Before there was Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey…
“Some say Citizen Kane is the greatest motion picture of all time. Other say it’s Casablanca. For me, the greatest picture of all time is Jason and the Argonauts.” —Tom Hanks, presenting Ray Harryhausen with an honorary Oscar in 1992.
A brave man and his shipload of followers heedlessly throw themselves into one dangerous adventure after another, as vengeful gods mark their progress. Nah, forget Christopher Nolan, we’re talking about Don Chaffey’s 1963 masterpiece, Jason and the Argonauts. If Films-Made-From-Ancient-Greek-Texts Fever has you in its sway, you need to see this. The basics of the story are pretty well-known: Jason and his backing band, the Argonauts, seek the Golden Fleece. His lover, Medea, is quite a handful. Zeus is unhappy, Hera digs our hero, and Hercules shows up, too. But who are we kidding—the star of this show is Ray Harryhausen, the undisputed master of stop-motion effects in motion pictures. Many consider this film to be his masterwork.
The great man’s inimitable effects appear in one epic scene after another here: the towering bronze giant Talos, the vulturous harpies, the seven-headed serpent Hydra, and, most famously, that terrifying army of skeletons! Given the painstaking work necessary for stop-motion effects, the battle between the four humans and seven skeleton creatures took four months to execute. The film, which managed to escape right-wing furor on its release 1963— surprising considering its lack of fealty to the original third-century Greek poem (unless, maybe, “featly to the original text” isn’t what the furor is really about)—was a major hit upon its release, and its reputation has only grown since.
For all the special-effects mayhem, the movie was rated G, so by all means bring the kids. It’s a Saturday matinee, after all!