Helen of Troy

Arrows rain death. Soldiers clamber up stone walls. Swords clang, fires rage. Yet the waves of combatants storming Troy are repelled. To defeat the undefeatable ultimately requires brains more than brawn. Feigning retreat, the Greeks offer a gift: a mammoth wooden horse secretly housing their fighting men. Homer's Iliad surges to the screen in Helen of Troy, from the '50s heyday of big-screen spectaculars. Robert Wise directs this lavish epic, capturing some 30,000 people onscreen at the then-huge cost of $6 million. Among the 30,000: Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Brigitte Bardot before her sex-symbol renown, and, as the lovers at the conflict's center, Rossana Podesta (Sodom and Gomorrah) and Jack Sernas (La Dolce Vita).

• drama
• romance
• war