Helen of Troy

The face that launched a thousand ships!

Arrows rain death. Soldiers clamber up stone walls. Swords clang, fires rage. Yet the waves of combatants storming Troy are repelled. To defeat the undefeatable untimely requires brains more than brawn. So feigning retreat, the Greeks offer a gift: a mammoth wooden horse secretly housing their fighting men.

Homer's Illiad surges to the screen in Helen of Troy, from the '50s heyday of big-screen spectaculars, Robert Wise directs this lavish epic capturing some 30,000 people on screen at the then-huge cost of $6 million. Among the 30,000: Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Brigitte Bardot before to her sex-symbol renown, and as the lovers sat the conflict's center. Rossana Podesta