★★
Director Robert Rossen never quite pulls together this sprawling bio-epic about Alexander the Great. Among its many problems is the way Rossen introduces characters and themes that the film drops later. For example, the long first part of
Alexander the Great gives us one of the movie’s more compelling figures in Fredric March’s Philip. The Macedonian king is a complex figure who is striving with challenges among the Greek city states as well as within his own family. While attempting to consolidate his rule over Greece, he feels his foreign-born wife is fomenting rebellion in Pella, he doubts the legitimacy of his son Alexander, and he’s working to gain the respect of the cultured elite of Athens. All the while, he’s fallen in love with a young Greek woman, Euridyce. These elements make Philip an interesting, well-rounded character, but all this development doesn't contribute to our understanding of Alexander. In fact, in overdeveloping Philip, the film underdevelops the titular focus of the film. Similar can be said of Alexander’s mother, While she isn't as well-developed as Philip and her occasional appearances serve plot functions more than anything, the time we spend with her doesn't give us much insight into Alexander because we see so little of their interaction. Rossen uses the parents to show us the independence of Alexander, but we're with them for far more time than we need in order to come this conclusion. And the themes like loyalty and leadership associated with the parents don't become important later in the movie.
Richard Burton doesn’t give us a cohesive Alexander either. We see Alexander as rash, when he takes the regency of Pellas; stubborn, when he rejects Aristotle’s advice; shrewd, when he decides not to destroy all that he conquers; intelligent, when he expresses openness about non-Hellenistic culture; self-promoting, when he commands that a hill tribe city be named after him; courageous, when he goes into battle; noble, when he executes Darius’ killers; and Oedipal, when told his father would have returned to Greece to repress Athens. But Burton doesn’t pull all these characteristics together into a unified figure that we in the audience can understand. His Alexander acts a certain way in a certain set of circumstances, but it’s hard to feel like there’s a single, complex psychology behind his actions. In voiceover, Aristotle gives us an on-the-nose exposition of Alexander's character as "smart, brave, ..., " but Burton doesn't give us an inner logic to his Alexander.
Rossen’s unsteady direction also undermines our experience. After lingering on the story of Philip, Rossen speeds up the pace when Alexander arrives in Persia to the point that we are unable to easily follow what’s happening, much less to see how the events there are related to the film's central figure. We can hardly distinguish the battles of Granicus and Babylon, and it’s hard to know where Alexander is at each point of his Asian campaign. At one point, he’s massacring Athenians, and at another he’s pardoning them. The minor roles of women likewise confuse, and it’s hard to know when and why we’re dealing with Barsine or Roxanne. And Barsine herself swings suddenly from supporting Alexander to opposing him without Rossen providing narrative support to either position. And the film lurches from one idea to the next with little build up or support for it. From his time with Aristotle, Alexander proceeds as an unflinching proponent of Hellenism,but we suddenly see him in Persian robes planning to marry Darius' daughter. The turgid fluctuations of characters, locations and themes in the latter part of the film make watching it an unsatisfying experience.
It's hard to know what happened that makes this film so rambling. Maybe Rossen tried to remain so true to history that he sacrificed narrative cohesion. Or perhaps Rossen's cut of the film was indeed cohesive and when the studio cut a third of its running time, that destroyed the unity of the film. Whatever the case, Rossen's
Alexander the Great offers some interesting visuals but little insight into the character or times of the hero.
