Brill's Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film (Brill's Companions to Classical Studies - Brill's Companions to Classical Studies: Warfare in the Ancient Mediterranean World, 7)

Through a vast array of case studies, from the silent era to recent years, Brill's Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film traces cinema’s enduring fascination with battles and violence in classical antiquity and explores the reasons, synchronic as well as diachronic, for war’s centrality in celluloid Greece and Rome. Contents Contents 8 Acknowledgments 12 Figures 13 Notes on Contributors 18 Part 1 Introduction 24 Chapter 1 Swords Made of Rubber: Cinematic Antiquity through the Lens of War 26 Part 2 Cinema vs. History: Testing the Accuracy of Celluloid Battles 62 Chapter 2 Form and Function: The Importance of Military Formations in Cinematic Depictions of the Roman Army 64 Chapter 3 Alexander in Ares’ Mirror: Armed Conflict in Oliver Stone’s Historical Epic 94 Part 3 The Leading Men of Celluloid Armies 116 Chapter 4 “Hail! The Sign of the Cross”: Industrial Campaigns and Commanding Performances in The Sign of the Cross (1932) and Cleopatra (1934) 118 Chapter 5 Richard Burton in Alexander the Great (1956) and the Mechanisms of Hollywood Stardom: Fashioning an Ancient Military Icon in Post-WWII American Cinema 154 Chapter 6 Brad’s Biceps and Dwayne’s Delts: Stardom as Physicality and Digital Spectacle in Troy (2004) and Hercules (2014) 187 Part 4 Women and Military Conflict 212 Chapter 7 Atalanta as Celluloid Warrior in Jason and the Argonauts (2000) and Hercules (2014) 214 Chapter 8 Women on the Battlefield: Ancient Warrior Queens and Female Military Commanders on the Millennial Screen 237 Chapter 9 “She Wants to Be Married and Give the Children Names!”: Women and the Roman Army in Post-Gladiator Films 269 Chapter 10 Women in Captivity: The Human Cost of Armed Conflict from the Trojan War to Modern Greek Cinema 296 Part 5 Western Colonialism and Racist Attitudes 316 Chapter 11 Rome vs. Carthage: Imperial and Racist Aspirations in Italian Films of the Twentieth Century 318 Chapter 12 Porus vs. Alexander in Modi’s Sikandar (1941) and Stone’s Alexander (2004–2014) 347 Part 6 Ancient Warfare on Film and Modern Politics 374 Chapter 13 Armed Conflict in Italian Historical Films of the Fascist and Post-WWII Era (1937–1954) 376 Chapter 14 The Noise of War: Sound, Politics and Space in the Italian Peplum 409 Chapter 15 “Make Love, Not War”: Roman Soldiers and 1960s Countercultural Masculinity in Fellini-Satyricon 428 Chapter 16 Epic Combat in Ancient and Modern History: A Comparative Analysis of The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) and The Longest Day (1962) 449 Chapter 17 Lysistrata (1972): Political and Sexual Refractions of the Peloponnesian War during the Greek Junta 473 Part 7 Ancient Battles for Millennial Spectators and the Impact of the Hollywood War Film 502 Chapter 18 Sensational Violence: Brutality in Twenty-First-Century Cinematic Depictions of Roman Battles 504 Chapter 19 Rockules’ Revenge: The Portrayal of the Veteran Warrior in Brett Ratner’s Hercules 531 Chapter 20 Romans and Zealots in the Global War on Terror: Asymmetric Warfare and Counterinsurgency in Risen (2016) and Ben-Hur (2016) 552 Part 8 Epilogue 580 Chapter 21 To Be Continued: Considerations of Ancient Warfare in Film 582 Index 604 Brill's Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film is the first volume exclusively dedicated to the study of a theme that informs virtually every reimagining of the classical world on the big screen: armed conflict. Through a vast array of case studies, from the silent era to recent years, the collection traces cinema's enduring fascination with battles and violence in antiquity and explores the reasons, both synchronic and diachronic, for the central place that war occupies in celluloid Greece and Rome. Situating films in their artistic, economic, and sociopolitical context, the essays cast light on the industrial mechanisms through which the ancient battlefield is refashioned in cinema and investigate why the medium adopts a revisionist approach to textual and visual sources.