New Picture

Ulysses (Lux; Paramount) brings to the screen the greatest adventure story of the Western world. Visually, the picture could scarcely be better. The camera's Cyclopean eye stares deep into the Minoan age that has come down only in legend and a few tantalizing shards from Peloponnesus and Crete. Misty islands float in a magic wide-screen sea, naiads romp along the water's edge, enchantresses lurk in sacred groves, galleys roll and toss on angry waves conjured up by Poseidon.

Even Kirk Douglas, tanned and bearded, looks the part of Ulysses, though when he speaks, it is clear that he is more at home in Ithaca, N.Y. than the Ithaca of Homer. In fact, talk is one of the picture's major flaws. It was filmed in the Mediterranean with a French, Italian and American cast, and most of the parts have had to be dubbed in English. The dubbers dubbed the job. In the opening sequence, where Penelope (Silvana Mangano) holds off her importunate suitors, the synchronization of words and lip movements is particularly awry, but this should bother only the churlish few who concentrate on Silvana's lips instead of Silvana entire.

Homer's epic story has been greatly shortened and considerably amended by a battery of writers (Ben Hecht and Irwin Shaw plus three Italians and a Briton). But the Odyssey has been tampered with before and suffered no appreciable damage. Purists will find cause to complain in the sprucing up of Ulysses' character; he emerges less a calculating Greek warrior than an upstanding cowboy hero outfitted with chiton instead of chaps, sandals instead of saddlebags.

The adventures themselves retain the timeless quality of myth: the gigantic Cyclops is chillingly acted by Umberto Silvestri, and his howls of frenzy at the loss of his eye are enough to shatter cliffs; the immortal and immoral Circe (also played by Silvana Mangano) can call up tempests or turn men into porkers with equal ease. The screen writers have added one imaginative touch to the incident of the Sirens' rock: as his galley is rowed past that bone-littered shore. Ulysses, bound to the mainmast, is driven to frantic despair by the pleading voices of his wife and son, crying to him that he must not desert them any longer.

Hollywood, despite its penchant for violence, could not face up completely to the slaughter of Penelope's suitors when Ulysses finally returns to claim his rightful place as king and husband; even so, it takes quite a scene of carnage to get the bloody business done with.

Mostly, the cast is one that Homer might have approved. In her revealing classical finery, Silvana Mangano is as provocative and enticing as a Tanagra figurine. Rossana Podesta plays the abandoned Nausicaae with all the sad airs and graces of a bereft princess. In the role of Penelope's leading suitor, Anthony Quinn shows a wily nobility, and young Franco Interlenghi as Ulysses' son gives real substance to his role of a stubborn adolescent. Kirk Douglas is more at home in the acrobatics of his part than in its subtleties, and occasionally seems tempted to reach for a Tommy gun instead of a sword. Yet, like the others, he often responds to Director Mario Camerini's neat combination of archaic flavor and modern pace. Technicolor, deft costuming and set decoration help immeasurably in creating the dreamlike quality of mankind's heroic age.

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