Marco Polo (1961)

User Rating:

4.7/10   

Directors:

Piero Pierotti
Hugo Fregonese

Writers:

Oreste Biancoli (writer)
Ennio De Concini (writer)

Release Date:

August 1962 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure

Tagline:

Mightiest adventurer of them all!

Plot:

Italian explorer rescues the daughter of the Mongol leader Kublai Khan, meets a hermit who has invented gunpowder and builds a cannon. |

Plot Keywords:

Mongol | Explorer | Gunpowder | Hermit | Kublai Khan

Cast

Rory Calhoun	...	Marco Polo
Yoko Tani	...	Princess Amurroy
Camillo Pilotto	...	Grand Khan
Pierre Cressoy	...	Cuday
Michael Chow	...	Ciu-Lin
Tiny Yong	...	Tai-Au (as Thien-Huong)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Franco Ammirata
Tonino Cianci
Paola Falchi
Angelo Galassi
Anna Maestri
Spartaco Nale
Ching Jen Pai
Roberto Paoletti
Ada Passeri
Bianca Pividori
Franco Ressel
Poing Ping Sam
Giacomo Tchang
Janine Tramony
Claudio Undari	...	Mongka (as Robert Hundar)

Also Known As:

L'avventura di un italiano in Cina (Italy)

Runtime:

USA:95 min

Country:

Italy | France

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16

Company:

Alta Vista

Trivia:

With the massive exterior sets, lavish interior sets and a multitude of Asian extras left over from this production, Panda had writers Oreste Biancoli and Duccio Tessari fashion a sword-and-sandal/mythological muscleman epic, Maciste alla corte del Gran Khan (1961), placing hero Maciste in a Chinese setting. Genre specialist Riccardo Freda was brought in to direct, Gordon Scott was cast as Maciste (renamed "Samson" for the U.S. version) and Yoko Tani was kept on as the female lead. It became regarded as one of the better films of that genre.

Marco Polo as pure fiction.

It's Marco Polo.It could well be Tarzan,Robin Hood,Zorro or James West.That is to say how much the plot is poor.This Italian /French production casts old Hollywood veteran Calhoun("river of no return") as the hero who leaves his native Venice for the broader horizons of Asia .A childish plot pits Marco against a villain who wants to dethrone the emperor of China and marry his daughter (who's in love with...well ,check the title).This infamous character has invented a torture Amnesty International would not allow:some kind of blade which gets closer to the face at every breath you take and it's the princess's turn!

In the sixties ,another "Marco Polo " was made (aka "Marco Polo the magnificent") circa 1965 directed by Noel Howard which was as fanciful as Fregonese's ,but was at least entertaining and featured a topflight cast who was probably in it for the money:Orson Welles,Akim Tamiroff,Robert Hossein,Horst Buchholz,Elsa Martinelli,etc.