By Derek Elley
As Charlton Heston positioned it: ‘There’s a temptingly uncomplicated definition of the epic movie: it’s the simplest form of photo to make badly.’ This booklet is going past that definition to teach how the movie epic has taken up some of the most historical art-forms and propelled it into the fashionable international, lined in twentieth-century pursuits, anxieties, hopes and fantasies. This survey of ancient epic movies facing classes as much as the top of the darkish a while seems at epic shape and discusses the flicks via ancient interval, exhibiting how the cinema reworks background for the altering wishes of its viewers, a lot because the old mythographers did.
The form’s major goal has regularly been to entertain, and Derek Elley reminds us of the glee with which many epic movies have worn their label, and of the sheer enjoyable of the style. He indicates the numerous degrees on which those movies can paintings, from the preferred to the expert, each one delivering a substantial resource of delight. for example, spectacle, the genre’s so much attribute trademark, is basically the cinema’s personal transformation of the literary epic’s flavor for the grandiose. Dramatically it may well serve many reasons: as a solution of non-public tensions (the chariot race in Ben-Hur), of monotheism vs idolatry (Solomon and Sheba), or of the triumph of a spiritual code (The Ten Commandments).
Although to many folks Epic equals Hollywood, in the course of the publication Elley stresses debt to the Italian epics, which frequently explored parts of background with which Hollywood may well by no means have discovered sympathy.
Originally released 1984.
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Additional info for The Epic Film: Myth and History (Routledge Library Editions: Cinema, Volume 11)
Sample text
It was a huge commercial success, banned in China and Italy for political reasons (Mussolini was angry that Messala, as the true Roman, was beaten by the Jew Ben-Hur). Stylistically Ben-Hur marked a point of no return for the historical epic. Griffith, for all his spec tacular inserts, had been concerned basically with present-day dramas; Ben-Hur built more on the tradition of Pastrone’s film, remaining wholly with in its period and seeing beyond opportunities for mere visual display. Strangely enough, however, the challenge ofBen-Hur was not taken up by other film makers, and it was to be over twenty years before the genre was to pursue its potential to the full.
Honor . . Loyalty .. Power . . Glory . . and Magic . ’ For the historical epic film the eighties could be the most interesting decade yet. of ofof commodity commodity concentration commodity concentration concentration of exports of exports commodity of ofofexports of concentration commodity commodity of exports concentration concentration of of of exports of exports commodity commodity concentration concentration of exports of exports And the Egyptians put the children of Israel into harsh service, afflicting their lives with hard labour, making mortar and bricks, and doing all kinds of work in the fields.
18 (below) ... and in Noah's Ark 30 BIBLICAL: THE OLD TESTAMENT minister (Paul McAllister, who also plays Noah) to pass the time when the dramatis personae are trapped in an underground vault; parallels between the ancient and modern stories are slim, to say the least, but the Noah flashback is a remarkable demonstration of the epic potential of silent cinema, particularly since the only version of Curtiz’s film available now is a sound reissue of 1960, produced and written by Robert Youngson and with an impressive synchronised score (musical supervision by Herman Fuchs and Louis Turchen).