Sign of the Pagan

According to Marilyn Kirk's biography of Jeff Chandler, Chandler was originally offered the role of Attila in Sign Of The Pagan. I think he was wise to decline as he would have been ill suited for the part. But I think Jeff would have been smart to skip this one altogether. He's rather colorless as the centurion who becomes Captain-General of the Roman forces.

When Jack Palance is on screen as Attila the Hun there ain't a stick of furniture safe in his view. It's that kind of part so sit back and enjoy. In fact Anthony Quinn took the same approach when he did Attila in a film that came out around the same time.

Nothing remotely historically accurate about Sign Of The Pagan other than Attila's meeting with Pope Leo I and his turning back from his conquest of Rome. Moroni Olsen in his farewell big screen performance is is the Pope. No one knows what was actually said so its is all open to speculation.

If you love scenery chewing acting when it's called for than Sign Of The Pagan is your kind of film.

If Charlton Heston had been born Jewish, he'd have been Jeff Chandler, a lookalike who lost out on both The Ten Commandments AND Ben-Hur to Old Granite Jaw. Had Chandler nabbed those roles, he may have become a superstar himself. As is, he played the leads in studio program pictures, those B+ movies that disappeared with the end of the 'studio contract' system in the early sixties. By then, Chandler was already gone, having died while filming a WWII action flick, Merrill's Marauders, for Sam Fuller in the Phillipines. Anyway, his director for this costume mini-epic was Doug Sirk, an expert out of making magic from routine material. Chandler's the Roman centurion who must push back the invading armies of Atilla the Hun. Ludmilla Tcherina is one of a number of flashy looking women (Blonde Allison Hayes, later the sixty foot woman, is another). Lots of fairly big and semi-spectacular action sequences, with Jack Palance hamming it up even more than usual as Atilla. Nice production values, given a moody atmosphere by the always fascinating Sirk. This is one of those films that have been so completely forgotten that even Turner Movies doesn't revive it. Too bad - for this represents a fun aspect of the Old Hollywood in its final hours that ought to be reclaimed by contemporary viewers.

At 7:05 pm on Saturday, 1 May 1976, BBC 1 showed the complete and uncut version of Sign of the Pagan. Puzzlingly, this was probably the last time that anyone was allowed to see Ludmilla Tcherina's exotic dance number. For reasons known only to the Universal studios, that whole sequence has been deleted from subsequent television showings, both on American station AMC and Britain's Channel 4. Nor do DVD releases contain the dance, even though the main title still credits Kenny Williams as choreographer, leaving viewers wondering what he could have possibly choreographed. Most surprising of all is the 2011 German DVD "special edition" which presents both the original wide screen and 4 x 3 versions. Even here, Universal have cleanly cut the dance number from both prints and both languages.

For those who have never seen the sequence, Attila has just won the palace show fight with Herculanas. After that, the Emperor commands his sister, the Princess Pulcheria, to dance for the visiting barbarians. For the first 50 seconds she performs a graceful and dignified piece of ballet which the barbarians obviously find boring. Therefore, the Emperor tells a servant, "Advise my sister this is not suited to barbarian taste." So ordered, the Princess switches to a more raunchy routine that the visitors find much more enjoyable. This lasts about two minutes. Few genre fans would argue that, in both the Hollywood and Italian epics, the exotic dance interlude is something of a highlight. We get to see beautiful girls in eye-catching costumes, always accompanied by some classy music. Indeed, the ballet score we hear (or used to hear) from Salter and Skinner in Sign of the Pagan is arguably the best music they ever composed.

Universal obviously hope no-one's going to notice what they've done, but why did they do it in the first place? One can only theorize. Perhaps the film was cut at some stage to fit into a fixed television slot. Or maybe the dance was excluded to make the film more suitable for children's matinees. Then nobody remembered to put the scene back? A somewhat wilder theory is that it's a rights issue. Remembering how the Gershwin estate, not liking the Porgy and Bess movie, have tried for years to prevent anyone seeing it, could Ludmilla Tcherina and her estate have somehow bought out this dance scene and are now withholding it because it does not enhance her memory as a classical ballerina? But surely Universal, with all their wealth, would hardly spoil one of their classics just to grab a few dollars?

Whatever the reason, most fans will agree that missing scenes in movies are a continuing source of irritation. Come on, Universal, put it back!

Made the same year as another sword and sandal movie dealing with the same subject ,"Attila Flagello Di Dio" (starring Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren),it is an icily impersonal movie from Douglas Sirk.It's watchable ,but it could have been done by anyone at all.Sirk's métier was melodrama (he was the master of the genre in the fifties) and western ("Taza,son of Cochise" ) and epics are not obviously his forte.

Although Jack Palance was potentially as ideal as Anthony Quinn to portray the king of the Huns,the screenwriters made him a too polite ,too sentimental ,not bestial enough character (just compare with Anthony Quinn's performance,in a movie which was not better though).

Sirk did not seem to put of lot of effort into his work:"Christian" best describes it:the thunderbolt,the Roman talking about the Virgin and her son to the pagan daughter ,the pope 's intervention (there's a similar scene in the Italian movie),the final victory which was given by "their" God...

An enjoyable spectacle, though some of the plot was a bit unconvincing. For a tough guy, Marcian was very eager to volunteer details of his mission when he was captured by Attila, and I don't know he he got intelligence of the pagan hordes' move on Rome and was able to rush some of his troops to its defence across considerable distances. And I was also puzzled by how Attila came to be in awe of Christianity. But Palance made an excellent Hun, and was every bit as good a villain as he was in Shane and Arrowhead. And Chandler has never looked better, thanks to his Roman armour and longer hair than usual. It was also fun to try to recognise lesser actors such as Pat Hogan and Leo Gordon in their barbarous costumes. A good 90 minutes of entertainment.