There isn't too much of Homer left in this comic book adventure detailing the voyage of Ulysses (Kirk Douglas) from the shores of Troy to his home in Ithaca. It's all pretty much boiled down. Gone are such distractions as Scylla and Charybdis and the naughty Calypso. But we still have an extended stay with Circe the witch (Sylvana Mangano), in which Douglas excels at comic self justification. He spends a comfortable night in Circe's bed and the next day presents himself and tells her he and his men are leaving on their ship. Circe slyly informs him that the wind doesn't pick up on this island until sundown. "Well," Douglas muses, "no point in leaving early. The men would break their backs on the oars. And they're all good men. They deserve a rest." So he spends the next five years eating lotus blossoms, drinking wine, and sleeping with Circe until his men go half nuts with waiting and leave him behind.
If it resembles a typical sword and sandal epic from the 1950s starring one or another muscle man it's probably because it was made at Cinecitta and used many of the same cast and crew. And, of course, at feature-film length it had to be compressed -- Procrusteanized, so to speak -- in order to fit in as many episodes as it now contains.
The scenes back on Ithaca, with Penelope (also Sylvana Mangano) weaving her tapestry and unweaving it at night to keep the blood-sucking suitors at bay, are retained, and they're not as bad as they might be. Anthony Quinn is Antinuous, chief of the suitors, and he comes across not as a greasy freeloader but as a masculine, common-sense kind of guy who just about convinces Penelope that his feelings for her are genuine and that Ulysses, gone lo these ten years, is dead. (It's only just before the bloody climax that he reveals his truer nature.) Some scenes are still fairly powerful, given the cheap special effects. Ulysses' visit to Hades and his encounter with the dead, who try to convince him that ANY kind of life is better than being dead. And Polyphemus is pretty horrible too. And there is a bit of wit built into the script. When they first notice Polyphemus' huge footprint, the men quail and start muttering about "giants." "Probably just a man with big feet," comments the phlegmatic Douglas, the man who does not believe in isomorphism.
Alas, the gods are left out of the story, which detracts from our understanding of what's going on and is a betrayal of the movie's Homeric source. I guess if you want gods and goddesses, you have to go to Homer or Thorne Smith.
Douglas is an adequate Ulysses. He's pretty sneaky. (The film leaves out the "no-man" ruse he used with the cyclops but includes the Trojan horse.) And he looks right. Except for Quinn, the rest of the cast doesn't really contribute much, though Rossana Podesta as Nausicaa looks cute, in a Cynthia Gibb way.
Entertaining version of an epic tale.
If it resembles a typical sword and sandal epic from the 1950s starring one or another muscle man it's probably because it was made at Cinecitta and used many of the same cast and crew. And, of course, at feature-film length it had to be compressed -- Procrusteanized, so to speak -- in order to fit in as many episodes as it now contains.
The scenes back on Ithaca, with Penelope (also Sylvana Mangano) weaving her tapestry and unweaving it at night to keep the blood-sucking suitors at bay, are retained, and they're not as bad as they might be. Anthony Quinn is Antinuous, chief of the suitors, and he comes across not as a greasy freeloader but as a masculine, common-sense kind of guy who just about convinces Penelope that his feelings for her are genuine and that Ulysses, gone lo these ten years, is dead. (It's only just before the bloody climax that he reveals his truer nature.) Some scenes are still fairly powerful, given the cheap special effects. Ulysses' visit to Hades and his encounter with the dead, who try to convince him that ANY kind of life is better than being dead. And Polyphemus is pretty horrible too. And there is a bit of wit built into the script. When they first notice Polyphemus' huge footprint, the men quail and start muttering about "giants." "Probably just a man with big feet," comments the phlegmatic Douglas, the man who does not believe in isomorphism.
Alas, the gods are left out of the story, which detracts from our understanding of what's going on and is a betrayal of the movie's Homeric source. I guess if you want gods and goddesses, you have to go to Homer or Thorne Smith.
Douglas is an adequate Ulysses. He's pretty sneaky. (The film leaves out the "no-man" ruse he used with the cyclops but includes the Trojan horse.) And he looks right. Except for Quinn, the rest of the cast doesn't really contribute much, though Rossana Podesta as Nausicaa looks cute, in a Cynthia Gibb way.
Entertaining version of an epic tale.