Dear Cinemythologists,
On Thursday, October 29, our unit on the Trojan War continues. Please do the following.
VIEWING
- Helen of Troy (Robert Wise, 1956)
Streaming on Swank Digital Campus. Take notes as you see fit. This is our first real introduction to the big-budget Hollywood screen epic, and our readings today will reflect that fact.
ANALYSIS
Gross and Jefferson will continue our Analysis series. Their sequence selection is in the comments.
READING
Today’s readings begin focused on Helen of Troy, but quickly zoom out toward considerations of genre and the film-making process.
- Nisbet, Gideon. 2008. “Helen of Troy (1956)” Ancient Greece in Film and Popular Culture, 30–6. Liverpool University Press.
Nisbet, in a brief overview of today’s viewing, demonstrates why the film remains relevant after almost 70 years.
- Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd. 2018. “The Genre and History: Defining the Epic.” Designs on the Past: How Hollywood Created the Ancient World, 26–35. Edinburgh University Press.
This excerpt, from the inaugural chapter of Llewellyn-Jones’ book (which is fast becoming a seminal work on the Hollywood screen epic), will set tone for our discussions of screen epic.
- “Mise-en-Scène” LAM Chapter 5, pp. 154–77.
Chapter 5 of Looking at Movies is devoted to mise-en-scène (roughly translated as “staging”), a term which encompasses all of the elements we see in any given shot or sequence, from set design, costuming, make up, lighting and more. So many of these elements define the screen epic, so it’s appropriate that we take a deeper dive into their history and practice.
SEQUENCES
- Bernstein, Eiger.
Use the comments feature on this post to recommend a sequence to be reviewed and discussed in class.
Recommendations should contain the following:
- A brief description of the sequence.
- Precise starting and ending times (hh:mm:ss — hh:mm:ss).
- A rationale as to why this sequence is worth our time.
DC
I chose the scene where Helen finds Paris washed up on the shore starting at 00:16:20 until 00:19:43. This scene shows Paris washed up on the shores of Sparta, still tied to his ship’s mast. He sees Helen coming out of the water and thinks that she is Aphrodite. Helen wants to help him but before she can two Spartan guards arrive. She hides Paris’ body and ignores her husband’s orders to return to the palace and then brings Paris inside her nurse’s house.
I chose this scene because, as in any romance, the scene where the two lovers meet is very important. Helen coming out of the sea alludes to Aphrodite. Paris mistaking her for the goddess reveals his devotion both to the goddess but also to Helen. Helen’s bravery for helping the Trojan stranger and also for ignoring her husband’s commands sets up her rebellious and spunky character. In addition, the fact that the guards already see Trojans as their enemies demonstrates that the tensions between Greece and Troy were already present before Helen was taken to Troy.
Gross/Jefferson analysis: 28:00–31:00, the face-off between Achilles and Paris.
I chose the sequence in which Helen frees Andraste and tells Paris of her wish for peace, starting at 00:44:43 and ending at 00:47:02. In this sequence, Paris reaches the top of a cliff and hears a woman call out to him, namely Helen, with her slave Andraste. She frees Andraste in thanks for helping her and Paris escape, telling her to go far from Sparta. Helen then wrestles with the woman she is with Paris and the queen she is with Menelaus, finding them to be different people. She tells Paris that she will do what she can to bring about a ceasefire, though she is unable to do much, as she is only a wife to the king. The two hide from Menelaus’ soldiers as they are being hunted down, and kiss after they have successfully evaded capture.
This sequence characterizes Helen not just as an unhappy queen in an arranged marriage but as a person who seeks change and evolution beyond the warmongering Spartan culture. Though her place in Menelaus’ court prevents her from doing much, she still wants to do her part to end the bloodshed between Greece and Troy. She is not a hopeless romantic in love with Paris, nor is she a prize given out to Paris. Instead, this scene has her sympathize with Paris’ tendency towards peace talks and negotiations over fighting, showing her intelligence and wisdom beyond that of a traditional 1950s woman within the films we have seen.