Les derniers jours de Pompei

The handsome Greek Lysias (blond Georges Marchal) only has eyes for the beautiful Hélène (Micheline Presle) but she's betrothed to the goddess Isis and can never marry. Arbax, the evil high priest of that pagan cult, wants Hélène for himself and Lysias's haughty fianceé will stop at nothing to break up the lovers ...and, oh, one of Lysias' female slaves would love nothing more than to be his love slave. As formidable as these obstacles are, they aren't the only ones on the rocky road to true love; throw in God's wrath over the culture clash between idol worship and Christianity and a potion that induces madness and all hell breaks loose...

Enjoyable Italo/French nonsense from the Golden Age that's thankfully not as boring as Hollywood's THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII ('35 version). There's good b&w special effects for the time but no real "sins" to speak of, alas, and as any Pompeii aficionado knows, the sea was boiling so there'd be no last-minute escapes in real life.

This French version is very well acted, particularly by Georges Marchal. The classical Roman sets and costumes are outstanding. The characters are closer to Bulwer-Lytton's originals than the 1936 American version, but the action scenes are very much lacking. Micheline Presle is lovely as the noble Roman lady Helena enmeshed in a sinister and fraudulent Eastern cult which makes her unresponsive to the honest young man Lysias (Georges Marchal) who loves her.

Meanwhile the young servant girl Nydia is so in love with him that she absconds with a dangerous drug supplied to the unscrupulous highborn lady Julia by the slimy Arbaces, high priest of Isis. Nydia substitutes water in the vial and later administers the potion to Lysias in the belief that it will make him enamored of her. Unfortunately, it puts him into a psychotic stupor during which he wanders onto the scene of a murder and gets blamed and imprisoned for trial.

The final cataclysmic scenes are nowhere near as magnificent as in the earlier 1936 American film. If the two films were combined (the characters from the French version and the action scenes from the U.S. version) the result would be a film far better than either.

One more time ,Bulwer-Lytton's book was cheapened in this movie which was to be L'Herbier's next-to-last one.It 's got a good beginning and a good ending but what remains is a muddled story ,not faithful to the original plot,saved by the magnitude of the actors (Georges Marchal,Micheline Presles and Marcel Herrand).

The beginning promised great things : it is a flash forward ,repeating the final lines of the novel,when the archaeologists discover the places where the -fictional- events took place ;then a court room where a man stands accused which makes most of the film a long flashback.

The leads' names have undergone changes :Glauco/Glaucus becomes Lysia(s) and Ione becomes Helene/Elena ;Nydia ,the young slave is not blind and she is killed early in the movie which impoverishes the character who was desperately in love with the hero.The poison which makes Lysia lose his mind and his memory is a pure invention from the screenwriters(I mean it's not in the book) .Of course the Christians are here ,but they come at the most awkward moment.

The eruption of the volcano is pretty good for the time and the movements in the crowd and the panic are well directed.But if you come to Pompei,the guide will tell you it was impossible to escape by boats and that there were no survivors.

Like this ? try these "Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei "(1959) The Bonnard/Leone Tarzanesque version should be reserved for Steve Reeves' fans.

"Last days of Pompey" was a fine mini-series in the eighties ,the best version I know of the celebrated novel.Starring Olivia Hussey ,Nicholas Clay and Lynda Pearl.