-boiled narrative style complements Alton's virtuoso hard-lighting cinematography. The entire film is excellent, but the last two sequences are particularly amazing. The first involves the police trying to surround the killer's house without him noticing. The entire sequence is silent except for the nervous whining and barking of the killer's pet dog. The suspense is as palpable as it is unnerving. Afterwards the killer leads the police on a chase through the Los Angeles sewer system. The claustrophobic, almost surreal cinematography during this sequence made me think of the similar climax from Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949). So imagine my surprise when I discovered that this chase scene predated its British counterpart by almost a year! Stylistically magnificent and visually dazzling, He Walked By Night may be the best collaboration between the team that helped define the film noir movement.

8/10

Strange Impersonation: Anthony Mann

There are only two kind things that I can say about Anthony Mann's Strange Impersonation, a tedious film about a scientist who is horrifically disfigured during a sabotaged experiment and who sets out to get her revenge after receiving a new face via plastic surgery. First, the film does an admirable job hiding its meager budget. Cinematographer Robert Pittack did a fine job photographing the relatively few sets in such a manner that they never become too over-exposed or bland. Second, the film sees Mann begin to come into his own stylistically: moody atmospheres accentuated by hard lighting, skilled camera movements that nevertheless don't draw too much attention to themselves, and a handful of scenes that are stripped of narrative fat and excess such as the interrogation scene finale. A montage of over-exposed faces that falsely accuse a young woman of murder near the end is particularly fascinating. This sequence remains as one of the most grotesquely stylized (in a bizarre, pseudo-German Expressionist sense) of Mann's entire career. In this moment Strange Impersonation almost flirts with the horror genre. But it is to no avail. The film is too contrived, too predictable to hold any interest for viewers uninterested in the development of Mann's early career. Too many scenes are bloated with repetitive, melodramatic dialogue exchanges about love, devotion, and relationships. More than once I found myself yelling at the screen for the characters to get on with it. In a normal length film such passages are troublesome. In a 68 minute feature like Strange Impersonation such inane frivolities are fatal. Here is a film too belabored with melodrama to reach the heights of horror and suspense that it so desperately strove for. It also commits one of the cardinal crimes of narrative storytelling: It Was All Just a Dream...I probably would have been angrier at this twist if I hadn't figured it out literally 10-15 minutes into the film.

4/10

The Great Flamarion: Anthony Mann

If The Great Flamarion seems unnecessarily turgid and dour even by that great master of hard-boiled cinema Anthony Mann's standards, it can perhaps be forgiven on account of the director's relative inexperience and the meagerness of the production. A (very) poor man's Double Indemnity, the film tells the story of the Great Flamarion, a callous and cold vaudevillian performer with a trick gunshot act. He is eventually approached by his lovely female assistant Connie who seduces him with promises of happiness in exchange for "accidentally" shooting and killing her husband, another one of Flamarion's on-stage assistants, during his act. The deed is done, Flamarion is cleared by a grand jury, and, predictably, Connie suggests that they "spend some time apart." The last few scenes are an effective rehash of the opening sequence where Connie is murdered backstage by the heart-broken Flamarion. If there is one good thing to take away from The Great Flamarion, it is a truly virtuosic tracking shot that opens the film. It enters a theater from the outside behind a thick crowd and glides down the center row until it halts with the stage performers in tight focus. The shot continues until off-stage (and off-screen) gunshots bring the performance to a screeching halt. Truly, this tracking shot is a moment of artistic clarity in an otherwise forgettable film. The performances range from the competent (Mary Beth Hughes as the femme fatale Connie), to the amateurish (Dan Duryea is rather one-note even by his own 1940s standards as Connie's doomed husband), to the unfortunate (the mighty Erich von Stroheim has been reduced to literally doing parlor tricks as Flamarion). One scene where Stroheim does a little jig while anticipating the arrival of Connie is particularly grotesque and cringe-worthy. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

