Customer Reviews

The Silver Chalice

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Based on a best-seller by Thomas B. Costain, and directed by Victor Saville, "The Silver Chalice" was one of the studio's early CinemaScope films, and was really a variation on Fox's "The Robe," the first CinemaScope movie that had been a huge success in 1953... The action follows a group of Christians who are dedicated to preserving Christ's Holy Cup twenty years after the Last Supper...

Since Newman had the lead as a young Greek silversmith, sold into slavery, then chosen by the Christians to design a chalice for the Cup, becomes involved in battles and orgies, and must decide between the pagan world represented by a courtesan (Virginia Mayo) and the Christian world represented by his young, innocent wife (Pier Angeli). There is also a mad pagan magician (Jack Palance), who wants to destroy the chalice and establish his own religion, replacing Christ's miracles with black magic...

Newman was ideally cast as a Greek, because of his classic features, but he makes his film debut at particularly unfortunate time... 1954 was the year of "The Wild One" and "On the Waterfront," and Brando was at the height of his popularity...

Make absolutely no mistake about it - Paul Newman was 100% correct when he asserted that The Silver Chalice was the worst studio film of the 1950s. It is jaw-droppingly, stunningly incomprehensibly bad - perhaps the worst big-budget movie ever made in the second half of the 20th century. Of course, this does not mean that it is without its charms and its pleasures, but be warned they are not the pleasures to be found in low-budget 1950s science fiction or in poorly dubbed spaghetti westerns or kung fu epics. Instead, they are pleasures of a different sort - the pleasure of watching the relentless unfolding of a cinematic spectacle so ill-conceived, so terrible-looking, so poorly cast, and so badly plotted that you simply cannot believe what you are seeing. In fact, I find it impossible to watch the film all the way through in one continuous viewing - you simply have to turn it off now and then just get some re-grasp on reality. There is no need to go into detail about individual performances, although Virginia Mayo will absolutely flatten you. It is really the overall look, flow, and plotline of this movie that extracts the continuous gasp of disbelief. What is up with those post-apocalyptic minimalist sets out of a Kubrick nightmare? Why does the brother of the guy who adopts the young Paul Newman hate him so much, and isn't there something a little creepy in the adoption to begin with? Why is the dang cup being made in the first place? Why is Natalie Wood a platinum blonde? The answer to these and other questions certainly does not lie in this movie - but if high-gloss hideousness if your cup of tea, skol!

The thing that makes me roar every time I see this film is how embarrassed Paul Newman was by it. He took out a full page ad in the "LA Times" one year when he heard it was playing at a prominent theater. The ad was an official apology to fans for how bad the movie and the acting was.

In truth, it is an old-fashioned kind of theatrical acting, which really should have died by this time in film history. It did not die out, and Newman was also nervous in this, his first film. He need not have been, he need only have acted his role as best he could. Apparently he didn't think he did.

The sets are a marvel: I don't know where the locations were--probably sets--but the sparse, OUR TOWN props and the weirdly abstract sets are eye-popping. To me, that was as experimental as it got in the 1950s as I recall seeing this as a kid. The story, alternating between Jerusalem and Antioch in Turkey, is a basic rip-off of THE ROBE as one critic indicated.

It isn't too bad as stories go...a "Greek" Antiochian sculptor is adopted by a wealthy patron as a boy. Once the patron dies, the patron's evil brother sells the now-adult sculptor into slavery. His reputation precedes him, as St. Peter himself--still alive at the time--knows about him. How?

Well, it seems Joseph of Arimathea sends for Newman to build a reliquary silver chalice to hold the Holy Grail...this is a point audiences tend to miss. The chalice-reliquary needs two final touches: the face of Peter and the face of Jesus. Peter (Lorne Greene) is easy enough to do. Jesus, well, he's gone and Newman must play the anguished artist who has missed the train, so to say. Never fear...thanks to St. Luke's endeavors early on, Newman eventually converts to Christianity. How sweet!!

The situation is not helped by a nutty Jack Palance as Simon Magus (Simon the Magician, a well-known New Testament figure). He's dying to show Rome that he is the true messiah, due to the fact that he's a total wacko. Palance does the role great justice.

I urge everyone to see this film, though you may find yourself wanting to switch it off. I say don't, watch it all at least once and get a feel for the experimentation that was in the air in the 1950s. Just try not to laugh to hard at Newman's "knobby knees" [I quoteth mine wife here].

