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| Year: 1962 |
| Director: Rudolph Mate |
| Cast: Richard Egan, Ralph Richardson, Diane Baker, Barry Coe, David Farrar, Donald Houston, Anna Synodinou |
| Genres: War, Drama, Adventure |
| Runtime: 114 min. |
| IMDB: This film on IMDB |
| Subtitles: OpenSubtitles.org |
The Persian king of kings Xerxes has devoted his reign to realizing the ambition of his father, stopped by Greeks, to extend his Achaemenid slave empire to and beyond Greece, and marches in 480 BC with an unprecedentedly vast army. When a captured Spartan explorer shows unconditional courage even on the chopping block, he is spared and send to the assembled Greek states at Corinth to report the Persian might. There the Athenian leader Themistocles manages to turn the defeatist tide by formally placing the Athenian fleet under the supreme command of Sparta, whose king Leonidas promises to defend Greece regardless who follows- but back in Sparta, the ruling council hesitates to commit the whole army until the Persians approach the Corinthian Isthmus, and even after an encouraging Delphi oracle -loose a king or all Sparta- is forbidden to lead it before the end of a religious festival, so he takes off first, keeping his promise, with only his 300 mean strong bodyguard. Realizing there is no time to wait for sufficient reinforcements, but abandoning the northern access to Greece proper may allow the Persian to swarm the country before it can make a proper stand, he decides to take a heroic suicidal stand: fight impossible odds till the last man at the narrow pass of Thermopylai to minimize the numeric disadvantage, in the hope this will buy enough time. They prove Spartans deserve the reputation of fiercest and best-disciplined fighters, ingeniously creating the element of surprise and driving the over-confident aggressor to growing despair by inflicting humiliating losses at every failing attack wave, even by the imperial body guard of 10,000 'immortals'. Just when Xerxes plans to return faking a divine message, the traitor Ephialtes arrives... |
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Comments |
| Date: 2007-10-04 10:16:34 |
User: James Shields |
It is only a vague memory of seeing this film four decades ago, but it impressed me for several reasons. It is (like ZULU DAWN, but more meaningfully) the story of a military defeat and massacre. It is also one of the handful of American or British films dealing with the history of ancient Greece. And, it is one of the few historical films that got the facts correct.
If one thinks about it, Hollywood only produced five other films dealing with ancient Greece between 1950 and 1990. They were "Alexander the Great" (directed by Robert Rossen), and "Jason And The Argonauts" and "Clash Of The Titans", the latter two not about classic Greek history but about the myths of the search for the Golden Fleece and of Medusa and Perseus. The fourth film was "Helen Of Troy" (which starred Cedric Hardwicke, but introduced Brigid Bardot to the U.S.). The fifth film was "The Trojan Woman", a film based on Euripides' tragedy and starring Katherine Hepburn. Italian productions were better, including "Ulysses" with Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn, and all those "Hercules" films with Steve Reeves. But the personalities of Golden Age Athens, like Pericles, Socrates, Plato, Alcibiades, never made it onto the big screen.
"Alexander The Great" was a fairly good film, and recently a new film on the conqueror was made. Also a new film about the Trojan War. Both flopped at the box office. That is why such films rarely are made - the bottom line is will it sell movie tickets (or DVDs). Neither did.
So it is a losing battle. But we are losing a great deal of history by ignoring it. So it is rewarding to see a production that dealt with a critical military turning point.
In 490 Darius of Persia attempted to conquer the free Greek states, as they were constantly causing trouble in his Greek possessions on the eastern shores of the Black Sea, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Meditteranean. His forces were defeated at the battle of Marathon. Marathon has been immortalized by a summer Olympic race that is named for an event in the battle: how Pheiddipides ran the twenty miles from Athens to Marathon and back without rest to report the victory, and dropped dead a moment after he announced it.
Darius died, and his son Xerxes decided to try again. He gathered the largest army in history (reputedly 2 million soldiers) from his empire, and crossed over into Greece, determined to smash Athens. However, this bulky army had to go through narrow mountain passes, and reached Thermopylae. Here a small Spartan army of 300 men, led by King Leonidas, repeatedly held off the attack. Besides showing superior military abilities to the Persian commanders, Leonidas had the added advantage of having a fighting area where the huge Persian forces could not manipulate their troop size in. He could have left several times, after each bloody repulse of Xerxes' men, but he refused because he wanted all of Greece to prepare for this onslaught. He finally told his last messengers to tell the Spartans that his men would never retreat and would die for Greece.
In the meantime, Themistocles (the leading political figure in Athens) had been arguing for the need of the sea port to take advantage of it's big calling card - it's huge fleet. Sparta was the great land power, and Athens the naval power. Themistocles started making arrangements for what would be the devastating blow to Xerxes' plans of conquest. Xerxes needed his ships to ferry his huge army back and forth across the Hellespont. Wipe out the Persian ships, and their huge size was not such an advantage anymore.
Eventually a traitor gave Xerxes the key to destroying Leonidas and his men - a secret path behind Thermopylae. Surrounded the last chance to retreat was rejected by the King, and the men of Sparta fought until all 300 were killed. But the death toll was like that at the Alamo, as the Spartans just kept killing Persian troops. We don't have the stats available but several thousand troops (mostly impressed slaves, unfortunately) were killed.
Xerxes moved onward, approaching Athens. On top of a hill overlooking Salamis Bay, he watched as his huge fleet was faced by a smaller Athenian one. But Themistocles had set up his ships in such a way as to get the larger, more cumbersome Persian ships jamming into each other. The Greeks destroyed most of them, thus making ferrying troops or supplying two million men impossible.
Xerxes himself went home - he could not bear to watch what was going to happen. A Spartan led Greek army destroyed his weakened army at the battle of Plataea in 279 B.C.E. Persia never again threatened to grab Greece.
The story of the 300 Spartans is now part of western legend - that against all odds, and in the face of death, a small force can make a difference and frequently does. Richard Egan was quite good as Leonidas, and Ralph Richardson did well in a supporting part as Themistocles. David Farrar played the arrogant, but ultimately humiliated Xerxes nicely.
A 19th Century Australian poet, Adam Lindsay Gordon, wrote this regarding the sacrifice of Leonidas and his army.
"We eat and drink or ere we die,
(The sunlight flashes on the sea.)
Three hundred soldiers feasted high
An hour before Thermopylae;
Leonidas poured out the wine,
And shouted ere he drained the cup,
'Ho! comrades, let us gaily dine --
This night with Pluto we shall sup;'
And if they leant upon a reed,
And if their reed was slight and slim,
There's something good in Spartan creed --
The lights are growing dim." |
| Date: 2008-01-13 18:06:05 |
User: AleshaWencen |
| seen the movie many times when younger, wanted to get the show again even now.still looking. best acting and best portrayal of the real events. they died with hounor and courage.and the last defence was very sad. loved the movie.the show had such realism and did keep to the whole plot of events that did shape the world even as we have it today. if not for their gallant and heroic fight the battle would have set the world on a different course. their was much emotion in watching the movie and it did keep you in your seat to not want to miss a thing. the major actors went on to bigger shows and also the best ones also as ben hur.ect.. this movie was years before its time and would be a major box office hit now. |
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