Picture this as a movie: a golden tablet awakens visions of a man shrouded in black, soon brought forth in the flesh after a storm at sea forces a course toward his shores. The man in black is at war with a regent in a gold mask, each holding a piece of a golden map leading to the Fountain of Destiny. The quest for the final piece takes the viewer into jungles, cities, and caverns. An Oracle of All Knowledge provides guidance, while the villainous man in black cheats with a homunculus spy. Vicious tribes and one-eyed centaurs lie in wait. When the story finally arrives at the Fountain, a griffin stands as the Guardian of Good, ready to challenge the man in black’s monsters. But when the corrupted centaur slays the griffin, only a man with a sword can win the day.
What’s that? The man with the sword, who all of this happens to? Oh, he’s just some guy.
It seems hard to believe, but that is about the level of depth to the heroes of nearly all ofRay Harryhausen’sfilmography. His movies were the benchmark for combining adventure and fantasy during the 1950s and 60s, but it was adventure and fantasy – and the stop motion creatures animated by Harryhausen – that dominated the screen. The stories were often bare-bones platforms on which to stage depictions of gods and monsters. Significant pieces of the original folklore and mythology were often discarded or simplified to work in filmic terms. And very few of the human characters did much more than guide the audience from Adventure A to Creature Encounter B.
Harryhausen’sSinbadtrilogy might be the purest example of this. To even call it a trilogy is stretching the definition of the word, because the three films have no relation to one another and have no recurring cast members. Sinbad himself is played by three different actors:Kerwin MatthewsinThe 7th Voyage of Sinbad(1958),John Phillip LawinThe Golden Voyage of Sinbad(1973), andPatrick WayneinSinbad and the Eye of the Tiger(1977). The details of Sinbad’s life aren’t even the same from film to film. He’s a prince of Baghdad inThe 7th Voyage, a freedom-loving captain who rejects kingship inThe Golden Voyage, and a prince again forThe Eye of the Tigerwithout any reference the first film. The voyages are all standalone works. There isn’t much sign of the original story-cycle afterThe 7th Voyageeither (which is really based on the third and fifth);The Golden VoyageandThe Eye of the Tigerwere invented for the screen.
The myths and folktales favored by Harryhausen often present their characters as broad archetypes, so if some of the humans of Harryhausen’s films seem to have rather opaque personalities, one could argue that such is standard for the genre. But Sinbad the Sailor has a fair amount of characterization in the story-cycle included in some editions ofOne Thousand and One Nights. He’s a ne’er-do-well who blows his inheritance and is forced into a life at sea. When good fortune gives him wealth and leisure after his first voyage, he grows restless and desirous of world travel. Thus begins a pattern that leads him onto voyages two through seven, each one marked by shipwreck and encounters with fantastic people, places, and creatures. Dumb luck is Sinbad’s savior a fair share of the time, but he also gets by with a combination of quick wits and an amoral ruthlessness (tempered, on his return home, by thanks to Allah).
Neither quality is much in evidence in the Harryhausen Sinbad trilogy. Law’s Sinbad has a certain swagger and zest for freedom, but even he never gets out of a jam through cleverness or underhandedness. All three of Harryhausen’s Sinbads have unimpeachable ethics and a direct approach to any mythical obstacles: fight or flee. They don’t cheat, they don’t leave wives or kingdoms behind, they don’t waste their fortunes, and except for Law, they really don’t show much of a personality at all. That’s in the script as much as it is in the performances; again, Law injects something into the part, but Matthews and Wayne never push against their strait-laced confines. The same goes for those playing their crews and love interests. The personality is all to be found in the cyclopses, centaurs, griffins, walruses, baboons, and smilodons the Sinbads encounter throughout the trilogy.
None of This Is News to Devotees of Harryhausen’s Work
Lifelong fans of his – likeTim Burton, who namedThe Golden Voyageone of his favorite films– told Ray to his face that his creatures were more emotive than the actors. It was meant as a compliment, and Harryhausen often took it as such, though he did sometimes defend individual members of the cast against critical derision. At other times, his producerCharles Schneerconceded that their characters were often “cardboard.” But the flat human figures haven’t stopped generations of filmmakers and audiences alike from singing Harryhausen’s praises and keeping his films alive. Why is that? At least one reason has to be that, contrary to what so many of us hear ad nauseam in English class and film schools, it doesn’t always come down to character.
How the Fantasy Genre Has Progressed Since Harryhausen Left His Mark
Fantasy films before and since Harryhausen’s time have demonstrated that the genre can absolutely support complex plots and rich characterizations. Many of these are better than Harryhausen’s films, and more pleasurable viewing experiences in my book. But that doesn’t make his work bad, or his approach wrong. The fantasy itselfisa big selling point of entries in the genre. Complex personalities can be found anywhere, but only a certain type of story will give you a Minotaur, or a dragon, or an animated statue of Kali. Why not put them front and center? When they’re beautifully animated through a hand-crafted art form and carried along by the stirring music ofBernard HerrmannandMiklós Rózsa, the fantastic elements have even greater appeal.
Complexity isn’t always a boon to a movie either. The heroine and the creature ofRaya and the Last Dragonare more fleshed out than any of Harryhausen’s Sinbads, but I find their personalities obnoxious and detracting from the experience. There’s a lot to be said for simple done well over detailed done poorly or unevenly. And there is one sense in which the flatness of characters like Harryhausen’s Sinbads, or his Jason, or his Perseus, or any of the rest, can help these types of stories. As much as they are fantasies, these movies are adventures, sweeping journeys into thrilling situations narrowly escaped from or conquered. A blank slate of a protagonist can allow the young or the young at heart to project themselves into the adventure, to experience it vicariously without having a fully realized character in the way as middleman and figure of investment.
Is it the only way to get people excited about that film about golden tablets and the Fountain of Destiny? No, and it’s often not the preferable one. But when it works, it works, and Harryhausen knew how to make it work better than most anyone.
