Word: helens
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...Helen of Troy (Warner). "Seven cities warred for Homer, being dead, wrote Thomas Hey wood, "who, living, had no roof to shroud his head." Two other cities, Rome and Hollywood, which care more about the poet's capacity to turn a profit than a phrase, have recently made an uneasy truce before the walls of Troystrictly, of course, for the sake of plunder...
...killed Patroclus), the script by John Twist shows a commendable respect for the letter of the myth. It is the spirit that is Twisted. Homer's was a mythic drama in which gods and heroes, love and politics, war and religion moiled in the mortar of imagination. Helen of Troy is basically a story of hot pants in high places. The hero, accordingly, is not "godlike Hector" or "great Achilles" but "soft Paris," whom even Helen called a coward. As the part is written, the "pest of Troy" can actually fight like a Trojan, and, as it is played...
...about the Helen, Rossana Podestá is a charming girl, but the customers like King Priam (Sir Cedric Hardwicke), may well ask: "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?" And is this Hector (Harry Andrews), dreadful in his wrath and fierce Achilles (Stanley Baker), both with arms like lath? They look, as on the field of Mars they clash, like aging brokers at a game of squash. They talk like brokers, too, except when the scriptwriter tries to belt out a Homer but winds up with a high-flown foul, e.g., "Tell her she will walk...
...awarded her half-sister Aphrodite the prize for beauty, decided to stir up the Greeks against the Trojans. It was not hard to do. Troy was rich in tribute taken from Greek merchants. Moreover, Paris himself was the young spark that fell into this tinder box. His rape of Helen, Queen of Sparta, whom he carried off to Troy in a fast galley, brought the Greeks to the shores of Asia Minor in 1186 ships...
...This story," according to the publicity come-on, "was filmed on location . . . inside a woman's soul!" Director Daniel (Come Back, Little Sheba) Mann, with the help of a sharp script by Helen Deutsch and Jay Richard Kennedy, gets around inside his subject with tact and agility. Susan Hayward plays her part right up to the cork; she can make the audience see not only the horror of the heroine's life but the rye humor of it, too. Jo Van Fleet is even more accomplished and convincing as the sort of stage mother who rides a child...