5/10

The Glenn Miller Story: Anthony Mann

I was honestly a bit apprehensive going into Anthony Mann's The Glenn Miller Story. I had previously seen two of his other non-Western collaborations with James Stewart, Thunder Bay (1953) and Strategic Air Command (1955). Both of them were painfully dull and underwhelming. And unfortunately, The Glenn Miller Story doesn't fare much better...with two exceptions. The film, a biopic of legendary big band leader Glenn Miller, features many cameos by real-life jazz legends. The best moment in the entire film takes place in a club "up in Harlem" where we are treated to an impromptu jam session featuring Babe Russin, Gene Krupa, and LOUIS ARMSTRONG. If you can't appreciate that, then you hate both movies AND music. The second great moment takes place during a concert given for Allied soldiers in World War Two. When an enemy aircraft approaches and starts to fire, Glenn Miller and his orchestra bravely keep playing until it is shot down by friendly forces. When they hear the deafening crash, all of the soldiers begin to cheer for their courage. But with the exception of these two scenes, The Glenn Miller Story is largely unremarkable. James Stewart gives all the conviction of a dead fish in his performance as Miller. Of course, that may have been intentional considering Miller's real life persona. The romance between Miller and his long-suffering wife is also trite and somewhat unconvincing. And considering that it plays a major part in both the narrative and Miller's character arc, such blandness is inexcusable. But, hey, at least the music is great!

6/10

Desperate: Anthony Mann

Though Desperate was Anthony Mann's first film noir, it features one of the most disturbing and artistically mature moments of his entire oeuvre within the genre. After an attempted robbery goes sour, a group of gangsters corner Steve Randall, their unsuspecting getaway driver who genuinely didn't know that he was participating in a crime. Because Randall alerted a nearby policeman after discovering that he was being played for a sucker, their leader, Walt Radak, blames him for the actions of his stupid younger brother who impulsively shot and killed the officer on the scene before getting captured. Now Radak's brother is going to be sentenced to death...unless of course Randall steps up, confesses to a murder he didn't commit, and takes the fall. Naturally, Steve is less than enthusiastic with this proposition and refuses. So Radak tells his men to "persuade" him. As they begin to beat Steve within an inch of his life, the camera moves in closer on Radak as the overhead light sways back and forth, throwing his stony face in and out of opaque shadow. It's a scene that would make German Expressionists drool. Everything after that is standard noir material concerning the Couple on the Run trope: Steve and his wife retreat to the country, they meet unscrupulous characters who cheat them of what little money they have (like a deliciously evil used car salesman), they run from the law (including a good-natured, laughing sheriff who changes his composure from friendly to threatening in less than the blink of an eye), and for some ridiculous, inexplicable reason, Steve refuses to tell his wife, family, and the police the truth about the crime. It gets to the point where you want to grab Steve by the throat and knock some sense into him. But despite the protagonist's idiocy, the film is competently shot, decently acted, and thoroughly suspenseful.

7/10

Side Street: Anthony Mann

Side Street may be my favorite film noir by Anthony Mann, not necessarily because it's the best or the smartest, but because it examines a trope that I dearly love: a good man making a simple mistake. We like Joe Norson, a part-time NYC mail carrier who recently lost his gas station and has to live with his in-laws. All he wants is to be able to provide for his very pregnant wife, Ellen, but times are hard and working as a mail carrier just isn't doing the trick. So, although we may disapprove, we can certainly emphasize with Joe when he has a moment of weakness and steals what he thinks is $200 from the office of one of his clients. Unbeknownst to him, the envelope he stole actually contained $30,000 of blackmail money. So Joe, being a likeable fellow, tries to do the right thing and return the money. Too bad the man he stole from was a corrupt attorney. Even worse, he doesn't believe Joe's story. After scaring Joe out of his office, the attorney orders his goons to find the money, no matter how many innocent people get hurt or killed in the process. Side Street is a remarkably gritty film that manages to truly get under your skin. As previously mentioned, Joe is an honest guy who made a simple mistake. In a way, his story serves as a grim opposite of the wrongly accused protagonist trope that Alfred Hitchcock loved so dearly. Joe is very definitely guilty. But his punishment doesn't match the crime. And that, in my opinion, makes him much more compelling than Richard Hannay or Roger O. Thornhill.

