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Yup.
That’s the answer to the rhetorical question posed by that bad-pun headline.
Honestly, I’ve never understood any of the adoring or merely “tolerant” reviews of “El Cid,” a corpse of a corpse-on-horseback “history.”
Charlton Heston, at his Big Man Standing Out from the Scenery early ’60s peak, wilts and was never worse in the title role.
Sophia Loren, whom Heston spent the ’90s praising as “a FORCE of NATURE,” is miscast and misused.
The spectacular Spanish locations — unspoiled castles, beaches, hills and plains filmed during the Franco era’s long economic fascist nap — pop. But when paired with painted, over-lit and altogether drab soundstage interiors in Rome, don’t match up.
Action beats suffer from limp noodle barrages of arrows fired by extras who’d never seen a bow before and catapults only tested by “We bring you BREAD!” — loaved half-tossed over castle walls — look like cheap, nonfunctionl props.
The ahistorical bastardized history the screenwriters consulted leads to a muddle of a movie about a warrior, canny psychological warfare student and opportunist of his age passed off as noble, a mythic model of chivalry. Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar switched sides between serving “Christian kings” of parts of Spain, and the dreaded Muslim Moor occupiers, whom those very same Moors dubbed “El Cid” to history.
Why wouldn’t they call Don Rodrigo “The Lord?” His impact on history has a “held the line — sort of” cast to it, seeing as how it took the Spaniards nearly 400 more years to unite and finally expel the Moors from Spain. Spaniards and Moors have reason to celebrate El Cid.
As the Moors, defined by history as North African Muslims of generally dark complexion, there’s something a tad racist in that the Moors that El Cid befriends in the movie are fairer skinned and played by the likes of Douglas Wilmer in light blackface. The “fresh from Africa Moors” are crazed zealots in their thousands, in black attire and blackface. The new threat to peace and religious freedom is led by future Inspector Clouseau foil Herbert Lom, furious and in far darker blackface.
The film, restored and briefly re-released in 1993-94, was an “event” picture of its era, a follow-up to Heston’s “Ben-hur” success and a precursor to the disaster that was “Cleopatra,” which at least was sexier and easier to follow.
They were long “road show” attractions,” with an overture and intermission with music making even “Chitty Chitty Bang-Bang” a widescreen “event,” at least in the eyes of the producers.
I remember it as a TV “event” some years later, and probably thought, for the first time in my then-young life, “This is what a 100 minute movie in a three hour package looks like.”
The “plot” has El Cid gain some measure of martial fame before being forced to kill The King’s Champion (Hurd Hatfield, older and unconvincingly a “match” for Rodrigo) in a duel over his father’s honor, a killing that all but ends Rodrigo’s wedding plans for that “champion’s” daughter, Jimena (Loren).
“The man you chose to love could do only what I did,” doesn’t lessen her hatred for him.
Years and kings pass, love waxes and wanes, battles are pitched but mostly a series of sieges, and El Cid doesn’t get any of the best lines.
“What a noble subject,” one admirer says of him. “If only he had a noble King.“
A gargantuan production like this one is a supreme test of an actor’s focus and a director’s (Anthony Mann, who made some Westerns, a few war movies and “God’s Little Acre”) ability to keep his and the film’s eye on the ball. “El Cid” fails at this.
Watching “El Cid” now, one’s mind drifts back to Heston’s autobiography, where he recalled his TV debut as a soldier in an adaptation of “Julius Caesar” on CBS. He blew his lone line “live.”
“Ahoy, Caesar!” he bellowed. There’s a lot of that here, dialogue delivered as if mistakenly chiseled in stone.
And more than once, characters bark out “We attack TONIGHT!” and we see processions of Medieval (11th century) soldiers, siege engines and the like, proceeding to battle, torches lit against the “night” when it’s plainly broad daylight or the worst “day for night” film processing in color cinema history.
The Middle Ages, the struggle between East and West for the future of Europe, castles and what not are kind of my thing. I’ve visited a few of the Spanish locations of this movie in the decades since its release. I’ve wanted to love “El Cid” as a “forgotten” classic, pretty much every time I’ve seen it.
And it just doesn’t measure up or hold up, no matter how cool that finale is.
Say this for Heston. Even as a corpse (you can kind of see him moving) nailed into the saddle, cut a helluva figure on horseback.
Rating: “approved,” violence
Cast: Charlton Heston, Sophia Loren, Raf Vallone, Geneviève Page, John Fraser, Gary Raymond, Douglas Wilmer, Michael Hordern and Herbert Lom.
Credits: Directed by Anthony Mann, scripted by Fredric M. Frank, Philip Yordan and Ben Barzman. An Allied Artists release on Amazon, other streamers.
Running time: 3:02
