El Cid

El Cid was a film from the early 1960s, and one of the sword and sandal genres greatest achievements. Charlton Heston, long a rival of Kirk Douglas for box office supremacy in that genre, gives one of his better performances as the Spanish legend.

Sophia Loren is nice eye candy, but apparently she and Heston could not stand each other.

The film ends with El Cid leading a victorious army against Moslem conquerors, but unbeknownst to the many, he has been struck dead in battle and his armored figure strapped onto his horse.

While not a great work of art, it was great spectacle, as seen with the ending:


Here's an earlier scene:


Interestingly, the Moslem hordes were, in this film, used as Cold War stand-ins for Communists, yet, seen in today's climate, that little sleight of hand seems almost prescient.

And, finally, here's the trailer:


I have to say, film studios today have utterly forgotten how to make trailers that actually market the idea of cinema as spectacle. Most are PoMo hipster posing. This trailer, however, is equal to the film it declaims

El Cid

One of the better epics from the 1960s, the film El Cid takes on a greater depth when one realizes that the 'Moslem threat' the film represents has been reconfigured post-9/11.

Yet again, Chuck Heston kicks ass. See the finale of the film here, where Chuck is a corpse: