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Rating:  - El Cid - At last
After such a long wait this is an excellent package. The quality of the remastering and the colour and sound are amazing. The extras worthwhile. It is good, at last, to have a complete copy of such a very fine film, arguably one of the better epics from the 60s. One minor quibble. It would have been good to have the entr'acte on disc 2 before the start of the second part rather than at the end of part one under the intermission card. However it is a very minor criticism of such a well presented package.
Rating: - Finally!!!
I ordered this as soon as I received the e-mail from Amazon. I saw this as a kid. I was just blown away at the beauty of the picture and the settings. Heston and Loren are a perfect match and both two greats. It truly is a mega-classic. This DvD has the film,commentary, biography of Bronston, biography of the man who scored it,interviews with Heston and Loren,trailers,gallery and interview of man who preserved films. Don't pass up the chance to buy this. It might go out of print and it took forever to get it released. Think how long a rerelease would take.
Rating: - An under appreciated film!
It is shocking that this film was so ignored by the Academy Awards in 1961. How could Henry Mancini win for "Breakfast at Tiffanys" over Miklos Rozsa's flawless score for "El Cid? Yes, there were some great movies that year, but how did "Flower Drum Song" get more nominations than "El Cid?" Well, with that said, it is thrilling to finally have this masterwork on DVD beautifully produced and packaged! My only petty complaint is the Intermission music should be on Disk 2 to lead into the second part of the film, not at the end of Disk 1.
Rating: - Excelent DVD Quality
Beautiful job from the Miriam Collection, excellent picture and sound quality. There is no other film like this one. Very unique, bold and spectacular.
Rating: - At Last on DVD, and Worth the Wait!
Producer Samuel Bronston's masterpiece, the 1961 epic, "El Cid", is at last on digitally-remastered DVD, in a two-disc edition that positively glows! The finest (and most expensive) 'Chivalry' film ever made, the film combines intimacy and monumental battle scenes (without CGI!), drenched in an opulence that will never be equaled.
One of the great pleasures of this long-awaited release is the second disc's Special Features, which provides the astonishing back story of the film, as well as features on Bronston, director Anthony Mann, film composer Miklos Rozsa, and "El Cid's" incredible restoration process. This was a film that defied the 'Hollywood system' in every way; Bronston, a freewheeling, frequently in-debt entrepreneur, stonewalled in Hollywood, literally turned Madrid into a film capital, spending every penny he could raise, every favor he could ask, in producing the film with all the richness it deserved. With a 'terrible' screenplay (by Philip Yordan), that an uncredited Ben Barzman would have to rewrite from scratch, as filming began, a respected director (Mann), who had just been publicly humiliated by being fired as director of "Spartacus" (replaced by Stanley Kubrick), and two of the hottest actors in the world (Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren), who despised each other (Heston, with a history of on-set temperament, particularly toward female co-stars, discovered Loren was being paid more than he was!), this production seemed doomed from the outset.
But Bronston was a man of limitless vision and energy, and could accomplish miracles! He got the DuPont family to financially back the production, convinced Spanish dictator General Franco to loan him nearly the entire Spanish army for battle scenes (second directed by the legendary Yakima Canutt), recruited entire villages to serve as extras, and backed Mann's vision, creating one of the most beautifully composed films in the history of the cinema.
Much to everyone's (except Bronston and Mann's) surprise, "El Cid" was a worldwide critical and commercial hit, and one of 1961's biggest blockbuster successes, influencing a generation of young filmmakers, and becoming a capstone to the careers of many of the participants.
While it is a crime that the film has been largely unseen for over forty years, this 2-Disc Deluxe Edition should again bring "El Cid" the respect it richly deserves.
It is absolutely ESSENTIAL for any film lover's collection!
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