Of Muscles and Men - Essays on the Sword and Sandal Film

When you are a fan of Italian filone cinema one thing which quickly becomes evident is how some filone have received far more attention than others, especially in the context of English-language scholarship. There’s most material on the Italian Western, followed by horror and the giallo, but considerably less when it comes to the peplum, sex comedy, mondo, spy film, war film etc.

As such this recent collection of academic essays on the peplum or sword and sandal film is especially welcome, even although only some of the authors investigate the Italian cycle of the late 50s-early 60s and there is certainly scope for further research.

Editor Michael Cornelius begins the collection with a overview of the genre and the areas which the individual essays explore.

Cornelius notes how the peplum, sword and sandal or strongman film is difficult to place within a generic taxonomy. Unlike comedy, romance, horror and thriller films there is not any obvious emotional state or mood associated with the peplum. In this it is like the Western. However, whereas the iconographic objects of the Western have symbolic value (white hats vs black hats, the horse vs the iron horse etc.), the sword, sandal and skirt are primarily functional.

A further area of difference (one likely shared with the Italian Western cycle) is around the dynamics of the gaze, or who looks at whom. Rather than men looking at women, the peplum is more likely to have men looking at other men. This, of course, raises issues around the homosocial and the homosexual.

Cornelius contends that four major periods of peplum filmmaking can be identified, the first two being associated with Italian cinema and the latter two with Hollywood. The filone/genre emerged in the 1910s, with the first colossal epics drawing on Ancient Rome and strongman Maciste’s shift from being a minor figure in Cabiria to the title character. The filone then reappeared in the late 1950s, beginning with the success of the Steve Reeves starring Hercules and would continue for another ten or so years. It then experienced a resurgence in the 1980s, with Conan the Barbarian, and in the 2000s, with Gladiator. (Regarding to the 1980s sword and sandal film it is worth noting that the likes of the Ator series, The Barbarians and Conquest are not mentioned.)

Maria Elena D’Amelio’s ‘Hercules, Politics and Movies’ proves one of the most rewarding chapters for the enthusiast and/or scholar of Italian popular cinema, both for the points she makes and where they might be taken.

D’Amelio identifies three key individuals or groups within the pepla of this period. First, the hero. Second, the tyrant. Third, the wider society. The role of the people is usually passive, the victims of an oppressive tyrant who has usurped power from a rightful ruler. Although the hero is sometimes responsible for overthrowing the tyrant, it is also frequently the case that the latter is undone by his own actions. Where he does overthrow the tyrant, the hero declines to take power himself, even if the people ask him to, instead returning power to the pre-tyrant ruler or their heir.

Though D’Amelio does not mention Will Wright’s structuralist study of the Hollywood Western, Sixguns and Society, the relationships she identifies seem much the same as those of the ‘classical’ Western there. In both cases the hero and the villain are strong and the society weak.

Beyond this Wright mentions a further three Western plots that presented different configurations of the relationship between these parties: the transitional plot, the revenge plot and the professional plot. Later Christopher Frayling and Bert Fridlund would explore how well these plots and the trajectory from the classical to the professional could be found in the Italian Western, with both proposing a number of alternative plots. In Frayling's case the factor that is especially important is his sense that the differences between American and Italian plots related to wider differences between the two societies.

Returning to D’Amelio, she likewise relates the particular configuration of the Italian peplum to politics and history, particularly Fascism and the post-war re-alignment into Western and Eastern blocs. Essentially the tyrant was Mussolini, the people the Italians, and the hero America. Establishing the rule of the tyrant as a deviation from the norm accorded with a post-war narrative that required ordinary Italians and Christian Democrat politicians to be excused from culpability with Fascism. Presenting the people as needing an external liberator downplayed the role of the left-dominated anti-Fascist resistance and the Communists in particular. Establishing the hero as someone who magnanimously defeated the tyrant but then chose not to himself take power suited the interests of the US, as the power behind the throne.

The next chapter is by Kristi M. Wilson and examines Pasolini’s Medea and the distinctive contributions of its director. While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the piece, it does seem a reflection of a weakness of many studies dealing with popular cinema, namely giving greater attention to the auteur film than would strictly be warranted given its audience size.

Following this Jerry B. Pierce looks at Gladiator, Troy and 300 and how they respectively work to performatively establish the heterosexuality of their protagonists within their primarily homosocial context.

Andrew B. R. Elliot also looks at the contemporary peplum and how it typically features a group of heroes rather than an individual. This is again interesting in relation to the Western and Wright’s analysis of its different plots. The last of Wright’s plots, the professional plot, is likewise characterised by having multiple protagonists.

