Androcles And The Lion

The 1950s were big on sword and sandals epics as we know but despite the presence of Victor Mature as a strapping Roman captain, stylistically this adaptation by director Chester Erskine and co-writer Ken Englund of George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 play has little in common with them. It is a gimcrack affair on every front that combines Robert Newton in fine eye-rolling fettle with a fluttering Jean Simmons as a couple of Christians being hauled off to Rome to be fed to the lions for the crowd-appeasing need of the fruity Emperor Caesar (Maurice Evans). Amongst their number is Androcles (Alan Young) a simple Christian animal lover who has been abandoned to his fate by his shrewish wife (Elsa Lancaster).

Played as a tongue-in-cheek farce (the martyrs sing :Onward Christian Soldiers" a 19th century hymn as they march to Rome) Androcles And The Lion  is a cheaply-made film in which the clumsy use of stunt doubles in lion suits, back projection and print overlays are only the most glaring aspects of the studio-bound production.

Shaw was an iconic figure of literature in the early 20th century and indeed the film opens with a zoom in on a bust of his head but his serio-comic play which weighs in against religious intolerance and cruelty against animals (Shaw was a liberal thinker, a vegetarian and anti-vivisectionist) is more illustrative of the author's values than anything even remotely dramatically convincing. Torn from its stage setting and at a distance of 50 years, its main appeal is its incongruities (try Jim Backus, one day to be the voice of Mr Magoo, as a Roman centurion!) but that still isn’t much.

FYI: Alan Young would become a household face as Wilbur Post, the owner of television’s talking horse, Mr. Ed.

 

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