Sodom & Gomorrah (4) Special Effects

I'm going to write some more about Sodom & Gomorrah (see my previous posts about the film) and I will concentrate on the special effects and technical aspects. The battle scene required 4,000 people among which were the Moroccan army, the extras, the actors, and 150 crew members. It was shot between Ouarzazate and Marrakesh using three helicopters.

Maurice Binder's title sequence

I mentioned James Bond production designer's work Ken Adam on the film : if you wish to see a sample of his work, there is a storyboard of the dam sequence on the French cinematheque website.

The torture of the captured slave required a complex mechanism with 6 fans, motors and ice to cool down the temperature for the stunt men tied to a giant wheel dipped in fire.

Stunt man in the throne room

Obviously the sequence that required the most screen trickery was the destruction of Sodom. The throne room was a set that could be tilted and many pieces, columns, statues could be operated to fall on cue. It took seven days to build it and cost $15,000 (for a total budget of $6 million) with an extra $10,000 device needed for the fall of over 180 y3 of debris on the 650 extras.

A rare look at a deleted scene of the dying queen

The whole scene was filmed by 5 film cameras as well as video cameras on a closed-circuit especially for the attending journalists. Unlike so many CG movies of today, what you see on the screen is really happening. The whole room collapsed.



These two picture appear to come from deleted scenes with Anouk Aimée. It seems unlikely that the first one could have been included in the final film without eroding the believability of the previous scene : in the film, it is clearly seen that the queen is smashed by an enormous rock. Yet she is seen here agonizing with only half of her body trapped under it.

The second one is from an unknown scene not in the film since Anouk Aimée is never seen in the film with that hairdo.

These are rare behind-the-scene quality pictures of Stewart Granger performing the miracle scene in front of the camera.

This is what appears to be a re-release trailer (since the film is advertised under the alternate title "The Last Days Of Sodom And Gomorrah").

More pictures on A Lost Film Facebook page.

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Sodom & Gomorrah (3) Off-screen curse

Here's yet another entry about Sodom & Gomorrah. This is a favorite of mine as you may know if you've read my previous posts (here and here).
On the left is the cover of the French press kit. I love the design.

Today, I will focus on the various behind-the-scene problems faced by the cast and crew during the making  of the film. I will draw the bulk of my information from an article of the time by Geneviève Gérald.

According to it, director Robert Aldrich apparently had some trouble with the Italian crew, unaccustomed to be directed by a strict man, promptly on the set at 8 o'clock sharp, with a precise idea of what he wants and how he wants it.

And his idea was apparently to represent the threat of nuclear power through the power of God over the Twin Cities, because it is still unknown if they were destroyed by an ancient atomic explosion or the eruption of some underwater volcano.

Sodom and Gomorrah was filmed in one year in Roman studios and in Ait-Benhaddou, a 4000 year-old Moroccan village lost among the mountains of the Atlas.


With no water or electricity, the cast and crew had to bring their own supply and the 100 days of exterior shooting were a nightmare for many. Stewart Granger displaced a vertebra during one of the duels rendering him unable to shoot for several days, after-which he stung his finger on a poisonous plant. Everyone suffered stomach aches and Rossana Podesta had to be flown back to Rome for a severe case of the mumps. Cameraman Cyril Knownles even died of a heart attack during filming and director of photography Mario Montuori was attacked by a buffalo which fractured his knee and elbow.

 
 On this set of pictures, Scilla Gabel seems to be having a dizzy spell while filming the opening scene in the desert where she meets the sodomite patrol. The cast and crew had to protect themselves from the sun with glasses and hats and also covered their mouth to avoid sand storms.

The temperature varied from ice cold at night up to 140°F in the daylight. 3,000 local extras were hired, which caused a problem depending on what religion they were : the Arabs would stop working on Fridays, Saturdays were the Hebrews's day off and on Sundays Christians wouldn't work.

Pier Angeli

The difficult production wrapped in a heat wave that broke all records at the time in Rome for the interior shooting.

The director's worst problem apparently turned out to be the producer. They went on trial because they couldn't agree on the final cut and Robert Aldrich apparently conceded a 15 minute cut eventually. I doubt that these scenes will ever be back.

Writer Bill Krohn (who wrote the excellent Hitchcock at Work) discusses this and more in this excellent essay about the film. (Among many other things, he tells of a scene in the script where the Queen seduces Ildith again after she moves back to the palace. According to Krohn, this was probably never filmed.

Here's the original trailer for the film :

There will be more about the film...
 More pictures on A Lost Film Facebook page.
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More Sodom & Gomorrah

I want to share more rare images about Sodom And Gomorrah, a film I already covered on this entry.







Here is a rare picture of Robert Aldrich directing Anouk Aimée. I always thought the way the Queen clapped her hands instead of directly addressing her slaves to give her wordless orders were a nice touch of characterization and the way everyone seemed to understand what she meant was almost magic.

I know now thanks to that picture that the director and the actress put some thought in the nonchalant way of doing it as they are seen here rehearsing the scene.

Here is a picture of actress Mitsuko Takara out of character in a Japanese costume.

 Robert Aldrich directing his stars in the banquet scene.

Here is a magnificent portrait of Anouk Aimée.

There will be more about the film...
 More pictures on A Lost Film Facebook page.
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Sodom And Gomorrah

Sodom And Gomorrah isn't a lost film per say. But the divine force that struck the two cities seems to oppose an official release of the film on a decent format.
And other details such as censorship cuts and the soundtrack make me want to talk about it.
Though I must admit: I have a soft spot in my heart for this film and that is my first motivation.