John Elia’s essay presents a defence of third and fourth generation pepla by seeking to draw a distinction between ‘reverent’ and ‘irreverent’ violence. This distinction is one that is situated as going back to ancient Greece and which potentially has uses elsewhere. In particular we might consider the subject of vengeance and the vendetta in Italian society; in Nietzsche’s notion of Christianity as a slave morality that inverted the values of earlier belief systems such that taking vengeance was wrong rather than right; and how revenge is treated in the Italian Western.

Subsequent chapters are of less obvious interest, in that they again exclusively address third and fourth generation pepla, but without less that can be drawn upon in relation to their second generation counterparts. Two essays that are worth singling out are those by Robert B. Pirro and Cornelius. Pirro brings out points where Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy departs from Homer’s source texts and relates these to the director’s personal history, as a German growing up post-WWII. Cornelius examines the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe franchise of the early 1980s and its affinities with the gay male clone subculture. (He-Man et al were literally clones, the action figures coming from a few basic moulds; whether He-Man and the others devoid of genitals ever got any 'action' is another matter...)

“Do you like gladiator movies?!”

The Barbarian Brothers / The Barbarians / The Barbarians & Co.

Ruggero Deodato is above all a competent professional. He may be a metteur en scene rather than an auteur – if we want to use the French terms and subscribe to their implicit hierarchy – but he’s also someone who can be relied upon to deliver. The Barbarians is no exception, though it must be emphasised that 'the goods' are more juvenile sword and sorcery in the Conan the Barbarian mould than the 'video nasty' material Deodato is most (in)famous for.


Hints of Cannibal Holocaust? barbarian women on a raised platform

The story starts with a caravan train crossing a plain. These people, the voice-over informs us, are the Ragneks. They once traded away their gold in exchange for a magical gemstone, the belly stone (so called because it magically fits into the navel of the chosen female ruler of the tribe, a nice variant on the Excalibur theme for those wishing to check off their mono-myths) and the right to safe passage across in the known world in the practice of their trade, entertainment.

Now, however, the evil Kadar has decided to put an end to this. Though they fight bravely the Ragneks are no match for his forces. Some are slain. Others are captured, including the current ruler, Canary (?!), and the two youngsters Kutchek and Gore. A few escape.

Kutchek and Gore are separated from one another and sent to work as slaves. The years pass and they grow into formidably muscle-bound figures.

Wearing helmets that conceal their features they are then sent to fight one another to the death. Bread and circuses and all that...


Kutchek and Gore, or Gore and Kutchek

Rather than killing one another the brothers realise the truth (“Why have you got my face” “Why have you got my face!?”) and escape. They team up with another adventurer, China, find the remaining Ragnek survivors and plan their revenge.


Kutchek, China and Gore, or Gore, China and Kutchek?

Initially this entails sneaking into Kadar’s castle to rescue Canary. She however declines to be rescued and instead tells them that they must first find the now-lost belly stone, which is guarded by a dragon. So off they go...

It’s about this point you get the distinct feeling that the film was being made up as Deodato and company went along.

Still, its hard not to be entertained. What money there was is very much up on the screen, with bright and extravagant costumes, sets and design. And while the Paul brothers, the professional bodybuilders who play Kutchek and Gore (and sometimes billed themselves as The Barbarian Brothers in real life) can’t really act they don’t pretend that they can. Indeed, beyond flexing their muscles, they aren't really called upon to do so.

The presence of Michael Berryman and George Eastman is, of course, also welcome; sadly both have relatively small roles.


Berryman as 'the dirtmaster'

The sad thing about the film is the way that, in retrospect, it can be seen as one of those titles that the Italian cinema was soon thereafter to cease making. Yes, it’s cheesy but is it really any worse on this count than Conan the Destroyer? The truth is that Italian B-films weren't necessarily any worse than US B-films but that they increasingly didn’t get the chance to prove themselves with potential audiences.

Maciste all'inferno / The Witch's Curse

Maciste is unusual amongst the peplum heroes in that his origins are not mythological but literary, making his first appearance in Emilio Salgari’s novel Cabiria. Though a relatively minor character in the novel and Giovanni Pastrone’s 1914 film adaptation, Masciste proved a hit with Italian audiences, with dockworker turned actor Bartolomeo Pagano going on to play him in a further 24 films in the silent era.

Maciste’s adventures in these films established the character as unbounded by time and space, setting a precedent for his reincarnations in the peplum boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In Maciste alpino, for instance, Maciste actually fights in the First World War for Italy, while in the original Maciste all’inferno he is presented as a 19th century petit bourgeois type.


