Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Photo of the Day

Hedy Lamarr is Helen of Troy (a young Massimo Serato with his back to us) in THE LOVES OF 3 QUEENS (1954)

A cool concept of a film, made in Italy, with typically elaborate but small budgeted production values. Hedy plays "Queens" from different era (Genevieve, Josephine and Helen) with some interest moments. It's also amazing to see a young Massimo Serato. I really wish this was available in a pristine copy. It looks cool, maybe not necessarily as a film, but as an example of where Italian PEPLUM cinema germinated.

3 comments:

jim said...

Yes, very cool.

Michael O'Sullivan said...

One I need to watch is FABIOLA in I think 1948, another early peplum, with Henri Vidal (a great French actor who died too young) and again young Massimo Girotti as Sebastian (the one who gets all the arrows). This is the IMDB blurb: "In ancient Rome a love story blossoms between Fabiola, daughter of a senator, and Rhual, a gallic gladiator. When Fabiola's father is killed, the Romans blame the Christians and the persecution begins. Rhual confesses to be a christian and is accused of the murder and sentenced to fight to death in the arena." Sounds our kind of film, directed by veteral Blasetti (who directed several of those early Lorens).

PEPLUM cinema said...

FABIOLA is great. It's in B&W but it doesn't matter. The English dub is severely cut from the original. It's one of those films that started the PEPLUM trend of the 1950s.