HANNIBAL (ANNIBALE)

Italy, 1959, 103 minutes, Colour.
Victor Mature, Gabriele Ferzetti, Rita Gam, Milly Vitale, Rik Battaglia, Mario Girotti.
Directed by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia and Edgar G. Ulmer.

Hannibal is one of the many sword and sandals films made in Italy at the end of the 1950s, the beginning of the 1960s. Many of them were supervised by American directors (Robert Aldrich for Sodom and Gomorrah, Jacques Tourneur for The Giant of Marathon).

The film is worth seeing only for historical reasons. Victor Mature was much better in his Hollywood sword and sandals films, especially The Robe and Demetrius and the Gladiators. The Italian cast is better, Gabriele Ferzetti as Fabius Maximus, the strategist against Hannibal. Mario Girotti, later known as Terence Hill, portrays his son.

The film has some spectacle, especially as Hannibal crosses the Alps with his elephants, despite all the hazards of the heights and the seasons. However, there is an interpolated romance, with Rita Gam, which is quite conventional, with trysts, betrayals, imprisonments. Rik Battaglia, hero of many Italian films, is Hannibal’s brother, Hasdrubal.

There are many battle sequences – not quite as accurate as history, especially the battle of Cannae, a much more confined battle than is displayed here.

The film is a visualising of some of Roman history – but rather comic book style. It also ends before the rise of Scipio Africanus who ultimately defeated Hannibal. American director Edgar G. Ulmer (Detour and other small-budget thrillers) has commented that the producers restricted his view of how the film should be made, ultimately letting it be a mere matinee spectacle.