Alexandre le Grand

"Alexander the Great" not surprisingly attempts to portray the life of Alexander the Great. On the surface it seems as though it should be excellent considering that the cast is led by two prolific actors, Richard Burton and Fredric March as Alexander and his father Philip respectively. The film also features elegant costumes and lavish sets laden with depictions of ancient art and architecture. However, all of these attributes disappointingly don't prevent the film from being extremely tedious.

The film starts with Alexander's earlier life in Macedon and is mostly focused on portraying antagonisms between Alexander and Philip and the relationship of Alexander's mother to both. Richard Burton and Fredric March have some fine moments, but for the most part their dialogue is uninteresting, which makes the film mostly dull since most of the scenes in the film show lengthy discourses. There are jokes added as well that are often followed by a number laughing, but the humor is mostly stale. There is one amusing point where Philip suggests that Alexander should wait until he is dead before naming a city after himself, but this represents an exception rather than the norm. Barry Jones did give an enjoyable performance as Aristotle, although he is only a marginal element in the film.

During this first phase of the film the Battle of Chaeronea of is also portrayed, where forces led by Philip and Alexander defeated a combined Athenian and Theban force in order to unite Greece under Macedonian rule. The battle, despite having an array of extras in it, is handled clumsily. It starts with brief shots of infantry and cavalry crossing a stream and then fighting out of formation. Then the focused is placed on Philip fighting one-on-one and Alexander charging in after him. This portrayal seems to bear little to no resemblance to the actual battle of history, is short in duration and not particularly exciting.

Shortly after half way through the film, Philip dies and the film moves to a portrayal of Alexander's military exploits in Persia. It is in this stage we are introduced to Memnon, a Greek fighting with the Persians. Peter Cushing gives a strong performance as Memnon armed with sharp lines, making his the top performance of the film though the character is seen in relatively few scenes. Harry Andrews is also notable as the Persian emperor Darius, though Darius is never made particularly interesting in the context of an opponent to Alexander. However, the scene representing the correspondence between Darius and Alexander showing the "clash of egos" was well-done.

Most of this phase of the film is a rotation between short battle scenes and more mostly dull dialogue with some rare decent scenes. The Battle of the Granicus is shown basically as a brief cavalry charge. The treatment of Granicus is better than the treatment of Chaeronea, but not much better. There is another final battle between Alexander and Darius, presumably intended to represent the Battle of Gaugamela. The battle starts with a Perisan chariot charge and seems as though it will be interesting, but it quickly culminates in a brief uninteresting cavalry charge as well. The main problem with these battle scenes is that they fail to give a sense of Alexander's military genius. It seems as though he just accumulated territory through a series of brief heroic cavalry charges and the film never represents the tactics used in any of the battles. These are also a series of brief and unnecessary battle clips overlapped by a map of Persia to represent the conquests not shown in "fuller" battles. After Alexander's conquests, the film ends poorly with an uninteresting "harmony and unity" speech from Alexander for Greeks and Persians. "Alexander the Great" is a colossal bore, and I strongly recommend avoiding it.

I have always been fascinated by the short and violent life of Alexander of Macedonia, which of course makes me biased in reviewing this film. It has been said of this film that Robert Rossen, who produced, wrote and directed this film, was aiming for a masterpiece but failed honorably. While this is true in a way, I still enjoyed it more than that. This movie is not fast in pace, and the direction is not perfect either, but it feels authentic. I'm sure that not everything portrayed is true to history (does anyone really care?), but it is convincing, and the acting is solid. Richard Burton is a very good Alexander, and he adds a lot of subtle edges to this enigmatic figure from history (just ignore the silly blond wig...) All in all, Alexander the Great is a good film, perhaps too ambitious, and even though it is not very accessible to viewers not familiar with the territory, it is still quite dramatic, convincing and enjoyable if you like historical epics. And even though the film doesn't ask you to care too much about the characters, it is still an interesting, intellectual, and high minded story you probably will not forget. If you keep in mind that it is the events of history that are really on display here, and not so much the individual players, you may enjoy it as I did.

