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The 300 Spartans (1961)
Oct. 20th, 2013 01:25 pmIs an amusing spectacle of a film with an awful lot of ridiculously boring bits. Alas, the guy playing Leonidas has no acting chops at all, and set against the rounded vowels and British consonants of the gentleman playing Themistocles (who actually can act), his tendency to pronounce "earth" "oyth" and rush out his lines as if speed is all that matters... is hilariously jarring.
This is a film which is actually aware of Herodotos: it has no clue at all about how to choreograph a battle involving Greek hoplites (protip: short shorts go stabby, not slashy, and CLOSE UP YOUR LINES), but it does speechifying to a very Greek length. Xerxes is distracted from war by sexytimes with a (sadly unattended by her own entourage) youthful and pale Artemisia, and there is some subplot involving a young Spartan and his affianced bride who follows him from the Lakedaimonian plain to the Hot Gates - afoot, without change of clothes or supplies - and much manly beating of chests and disclaiming responsibility among the Persian generals. The division the film makes between "East" and "West," "tyranny" and "freedom," also echoes Herodotos a little (tho' for the author of the History, the division was less "East" and "West" and more "barbarian" and "Greek"), although its expression here to my mind has as much to do with its Cold War context as any attempt at faithful historicity.
But it bears comparison with the Frank Miller/Zach Snyder 300, because - poor dialogue, bad acting and all - it tries. And cruelly whimsical as it shows Xerxes to be, it demonises none of its characters: all of them are men, not inhuman monsters, though some of them are over-proud tyrannical men.
This is a film which is actually aware of Herodotos: it has no clue at all about how to choreograph a battle involving Greek hoplites (protip: short shorts go stabby, not slashy, and CLOSE UP YOUR LINES), but it does speechifying to a very Greek length. Xerxes is distracted from war by sexytimes with a (sadly unattended by her own entourage) youthful and pale Artemisia, and there is some subplot involving a young Spartan and his affianced bride who follows him from the Lakedaimonian plain to the Hot Gates - afoot, without change of clothes or supplies - and much manly beating of chests and disclaiming responsibility among the Persian generals. The division the film makes between "East" and "West," "tyranny" and "freedom," also echoes Herodotos a little (tho' for the author of the History, the division was less "East" and "West" and more "barbarian" and "Greek"), although its expression here to my mind has as much to do with its Cold War context as any attempt at faithful historicity.
But it bears comparison with the Frank Miller/Zach Snyder 300, because - poor dialogue, bad acting and all - it tries. And cruelly whimsical as it shows Xerxes to be, it demonises none of its characters: all of them are men, not inhuman monsters, though some of them are over-proud tyrannical men.
