Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
Trivia
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Spoilers (1)
It took Ray Harryhausen four months to produce the skeleton scene, which runs, at most, three minutes.
Ray Harryhausen regarded this as his best film.
Talos was changed into a living bronze giant after the success of Sergio Leone's The Colossus of Rhodes (1961). It would become one of Ray Harryhausen's most famous creations.
While filming footage of the Argo off the coast of Italy, a replica of the Golden Hind sailed into view. Sir Francis Drake (1961) happened to be filming in the same location. Producer Charles H. Schneer shouted, "Get that ship out of here! You're in the wrong century!", dispelling any tensions that arose from both shots being lost.
Colchis, the location of the Golden Fleece, is a real-life location on the east coast of the Black Sea, in western Georgia.
After Ray Harryhausen received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award recognizing his contributions to the film industry at the Oscars' Science & Technical Ceremony in 1992, Tom Hanks, the host of the event, said, "Some people say Citizen Kane (1941) or Casablanca (1942). I say 'Jason and the Argonauts' is the greatest movie ever made."
John Cairney and Nigel Green didn't get along at all during filming. Green accused Cairney of being very effeminate. The last scene they filmed together was the scene in which Hercules and Hylas enter the treasure chamber, hidden in the plinth of the mighty Talos. The lighting used to give the treasure its sparkling effect was very bright, and the following day, the actors began losing their vision. Both actors became temporarily blind, and were hospitalised in the same room for two weeks with their eyes bandaged. They found they had a lot in common, and soon became fast friends. They remained good friends until Nigel Green died in the early 1970's. Fortunately their sight returned after their hospital stay.
The skeletons' shields are adorned with designs of other Ray Harryhausen creatures, including an octopus and the head of the Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957).
This British / American film was released in the waning years of the Italian-produced sword-and-sandal / mythological muscleman movies. Many of those productions dealt with Jason. Most unusual for the time was the casting of British actor Nigel Green as Hercules. Although he was very tall, Green lacked the bodybuilder physique that moviegoers were used to seeing for this character. The film may not have been able to match the scale of many of the European spectacles, but the elaborate special effects by Ray Harryhausen gave it the look of a more expensive production, contributing to its box-office success.
Presumably in order to capitalize on the success of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Ray Harryhausen originally conceived of the film as "Sinbad in the Age of Muses". The story would still have been set in ancient Greece and would have involved Sinbad joining Jason in the search for the Golden Fleece.
Early stages of story development included the twin sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis, a centaur, and the three-headed dog Cerberus.
Ray Harryhausen stated that he wanted to avoid the Italian "muscleman" stereotype present in films at that time when casting Hercules.
Although Nancy Kovack is billed second in the opening credits, she does not appear until 66 minutes into the 99-minute film.
Previous Ray Harryhausen films were generally shown as part of a double feature in "B" theatres. Columbia was able to book this film as a single feature in many "A" theatres in the United States.
The soundtrack was made without a string section. This leaves the brass and percussion to perform the heroic fanfares, and the woodwinds and additional instruments (such as the harp) to dominate in the more subtle and romantic parts.
Bernard Herrmann's score liberally utilizes the technique known as "self-borrowing", which involves reusing elements from his previous scores. He reused passages from scores for The Kentuckian (1955), Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953), and 5 Fingers (1952), and reworked passages from scores for North by Northwest (1959), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), and Vertigo (1958).
The voice of Nancy Kovack, who played Medea, was dubbed by Eva Haddon, an actress well known on BBC radio.
The live action work had been done a year before in Italy with the actors doing a kind of shadow boxing against imaginary opponents. Ray Harryhausen then had to animate seven skeletons with each one having five appendages. That meant he had 35 different things to move for each frame of film. In addition he had to make the skeleton's movements fit in with the actor's movements so that all ten could be seen hacking away at each other with their swords. Sometimes he only managed to do 13 or 14 frames a day ( movies are shown at 24 frames per second ) which was about half a second of film in a day. As a result it took 4-1/2 months to film the animation for the sequence.