The Silver Chalice, finally available on DVD in a beautiful widescreen transfer, is a unique example of the epic genre. Hoping to achieve something different from the type of epics being made in Hollywood at the time, Warner Bros. hired Art Director Boris Leven and Production Designer Rolf Gerard (of the Metropolitan Opera) to create a very stylized concept of the ancient world. Thanks mainly to Paul Newman's derisive comments about this movie, it's reputation has suffered over the years. The Silver Chalice needs to be reevaluated as, in addition to the stunning visuals, it also boasts an involving plot, some fine performances, and a wonderful Academy Award nominated score by Franz Waxman.

This waste of film stock introduced Paul Newman to the world in 1954. Virginia Mayo, with "wicked" eyebrows (drag-queen mean), and Jack Palance, sporting a black sperm on red union-suit, who runs short of pixie-dust and flutters to a splat (watch out David Blaine!). It is the most misguided, ABSURD art direction & set design of any of the 50's "spectaculars" - a kind of "Neronian Moe-dern". Now folks, to impress upon you just how rich Nero's banquets were, they let loose with the gold spray paint and painted the lavish eats all GOLD! LAVISH! The script could have been bettered by a 12 year old. Reportedly Newman tried to buy the negative from the brothers Warner so he could burn it (the bros refused).
"So bad, it's good!" does not aply , this film REALLY IS AWFUL - No laughs here (well Mayo's eyebrows do get a smile at least). [...]. The print is very good and the sound even better, which leads me to its ONE redeeming quality, and it is a great contribution to film history (along with introducing the great humanitarian and fine actor, Mr. Paul Newman): Franz Waxman's magnificent score (Limited edition 2 CD set of only 3000 by Film Score Monthly - FSM Vol.10 No.11) is a lasting tribute to that great composer. Russ Tamblyn (under-rated and unjustly, almost forgotten) fans, he's NOT in this film - Amazon should eliminate that insulting "Tag". No menu or numbered chapters.

.....I bought this DVD because of the star power and to own the film that was Paul Newman's debut. Besides Newman, it had Jack Palance in one of his earliest films, Pier Angeli at her most alluring, Virginia Mayo at her most vampish and Natalie Wood in one of her many roles as a child.

.....Newman wasn't comfortable with the role of a greek silversmith, he much preferred the sarcastic anti-heros of Hud and The Hustler or the crusading hero of Ari in Exodus where he could display his fiery temperment but he did justice to the role as it was written. The story is a very fictional account of what in later movies would become the Holy Grail but it is entertaining and the DVD is of good quality. If you are a Paul Newman fan this movie should be in your collection.

"The Silver Chalice" is a real enigma to me. It's a sincere religious epic but it left me a little less than inspired. It's not a bad film. It's just not very good. It's numerous sins include flat direction, pat scripting and amateurish acting. It's interest to modern audiences would be the distinction that this is Paul Newman's film debut. The best you can say is that Newman doesn't embarrass himself but he sure seemed to be embarrassed. Jack Palance seems to be about the only participant who sized up the camp element of this enterprise and chews the scenery accordingly. If you must see it once and then not at all.

That 'The Silver Chalice' is finally issued is choice news for this correspondent.

For some reason, this Warner Bros pic played in my home town months before 'The Robe' - slightly recollect that the Fox exhibitors were not quite ready with a CinemaScope screen. At any rate, the big send up for 'The Silver Chalice' entailed it being promoted as our first wide-screen experience. Little did anyone know Paul Newman from Method or Brando. Expectations regarding Virgina Mayo's performances were slight - considering her previous undemanding costumers ('Captain Horatio Hornblower;' Westerns; etc.), while Jack Palance barely was an up-and-coming young performer (cannot recall if 'The Big Knife' had come out yet).

Barely in third grade, I was blown away with the unconventional storyline for a tale set in Biblical times and the sort-of Art-Deco production values. Have not seen it since (but am all over my kids to treating me a copy for this Christmas) yet for some reason recall most of it.

Pier Angeli comes to mind, first. Saw several other performances of hers but, relatively small as her part is, could and still can appreciate James Dean's real-life endearment to her. The casting of Natalie Wood at perhaps age 12 was welcome - a favorite since 'Miracle on 34th Street' - and do believe that Russ Tamblyn was not entirely an unknown at the time. What made my head spin was for moviemakers to expect us to suspend disbelief and accept that these two characters as adults would become Mayo and Newman, respectively. It called for considerable adjustment: as if reels from two different movies had been switched.

