El Cid (1961)

Just perfect...

hyped garbage

How sad is this?

The acting in this movie is really good.

They do not make films like this any more. Is it the money? Or lack of the enthusiasm? It is not that clear. It is probably there is no more possibility in Hollywood to make such a films. I really think that no one will risk any more to invest large sums of money and at the same time risk a flop.It is an interesting story. Christianity started as a meek religion. It would probably stay like that if Islam did not come along. So aggressive in its expansion that Christianity had to defend itself from it.The story is of the beginning of the rebellion of the Catholic Spanish kingdoms against the invading Maurs from Africa. It was to be or not to be for the Christendom. Invaded on two fronts, Spain and the Balkan peninsula, it was just a matter of time before Rome was taken by the Islamic hordes. El Cid showed to the rest of the Christendom that Spain could be defended from the Maurs, which gave the wind to the other Christian kingdoms to defend themselves from the Ottoman invaders.Plot and acting are what we always expected from this type of film. The principal stars are and always will remain stars.

more than a classic , it is a beautiful film.that is its secret and basic virtue. a film about fundamental values more than image of a hero. and it is a precise lesson about making of a epic movie. not only for good performance, atmosphere, dialogs or fight scenes but for its special poetry who makes it different by another blockbusters of period. the theme is delicate - a national symbol and the Hollywood recipes is too clear. but in this case, a splendid puzzle appears. and the work of entire team, especially of Charlton Heston, makes each part to be almost perfect. it is not Ben Hur or Cleopatra. the ingredients seems be the same but it is only impression of first sigh. it is itself, after decades, after trends and evolution of artistic taste. so, a beautiful movie. love story, heroic scenes, delicate nuances. and something more. a secret ingredient. or, only, the shadow of a knight.

I loved it now as well as I loved it first time, when I saw it in the early sixties. Maybe more. It is an epic, perhaps not very accurate historically, still appealing. You see interesting director's solutions, attention to details. Heston and Loren are gorgeous and inspiring. Mass scenes would be quite cost prohibitive nowadays and be substituted by animations. Yes, it is long. But somehow I do not get tired. The dialogs, the music, the costumes, the scenery, the makeup - they used to take their time to do all of these things back in the day. I think El Cid can hold its own against any contemporary epic, without an exception.

There's a reason why they can't make good epic movies anymore. It isn't due to lack of money. "The Lord of the Rings" proved that. And it isn't because they're afraid of harming stuntmen or animals. Nowadays, they can manage all that sort of thing perfectly well with CGI effects. No, the reason nobody seems able to produce good epic motion pictures anymore is because of the main characters. When you make a movie on a really grand scale, complete with lavish costumes and sets, a cast of thousands, and filmed in super wide-screen format, then the first thing you need is central characters who are at least ten times larger than life. Which brings us to a perfect case in point, El Cid. If there was one thing Charleton Heston could do better than any other actor in the business, it was stand out against a background of lavish sets and a cast of thousands. It was no accident that Heston was cast as Moses in the Ten Commandments, as well as in the title role in Ben Hur. The producers of those films knew exactly what qualities they need for their leading man, and so did the producers of El Cid.And then, of course, there's Heston's leading lady, Sophia Loren. Put Sophia Loren in a scene set in the middle of a huge, lavishly-decorated medieval throne room, filled with hundreds of colorfully-garbed extras, and I guarantee that you won't be able to look at anything but her. Nope, it can't be done, it's simply a physical impossibility. And she doesn't even have to do or say anything, just BE THERE. Don't believe it? Check out El Cid and see for yourself!I don't know if they have a name for that special quality that Charleton Heston and Sophia Loren had. Whatever it is, it certainly isn't something that can be learned at the Actor's Studio. You're either born with it, or you're never going to have it. Of course, to balance out the ten-times-large-than-live leads, an epic motion picture also requires a ten-times-larger-than-life villein. In the case of El Cid, that role is ably filled by Herbert Lom. The fact that you never actually see the actor's face amply demonstrated exactly how much larger-than-life an actor he really was. You didn't need to see his face, that voice was more than sufficient. No other actor had a voice like Herbert Lom.I believe El Cid received rather mixed reviews at time it was released. However, over time, it seems to have gained a much greater appreciation.