Hélène de Troie

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.

As a fan of Greek Mythogy, Helen of Troy is the closest I've seen reenactment of the Trojan War. Under the Direction of Director Robert Wise, this is a well produced version in telling the story.

As most people know the ending it was still sad, they had it made, but the advice given by Helen "Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts", was ignored and thus the downfall of the City of Troy.

All in all I did enjoy this version, I don't think anyone else will disagree

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.

Spectacular and Hollywood style renditíon based on Troy war with splendid cast and breathtaking battle scenes.When París : Jacques Sernas escapes with Helen : Rosana Podesta there takes place the Troy war. Helen is the beautiful wife of Menelao , Sparta King, : Neal MacGuinnis, when she falls for París , son of Troy king Priamo : Cedric Hardwicke, both of them escape. This event lead to the Siege of Troy.Director Robert Wise picked two new Italian stars: Sernas and Podesta to play the íntimate lovers in this impressive as well as epic tale based on the known poem written by Homero: Iliada. Dealing with love , battles , Goddess : Aphrodita and Atenea , death and the motive led up to it . While tension among Greeks divide the camp giving hope the Trojan . As Greek warriors under command of Menelaus , Agamenon , Ulysses , and Achilles : Stanley Baker get to hide out in the Trojan horse when they take the Wooden Beast into the Troy city and they are successful.

This monumental and epic retelling contains a moving love story , Drama, tragic events , and overwhelming battles with a cast of thousands. After a hardworking filming the results were only fair and decent. The picture ignores true deeds for lavish and high budgeted effects, including a great number of extras and a lot of war machines.In the movie shows up numerous historical and mythological roles as Priamo: Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Hecuba well played by Nora Swinburne , Agamemmon performed by Robert Douglas , as Menelaus interpreted by Neal MacGuinnis , Ulysses : Torin Thatcher, Hector : Harry Andrews , Achilles: Stanley Baker , Cassandra : Janette Scott , Ajax : Maxwell Reed , Patroclus : Terence Longdon , among others.

This events about Troy war have been adapted on various films : Silent movie titled The Private life of Helen of Troy by Michael Curtiz 1927 with Maria Corda , Lewis Stone ; Italian versión 1962 by Giorgio Ferroni with Steve Reeves , Juliette Mayniel, Lidia Alfonsi, Mimmo Palmara; Italian recounting titled Fury of Achilles by Marino Girolami with Gordon Mitchell , Jacques Bergerac , Gloria Milland , Ennio Girolami and Troy by Wolfgang Petersen, with Brad Pitt, Diana Kruger, Rose Byrne , Orlando Bloom , Brian Cox. And a TV series 2003 by John Kent Harrison with Matthew Mardsen , Sienna Guilery, Rufus Sewell , Joe Montana,Daniel La Pine, James Callis , and Katie Blake as Cassandra.

HELEN OF TROY is a very respectable Hollywood sword and sandal effort from the 1950s, with a strong international cast and very good production values. Except ...

Why does every popular culture effort at retelling the Trojan War myth have to make Paris the hero? In the Illiad, by far the most significant and authoritative source of the story, at best shows Paris to be an ambiguous figure--the best looking man of his generation, but often a coward in battle. Helen expresses extraordinary contempt for him in one extended passage. In one or two brief sequences, Paris fights valiantly, but in his major appearance, his winner-take-all-and-Helen duel with Menaleus, after bragging and crowing about his prowess, he completely wimps out in the battle, and, once defeated, is transported by Aphrodite back to Troy to hide in his bedroom.

HELEN OF TROY is not the only effort to mis-read the Illiad into a Paris-and-Helen "runaway" love story. Perhaps in writing a commercial screenplay, that's what any writer would be forced to do. But that doesn't speak well for our popular culture, one that can't sustain the ambiguity and complexity of another culture--of 2700 years ago!

Still, the movie has its strong parts, particularly Stanley Baker as Achilles. Watch for Brigitte Bardot in an early, pre-star role as Helen's handmaiden.