El Cid, a film that was first released in 1961 and starred Charlton Heston in the title role, has recently been released on DVD, fully and gloriously restored. Though the film is over forty years old, it has some serendipitous references to our own time.
El Cid is set in Spain of the 11th Century, during the early Reconquista, when the country was divided between warring Christian and Moslem kingdoms. As the film begins, Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, a Spanish nobleman, stops on the way to his wedding to fight off a Moslem incursion against a Christian village. In the process he captures a group of Moslem Emirs. Instead of hanging them on the spot, as was custom, Rodrigo sets them free. Impressed by that act of generosity, one of the Emirs swears fealty to Rodrigo and his King, Ferdinand of Castile, and calls Rodrigo, “El Sayyid” or “Lord” in Arabic. The title is generally spelled “El Cid” in western chronicles.
This act of generosity gets El Cid Rodrigo into trouble at the Castilian court, with charges of treason being bandied about. This situation puts a strain on his relationship with his betrothed, Chimene, played by the lovely and gracious Sophia Loren. The strain becomes enmity when Rodrigo is obliged to kill Chimene’s father in a duel of honor for insulting his father. The theme of pride, how much trouble it causes, and how one can overcome it for the greater good is replete throughout the film.
Where the references to our time come into play is when the Muslim leader Ben Yussef (think of him as a medieval Osama bin Laden) is seen gathering his hordes in North Africa with the ambition of sweeping first over Spain, then Europe, then the world. All for Islam, of course. Ben Yussef hates the Spanish Moslems only a little less than the Christians, since they seemed more concerned with astronomy, medicine, mathematics, and good living than with making their swords run red with the blood of the Infidel. His black clad jihadis looks shockingly like Al Qaeda terrorists.
El Cid Rodrigo therefore has a number of problems. Not only must he win back his one true love, who wants to kill him for killing her father, but he must unite the quarrelling kingdoms of Spain, Christian and Moslem, to meet the external threat of Ben Yussef. El Cid Rodrigo has to overcome history, culture, and tradition with nothing but his own charisma in order to accomplish this. And he must maintain his own very strict code of honor.
El Cid was a real, historical figure and is the national hero of Spain. The movie more or less covers his life, with certain changes necessary for drama and to fit inside a three hour long film. The film holds up, even though it was among the last of the classic historical epics to actually make money before Gladiator came out forty years later. The DVD has some special features, including an account of the rise and fall of El Cid’s producer, Samuel Bronston, a story that itself is an epic worthy of the big screen.
