I suspect it's curiosity that brought most of us reviewers to "The Colossus of Rhodes", an Italian swords-and-sandals blockbuster set in the Greek antique world and whose most prestigious name on the credits belongs to the director, Sergio Leone. His thunder isn't even stolen by his no-less legendary partner in film: the late Maestro Ennio Morricone. I confess it, if it wasn't for the film's reputation as the first directed movie from Sergio Leone, chances are it wouldn't have made it even in my Top 500 to-watch list.
And so like many fans, I was wondering how the film looked, how the hyperbolic style of Leone and his infatuation with detached and outcast characters would translate into a peplum? Yes, the film about one of the wonders of the Antique world started with a personal wonder. And so, maybe distracted by years of impregnation with Leone style, I kept looking at the film like an oddity, a canvas where I could spot here and there one or two trademarks from the Maestro. And I was so focused on that that I perhaps forgot to watch the film.
The distraction was so grand that I don't even feel entitled to review the film properly. I guess what I can say is that there is something in Rory Calhoun's impersonation of the Greek Darios that emerged from the usual heroic archetypes, here's a womanizer who gets itself caught in several plots converging toward the same goal, which is the destruction of the local tyrants. A Clint Eastwood he ain't but there is something in this colorful mosaic of talking and fighting and courting scenes that can't allow such characters to express themselves. As I noticed after watching "The Robe", peplums are movies designed for the spectacular and the epic, and it is a credit to the better ones to allow personalities to emerge.
Leone who was no stranger to that genre as he assisted Wyler in "Ben-Hur" and took part to the "Last Days of Pompei" had the instinct for such movies and "Colossus" features some remarkable sequences and set-designs, starting with the recreation of the big statue but something was missing. Leone's camera work has always been known to turn even the ugliest or most remote locations into subjects of eye-catching quality such as Goya paintings, his films portrayed the least appealing matters with great operatic lyricism, a capability to transcend the lowest instincts of humanity and turn them into things of epic aesthetic scales rather than morales. The Dollars trilogy was about greed or manipulation, ugly traits, the "Once Upon" trilogy about people incapable to cope with their time and also betrayal.
Great movies can be defined into simpler words and the simpler they are, the more they allow their directors to fully express their talent. "Colossus of Rhodes" has such a convoluted plot and historical mishmach doubled with the usual devotion to heroism as a value that it's remotely impossible to come up with anything fresh and new. At least, "Ben-Hur" had a universal story to tell, both "Spartacus" and "Quo Vadis" had Peter Ustinov. "Colossus of Rhodes" lacks colorful characters that could have humanized it. It's spectacular all right, the earthquake sequence is nothing short but brilliant but the film strikes as big chunk of antic splendor displayed only as a feast to the eyes, a "movie with gladiators" like another reviewer point it out, mentioning the infamous line from "Airplane!".
I don't feel like going further, this review isn't the highlight of my work either, but "Colossus" is more of a film you 'check' rather than watch, I checked so I could say that I saw all Leone's movies, Leone resurrected the Western genre and found the true arena of his colossal talent there and it had to to go through that step, one little step before the giant leap. Anyway, it was an Interesting watch, but legacy-wise, closer to the 'Manneken-pis' than the Colossus...
