Marco Polo, O Magnífico

Marco the Magnificent results to be a mediocre adventure movie about the legendary traveller Marco Polo : Horst Buchold , dealing with his feats throughout a long and dangerous journey to China. Marco is an Italian philander who enjoys loves and amusement until he undertakes the risked mission . He along with his father : Massimo Girotti and uncle go to hand over a Christan Pope's peace message to Emperor Kublai Khan : Anthony Quinn. West is where he finds the Cave of Assassins , listen the bell that drives men mad ... feels the whip girl's lash. But East is where he defeats armies....conquers women... runs into moving belly dancers ...and plays with inscrutable beauties than are hotter than gunpowder !. It's adventure at its highest with the star-studded cast of the year !

A lavish but middling effort with plenty of adventures , emotion , noisy action , battles , romance , colorful cinematography and stirring musical score by Georges Garvarentz . This is an exciting story of savagery , endurance and heroism. The pic mingles far eastern adventures and medieval scenario. The movie turns out to be an inferior remake to classy Hollywood "Adventures of Marco Polo" by Archie Mayo starred Gary Cooper as the title role . As this " La Fabuleuse aventure de Marco Polo" is similar to "Marco Polo" 1962 starred by Rory Calhoun , an European co-production with a plethora of stars and disjointed events. Stars Horst Buchold as a sympathetic and stubborn Marco Polo who will stop at nothing to get his purports . Being supported by an excellent cast with full of stars as Anthony Quinn as Kublai , Akim Tamiroff as the Old Man of the Mountain , Elsa Martínelli as the woman with the whip, Omar Sharif as an Emir , Bruno Cremer , Gregoire Aslan , Folco Lulli, Massimo Girotti , and the great Orson Welles as Marco Polo's tutor. Shot on location by cameraman Armand Thirard in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan , appearing the famous Bamiyan's Buddhas that were destroyed by the Talibans . The motion picture was highly budgeted by Raoul Levy and regularly directed by Dennis Patelliere and direction assistant by Noel Howard .

Other films based on this legendary character are the following ones : Classic version "Adventures of Marco Polo" by Archie Mayo with Gary Cooper , Basil Rathbone , Alan Hale . "Marco Polo" 1963 by Hugo Fregonese with Rory Calhoun , Yoko Tani , Robert Hundar , Pierre Cressoy . "Marco" 1973 by Seymour Robbie with Desi Arnaz Jr , Zero Mostel . "The incredible adventures of Marco Polo on his journeys to the ends of the Earth" 1998 with Don Diamond , Jack Palance , Oliver Reed . "Marco Polo" 2007 by Kevin Connor with Ian Somerhalder , BD Wong , Brian Dennehy . The best turns out to be the excellent series "Marco Polo 1982" by Giuliano Montalvo with Ken Marshall , David Warner , F Murray Abraham , Leonardo Nimoy . And "Marco Polo TV series 2014" by John Fusco with Lorenzo Richelmy , Benedict Wong , Joan Chen , Michelle Yeoh , among others .

Immediate background:once upon a time there was a veteran called Christian -Jaque He had big ambitions: a production which would have no cause to be jealous of Hollywood.The highlight was to be a giant chess game (hence the previous title :"God's chessboard!").Alain Delon was Marco.Endless problems of production led Christian-Jaque to call it a day.

Hence this movie ,much less ambitious in scope ,which was made by the odd job man of the French cinema ,Denys de la Patellière .Delon was replaced by his German equivalent ,Horst Buchholz -the younger generation saw as the doctor in "la vita è bella"- and a cast of thousand was gathered:Orson Welles and Akim Tamiroff,Kirk Douglas's ex-protégée Elsa Martinelli,Anthony Quinn,Omar Sharif,Gregoire Aslan ...is that all? On his way to China ,Marco will meet wicked people (Tamiroff's "Old man in the Mountains" ) attractive ones (Venice's women with whom he cuckolds all the husbands;the woman with the whip);traitors (the Mongolian prince),but,as history books tell ,and tell it so well,he will succeed and occident will make friends with orient.

Thanks to the cast,and to a far-fetched but entertaining story,it's watchable.More than the version featuring Rory Calhoun (1961).

If you give this film a chance for the sake of Orson Welles, you will be disappointed. By all means, he is the first actor to appear in the film, but in one scene only. The rest of the film is mainly worth seeing for the sake of Omar Sharif at his most dashing and Anthony Quinn as Kublai Khan - he never failed to fulfill a character.

For the rest of the film, it's a feast to the eyes, and the music is perhaps the best part. The worst part is the script.

They always do that with the Marco Polo story. They never stick to his own book but make just anything up as romanticized as possible to avoid the casual scientific and extremely dry documentary of the book, which tells nothing of the characters but only of facts. The episode of the old man of the mountain is always especially screwed up into any fabulous extravaganza, and especially so here. He was a historical figure and actual leader of the assassins, but for some reason in every new version of Marco Polo they have to do anything to exagerrate his legend as much as possible. Here it is simply made ridiculous, and Akim Tamiroff is the only miscast of the film. They could have turned it into a real horror episode but only make it fall flat in absurdity.

Originally, it was planned to become a great epic directed by the qualified veteran Christian-Jacques with Alain Delon as Marco Polo, and there was nothing wrong with that idea. Unfortunately the project shipwrecked, and this was made instead some years later, still with a mainly French technical crew, but much cut down and shot almost entirely in Serbia.

So it's just another among the number of Marco Polo distorted fantasies, but it's not the worst one. I believe the worst one was the soap opera with Gary Cooper 1938, which was anything but the Marco Polo story. The best one though was the great television series of 1982-83 in eight long meticulous episodes with Ken Marshall, Denholm Elliott as the father, David Warner, F. Murray Abraham and Ruocheng Ying as the ultimate Kublai Khan, which TV-series so far also came closest to at least almost reaching the truth.

Cinematographer Armand Thirard (les Diaboliques, le Salaire de la peur) does a fabulous job with beautiful environmental shots, but unfortunately everything else in this movie is crap. This movie is terrible, but somehow visually reminiscent of Kwaidan (Kobayashi, 1964), which is one of the greatest fairy-tale films in the world, largely because of the sceneries and the lighting. 'Marco' could have been magnificent if there was another protagonist and another director. It is a pretentious and dumb movie with (2-minute performance) box-office attraction Orson Welles who wore a silly costume: don't bother to see it plz. Maybe nice for kids though as a supposed adventure movie. And to see Anthony Quinn in an unexpected role: I had to search the credits to find which part he played. I would be grateful if someone did a remake of these promising tales.

Denys de La Patellière it's not one of the great masters of the French cinema, I don't know to what extent the lack of directorial talent or the lack of super screenplays... This film, without the presence of some great actors, starting with Anthony Quinn, would be very boring. The other big names, Omar Sharif, Akim Tamiroff, Bruno Cremer, Robert Hossein, Orson Welles, Massimo Girotti, Grégoire Aslan, Folco Lulli, are OK in a completely uninteresting story. Horst Buchholz is not a great actor, he's just a nice boy, the forever adolescent type. The beautiful Elsa Martinelli also has a small role.