I remember seeing it as a child at my grand ma's and the show blew me away. Yes, because, in spite of the title, the film remains quite decent. In it, Sodomites are barely the inhabitants of Sodom, lesbianism is reduced to a few insistent gazes, all of which can very well go unnoticed for a young naive and pure child (which I was back then). Not a tit shot, not even a curse word, nothing.

This Italian-French-American co-production did not meet an overwhelming success even though it was released in many countries. Maybe it's the origins (Italian productions of the time often look somewhat cheap to me) at a time when the sword-and-sandal genre was beginning to wane in popularity. Have you noticed how Italian extras, as opposed to over-enthusiastic American ones, always seem to be waiting the end of the scene to get their paycheck? Maybe it's just me.

By now, you're probably wondering : "What's so special about this film, then?"

Apart from a few details like the involvement of two future long-time James Bond collaborators : Ken Adam for production design and Maurice Binder for his highly stylized main title sequences, the on-screen presence of Stewart Granger (Moonfleet, The Prisoner of Zenda,...), and pretty Pier Angeli, this film has two main attractions : Anouk Aimée and Miklós Rózsa's music.

Let's start with Anouk Aimée.
I've always loved the parts of beautiful, cruel, poker-faced women with power. They fascinate me. The Queen in Snow White, Ayesha in "She", and the Queen of Sodom.
The latter is, to my knowledge, never mentioned by name in the movie but is listed as "Queen Bera" on the IMDB and various other sources.
Anouk Aimée, who was never prettier than in this film, parades with a detached face but really has power of life and death over the people that surround her and she uses rivalries and the court intrigues to get rid of the one person that can rightfully resist her: her brother, with whom she cultivates a very peculiar relationship. But her influence over him and his final execution resemble a cat-and-mouse game: slow and vicious so she can see her victim suffer and relish it.

As sovereign of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Queen choses her prettiest slave to make her the favorite from whom she demands more obedience than the film can depict. But the innuendos are there.

In the end, she can only be defeated by the only entity who can defy her power : God. The scene of her tragic fate impressed upon me as a child : all alone, abandoned, without a sound (her favorite screams in her place), she faces death and with her falls the symbol of her kingdom.

The character is fascinating, but the talent of the actress (not to mention her beauty) are really what made it work for me. I saw Anouk Aimée on the stage playing Love Letters, and in another English-speaking role besides "Sodom" (she dubs herself in the French version) in a TV episode called, "Voices In The Garden" where she plays the tragic part of a sick woman whose last days are brightened by her meeting with a couple of teenagers.

Her voice charmed me every time.

I was very surprised to read in an interview by Boze Hadleigh  of director George Cukor, who ordinarily remains so consensual, that he thought working with her (on Justine) had been one the worst experiences of his career. According to him, her attitude was "intractable. Like Marilyn but without the results". I don't know what their differences were on that shoot, but I have to say I disagree on that last comment. Whatever attitude she had, the results are there. But I must admit that Anouk Aimée never had the career she could expect in the USA. However that may have been a choice.

Back to the film. About the soundtrack, this is Rózsa's last score (Quo Vadis, Julius Caesar, Diane, King of Kings, Ben Hur,... ) for this kind of movie. And what a score! The theme of the two cities marvelously conveys decadence and power mixed together. The amateur had to wait a long time before he could buy a relatively satisfying recording.

A double LP album offered a large selection of the music (although not a complete one), but in the digital era, one could expect better. A 64 minute CD was released in 1990 albeit with a monaural sound and strange cuts right in the middle of the cues. In 2001, another CD, this time in stereo, gathered only 43 minutes of music without even including the main title.

Not until 2007 did Digitmovies release a double CD copying the content of the LP with 6 extra unused cues (5 Hebrew prayers and one dance). If these discs offer the most complete selection to date (and probably all that's left of the actual soundtrack), some cues are incomplete and others missing altogether (the main title is cut 2 minutes 20 seconds in at the most inappropriate time in all of these editions).

But the soundtrack got royal treatment compared to the film itself. Look for a DVD release (I don't even mention Blu-Ray) and weep. I bought the VHS tape some ten years ago. Obviously the film was not restored and was presented in the 4:3 picture format, but except for the overture, intermission and epilogue (all on the CD), the film was complete.

In the French version for instance (the film was shot in English), Tamar's torture scene was censored and the shots showing the spikes on Arno's torso are missing, which gives the impression that Tamar is dying of a big hug.

An official DVD with an English soundtrack saw the light of day in Germany. If the format of the picture is adapted to wide-screen TV, it seems that various copies of different quality were mixed together which gives a frankly disturbing result. And the main title is also cut in several places (including the first seconds) with the consequences you can imagine on the listening pleasure.

More or less legal but always deceptive editions come up everywhere in the world: in Asia, on two discs with a randomly chosen cut (clumsy considering the fact that the film has an intermission), or in Brazil where the film is "letter-boxed" (black strips at the top and bottom).

If god wants it (and especially if 20th Century Fox does), some day maybe, Sodom And Gomorrah will rise from the ashes! Hear the Queen call you : "Stay! I command you to stay !"
There will be more about the film...
 More pictures on A Lost Film Facebook page.
That's all for today folks!

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