Wednesday, January 9, 2019

By the Gods!

The bodies of Polinices (Mimmo Palmara) and Eteocles (Sergio Fantoni) on a funeral pyre in HERCULES UNCHAINED (1959)

This scene irks me to no end. Dramatically speaking, it's an important moment and yet the framing and the duration of this shot is terrible and destroys any chance of an adequate closure to the main story which propelled the film. It's super brief, often truncated even more from the already short duration in the original version. And we barely see the faces of the men. It's feels rushed. One bad moment of an otherwise excellent production from Pietro Francisci. I wonder what happened during the filming of this scene. A last minute decision?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is cut from most copies of the film I've seen. Only included in the old VHS VideoGems release, which was sold via the WH Smiths shop chain in the UK as an 'exclusive'.