Sword-and-sandal

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With sandals movie (English: sword -and- sandal; Italian: Peplum ) mainly produced in Italy are called movies, where historical or biblical stories were shown. The production of sandals films dominated the Italian film industry from 1958 to 1965 and was replaced by the Spaghetti Western. The term sandals film was used by film critics usually pejoratively, as these Hollywood epics imitated ( as later the " Spaghetti Western " the Hollywood - Western). Lightweight desert shoes suitable as sandals are a formal feature of this until well into the 1980s popular genre of B movies.

History

Sandals films were based on the success of monumental films with large antique subjects, as they were in the 1950s and 1960s, shot in Hollywood with great effort. Crucial to the success of that strip was the introduction of large-format CinemaScope process. Known examples of monumental films of this period, so templates for subsequent sandals films were Cleopatra, Ben Hur, The Robe, Quo Vadis, Spartacus and The Fall of the Roman Empire.

Sandals films were not in the U.S., but especially in Italy and in other South and Southeast European countries because of high production costs in Hollywood. The production cost was much lower, the acting cast cheaper than with the bigger models, but also found these movies with the audience very well received. In contrast to the monumental films, the directors put less emphasis on character representation and symbolic actions, but rather to as many fist and sword fights. A popular topic was the muscular hero Maciste and often bizarre variations such as Hercules fights ' against vampires or Zorro. Popular star of numerous Italian sandals films was the bodybuilder Steve Reeves. In the mid- 1960s the production of monumental films due to high costs and dwindling popularity has been set, disappeared also the sandals movies.