8/10

The Bamboo Blonde: Anthony Mann

Well, this was an interesting experience. I had always been aware that Anthony Mann had directed musicals, but I had never seen one of them. The Bamboo Blonde isn't so much a musical as it is a film with a lot of musical numbers, if you catch my drift. But it still was fascinating to see a director that I have always associated with gritty Westerns and hard-boiled film noir directing such an upbeat film. It follows a love triangle involving Captain Patrick Ransom, Jr., a pilot of a B-29 bomber from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, his fiancée Eileen Sawyer, and a blonde nightclub singer that he meets on his last night before shipping out to the Pacific named Louise Anderson. Unfortunately, he never actually learns Louise's name, but he does spend an evening with her after Eileen stood him up. He gets her picture taken and carries it with him to the Pacific where it is discovered by his crew and painted onto their fuselage. She becomes known as the "Bamboo Blonde" and is deemed responsible for the plane's incredible luck in surviving several dangerous missions. The "Bamboo Blonde" becomes a hero to the war effort. Meanwhile, Louise's manager has taken advantage of the situation by turning her into an overnight star, billing her as the original "Bamboo Blonde." When Ransom and his crew return home from their tour of duty, the press leaps at the reunion of the "two lovers." The military uses the opportunity to make Ransom and Louise public speakers at war bond rallies. Of course, the two fall in love. But Ransom was previously engaged to Eileen, a gold-digger who will move hell and high water to keep her man. The Bamboo Blonde is a charming film with some great musical numbers provided by Frances Langford who played Louise. There isn't much to the film, really. But The Bamboo Blonde is a decent way to spend an extra hour.

6/10

Border Incident: Anthony Mann

What's that? A film noir directed by Anthony Mann featuring the cinematography of John Alton? Why, that sounds fantastic! It seems like Border Incident was custom made for cinephiles like yours truly. Well, I can say that as far as film noir go, Border Incident delivers the goods.  It focuses on a topic which has become a cause célèbre for politicians in the last few decades: illegal immigration.  After a number of illegal immigrants are brutally murdered, robbed, and thrown into quicksand while attempting to cross the border, the governments of the United States and Mexico decide to collaborate in order to stop the bloodshed. So both governments dispatch agents to try and shut down a group of criminals who illegally smuggle Mexicans over the border. The Mexican agent is Pablo Rodriguez, played by a young Ricardo Montalban, who goes undercover as a bracero seeking illegal transport to America.  It's quite odd to watch a film from 1949 deal with a problem that has dominated our modern politosphere for so many years.  If I was a more cynical man, I would openly mock the scenes where US and Mexican officials talk in deep, serious tones about how most Mexican workers and American ranchers obey the law.  But ignoring that, Border Incident is a decent film. There are a number of particularly effective scenes. In one scene, Rodriguez is almost revealed as an agent when an old woman touches his hands to see whether or not he is a true bracero and he has to improvise a back-story or face execution.  In another, a US agent is savagely murdered by being run over by a mechanized harrow. And it is fascinating to watch how Mann uses quicksand to heighten the tension of the climactic gunfight.  Border Incident may seem somewhat naive from today's perspective. But it remains a solid entry in both Anthony Mann's and John Alton's respective filmographies.

7/10

Follow Me Quietly: Richard Fleischer, Anthony Mann

Quiet honestly, I think the only reason that I am going to remember Richard Fleischer and Anthony Mann's Follow Me Quietly is that its villain is a serial killer who refers to himself as "The Judge" and leaves notes on his victims that read "I am the Law!" For all of you out there who AREN'T familiar with Judge Dredd, then I strongly recommend that you check him out (the comics, not the movie). But besides this rather amusing coincidence, there really isn't anything else particularly special about Follow Me Quietly. It's a rather standard cop procedural: there's a serial killer on the prowl who is being hunted by a dogged police detective who doesn't have any time for your bullshit. There's a subplot with a female reporter who tries in vain to coax some details out of the detective for her sleazy newspaper, but it's just there to give the detective a sappy love interest. Anyhow, I guess that I misspoke when I said that there was almost nothing memorable about this film. It does have one thing going for it: it has no idea how absolutely silly it is. In the race to catch "The Judge" the cops create a life-size trench-coat and fedora wearing dummy that they show to reporters. But since nobody has seen "The Judge" his face is left a giant blank. And so we are treated to several unintentionally hilarious scenes where people try to identify a faceless dummy. My personal favorite is near the end when the detective shows a photo of the faceless dummy to a waitress. When she initially can't recognize him, the detective hits upon the idea to draw a pair of glasses on him with a pen. Immediately the waitress can identify the killer. It's a harmless enough film. And besides, it's only about an hour long. So it won't waste a large chunk of your day if you don't like it.

