Outside of Napoleon or Julius Caesar it would be hard to pick a warrior whose life lent itself more readily to Cinemascopic scenes of great con-quest than Alexander of Macedonia, who started his military career by saving his father's life when he was only 18 and went on to conquer the whole known civilized world before he was 30. Robert Rossen has taken full advantage of such raw material to film, in his forthcoming Alexander the Great, some of the busiest battle scenes in movie annals. At a cost of $4 million he has followed Alexander's grandiose career from Chaeronea to Gaugamela and left little of war's horror to the imagination.
But while much of Alexander is spectacle and high horse opera, Producer Rosser, a serious film maker (All the King's Men), is not given to blood and thunder for its own sake. He sought to portray a psychologically complex young man who tried to unify the world by force and only succeeded in destroying himself. Rossen spent three years researching his subject and the result, despite all the blood, sweat and spears, is a thoughtful picture of the conqueror that might please even Plutarch. Which version of Rouen's Alexander moviegoers will remember best—the confused idealist or the early-day Davy Crockett—remains to be seen.
Though Alexander was filmed in Spain for reasons of economy, terrain was picked to match actual locales of the Macedonian's conquests. Rossen's quest for authenticity further extended to hiring, as technical adviser, Prince Peter of Greece, an anthropology expert. It also led him to show, in Bruegelesque scenes like the orgy of King Philip's men at left following victory over the Greeks at Olympus, the barbaric environment Alexander was born into and tried to grow out of in his plan to unify the world.
Alexander was a bonanza for Spanish actors, craftsmen and technicians, who pocketed more than three quarters of the film's budget of $4 million. For the battle scenes some 6,000 extras wore 600 suits of armor, 230 beards, 50 scars, 36 plastic noses and 40 wigs, carried 6,500 assorted spears and drove 42 chariots. The Madrid mounted police, whose chief played the part of a high priest traveling with Alex-ander in the film, supplied some of the cavalry support. The rest came from 300 army cavalrymen whose leader was only nervous that the long (February to July) shooting wouldn't end on time—his troops were signed up to go to work immediately in another film.
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images and info provided by the LIFE Magazine / LIFE Magazine International / LIFE Magazine Atlantic ARCHIVE from the Zetu Harrys Collection
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