The English language title screen

In this remake cum reinterpretation of Maciste all’inferno the action is relocated to 16th and 17th century Scotland.

If this setting is one against which Kirk Morris’s / Adriano Bellini’s pepla wearing, bare-chested Maciste looks somewhat out of place, it is at least consistent with the nature of the character’s previous adventures. For, as we see via flashback interpolations of footage from other Maciste films – none featuring Morris, it might be added – the character’s mission to fight injustice wherever it may be found had earlier saw him face the mythical Cyclops and the historical Mongols.

The choice of setting might also be attributed to either director Riccardo Freda and / or producers Panda film, given that their previous collaboration on The Ghost had also had seen the use of Scottish locations.

As with that film, Maciste all’inferno / The Witch's Curse’s representations of Scotland is unconvincing, particularly through what appears to be the Catholicism rather than Protestantism of the Christianity on display when the priest officiating at the ceremony recites “in nomine patris” and so on.


Some rather un-Presbyterian hand gesturing here

This is excusable given that the purpose of the film was to entertain its target audiences in Italy, not to educate them on religious distinctions that might have interfered with their enjoyment of the film.

It does, however, also provide a further clue to why the typical peplum was unlikely to be well received by anyone emphasising fidelity to myth and history.

The story comes across as something of a combination of two films by Freda’s former cinematographer turned director Mario Bava, Black Sunday and Hercules in the Haunted World.

The opening sequence seems inspired by Black Sunday as a woman is burnt at the stake for being a witch and dies leaving a curse upon the village and its people.


I Vardella, er Martha, will have my revenge!

100 years later another woman is feared to be the re-incarnation of the witch and to have brought her curse to fruition.

While having the same name as the witch, Martha Gunt, she is not a double / reincarnation in the way Barbara Steele’s Asa and Katya are in Bava’s film, with the witch Martha and the innocent Martha being played by different actresses.

With the innocent Martha placed in gaol, tried, found guilty and sentenced to also burn at the stake, Maciste makes a timely entrance.

At this point the film becomes more like Hercules in the Haunted World as Maciste determines that the witch Martha’s curse can be lifted if he enters into Hell itself and bests her there.


The entry to Hell is beneath a tree

The complication is that the witch then ensorcels Maciste so that he loses his memory and cannot remember why he entered Hell in the first place

Although its story has affinities with the two Bava films, Maciste all’inferno is somewhat distinctive in its visual style. In part this is unsurprising when we consider the differences between the black and white expressionism of Black Sunday and the expressive use of colour in Hercules in the Haunted World. But another aspect of the difference appears more budgetary than aesthetic. Freda appears to have had the kind of material resources at his disposal to do crowd scenes denied Bava and to be able to deploy the sort of spectacular Bava had to fake through skilful mise-en-scene.


A relatively populous hell

In this regard it is also worth noting that, despite the film’s historical setting, Maciste all Inferno’s version of hell is a largely mythological one, as Maciste encounters the likes of Sisyphus and Prometheus rather than Satan, leading one to suspect that the lord of this hell is in fact Hades rather than Satan.


Maciste and Sisyphus...


and with Prometheus

One of the ways in which Maciste all’inferno remains distinctive even in its The Witch's Curse is that Maciste goes by this name, rather than being renamed as Hercules or Goliath for the sake of Anglophone audiences unfamiliar with the character and his history.


Maciste crosses a ravine...


to fight a giant; there is some good use of trick perspectives here to make the giant seem bigger than he really is

As a Freda film of this period it is also odd in that it sees him credited under his own name rather than his Robert Hampton pseudonym. This is perhaps because, unlike the cases of the western and the horror film, there was no-one to fool as regards the national origins of the peplum.

In terms of its own influence, meanwhile, Maciste all’inferno’s Scottish scenes are reminiscent of Michael Reeves’s The She Beast and Matthew Hopkins: Witchfinder General. If this seems co-incidental, it is worth noting the visual similarities between the witch Martha and her She Beast counterpart Vardella. Moreover, Reeves was clearly familiar with Italian horror given his second-unit work on Castle of the Living Dead; the Italian co-production nature of that film and The She Beast, and the casting there of Steele in a distinctively Italian-style dual role.

Zorro contro Maciste / Samson and the Slave Queen

What we have here is a prime example of how the Italian filone cinema, no matter how successful it might have been in meeting the needs of its target vernacular audiences, was never going to be recognised by critics.