The voice of Todd Armstrong, who played Jason, was dubbed by British actor Tim Turner. Turner's voice was well known as the narrator of the '60s Rank series "Look At Life"'. He was also the narrator of trailers in many British films in the '50s, '60s and '70s, including the one for this movie, and provided the voice of Dr. Peter Brady, the titular hero of the popular late '50s British TV series, The Invisible Man (1958).
Curiously, for the first time in the history of the trade name of Ray Harryhausen's "Dynamation" process, this film didn't carry the "Dynamation" brand, even in the opening credits. Early publicity materials for the film did, however, advertise it as being filmed in "Dynamation 90" (90 referring to the double 45-degree exposure in the sodium-light traveling matte process, used in this film and some of his previous films as well), but was reportedly dropped for being "too gimmicky". Additionally, the original pre-release prints carried the film's original title card, "Jason and the Golden Fleece" (which can be seen on the 1992 LaserDisc release by Criterion), before deciding on the film's eventual title, "Jason and the Argonauts", on March 1, three months prior to the film's release in early June.
While the original release made no mention of Harryhausen's trademark Dynamation process, the 1978 re-release ads touted the film as being "in spectacular Dynarama."
This was Ray Harryhausen's favourite of the 13 films that he worked on and while not doing too well at the box office outside Britain it's now considered to be a classic.
The Argonaut named Polydeuces, the victorious boxer in the games, is more commonly known as Pollux. He and his twin brother, Castor, form the constellation Gemini. The sign of the zodiac called Gemini is also named for them. A part of the Argonauts tale that is not shown in the film is the story of Pollux and Amycus, King of Bithynia. Amycus challenged all men who were strangers in his land to boxing matches. If they were defeated by him they became his slaves. The King had never lost a fight. Pollux fought Amycus. He overcame the King's strength advantage with his footwork and jabs. He maneuvered Amycus into facing the sun, to obstruct his view. Amycus was spitting out blood and teeth when, in a rage he swung at Pollux but the latter avoided him. Pollux then struck Amycus to the ground and made him promise never to take slaves again.
Terence Stamp was considered for the role of Jason.
The liquid coming out of Talos' foot is actually red cellophane animated by Ray Harryhausen to look like flowing "blood."
Ray Harryhausen credits the image of Talos' head coming to life and turning towards Jason as being inspired by a Japanese film, but he was never able to recall the name of the movie.
Peter Jackson loves movie props and replicas, and he acknowledges having more than a few illegal, non-licensed resin replicas of Harryhausen creations. He has more than a hundred Harryhausen figures, and some are limited editions available through certain sites and magazines "that shall remain nameless."
Ray Harryhausen kept a couple of garages in Los Angeles, and one had been padlocked shut for decades. Randall William Cook was asked to help catalog and clear out the long-shuttered one in 2008, but while Harryhausen mentioned it was all junk what they found was anything but. Marionettes, puppets, creature pieces, and more from the artist's youth and filmography were discovered within. The garage expedition also revealed the dailies from many of Harryhausen's older films, and that's when Jackson got involved as he volunteered to clean up, restore, and save the footage. "That's one of the advantages of owning a post-production facility," he adds.
Ray Harryhausen still had the seven skeletons (as of this commentary recording which was done a decade before his death), but he doesn't recall which of them was also used in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). He brought one to New Zealand, and Peter Jackson and Randall William Cook made a too-short piece of stop-motion animation with it.
Nigel Green and Douglas Wilmer would both later play Fu Manchu's arch-enemy Sir Denis Nayland Smith in films starring Christopher Lee as the Chinese criminal mastermind; Green in The Face of Fu Manchu (1965) and Wilmer in The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966) and The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967).
