Ancient Fantasies presents
Giant of Marathon (1959)

Director - Jacques Tourneur

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Plot
Film Notes
Ancient Connections
And I Quote...
Facts and Fancies from the Notebooks of Edison J. Nello

Cast and Production Credits

The Plot

Philippides (Steve Reeves), Athens' greatest athlete, is appointed Captain of the Sacred Guard of the City. He meets and falls in love with the lovely Andromeda, but before he can declare his love, the dark beauty Karis attempts to seduce and influcence him for Theocritus, who intends to betray Athens to the Persians. Phillippides runs and runs and runs to enlist Sparta in the fight against the far more powerful Persian forces. It all goes down at Marathon.

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Film Notes

Seriously Sword and Sandled

The Giant of Marathon (La Bataglia di Maratona) is notable for the teaming of two fine film artists whose careers were heading in opposite directions – Jacques Tourneur (going down) and Mario Bava (going up).

In 1959, the Sword and Sandal movies were still the lastest rage and the scripts and tone were as likely to be treated seriously as not. The Giant of Marathon, however, has few of the campy elements for which the genre is usually remembered.

That's both good and bad.

On the side of good, Giant is a beautiful film to gaze upon. The cinematography, design, and editing show a genuine artfulness and care. There's a particular classical stillness in the set scenes, and the battle scenes move from the real to the surreal.

The bad is that it is slow moving and its seriousness is only surface deep. As the film reels turn you may find yourself yearning for the mixed mytholgical madness that allow Samson, Hercules and Las Vegas show girls to exst in a manic time that the gods wish they forgot.

Jacques in a Box

Martin Scorcese called Jacques Tourneur "an artist of atmosphere," and Tourner's distinctive mark can be observed in the numerous scenes where indoors and outdoors meet – exterior invading the interior – and how the actors are placed and within these settings.

Geoffrey O'Brien says that Tourneur is usually boxed in again and again with the same words, "hypnotic, elusive, enigmatic, uncertain, mysterious, ambiguous, ambivalent."

Yes, even his best films Out of the Past (1947) and the trilogy of low key horror films for Val Lewton – Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and The Leopard Man (1943), are most notable for their strange quiet moodiness. The acting is always underplayed, the action never overheated, the climax never the point. What's important is actually what's unseen and undone, each film (to varying degrees) folding back in on itself.

Certainly The Giant of Marathon is among the the lesser films of this minor-master, but even here there are moments.

Tourneur speaks for himself that film artists are mediums and, "You must be modest, try to handle as well as possible what you are given and let your subconscious work...This attitude forces you to be open, receptive to all genres, to all forms of narration..."*

Bava-Bing, Bava Boom!

When the shoot went over schedule, the producers decided not to continue with the relatively expensive Tourneur, and cinematographer Mario Bava directed and shot the final spectular underwater scenes. It's obvious where the producers of James Bond films found the idea and style for so many of the climactic final battles the series, especially Thunderball.

Ed Schneider – Alameda TV

* from Chris Fujiwara - Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall, McFarland & Company, 1998, p. 289

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Ancient Connections

• Protypical Italian beauty Daniela Rocca (Karis) had her biggest success as the homely wife of Marcello Mastroianni in Divorce Italian Style. She can also be seen in another episode of Ancient Fantasies – Colossus and the Amazon Queen.
  
  
• Sergio Fantoni (Theocritus) also appeared with Steve Reeves in Ancient Fantasies' Hercules Unchained.
  

• Reeves' body double in Giant of Marathon was Sergio Ciani, who soon changed his name to Alan Steele portraying Hercules in a number of other Italian epics including Ancient Fantasies favorite - Hercules Against the Moonmen.
  

• The work of Mario Bava can also be seen in the Ancient Fantasies' series –as director of Hercules in the Haunted World and cinematographer for Hercules Unchained.

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And I Quote...

“You’re as beautiful as the statue of a goddess.”

“All you need is to get what you want"

“Let her die in the dirt; she’s a spy!”

Facts and Fancies
from the Notebooks of Edison J. Nello

"The Giant of Marathon takes us on a journey through a historical mélange of fact and fiction by way of a mytho-menage a trois. It serves up quite an appetizing trio that is a film-feast for the eyes. Gaze with desire upon:

Steaming steely muscled Steve Reeves Dark and dangerous Danielle Rocca Mellifluously mesmerizing Mylène Demongeot

This film offering is all fighting, all kissing, all running, all swimming, all bleeding, and all flexing.

A classical classic, The Giant of Marathon is a mighty magnificent movie that comes stalking out of times of unbridled passion and terror when east once again battled west in the Persian Wars. Modern man should take notes."

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Cast & Production Credits

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For more information on

Jacques Tourneur ...

Hercules...

Watch Ingmar Ozu-Bresson's experimental film meditation on Hercules - Herculin/Feminin (only on Alameda TV Ch. 31).