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Film · 1961 · Historical epic
El Cid
Directed by Anthony Mann
1961
★ 2.8 editorial score
Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren in the last great historical epic before the genre collapsed: real castles in Spain, thousands of extras on horseback, and Miklos Rozsa's score doing the heavy lifting.
“Mann's rigorous control keeps El Cid ruthlessly lean despite the vast landscapes and masses of people filling the widescreen...there's no denying El Cid's lucid grandeur as it reaches its famous climax, a simultaneously triumphant and tragic portrait of the warrior as corpse that, like the best of Mann's work, never neglects the human toll of heroism.”
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