Me and this movie, we have a history!  Back when the world and I were young, the folks told us we were all going to the movie.  Well, my sister and I didn't want to go.  Why?  Because they told us we were going to see a 'war movie'.  So naturally, we were imagining a bunch of guys in olive drab, spouting gibberish about "Charlie Tango" into walkie-talkies.  Boooooring!

But the movie was El Cid - and we were enthralled!  Why didn't they tell us it was medieval?!  It would have spared us all a lot of whining on the way to the theater.  No Charlie Tangos in this movie, nosirree!  Instead, we have castles, we have jousting, we have sword fights, we have horses! 

We played 'El Cid' games on the playground for months after that.

I almost hesitated to rent the DVD and turn my jaded adult eyes to what I remembered as such a thrilling and absorbing movie, but curiosity won out.  Could it possibly be as good as I remembered? 

Well, no - but it's still pretty darn good.  This was the heyday of the Hollywood Epic, and El Cid is about as Epic as they come.  Everyone dresses gorgeously, even the men, and live in huge airy apartments where there's plenty of room to swing a sword should the occasion arise (and of course it does).  Kings enter throne rooms heralded by banner-bedecked trumpets going 'toot-ta-ta-toot-toot-toot-tooooot!' without so much as a twinkle of Irony.

The movie is set in 11th Century Spain, though what is now modern Spain was still a group of smaller kingdoms, some Christian and some Moslem.  It tells the story of legendary Spanish hero Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar (Charlton Heston), known as "El Cid", a title of respect awarded him by the Spanish Moors.

And where the movie talks of 'Moors', think Moslems.  I had wondered if I was going to find some old-fashioned stereotyping, with Christians = good and Moslems = bad.  But the story gives us good and bad among both Moslems and Christians.

The best of the good Christians is naturally our boy Rodrigo, played with iron-jawed rectitude by Heston.  Rodrigo's unyielding sense of honor keeps getting him in trouble, in fact.  The story opens with Moorish raids on Christian territory and Rodrigo rides to the rescue, but rather than slaughter his Moorish captives, he exacts from them a promise to stop raiding and lets them go. 

That gains him some Moorish friends for life, but also a charge of treason at the court of King Ferdinand.   Rodrigo fights and kills the king's champion, who - whoops - was the father of his fiancee Jimena (Sophia Loren), who swears an oath to her dying father to avenge him. 

And note - Jimena still loves Rodrigo, but she tries to get him killed.  She promised Dad, you see.   Failing that, she marries Rodrigo, and then immediately retreats into a convent.  (And you thought modern relationships were complex!)

Now in those days, kingdoms were pretty much treated as the personal property of the monarch.   That becomes a problem when King Ferdinand dies, and his will splits his various kingdoms and principalities between his two sons, hotheaded Prince Sancho (Gary Raymond) and weaselly Prince Alfonso (John Fraser).  Sancho tries to throw Alfonso in the dungeon, but Rodrigo doesn't allow that to happen. 

So Rodrigo is fighting on Alfonso's side?  No, he's just fighting the injustice of Sancho's order.  Nasty Princess Urraca (Genevieve Page) is siding with Alfonso, though, and she fights dirty.  Sancho winds up stabbed in the back by an Urraca henchman, and at Alfonso's coronation, Rodrigo forces him to swear on the Bible he had nothing to do with his brother's assassination. 

That act of lese majeste gets Rodrigo exiled.  But on the upside, Jimena decides to finally exit the convent and forgive him.  They're going to go off and live in quiet obscurity somewhere...  But the army that follows Rodrigo into exile has other ideas. 

And it's a good thing he's got an army, because over in North Africa, a wild-eyed fanatic named Ben Yussuf (Herbert Lom) is preaching what neither Hollywood nor their audience knew yet to call Jihad.   Kill Christians and conquer the world for Allah.  He berates the Spanish Moors for being renowned for their poets and doctors, and in a chilling bit of accidental modernity, urges them to set their doctors to work 'finding poisons for our enemies'. 

Now, the Spanish Moors actually rather like being known for their poets and doctors, and given their druthers, they'd really prefer to fight alongside the Spanish Christians against the fanatical invaders.  But when Rodrigo brings his Moorish allies to King Alfonso, Alfonso turns them away like the petulant Weak King that he is. 

And anyway, to face these invaders is going to take more oomph than a petty kingling like Alfonso -- it's going to take El Cid.

El Cid clocks in at a smidge over three hours.  If that strikes you as excessive, pretend it's a two-night mini-series and spread your viewing over several nights.

But yeah, this is a keeper.  If you can find it.  Amazon has a very few copies, mostly in VHS format:



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