For in combining bringing together Zorro and Maciste within a pseudo-historical context that seems neither man’s but rather more something akin to a rather ahistorical Spanish version of the world of the Three Musketeers, and in then releasing the film ‘badly’ dubbed into English – with Maciste renamed as Samson – the filmmakers were undoubtedly setting themselves up for all manner of critical derision.

Nevermind that the same critics who likely attacked the film for this combination of anachronisms likely hadn’t seen the original silent-era Maciste in Hell, where the character, still incarnated by Bartolomeo Pagano, is likewise taken out of the ancient world where he originated and placed in the 19th or even early 20th century.

Though he’s here played by Alan Steele / Sergio Ciani and looks more like a Hercules type, with a full head of hair and a neatly trimmed beard, Maciste’s otherwise still the same old figure: a good-natured, easily duped righter of wrongs.

Zorro, here incarnated by Pierre Brice, wears the same all-black outfit and is likewise still a heroic defender of the weak, but his alter ego is not that of Don Diego but rather Ramon, a loyal servant and would-be suitor of the pure and kind Isabella de Alonzon.

Our two heroes are pitted against one another when Isabella’s uncle, the reigning monarch, dies of a fever on an island part of the kingdom; the exact location of this island in relation to the rest of the kingdom remains unclear throughout, as do geographical and temporal locations generally, to thereby establish an appropriately mythical chronotope for anyone who cares about such things.

Knowing that the king will surely have chosen Isabella to succeed him, her evil rival Malva and her lover, Garcia de Higuera, a captain in the guards, charge Maciste with intercepting General Saviera, who is bearing the ex-king’s missive. Unfortunately for both our heroes bandit Rabek, gets to the general first...

True, you can pretty much guess the outcome already, that the conflict between Zorro and Maciste is an evenly matched one where neither man is ever going to strike a fatal blow; that the two men will eventually realise they are on the same side, and that good will inevitably triumph over evil, with – in true Lacanian fashion – the purloined letter eventually reaching its destination.

But this is exactly the point, the way in which the filmmakers give us exactly what the formula dictates they should. And if it’s arguably a case of no more than the formula – here noting the distinct absence of Bava-esque irony and the comparatively straight hybridisation of costume adventure and peplum modes, compared to the peplum and gothic horror of Hercules in the Haunted World – it’s also clear that a lot has gone into the production, with impressive sets, costumes and large-scale set pieces.

Whether or not it’s better than director and co-writer Umberto Lenzi’s other excursions into the filone with the likes of the Steve Reeves starring Sandokan is debatable, but Zorro contro Maciste is certainly the kind of film that you can’t help but enjoy if you’re willing to put yourself into the appropriate mindset of straightforward heroes, villains and situations.

Fans Sergio Leone may be interested to hear the Mexican-styled score from Angelo Francesco Lavagnino, as a possible example of the kind of thing he would have contributed to A Fistful of Dollars had fate not decreed that Morricone would get the job rather than Lavagnino, who had scored Leone's own peplum entry, The Colossus of Rhodes

Il Colosso di Rodi / The Colossus of Rhodes

Set in the period between Greece decline and Roman ascendancy, The Colossus of Rhodes begins with the ceremony marking the completion of the titular Wonder of the World.

Ten years in the making, the giant statue over the entrance to the island state's main harbour promises to alter the balance of power in the Mediterranean, giving Rhodes and its allies a near impregnable base.




Two views of the Colossus, in benign mood / mode


A later fight on its shoulders, giving an idea of the film's scale

Accordingly the Phenecians, the first villains of the piece, have sent an emmisary to Rhodes to negotiate with King Sirse for access to the harbour, the plan being to raid Greek ships and split the proceeds.

Sirse is wise enough, however, to impose a limitation on the number of Phenecian ships and men permitted into the harbour at any one time, both as a means of securing his own position and hopefully avoiding arousing suspicion amongst the Greeks, Rhodes traditional ally.

Sirse's advisor Thar has his own plans and is secretly plotting to overthrow his ruler with the aid of the Phenecians, hundreds of whose troops are being brought into the island in the guise of Macedonian slaves.


Sirse, Thar and the Phenecian emissary negotiate over a model of the harbour – a precursor to McBain's simulacra of Sweetwater station?

In addition another faction amongst the island's nobility also hopes to bring about a regime change, being dissatisfied with Sirse's rule and what they see as the vainglories of the Colossus. Unlike Thar they are loyal to their homeland and are looking to Greece for assistance.

All this means that everyone wants to know where the loyalties of the heroic half-Rhodean warrior visiting his uncle after his recent wartime exertions for Greece, Dario, lie and if he is just the innocent abroad that he appears to be...