The campy performance from Jack Palance as this flaring nostrils Jesus-wannabe cannot be faulted: it must be seen to be believed. Take his Simon seriously and you will deprive yourself of a pleasure. Think Robert Newton as Long John Silver in 'Treasure Island' (1950); Charles Laughton in 'Spartacus' or in 'Advise and Consent'; Christopher Plummer as Atahualpa in 'The Royal Hunt of the Sun' ("They eeet Him") or as Commodus in 'The Fall of the Roman Empire"; or choice Olivier ("Is it safe?"); or a controlled Gary Oldman and Christopher Walken - and you will come close.

Lorne Greene's straighforward take on his character skewers the whole thing, actually.

Will see it repeatedly, am sure.

The death of Paul Newman means the usual flood of releases and tributes, but naturally an actor who worked steadily for decades can't have made ALL good movies. The Silver Chalice ($19.98; Warner Bros.) was a plodding Biblical epic and the first showcase for Newman, who loved to make fun of the film. Indeed, it's a strange, miserable little movie, with the sets either bizarrely stylized (the outdoor scenes look like leftovers from Fritz Lang's Metropolis or maybe the dream sequences from Hitchcock's Spellbound) or in the case of the interior scenes cavernous and echoing to a ludicrous degree. Visit me at michaelgiltz dot com.

Staking a claim for some of the massive business racked up by The Robe but falling far short of its box-office and artistic ambitions, The Silver Chalice is one of the most mocked of all Biblical epics, not least because its debuting star Paul Newman never missed an opportunity to talk it down, even taking out an advert later in his career to apologise for his performance when it played on TV. Yet the film doesn't really deserve its place in the 50 Worst Films of All Time or deliver the camp hilarity you'd expect, falling inoffensively into the last gasp of studio backlot-shot epics like Salome that would soon be replaced by cast-of-thousands shot-on-exotic-locations roadshow pictures that weren't quite so old-fashioned.

The story is fairly simple and predictable fare, with Newman's sculptor (awkwardly named Basil) being cheated out of his legacy and sold into slavery, only to be rescued by Saint Luke so that he can create a setting for the Holy Grail depicting the Apostles and the face of Christ for Joseph of Arimathea. While he is struggling for inspiration, Jack Palance's Simon the magician is graduating from creating impressive illusions with his assistant Virginia Mayo (who, as played by a blonde Natalie Wood, was Basil's childhood sweetheart) for the local Roman garrisons to posing as the Messiah to unite Joseph Wiseman's Zealots while offering some helpful tips on PR, presentation and showmanship like a turn of the millennium spin doctor. Unfortunately Simon pulls off such good illusions that he starts believing them himself, which is not a good idea when your next big trick is flying from a giant tower, while the Zealots are after the silver chalice to destroy it because the competition from the Christians is damaging their recruitment drive...

The plot's certainly as silly as The Robe and it's rather lacking in drive whenever Palance is off the screen. It doesn't really have much of an ending either and there's never really any jeopardy for Newman's character: he may take a while to reclaim his birthright, but he's not a slave for long. Indeed, everything tends to fall into his lap rather too easily to drum up much drama. Yet somehow director Victor Saville never lets it go over the top - an achievement with this kind of plotting AND Jack Palance in the cast - while taking an interesting visual approach to the material. Boris Leven's design is genuinely striking - clean straight lines, smooth surfaces and a minimum of detail or set decoration giving it a look at once expensive but simple and almost minimalist. At times it looks as if Saville was bringing a studio-shot film musical aesthetic to the Biblical epic rather than the location naturalism most of its competitors strove for. In many scenes there's no attempt to hide the fact that paintings are used, so the stylisation is clearly deliberate: a storybook style for a storybook story.

The performances are more variable. At the very beginning of his James Dean period (Warners had originally tried to convince their newest star to play the role), Newman thankfully isn't imitating his mannerisms here as he would so self-consciously in the pictures he inherited from Dean post-mortem, Somebody Up There Likes Me and The Left-Handed Gun, though he's certainly out of place in the genre. Lorne Greene is probably as miscast as Saint Peter, starting his screen career as much of it would follow by playing older than his years, though he manages not to embarrass himself. The recently departed Joseph Wiseman, an actor always at his best when underplaying but always at his most entertaining when going over the top, dials it down here despite playing what seems to be the inspiration for the Judean People's Front's crack suicide squadron, while Palance dominates much of the film by (by his standards) underplaying his strength and certainty. Instead it's left to Albert Dekker, hamming up his terrible dialogue as if doing a nightclub impersonation of Frederic March in Sign of the Cross, to cross the line into unintentional comedy.

It all adds up to a film that's never less than watchable even if it's less than riveting, throwing up enough that's interesting to repay the effort even if it's one that's unlikely to trouble the memory too much. Warner's DVD release, though sadly extras free, boasts a particularly fine widescreen and stereo transfer.