| The Colossus of Rhodes | |
|---|---|
&sq=Qlik&lang=&file=File:The_Colossus_of_Rhodes.jpg) US film poster | |
| Directed by | Sergio Leone |
| Screenplay by | Ennio De Concini Sergio Leone Cesare Seccia Luciano Martino Ageo Savioli Luciano Chitarrini Carlo Gualtieri |
| Produced by | Giuseppe Maggi Mario Maggi[1] |
| Starring | Rory Calhoun Lea Massari Georges Marchal Conrado San Martín Ángel Aranda |
| Cinematography | Antonio L. Ballesteros |
| Edited by | Eraldo Da Roma |
| Music by | Angelo Francesco Lavagnino |
Production companies | Cine-Produzioni Associate Procusa Film Comptoir Français de Productions Cinématographiques Cinema Television International |
| Distributed by | Filmar (Italy) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (International) |
Release dates |
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Running time | 142 minutes (Italy) 128 minutes (International) |
| Countries | Italy Spain France |
| Language | Italian |
The Colossus of Rhodes (Italian: Il Colosso di Rodi) is a 1961 Italian sword and sandal film co-written and directed by Sergio Leone. Starring Rory Calhoun, it is a fictional account of the island of Rhodes during its classical period in the late third century BCE before coming under Roman control, using the Colossus of Rhodes as a backdrop for the story of a war hero who becomes involved in two different plots to overthrow a tyrannical king: one by Rhodian patriots and the other by Phoenician agents.
The film was Leone's first work as a credited director,[2] in a genre where he already had worked before (as the replacement director for The Last Days of Pompeii and as a secondary director for both Ben-Hur and Quo Vadis). It is perhaps the least known of the seven films he officially directed, and is the only one without an Ennio Morricone score.
The film is set during the time following Alexander the Great’s death (323 BC) but before the rise of the Roman empire (27 BC), known as the Hellenistic era. Most sword-and-sandal epics of the 1950s and 1960s were set in either classical Greece or even earlier (Hercules, Ulysses, The Giant of Marathon) or the later Roman period (Ben Hur, The Magnificent Gladiator, Quo Vadis). The only other films made during the peplum era to use a Hellenistic setting are Hannibal (1959), Revak the Rebel and Siege of Syracuse (both 1960).
- ^ "The Colossus of Rhodes". UniFrance. Retrieved December 12, 2019.
- ^ Farino, Ernest (August 2020). "A Fistful of Pasta: The Italian Westerns of Sergio Leone". RetroFan (10). United States: TwoMorrows Publishing: 62.