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Denied the chance to make Tamburlaine, Douglas Sirk goes and makes Tamburlaine anyway. A divided empire, Rome and Constantinople, against it Attila (Jack Palance) and his hordes. The Hun respects bravery, the captured centurion (Jeff Chandler) is spared amid depredations. Theodosius (George Dolenz) is a knave, the barbarian crashes his feast, topples his strongman, hits on his sister (Ludmilla Tchérina). "The battle and a woman, dear Princess, are of more value when they're not easily won." The Christianity that was once an illicit creed has become official, it unsettles the conqueror and beguiles his daughter (Rita Gam). No bigger mystery to a slayer than clemency, "never will I understand you Christians." A tale of faith, in other words Sirk's own The First Legion in ancient guise. The staging is properly operatic, Attila in a cave rallies fellow chieftains, his seer is crushed by a tree struck down by lightning. Palatial interiors as ornate as Eisenstein's, stiff civilization rattled by swarming primitive vitality. "I use only what Rome taught me." The humble soldier rises after Valentinian (Walter Coy) abandons the Eternal City, Leo the Great (Moroni Olsen) materializes in the mist to spook the marauder laying siege to the capital. The golden cross glaring in the darkness is an emblem to be deciphered by the man of brutal action, just one of the omens and prophecies comprising the dense mise en scène around him. "How do you read this?" (In a scene with Chandler and Tchérina in a pale foreground spotlight while a servant kindles a candelabra in the gloom, Russell Metty's Technicolor layering rivals Bava's.) It builds like Fleischer's The Vikings to a surreptitious elegy for pagan brio, into Kurosawa's Throne of Blood it goes. With Jeff Morrow, Eduard Franz, Allison Hayes, Alexander Scourby, Howard Petrie, Michael Ansara, and Leo Gordon.
--- Fernando F. Croce |