Helena de Tróia

Based on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, it's the story of the Trojan War. It's a grand old Hollywood epic from Warner Bros. They are shooting in Italy. The cast is international. The lead character is Paris which is a little odd. He always struck me as a bratty teenager. Of course, that's not the Paris in this movie. They are making him the hero and the Greeks as the villains. It's love against the world. I don't buy it, but that's what they're selling. The dialogue is a bit stiff. It's trying to be a Shakespearean tragedy. On top of that, the production is big. It's huge in fact. It's an old Hollywood epic in that sense. They really have ships and war engines. They have some big sets. They have masses of extras. It's very big and the battles are big. Whatever flaws this has, it's worth it to see all the construction and destruction.

Come on, IMDb'ers! Get your stuff right. Warner Brothers was the studio and they usually forced their producer/directors around this period to use their own proprietary single-strip color process, rather than Technicolor, which by 1956 had already abandoned its own more expensive to use and cumbersome to handle three-strip process. Somehow Robert Wise and his technicians managed to get more variety and warmer tones while using Warnercolor in this film than what was usually achieved stateside on W.B.'s Burbank sound stages and on various U.S. locations. Maybe it was, as Franco Zeffirelli is fond of calling it, "the golden-ah light" of Italy. Anyway this film is quite an eye-filling visual achievement. And Max Steiner's score is one of his better ones, pumping up the spectacle aspect quite effectively.

A couple of trivia notes: The Walls of Troy set accidentally caught fire before the company was finished with it, but Wise and his technicians were on the spot and managed to get some usable footage out of that disaster. (I don't know if they had to reconstruct it or rewrite some scenes that were originally supposed to have taken place on its ramparts.) And TIME magazine in its review complained that Signorina Podesta's vaccination scar (and I think that of Monsieur Sernas as well) is clearly visible in a love scene. Without computers to fix such gaffes back then, and probably not noticing that little "oops!" until examining footage in a U.S. screening room when the company returned home for editing, the studio probably figured they'd just let it pass. But forty-foot wide CinemaScope screens were quite merciless when it came to audiences' perceptions of the obvious.

It is good for the viewer to see this cinemascope spectacular from 1956 after seeing the new TROY with Brad and Eric. HELEN OF TROY as directed by craftsman Robert Wise is very pleasingly made and with excellent action and spectacle - especially in the well populated fiery siege scenes. No CGI in those days, there really was a couple of thousand dressed and armed extras running all over the huge set. Apparently Robert Wise is on record as having said he took the $6 million assignment because he hadn't yet directed a spectacular....! Told from a different perspective than the 2004 version, this 50s view is from the point of Paris as opposed to Archilles in the new one. It would be like the new one being told from Orlando Bloom's perspective rather than from Brad Pitt's. HELEN OF TROY on DVD has good extras including the TV specials made with Gig Young as a promo of the time. The huge set created in Italy was recycled into SODOM AND GOMORRAH given the orange pillars and layout. HELEN OF TROY has excellent Warnercolour and beautiful art direction. It is a good film and well worth seeing after you see TROY as a companion/chaser.

Of all the great stories handed down through the ages, few can equal Homer's Iliad - a towering epic of warrior heroes, squabbling gods, and anger that destroyed nations...

This is the source for Robert Wise's film... All the elements of a magnificent spectacle exist in Homer's work - a lavish and decadent court life, the tension of the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, the most beautiful woman in Greece, and a drama of love and seduction...

Thousands of weapons are used: spears, bows, arrows, body armor, helmets, shields, maces and ships of the period l200 B.C., plus a tremendous wooden horse...

Paris, on a diplomatic mission to Sparta to arrange peaceful trade, is washed up on the Spartan shore after being shipwrecked during a storm... He is helped by the lovely Helen who claims to be a handmaiden to the queen... She takes her leave, directing him to the court of King Menelaus... Paris is greeted and honored in a 'cesti' combat with Ajax... Secretly, however, Menelaus plots to kill his guest...

Helen warns Paris of the danger to his life and urges him to run away... Herself in danger for revealing the plot, she succumbs to Paris' pleadings to flee with him... The lovers make their way to Troy...

From that point the spectacular elements - the massing of the ships and men, and the battles outside the walls of Troy, take over...

Rossana Podesta - a natural brunette given a blonde wig and the classical Grecian look - plays Helen, the indirect cause of the Trojan War, but for Paris, she is the goddess of love and beauty, "Aphrodite."

Jacques Sernas plays Paris... His seduction of Helen and refusal to return her, started the Trojan War...

Robert Douglas is Agamemnon, the commander in chief of the Greek forces... He calls on the kings and princes to unite in a war of revenge against the Trojans... He was a very ambitious man, dreaming of Troy's treasures...

Stanley Baker is Achilles, the unbeatable warrior, the greatest and most tragic of the Greek heroes...

Harry Andrews is Hector, the eldest son of king Priam, and the husband of Andromache... He is the chief warrior of the Trojan army...

Niall MacGinnis is the furious Menelaus, King of Sparta, who calls on his brother Agamemnon to gather an army and avenge the mark of shame...

Torin Thatcher is Ulysses, king of Ithaca, the man of outstanding wisdom...

Sir Cedric Hardwicke is the powerless but kindly King of Troy...

Janette Scott is Cassandra, daughter of Priam, loved by the goddess Athena... With a great spirit of prophecy she warns her father to burn the wooden horse...

Robert Wise makes a brave attempt to marry the intimate with the spectacular - a difficult task - but "Helen of Troy" is an epic movie, a superior entertainment filmed in CinemaScope and Technicolor..

In comparing this version of Helen Of Troy with the more recent Troy it's quite the tossup. Both didn't quite live up to expectations, the casting in a few places doesn't quite work. There was also different emphasis placed on the classical figures in each film. This version also uses a cast of thousands and in the current version, computer graphics are used to show the mass armies of both sides.

I never understood why 20th Century Fox never thought to film this with Tyrone Power, the role of Paris seems like such a good fit for him. Jacques Sernas was adequate, but not more than that. Rosanna Podesta is one magnificent looking Helen in a role that asks nothing more than being the first celebrity romance in history.

I'd be hard pressed to choose between Peter O'Toole in Troy and Cedric Hardwicke. Each so well portrays the world weary and war weary Priam so well. Hecuba is reduced to a cipher in the current version. But Nora Swinburne is not just a magnificent queen, but a caring mother for her rambunctious brood of Trojan princes and one princess.

My favorite as he's likely to be in any film he's in is Stanley Baker. There is quite a difference between him and Brad Pitt. Brad was a reluctant warrior as in Homer's epic. But Achilles as Baker realizes him is just a warrior who likes battle with the zest of a warrior who knows the gods have given him near invincibility. Baker brings so much passion to anything he does, he usually blows me away with any performance.

Next to the stories of the Bible, Homer's epics are probably the most universally known tales and everyone is a critic. For me this Helen Of Troy is a good if not great retelling of the tale.