La guerra di Troia (1961)

User Rating:

5.5/10   

Director:

Giorgio Ferroni

Writers:

Giorgio Ferroni (writer)
Ugo Liberatore (writer)

Release Date:

July 1962 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Drama

Tagline:

The World's Mightiest Man In The Mightiest Spectacle Ever Filmed.

Plot Keywords:

Ancient Greece | Sword Fight | Bronze Age | Mythology | Peplum

Cast

Steve Reeves	...	Aeneas
Juliette Mayniel	...	Creusa
John Drew Barrymore	...	Ulysses
Arturo Dominici	...	Achilles
Edy Vessel	...	Helen (as Hedy Vessel)
Nando Tamberlani	...	Menelaus
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Lidia Alfonsi	...	Cassandra
Luciana Angiolillo	...	Andromache
Giancarlo Bastianoni
Warner Bentivegna	...	Paris
Nerio Bernardi	...	Agamemnon
Giovanni Cianfriglia		(as Giovanni Cianfrilla)
Luigi Ciavarro
Andrej Gardenin	...	Fencer
Giulio Maculani
Mimmo Palmara	...	Ajax
Nello Pazzafini		(as Giovanni Pazzofin)
Carlo Tamberlani	...	Priam

Also Known As:

La guerre de Troie (France)
The Trojan Horse (USA)
The Trojan War
The Wooden Horse of Troy

Runtime:

105 min

Country:

Italy | France

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

West Germany:12 (f) | Finland:K-16 | Portugal:M/12

Filming Locations:

Centralni Filmski Studio Kosutnjak, Belgrade, Serbia, Yugoslavia

Company:

Compagnie Industrielle et Commerciale Cinématographique (CICC)

Movie Connections:

Edited into Leone di Tebe (1964)

Vintage Italian colossal

If I remember well it was last year (1997) when I first saw this movie on the private Italian channel Rete 4 one Sunday afternoon. It was broadcasted in the series "Kolossal All'Italiana". At the same time, the Italian state TV RAI3 was showing "Helen of Troy" in the series "Colossi di Casa", both series implying that the movies were epics filmed in Italy. Before viewing this film I thought it was some sort of low-budget re-make of "Helen of Troy", but on watching it I was surprised to find out otherwise. Even though the storyline is basically similar in both films, this one offers a different kind of entertainment. While "Helen of Troy focuses more on the love affair between Helen and Paris, this movie is more concerned on the psychological situations of the principal characters, namely Aeneas. The final scene of "La Guerra di Troia", showing Aeneas escaping carrying his son in his arms after the death of Creusa is much more touching than the finale of the other movie showing Helen looking longingly at Troy where Paris had been killed. Even though I liked more "Helen of Troy" because of its better cinematography, better colour and better acting, still I have to admit that this one is of a higher level than many other Italian sword and sandal films of that era.