The Colossus of Rhodes (film)

The Colossus Of Rhodes (film)

Il Colosso di Rodi (English title: The Colossus of Rhodes) is a 1961 Italian sword-and-sandal film directed by Sergio Leone. Starring Rory Calhoun, it is a fictional account of the island of Rhodes during its Classical period in the late third century before coming under Roman control, using the Colossus of Rhodes as a backdrop for the story of a war hero who becomes involved in two different plots to overthrow a tyrannical king: one by Rhodian patriots and the other by Phoenician agents.

The film was Leone's first work as a credited director, in a genre where he already had worked before (as the replacement director for The Last Days of Pompeii and as a secondary director for both Ben-Hur and Quo Vadis). It is perhaps the least known of the eight films he directed, and is notable for being one of only two of these films without an Ennio Morricone score.

The film is also notable for its unusual time period: The time following Alexander the Great’s death (323 BC) but before the rise of the Roman empire (about 146 BC), known as the Hellenistic era. Most sword-and-sandal epics of the 1950s and 60s were set in either the earlier Greek empire (Hercules, Ulysses, The Giant of Marathon) or the later Roman period (Ben Hur, The Magnificent Gladiator, Quo Vadis). The only other films made during the peplum era to use a Hellenistic setting are Hannibal (1959), Revak the Rebel and Siege of Syracuse (both 1960).