Though entirely enjoyable in its own right, the main interest that The Colossus of Rhodes holds for many viewers today – myself included – is likely in its status as the official directorial debut of Sergio Leone and the extent to which it contains the same signature touches and themes as can be found in his later films.

The chief differences from the westerns are that the distinctions between the good guys and the bad guys are more straightforward and obvious, and the failure of the protagonist to play different factions against one another for his own benefit.

As Dario says at one point, “I don't play the hero” – rather he is the hero.

Leone's approach to history is also somewhat distinctive here, playing that bit faster and looser in terms of historical details. Though he acknowledged that it would probably take a lifetime's research to pursue authenticity here, it could be argued that in the case of the western he did do this research into its myths and history. Just like his later films, however, Leone also proves inclined to go for what he felt to be right in terms of the impact or effect it would have on the audience, as with a Colossus three times the size of its historical counterpart, positioned in a different place and tricked out with all sorts of fancy gadgets.






The Colossus reveals one of its secrets, raining fire down on a ship trying to pass beneath it

The film's approach to identity and allegiance is also somewhat reminiscent of Leone's later films, as when the difference between a Macedonian slave and a Phenecian warrior comes down to a uniform or the way in which Dario's love-interest Diala and uncle Lissipus do not revealing their true allegiances until late in the day.

There are also some surprising reversals of expectation, as with the way it looks like these selfsame slaves are about to be sacrificed to the god Baal rather than be housed in the dungeons of the temple until the moment to strike arrives, or the attempted forcible abduction of Dario by the Rhodean rebels after he stubbornly refuses to come along quietly and listen to what they have to say.

While the film is very much on an epic scale, it also largely succeeds at the more intimate level. In particular two of the female characters rank amongst the best developed ones to appear in a Leone film for some time, albeit with a relatively straightforward good girl / bad girl, if not madonna / whore, distinction emerging as the film goes on.

There's also an intriguing aspect to the rebels' motivation. It's not entirely clear what Sirse has done to incur their enmity other than following what they feel – admittedly correctly – to be the bad counsel of Thar and, perhaps, putting his own personal glory above that of Rhodes and the welfare of its people.






Some Blondie-style sharpshooting threatens to send a rebel to i leoni

Nevertheless, the other citizens of the Island seem happy enough with the building of the Colussus and the promise of prosperity and security that it offers, or are at least not generally that vocal in their complaints.

As such, there is perhaps the hint that the conflict is, much like the subsequent representation of American and Mexican civil wars in The Good the Bad and the Ugly and Duck You Sucker, primarily between two elite factions and the kind of thing which the masses would do best to avoid getting entangled in.


A somewhat unexplained, Duck You Sucker style massacre scene

There is a difference from these later films in that it is more idealism rather cynicism that eventually triumphs. Given Leone's remark that the distinction between his and Ford's westerns could in part be attributed to their respective backgrounds – Roman pessimism and American optimism – this may be a reflection of the film's own historico-mythic setting or that Leone was not interested in undertaking a wholesale re-invention of the peplum in the same way as he would later be with the western.




Two of the rebels undergo torture in a classic piece of homoerotic sadism

It is perhaps somewhat curious in this regard that the film is credited to Leone whereas A Fistful of Dollars was originally accredited to the pseudonymous Bob Robertson, such that he moved from being identified with his work to a position non-identification – albeit with a name that referenced his director father, Roberto Leone – before going back to identification from For a Few Dollars More onwards.

Presumably this loss of authority on Fistful can be accounted for by the fact that at the time it was still a relatively untested genre for Italian directors. Whereas the the historical and mythical epic was actually invented by the Italians in the silent era, such that the contemporaneous work of Cottafavi and others could be understood as a post-fascist reclamation of Italian cinematic heritage, the western, like the Gothic horror, was initially perceived as a foreign genre which Italians had no obvious aptitude for, leading filmmakers to attempt to pass off their product as of US or UK origin as generically appropriate.

This said, just as the practiced viewer can easily spot the stylistic and thematic differences between Hammer and Italian Gothics, part of the whole reason for the spaghetti westerns proving so fresh and attractive to many audiences at the time was their evident differences and departures from the Hollywood models.

It is this, despite Leone's attraction to The Colossus of Rhodes as a project apparently residing mostly in the opportunities it afforded him to ironicise the form after his uncredited and unofficial, straight debut on The Last Days of Pompeii, is perhaps where the finished product proves lacking compared to its immediate successors.




