Looking into this film's reception and history, it is a weird film to be the first ever live-action film from the 50s that I have ever watched. Seeing the scale, I figured this was a Cleopatra or Ten Commandments sort of film that I just never heard of, but instead it was a flop at the time that history has barely remembered.
The scale of sets and the cast are what is, frankly, shocking to look at. It is crazy that all of what is presented on screen is 'real' or at least looks real. When the camera just watches parades of people for a solid ten minutes thats some of the best stuff in the film.
There however is a problem in that the plot is wildly all over the place. There are probably four plot lines that dominate certain parts of the film like it's trying to be 'epic' but it seems to not understand how a plot f one works. Other than that, the characters are so artificial and just nothing, the sets and scale in the first hour really carry it and as the second hour is almost entirely inside the whole thing falls apart as a result.
Looking into this film's reception and history, it is a weird film to be the first ever live-action film from the 50s that I have ever watched. Seeing the scale, I figured this was a Cleopatra or Ten Commandments sort of film that I just never heard of, but instead it was a flop at the time that history has barely remembered.
The scale of sets and the cast are what is, frankly, shocking to look at. It is crazy that all of what is presented on screen is 'real' or at least looks real. When the camera just watches parades of people for a solid ten minutes thats some of the best stuff in the film.
There however is a problem in that the plot is wildly all over the place. There are probably four plot lines that dominate certain parts of the film like it's trying to be 'epic' but it seems to not understand how a plot f one works. Other than that, the characters are so artificial and just nothing, the sets and scale in the first hour really carry it and as the second hour is almost entirely inside the whole thing falls apart as a result.