In early press material, Mario Nascimbene was credited as the music composer of this film. This was because Nascimbene was considered for the job of composer in case Bernard Herrmann turned it down (which, as it turned out, he didn't). In later interviews Nascimbene claimed he never heard of the film (most probably meaning Herrmann accepted the offer before Nascimbene could be approached). He did, however, go on to compose the music score for another Ray Harryhausen film, One Million Years B.C. (1966), which was also directed by Don Chaffey (who directed this film).
This is Bernard Herrmann's fourth collaboration with Ray Harryhausen. The others are The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, and Mysterious Island.
One of the many things Peter Jackson appreciates about the film is how it and Harryhausen brought mythology to life via stop-motion special effects. "Stop-motion had traditionally been developed for monsters, and for dinosaurs really," but the filmmakers thought beyond that to bring other beings to life.
The Argo was built over a fishing boat and powered by three large Mercedes engines which cost roughly ten percent of the film's budget. They sold the ship to 20th Century Fox after filming, and it was used in Cleopatra (1963).
The production ran out of food at one point during filming and was left with only Corn Flakes and spaghetti.
Peter Jackson recalls having a copy of Harryhausen's book, The Film Fantasy Scrapbook he didn't own it, but he would borrow the library's sole copy again and again for years meaning no one else was able to read it. "That's why no one else in New Zealand became a stop-motion animator," laughs Randall William Cook.
While Ray Harryhausen is best known for his effects work, he actually conceived of this film and helped shape many of its creative choices beyond the stop-motion animation.
The film was briefly titled Jason and the Golden Fleece -- artwork and title screens were already crafted and ready to go -- but filmmaker and fan of the film Peter Jackson says an Italian film starring Steve Reeves beat it to theaters with that title so they had to change it.l "It did get lost in a little mini flood of similar-themed films," says Jackson regarding this movie's minor blip at the box-office.
Honor Blackman plays the god Hera, and just one year later she'd be starring as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger (1964).
Although Bernard Herrmann was one of the finest composers in film history he was prone to repeat himself with similar motifs. The background score in the scene where Hylas and Hercules find the treasure in Talos' pedestal is almost identical to the motif he uses in "Vertigo" when Scottie enters the museum behind Madeleine.
. The Harryhausen/Schneer collaborations were all "director for hire" gigs, as the films were worked out top to bottom by the pair before handing over directing duties to someone capable of following their instructions. They were basically the Marvel of their day.
Ray Harryhausen sketched out the first inkling of this film on the back of his Mysterious Island (1961) script. It was initially titled 'Sinbad and the Age of Muses' and had Jason and Sinbad teaming up for the adventure.
The film's stunt director cameos (at 20 mins.) as one of the Olympiad contestants. The archer at (20 mins.} is Andrew Faulds who later went on to become a member of Parliament.
They scouted Greece and Yugoslavia for filming locations, but the former was too "bleak and gray" and the latter was too corrupt. They ended up filming in Italy roughly an hour outside of Palermo.
This was the 7th collaboration between Ray Harryhausen and producer Charles H. Schneer which included The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), and others.
Randall William Cook and Peter Jackson start discussing "the traveling matte" when a tiny Jason is put on the table of the gods at (17 mins.) Jason is in the foreground of the shot while the gods and such take up the bulk of the screen. They're not used any more thanks to computer advancements, but it involved shooting an actor in front of a yellow sodium screen. "They used a beam-splitter that allowed you to photograph a matte instantaneously that didn't have any image degradation through generation loss."
Spoilers
Although the abrupt ending clearly hints at a sequel that would end Jason's voyage, none was ever made. No clear reason has ever been given, but it is presumed to be a combination of factors. The movie was a box office disappointment at the time, and special effects creator Ray Harryhausen's love for ancient spectacle was getting out of fashion with young 1960s audiences. By the time that the movie became a cult phenomenon, Harryhausen was too busy working on the sequels to The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), so the Jason sequel probably died a quiet death.
