Sandwiched between two Rock Hudson vehicles, director Douglas Sirk made the WideScreen Christian historical he probably hoped to avoid. His first CinemaScope project, a big brawny epic about Attila the Hun (Jack Palance slathered in Max Factor) taking on a divided Roman Empire (Constantinople only gets a friendly visit) and coming up against Centurion Jeff Chandler’s military tactics and his own fast developing Christian conscience. After a lumpy start on unconvincing, museum diorama soundstage sets with understaffed invader hordes, things improve once we head to the great (California) outdoors with the film finding its footing arguing a la Edward Gibbon on the role Christianity played in The Decline and Fall . . . not of Rome but of Attila! Not an uninteresting idea, though straying so far from what we know about Attila (dying not in battle, but from wedding night revels!) as to be largely useless. Palance is really the whole show here. And, once you accustom yourself to his oversized playing, spectacular.
DOUBLE-BILL: Vet helmer Michael Curtiz also debuted in CinemaScope this year in another religious-themed historical, THE EGYPTIAN/’54, a handsomely designed, starrily cast Pre-Christian dud about a doctor who turns from Egypt’s many Gods to Monotheism.
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