The deceptiveness of appearances, as we think the slaves are about to be sacrificed to Baal's gaping maw

The balance between following convention and introducing innovation is more heavily weighted towards the former than would later be the case here, such that cliché and pastiche tending to appear as such rather than as parody, subversion, deconstruction or any of the other preferred oppositional critical terms of choice.

Though some horse riding sequences outside of the city of Rhodes and some brutal and inventive torture scenes could easily have seen service in one of the later westerns with different musical accompaniment, costuming and design, the urban and sea-front locations that dominate elsewhere tend to makes Leone's direction generally that bit more anonymous than it would later become.

The contrasts between close-ups and background vistas are less extreme and more conventional, the former serving more in a classical Hollywood manner than as the exploration of the geography of weather-beaten, life-worn, distinctly unglamorous physiognomies. (As an aside, there is perhaps also a connection to be explored here between Dreyer's Joan of Arc, as the film of the facial close up, Pasolini – who, as Bertolucci notes in an interview, greatly admired Dreyer's film and drew inspiration from it when making his directorial debut, Accatone – and Leone's mature work a few years later.)




The camera assumes an independence from Dario's point of view, circling back to incorporate the seer within the seen of the set.

Leone's rhetorical, mannerist camera style is however in evidence when Dario pursues Diala into the crypts of her ancestors, where a 360 degree pan starts from his point of view and concludes by incorporating him within the camera's gaze as it comes to rest once more. The same sequence also sees a (wo)man with no name incident when Dario, reading out the names atop each mummified noble, encounters Diala standing in a vacant spot and plays along with her – “Hm, no name here” – before continuing on his way as if he had not seen her.

Likewise, traces of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly can perhaps be seen when a galley full of rebels proves to have been beneath Dario at the quayside all along and in a colisseum sequence where ranks of Phenecian archers are dramatically revealed at the back of the arena as Thar makes his bid for power.




Somehow Dario remained unaware of the ship's presence until it was pointed out to him


Similarly no-one in the coliseum seems to have noticed the rank of Phenecian archers amassing above them

As with the likes of the shoot out between Blondie and Tuco and Angel Eyes' gang and in the remarkably silent battlefield the two magnificent rogues stumble into shortly afterwards, there is here the sense of Leone experimenting with off-screen and on-screen space and the relationship between visual and aural data sets, formulating these for the first time along the lines that if you can't hear it or see it within the frame then it doesn't have any existence.

There's perhaps also vague hint of Tuco and Blondie's repeated riffs on “two kinds of people” in Dario's ironic references to Rhodes as the “Island of Peace” every time someone gets attacked or murdered.

A number of the performers like George Rigaud and Roberto Camardiel would go on to be spaghetti western regulars, the two actually appearing together as Scots and Irish patriarchs in Seven Brides for the McGregors, with Camardiel also appearing in For a Few Dollars More.

Epic Films: Casts, Credits and Commentary on over 250 Historical Spectacle Movies

The cover of the 2004 second edition, with expanded coverage

This McFarland book, published in 1990, discusses the epic film, providing full reviews of 222 movies and shorter summaries of another 73. Richard Harrison, the star of a number of Italian peplum productions in the 1960s provides the introduction, followed by an overview of the history of the genre by author Gary A. Smith. It's important to note the boundaries of the epic Smith provides here as they define what gets included and what doesn't.

Budget is not directly an issue, though the presence of larger-than-life characters and monumental events, whether historical or mythological, are prerequisites. So too is that these events occur sometime between the beginning of the world and the thirteenth century – the latter proving a somewhat arbitrary cutoff point that leads to the exclusion of a film like Freda's Maciste in Hell which would otherwise presumably qualify.

Another limitation, perhaps more obvious today than at the time of the book's publication, is its strong emphasis on European history, religion and mythologies and corresponding film productions, with no mention of, say, Tarkan Meets the Vikings from Turkey or Tales of the Taira Clan from Japan.

Nevertheless, the range of films featured is still broad, ranging from silent Italian and Hollywood epics such as Cabiria and Intolerance, through much of Cecil B DeMille's output, onto the 1950s Hollywood epics, scores of peplums, sundry Hammer exotics, Caligula and Caligula the Untold Story (but no mention of Mattei's Caligula and Messalina) and even a few versions of Bible stories produced under the auspices of church groups and released theatrically.

All the longer reviews follow the same basic format, telling the potential viewer what he or she needs to know, with an overview of the story and an evaluation of the film's strengths and weaknesses, along with any particularly noteworthy facts about the production.

