Ultimi giorni di Pompei, Gli (1950)

Directors:

Marcel L'Herbier
Paolo Moffa

Writer:

Alexandre Arnoux (French dialogue)

Release Date:

December 1955 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

Was THIS the birth of the H-Bomb?

Plot:

In the town of Pompeii, 79AD, a few weeks before the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius, a Roman lady Hélène...

Plot Keywords:

Peplum | Ancient Rome | Based On Novel

Cast

Micheline Presle	...	Elena / Hélène
Georges Marchal	...	Lysia / Lysias
Marcel Herrand	...	Arbace / Arbax
Jaque Catelain	...	Clodio / Claudius
Adriana Benetti	...	Nidia
Camillo Pilotto	...	Diomede / Diomède
Antonio Pierfederici	...	Olinto / Olinte
Guglielmo Barnabò	...	Panza
Alain Quercy	...	Lepido / Lépide

Also Known As:

Derniers jours de Pompei, Les (France)
Sins of Pompeii (USA)
The Last Days of Pompeii (USA)

Country:

Italy | France

Language:

French | Italian

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

West Germany:12 (f) | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Company:

Universalia Film

Trivia:

Was the highest grossing film of the 1950's in Italy.

Movie Connections:

Version of The Last Days of Pompeii (1900)

Another interesting variation on the classic Bulwer-Lytton tale

This French version is very well acted, particularly by Georges Marchal. The classical Roman sets and costumes are outstanding. The characters are closer to Bulwer-Lytton's originals than the 1936 American version, but the action scenes are very much lacking. Micheline Presle is lovely as the noble Roman lady Helena enmeshed in a sinister and fraudulent Eastern cult which makes her unresponsive to the honest young man Lysias (Georges Marchal) who loves her.

Meanwhile the young servant girl Nydia is so in love with him that she absconds with a dangerous drug supplied to the unscrupulous highborn lady Julia by the slimy Arbaces, high priest of Isis. Nydia substitutes water in the vial and later administers the potion to Lysias in the belief that it will make him enamored of her. Unfortunately, it puts him into a psychotic stupor during which he wanders onto the scene of a murder and gets blamed and imprisoned for trial.

The final cataclysmic scenes are nowhere near as magnificent as in the earlier 1936 American film. If the two films were combined (the characters from the French version and the action scenes from the U.S. version) the result would be a film far better than either.