6/10

The Far Country: Anthony Mann

A decade before the start of Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy, Anthony Mann and James Stewart were reinventing the Western. They created a series of five classic Westerns that challenged the norms of the genre, infusing them with darker plots, brooding characters, and the symbolic use of landscapes to represent the character's inner turmoil. The Far Country is the fourth film in the Mann/Stewart cycle. It holds the distinction of being one of the only Westerns in history to be set in the harsh wastelands of Alaska. In 1896, Jeff Webster (James Stewart) and Ben Tatum (Walter Brennan) head up to Alaska as part of the Klondike Gold Rush. They quickly run afoul of judge Gannon, a local confidence artist who runs the town of Dawson City with an iron fist and a disarming smile. Gannon beings to cheat local miners out of their claims through extortion and outright murder. This doesn't bother Jeff Webster at all. He only cares about himself and as long as Gannon leaves him alone, he doesn't care how many people his goons kill. At least...he doesn't care until Gannon starts to attack him...and Ben. The Far Country is a remarkable film that proves that Italians didn't have the monopoly on dark, brooding (and violent) Westerns. In fact, there's a little Clint Eastwood in James Stewart's performance and image, what with his grizzled, unshaven visage and cynical sneer. The Northwest has rarely seemed as threatening and foreboding with giant frozen wastes and chilled forests. It's a harsh film. But then again, it was a harsh world.

7/10

Devil's Doorway: Anthony Mann

Anthony Mann always could direct a good Western.  At the start of the 50s, Mann directed a series of Westerns that redefined the genre by adding a sense of moral ambiguity to them.  These films helped introduce the idea of the Western antihero.  In Devil's Doorway, Mann displays another kind of hero: the Indian.  Devil's Doorway follows Lance Poole, a full-blooded Shoshone Indian who served in the Civil War, even earning the Congressional Medal of Honor.  When he returned home to Wyoming, he finds that a new homestead act has effectively stolen his land out from under his feet.  When a posse of locals try to take his land by force, Poole organizes an armed resistance against them with the help of escaped refugees from a nearby Indian reservation.  For a film from 1950, Mann's portrayal of Indians was extremely advanced.  However...he seems to know this a little too well.  Mann takes every opportunity to drive the inherent melodrama surrounding the situation home.  One of the last lines of the film is even along the lines of, "How terrible it would be if we would ever forget this."  If Mann had made the film a little less self-conscious of its progressive politics and depictions of Indians, then it would have been more effective.

7/10

God's Little Acre: Anthony Mann

God's Little Acre is a slipshod, scatterbrained production that can never quite decide what kind of movie it wants to be.  It changes focus, direction, and characters so many times that it could give you whiplash.  It starts off as an amusing tale of a Georgia farmer who believes that his grandfather buried a trove of gold somewhere on his property.  So he spends years digging holes in his farm.  He even kidnaps a local albino because he believes that they can use a divining rod to locate buried treasure.  But then it becomes a clumsy romance when one of the family falls in love with the albino.  Then, the film changes directions again to become a confusing pro-labor picture where a member of the family sacrifices his life to reactivate a cotton mill that a local town depends on.  God's Little Acre is a Frankenstein-esque combination of unrelated plots and stories.  If it had just focused on one of them (i.e. the digging for gold, the romance, the pro-labor demonstration), then it might have been a good film.  But, it didn't, so it isn't.