Though perhaps not as comprehensive as it could be I doubt that it would be possible for anyone to genuinely cover the epic across the entirety of world cinema and feel sure that Epic Films will remain a useful guide to pre-Gladiator, 300 and Passion of the Christ historical spectacles. Certainly, I came away from it with a better sense of where these films fit in relation to their wider sub-generic histories. And, at the simple level of knowing whether this or that Hercules or Maciste peplum is worth a look, it will undoubtedly help.

Cinema and Fascism: Italian Film and Society, 1922-1943

The cover of the book is from a Maciste film poster, further suggestive of pre- and post-fascist cinema connections, with the character having appeared in films in all three periods

What's the relevance of a book on cinema in fascist Italy to the post-war popular cinema? The answer depends, of course, on how you choose to frame the question. Directly Steven Ricci's Cinema and Fascism: Italian Film and Society, 1922-1943 is not immediately, obviously relevant. But indirectly there is a lot of useful information and thought-provoking analysis that helps one think about later filone cinema in a different light.

Much like the recently rediscovered “Italian secret cinema” of the 1960s and 1970s, the films produced in the 21 years of Italian fascism were long ignored, typically summarily dismissed on account of their presumed politics or lack thereof in the wake of post-war re-adjustments and re-alignments: whether the overt propaganda of the “black” film or “white telephone” distractions from political and social realities, fascist films were examples of what cinema should not be.

Ricci notes, for instance, that Pierre Leprohon's oft-cited The Italian Cinema devotes 25 pages to the inter-war era compared to 200 on the post-war years.

While fascist-era cinema was actually already undergoing a process of re-evaluation within Italy at around the same time as books like Leprohon's continued to tell this same old story, these re-evaluations took the form of depoliticised aesthetic and auteurist readings, culminating in the publication of a 1979 volume entitled The Fabulous Thirties.

The task Ricci sets himself is to chart the history of Italian cinema during the fascist period without falling prey to these or any other extreme positions and by paying close attention to the films themselves. There were both continuities and discontinuities between pre-fascist, fascist and post-fascist Italian cinemas. Indeed, part of the picture that emerges is that what you see often depends on where you look.

A good example here is dubbing. The history of Italy as a dubbing country dates to the fascist era, with the passing of a law stipulating that all foreign-language films had to be dubbed into Italian. For the fascist regime, dubbing provided a way of literally rewriting films and of promoting their standard version of the Italian language. Thus, for example, The Adventures of Marco Polo, a 1938 adventure in which Gary Cooper plays the Venetian explorer, could be retitled and recontextualised as Uno scozzese alla corte del Gran Khan – i..e a Scotsman in the Great Khan's Court – because the regime disapproved of the film and the actors' representation of a noted Italian hero. For a neo-realist, meanwhile, using regional dialects and accents was a way of signalling a break from and opposition to this past.

Though Ricci does not bring out the connection with the fast and loose approach to time and place (or “chronotope” in a more theoretical vocabulary) in the peplum and adventure films of the early 1960s, it does leave one wondering about the likes of Riccardo Freda's Maciste all'inferno / The Witch's Curse, in which Maciste – renamed Samson for the international audience unfamiliar with a specifically Italian character – finds himself in 17th century Scotland.

This is all the more so since another of Ricci's major themes, the representation of the (male) body in the silent-era strongman film and later more explicitly propagandistic adventure films, almost cries out for an extended comparison with the peplum, superspy and spaghetti western filone. Is it the case, for instance, that all that really happens is that the poles reverse, insofar as a Maciste performs the same mighty deeds in defence of the people but transforms from a fascist to a anti-fascist hero inasmuch as the villain of the fascist era film is coded as a decadent liberal and his 1960s counterpart as a fascist?

Tellingly in both cases the mythical-historical past seems likely to be an national rather than a pre-national one, whereby ancient Rome represents and resembles nothing so much as it does 20th century Italy.

At the same time, however, if we also consider Mikel Koven's vernacular cinema thesis here, it is clear that national identity was likely not the only issue here either, that the same film would say different things to a terza visione spectator in the south as to a prima visione spectator in the north. (Many of the differences in audience patterns discussed in Koven's La Dolce Morte can also be traced back to the pre- and fascist periods, as Ricci's analysis makes clear.)

This brings us on nicely to the giallo. Given of the fascist regime's attempts to purge foreign influences on the Italian language and their close relationship with publisher Mondadori, one first of all wonders if there's a secret history of the term itself waiting to be brought out. How far, that is, did giallo become the preferred term here because i thriller was an Anglicism and noir a French import? What were the political implications of using one or the other?