I borrowed this movie with one intent, and that is to see how the subject material was handled in the 50s, compared to the most recent interpretation by Oliver Stone, who gave us an Alexander with Colin Farrell complete with his hair dyed blonde. And while I was lamenting the fact that there were only 2 war scenes on a massive scale included in that version, the hype that surrounded the story of a conqueror seemed to have made way for Stone's very queer depiction on the bisexuality of Alexander, especially with the camera adopting his POV and gazing ever so lovingly at the male species, countless of times until you want to throw up. I guess subtle is never in Stone's books.

Now this version written and directed by Robert Rossen (who also gave us the original Hustler) did away with all that sexuality issues, and neither did it find any need to have gratuitous nudity in watching Alexander make love (in Stone's version, Rosario Dawson went nude in her role as Roxane). Then again it was made about 50 years ago. Anyway, what I found to be a major disappointment, were the battle scenes. Yes, it might be terribly dated by now, and sadly didn't survive the test of time. At certain scenes and angles, it's akin to old martial arts movies, where enemies just circle around you, waiting for their choreographed moves to be executed, or worse, if you pay attention to characters in the background, they surely aren't moving like ferocious warriors, choosing instead to mull around!

Also, we only get one major battle sequence in Alexander the Great, which made the foray into India in Stone's Alexander look like bonus material. In fact, this version took some time to establish key characters, and began with Alexander's father King Philip's (Fredric March) conquests first, interrupted by the birth of his son, and the prophetic signs under which he was born. It took almost 30 minutes before you see any semblance to a fight, and almost one hour before Richard Burton finally takes over the mantle and seeks out his destiny as one of the greatest known world conquerors of all time. However, the film felt like it was in two arcs, the first which dwells on the internal bickering within Greece with its many factions, and the plotting between mother Olympias (Danielle Darrieux) and King Philip, each wanting to win over Alexander's loyalty for their own political purpose. In this version though, which harped on Darrieux's appearance in the credits, I thought she made Angelina Jolie look more formidable in the role. At least Jolie was dripping with evilness and cunning, compared to the more subdued Darrieux.

The latter half dealt with Alexander's conquests through Asia, though most of the facts were glossed over. It was too little too late as most of which are told using montage, intertitles and narration, which made it look like a rush job to end it. While Stone's movie had focused a fair bit over Alexander's obsession with being the Son of God and his increasing obsession over himself and his glories, this version again made those themes look superbly examined in Stone's version. However, one thing's for certain, Richard Burton, even with the horribly blond hair which looked like a wig, was indeed a lot more charismatic and believable than Coliln Farrell. And that also meant when Burton was wearing the horrendous full faced helmet so that the stunt guy can take over!

All in all, a pretty decent effort in telling the story of Alexander the Great, however as mentioned, it didn't really stood up to the test of time.

This is one of those international productions popular in the 1950's. Made in Spain with British, American and French actors.

Robert Rossen is a good director with many fine movies to his credit but really doesn't seem to have the flair for historical epics. There is too much talk and the battle scenes tend to be rather confusing and poorly choreographed.

Richard Burton does his best, his magnificent voice can make something of the most mundane dialogue and he certainly looks virile despite a rather swish looking blonde wig.

A good supporting cast is largely wasted.

Though not historically accurate you could say this film is based on Alexandre the Great's impressive figure. The point is that it has some important flaws the demerit the product.

First of all Richard Burton was not the actor to play Alexandre though not for his undoubted acting ability but because he was too old. In fact, he was almost the same age the Macedonian hero was when he died, and it shows clearly (even more when the picture takes his life when he was just an adolescent). Secondly, the film is too slow with lots of talk and little action, but Alexander was mainly a man of action. And finally, the not abundant action sequences lack spectacle and strength, even for the middle 50's. So it appears to me that director Robert Rossen either missed the correct focus to tell this story or got too tight to an erroneously focused script.

However the film might be entertaining for those who like epic films and/or are interested in the historical figure (like me) and has some good moments, good color photography, a fine and adequate musical score and a strong supporting cast.

Frederic March does a good job as Philipus II "the Barbarian", Alexander's father, who created the invincible Macedonian "falange" that was so very well used by his son at war. Danielle Darrieux plays Alexander's ambitious and confronting mother and there are fine performances too by Peter Cushing, Stanley Baker, Helmut Dantine and the always reliable Harry Andrews as Persian king Darius.

Just for a look every once in a while, but no too often.