4/10

Thunder Bay: Anthony Mann

I'm sure that in 1953, Anthony Mann's Thunder Bay must have seemed like a great idea for a film.  However, the story of two oilmen who fight off the ignorance and malice of local shrimpers to put in place an offshore drilling platform off the coast of Louisiana doesn't quite seem so adventurous and glorious anymore.  Maybe it was the 4.9 million barrels of crude oil dumped into the gulf last year due to corrupt business practices by greedy oilmen.  I'm just saying that such a gung-ho film over drilling for oil in Louisiana can't help but be subjected to ire and cynicism by today's society.  But ignoring its uncomfortable subtext, how does the film itself stand up?  Well, the main problem is that drilling for oil has never been a very exciting thing to watch.  Sure, it was captivating in There Will Be Blood, but that was largely due to the characters who were overseeing the drilling.  While he puts in a great performance as one of the oilmen, Jimmy Stewart is no Daniel Plainview.  There is some interesting back-and-forth between the oilmen and the townsfolk, but after the first thirty minutes it is largely ignored until the very end.  Thunder Bay isn't a flawed film.  It just isn't a very captivating one.  And, through no fault of its own, it can't escape the modern day context that it finds itself invoking.

6/10

Reign of Terror: Anthony Mann

With Reign of Terror, also known as The Black Book, Anthony Mann has done something which I had previously thought impossible: he made a short, concise, and gripping thriller about the politics behind the French Revolution.  Mann frames the story as a battle between the corrupt Maximilien Robespierre and the virtuous members of the French Revolution who oppose his bloody reign.  The central plot device is a black book which holds the names of people that Robespierre is planning to execute.  If the names get out, then the other leaders of the French Revolution will turn on Robespierre and send him to the guillotine.  The film is surprisingly well-scripted and shot and contains some scenes of remarkable tension.  One sequence where Robespierre tracks down a couple who have stolen the black book to a countryside farm is stunning in its execution.  Some of the suspense is worthy of Hitchcock.  But the film's ultimate triumph is how it condensed one of the most complicated events of the 18th century into such comprehensive terms.  Mann understood that at the core of the French Revolution were a circle of fiery egos and megalomaniacs.  He was wise to make the film about them.  Very wise, indeed.

8/10

Raw Deal: Anthony Mann

Most great film noir have a dame.  Raw Deal ups the ante by having not one, but two of them to contend with its dark, brooding hero.  The hero in this case is Joe Sullivan, a crook who is doing a stint in prison for taking the heat for his pal Rick.  The first woman is Pat, his main squeeze.  She helps bust him out of prison in an escape orchestrated by Rick.  The second woman is Ann, a social worker who tried to reform Joe while he was in prison.  The three go on the run from the law and the mob.  It turns out the Rick set up the escape so that Joe would get killed.  Now that Joe is free, he does everything in his power to take him down.  This is standard noir stuff, from the doomed love affair (or triangle, in this case) right down to the moody inner narratives spoken over the sound of a theremin.  Cinematographer John Alton comes out swinging, providing some of the best work of his career.  But it can't elevate the bare bones story to greatness.  As it stands, Raw Deal is standard, yet still enjoyable, pulp fare.

6/10

El Cid: Anthony Mann

Anthony Mann's El Cid is one of the great historical cinematic epics.  It stands alongside such classics as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, and Lawrence of Arabia as shining examples of the peak of old school Hollywood entertainment and showmanship.  This romanticized story of Castilian knight Don Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, also known as "El Cid," recounts how he befriended hostile Moors through acts of mercy, shamed a corrupt king, and contributed to the ultimate unification of Spain.  There are tremendous battles filled with thousands of costumed extras, a earth-shattering score by Miklós Rózsa, and magnificent 70mm cinematography.  Charlton Heston commands the screen as El Cid, delivering one of his greatest performances as a man eternally torn between loyalty to his king and his personal convictions.  Some of the human drama falls flat, particularly in the scenes surrounding El Cid's wife Doña Jimena where she comes off as wooden and mechanical.  But for the most part, the human drama echoes the magnificence and scale of the tremendous battles.  And what battles!  Shot before the time when massive armies could be encoded onto the screen with computers, El Cid featured to-scale battles that shimmer on the screen.  Despite the obvious romanticization of the events and characters portrayed, El Cid is a delight to watch and a wonder to behold.

8/10