Whatever the case, it seems clear that part of the reason for the giallo film's late emergence was fascist regime's distinctive stance on crime literature and film: they were tolerated, even acceptable, so long as they presented events taking place outwith Italy's borders to thereby remind the audience of how bad things were in the non-fascist world and of what the regime was protecting them from. Thus, the Hollywood gangster movie was acceptable precisely because it was American, so long as the criminal was not coded as an Italian-American – which dubbing could sort, at least in part.

And again the picture becomes more complex as one looks further, insofar as the likes of Ossessione and Bitter Rice then represent the (re-)emergence of crime in Italian contexts. Moreover there are also important differences from film to film that need to be taken into account: Despite being an adaptation of Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, Ossessione presents an essentially indigenous criminality untainted by outside influences and thus implicitly attacks the fascist regime: “This is not Italy,” as Count Ciano famously remarked.

In contrast the post-liberation Bitter Rice presents a criminality influenced by Hollywood gangster movies and US culture and arguably presents an emergent left-wing critique of the new post-war Italian re-alignment: “This is not Italy, or at least the Italy we on the left fought for,” as it were.

Linked in with this, Ricci also provides useful discussions of the role of travel and tourism, hinting that the giallo emphasis on jet planes and in-between places and states noted by Gary Needham in his article on the filone might also be re-read as part of a longer history.

In sum, though the fan may not have the same theoretical or cinematic background as Ricci, he or she may well get a lot more out of this book than might have been thought; certainly there are numerous other little details and spurs to further reflection and research which I'll leave the reader to discover for themselves...

Peplumania

After enjoying Goliath and the Dragon and The Conqueror of Atlantis, I decided I wanted to get better acquainted with the Italian sword and sandal / peplum / mythological film and accordingly ordered the 50 film Warriors box set, which arrived yesterday.

So far I've only watched Hercules against the Moon Men, which is actually a retitled Maciste entry, non-Italian audiences not being familiar with the Maciste character, and The Giants of Thessaly, Riccardo Freda's version of Jason and the Argonauts, which also has contributions from Carlo Rustichelli and Carlo Rambaldi among others.

Although Giants features an evil sorceress who transforms into an old crone in front of the hero, as also seen in I Vampiri, I don't think the peplum as a whole is a cinema that is particularly amenable to auteurist analysis.

Rather, reading the list of titles included in the box, their use of mythological sources, and the mix and match approach pursued by the filmmakers in their approach to these sources, they seem more like a genre better approached in more structuralist type terms, without regard for author.

Indeed, as a programming exercise, I'm almost tempted to take the list of titles and make a computer program to generate random titles and would venture that many of these would sound equally as convincing as the real ones included in the set:

Ali Baba and the Seven Saracens
Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops
The Avenger
Caesar the Conqueror
Cleopatra's Daughter
Colossus and the Amazon Queen
Colossus and the Headhunters
The Conqueror of the Orient
Damon and Pythias
David and Goliath
Duel of Champions
Fire Monsters against the Sons of Hercules
Fury of Achilles
Fury of Hercules
The Giant of Marathon
The Giant of Rome
The Giant of Thessaly
Gladiators of Rome
Goliath and the Dragon
Goliath and the Sins of Babylon
Hercules against the Barbarians
Hercules against the Mongols
Hercules against the Moon Men
Hercules against the Captive Women
Hercules against the Masked Rider
Hercules against the Princess of Troy
Hercules against the Tyrants of Babylon
Hercules Unchained
Hero of Rome
Herod the Great
Kindar the Invulnerable
The Last of the Vikings
Maciste in King Solomon's Mines
Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules
Queen of the Amazons
Romulus and the Sabines
Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World
Son of Hercules in the Land of Darkness
Son of Samson
Spartacus and the Ten Gladiators
The Ten Gladiators
Thor and the Amazon Women
Triumph of the Son of Hercules
Two Gladiators
Ulysses against the Son of Hercules
Ursus in the Land of Fire
Ursus in the Valley of the Lions
Vengeance of Ursus
Vulcan Son of Jupiter
The White Warrior

Then again, one could well imagine a 50 disc set of gialli suggesting something similar with its animal and / or number titles, as the random giallo generator also indicates, with the films themselves sometimes revealing distinctive personalities and aesthetics.

While I'm sure that some differences in approach will emerge within these peplums, I also have a hunch that there will be a greater sameness to them. I also wonder whether this, in combination with the greater simplicity of the films, their readily identifiable heroes, villains and straightforward dynamic of might and right invariably triumphant, along with the relative lack of aesthetic self-consciousness, means that they might actually haven proven a better test case for Koven's vernacular cinema thesis than the giallo.

Thoughts or counter-examples welcomed...