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| Starring: Richard Burton, Frederick March,
Claire Bloom, Barry Jones, Harry Andrews, Stanley Baker,
Nall McGinnis, Danielle Darrieux Directed by: Robert Rossen |
Theatrical Release: 1956
DVD Release: 2004
Released by: MGM Home EntertainmentDolby
Digital 2.0 Surround
Widescreen (anamorphic) |
Alexander the Great mania is about to
strike. As I write this, Oliver Stone’s new movie, Alexander, is scheduled to
open on November 24. Colin Farrell is cast as the charismatic young leader, with Jared
Leto as Hephaistion, his great love. There are also new documentaries in the works, and
there are still rumors that Baz Luhrman will soon direct his own version of
Alexander’s life and exploits. The early stills from Stone’s epic make it appear
that the director has done for Alexander what Young Guns did for the Billy the Kid.
The men all look so young -- but wait , they were young! Alexander conquered half
the known world before he was 30, and lived barely three years beyond that point. Perhaps
Stone’s vision is not far off the mark.
| Following in Alexander’s
Footsteps The History
Channel unveiled a new documentary about Alexander the Great on November 7. You can see a
trailer for it at historychannel.com/alexander/.
It’s the expected documentary for our age, complete
with battle reenactments. In 1998, the BBC released In the Footsteps of Alexander the
Great, a very different sort of film, now available on DVD through PBS Home Video,
distributed by Paramount (***1/2). It is a four-part miniseries, complete on one disc.
The writer, historian, and host is Michael Wood, who
obviously has a burning passion for anything pertaining to Alexander. Wood sets off to
follow the Greek leader’s journey, retracing his steps, traveling by Jeep, truck,
train, and even camel. There are no reenactments. We see Wood at these sites, telling us
what happened there, often encountering oddly parallel celebrations along the way. This
approach really makes for a sense of living history. I am not sure that anyone else but
Wood could have pulled it off. His enthusiasm and dedication kept me riveted to my viewing
chair.
 When the
documentary was over, I had more of a feeling for Alexander than I did from watching the
Burton movie, especially for the tremendous scope of this travels and Persian conquests. A
line on a map looks short, a Hollywood movie makes it look like troops in their shiny
armor were teleported to the latest location, but this documentary gives one a real
feeling of what an exhausting and lengthy trek Alexander’s march of conquest must
have been.
The transfer on the DVD is superb, though the video quality
of the original varies, as it normally will, given this set of filming circumstances. The
Dolby Surround gives one a great sense of location, and dialogue is absolutely clean and
easy to understand.
...Rad Bennett
radb@hometheatersound.com |
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This movie, from 1956, looks quite different. It is
classical, stiff, and cast with people who look very mature. Richard Burton was 31 when he
made it, exactly the right age for the soon-to-be-deceased Alexander. He looks a bit old,
perhaps, for the younger Macedonian king, but that’s from a 21st-century perspective,
where the goal is to look youthful until you’re put in a box or your ashes are
scattered to the four winds. Things were tougher and rougher in Alexander’s day, so
perhaps the view in this movie is not far off the mark. There were no camcorders back then
-- ancient history is open to interpretation.
For its era and viewpoint, this version of Alexander’s
life is very good. The script is literate, if often talky, and the battle scenes are
energetic if somewhat undernourished by having insufficient extras. Burton crackles in the
lead role, really getting into the manic, egomaniacal persona that the real Alexander
displayed. In reading more about the legendary leader to write this review, I discovered
that Alexander was an alcoholic and also gay. Burton captures the mood swings of an
alcoholic perfectly in a performance that is right on point, but because the movie was
made in 1956, Alexander’s relationship with Hephaistion is ignored, replaced by an
overly strong attachment to his mother.
The rest of the cast is solid, but there is something of a
pall over the whole production, as if it was so much tinder in search of a match. Except
for the bypassing of Alexander’s homosexuality, there is careful attention to
history, and the facts that are known are adhered to. But the movie bogs down too often to
be thrilling. See it for Burton’s performance, which does strike fire, but it is
perhaps a better rental than purchase item, although MGM’s price is refreshingly low.
The video transfer is excellent. This was an early
Cinemascope movie, and once in a while there’s a bit of optical distortion near the
center of the screen, but by and large the image is clean and crisp with color that is
only slightly faded. The sound appears to be early four-track magnetic stereo surround.
Microphones were less sophisticated then, so some of the directional effects sound odd.
Disembodied voices to the left and right are fairly common; at the time there was an
apparent inability to mix them into the whole soundfield and give them directionality at
the same time. The surrounds are used mostly in crowd scenes. The music often sounds quite
glorious. There are no extras.
In preparing this review, I encountered the site of all
sites for things Alexander. |
