'El Cid'

Marilyn Monroe is dead, perhaps having outlived the Hollywood she once symbolized; the era of flamboyant, larger than larger than-life production, whose scale somehow was less and less appropriate to the grand stories the movies tried to tell as it grew bigger and bigger. So that the spectacular biblical epics, for example, could never suggest the dimensions of the Christ story with anything like the power of the modest He Who Must Die. But if, in fact, the old Hollywood is passing, El Cid is as fine a note for it to go out on as one could wish.

for El Cid manages, better than any of the other block-busters I have seen, to describe the life of a hero, and the growth of his legend. Perhaps because the great Spanish champion was precisely the sort of popular hero movie stars are today, El Cid is much more than the pile of irritating evasions and distortions that largely made up a Ten Commandments or (gasp) King of Kings.

It is also a a sunning display of Technical competence; the color quality is magnificent, and several of the scenes (especially the single combat of the Cid and another king's champion) have all the subtle tints and shadings of a medieval triptych. Moreover, the composition of even the battle scenes was obviously planned, so that they are much more impressive than the usual sand-box pandemonium of the run-of-the-mill spectacular.

Oddly enough, the technical weaknesses of the picture occur in just those areas where this sort of film usually never misses: in some of the "crowd" scenes, it is all too obvious that the same hundred or so people are parading back and forth before the camera; and the same "Somewhere in the Castle" set is used over and over again, for what are supposed to be different" somewhere."

The acting is easily the best Charlton Heston has done since he graduated out of circus pictures and into the nether spheres of legend and religion. There is perceptible growth to go along with the increasing use of grey Tintone: and the final scene of the film, in which the dead Cid is propped in his saddle to lead his troops into battle, comes as near as one can expect to the power of real myth. As the lovely Chimene, Sophia Loren is overwhelmingly lovely. Much of the drama of her story has been cut out; unlike the Corneille heroine, the film's Chimene doesn't spend too much time delivering tortured soliloquies about her loyalty to her dead father, and her love for Cid, his murderer. But as the somewhat more domesticated character Hollywood has made her, Miss Loren is perfect.

These performances are certainly worth seeing. But it is the few scenes (like the two I've mentioned) that make El Cid some thing special. All in all, there are worse places to spend three hours these humid, humdrum days than the H.S.T. One word of warning, however: Cambridge kids evidently agree with me, and they're going in droves; so every show is a little like a Saturday afternoon Kartoon Karnival. But you can just throw a pop-corn box back at the little bastards, and bury yourself again in the Infinemascope screen and Delightful Air-Conditioning.