To enable the audience to identify with the characters of the gods they are shown in human form. This is an epic tradition (Burkert 1985:182-9). In Homer, with the exception of immortal ichor in place of human blood, the bodies of gods and mortals correspond entirely: their limbs are the same, their tissues and organs are identical. They groom and dress themselves like humans; in the Iliad we see that Hera’s skin, like any mortal woman’s, needs to be cared for with scents and oils. Her white-armed beauty is not easily maintained.
The flawless bodies of the immortals are frequently depicted in Greek art, where the gods are usually given special attributes or costumes to remind the viewer exactly who’s who in the divine family. In the most simplistic terms Athena wears a helmet or carries an owl; Artemis has her quiver and bow; Dionysus his crown of vine leaves (Childs 1998; Woodford 2003). The on-screen gods are given many of the same attributes and wear costumes recognizably ‘‘ancient Greek.’’ In The Clash of the Titans, for example, all of the gods wear white robes, in imitation of sculpture, with slight variations to suggest character: Hera’s head is veiled, Aphrodite’s robe falls off one shoulder, Zeus wears a long-sleeved tunic beneath his himation, in contrast to Poseidon who is bare-chested beneath his. As Harryhausen recalls: ‘‘[We dressed] the actors in white togas [sic], which were distinctly different to the humans’ more earthy colours’’ (Harryhausen and Dalon 2003:155).
But cinema audiences cannot be trusted to recognize the signs spelled out through costumes and sets. Other methods need to be adopted to ensure that film viewers recognize different gods and, moreover, appreciate the essential qualities that individual gods incorporate. Therefore the on-screen image of the god and the movie star who plays the deity are often merged in the audience’s subconscious in order to clarify the type of god being portrayed.
Harryhausen and his producer, Charles Schneer, got the idea of casting the Olympians with a bunch of international stars, and so in The Clash of the Titans the phenomenon is knowingly played up to the film’s advantage: Zeus, king of all gods, is hammed up relentlessly by Laurence Olivier, king of all actors; Hera, his queen, is played by Claire Bloom, Olivier’s leading lady at the RSC for many decades and something of a figure of elegant respectability in theatrical circles. The love goddess Aphrodite is the Swiss love goddess Ursula Andress, who like Aphrodite arose from the sea in Dr No (dir. Young, 1962) and set the world on fire. Thetis, the dry-witted sea goddess, is played to perfection by the caustic Maggie Smith (Beverly Cross’ wife). Indeed, one of the major pleasures of The Clash of the Titans is the preponderance in the cast of women ‘‘of a certain age.’’ Claire Bloom, Maggie Smith, and Sian Phillips (as Queen Cassiopeia) demonstrate effectively that it is entirely possible for female characters to be gorgeous, strong, and interesting despite being played by actresses over the age of 25 (in significant contrast, Ursula Andress does not speak a single line in the film, although off-screen, of course, she was - true to her Olympian character - conducting a passionate romance with Perseus).
The divine hierarchy of Olympus is therefore reflected in the casting of the characters, especially in terms of age and status. The gods ‘‘frieze’’ in age to reflect their position in the Olympian genealogy: Zeus and Hera are depicted as the older generation, Athena is a young woman, Hermes a young man. The same principle is followed in the casting of particular actors in specific roles.
The clever work of the casting director permits an audience with limited knowledge of the Greek gods to identify immediately the character traits of the Olympians with the off-screen and inter-filmic personas of the stars who portray them. To avoid any further confusion, however, the movies opt to show only a select handful of the many gods of the Greek pantheon: The Clash of the Titans shows Zeus, Hera, Athena, Thetis, Poseidon, Hephaestus, and Aphrodite, while Jason and the Argonauts highlights only Hermes, Zeus, and Hera (another clever piece of casting - with Honor Blackman as the Olympian queen). This movie differs, however, in its depiction of the wider family of the gods, who are seen dotted around Olympus engaged in various leisurely pastimes and group together behind Hera and Zeus as curious observers when the mortal Jason is brought to visit them.
As an introduction to the gods in Jason and the Argonauts, Hermes, the messenger and herald of the gods, appears to Jason as an old man, a seer, who transforms himself into a god; the moment is captured in some rare surviving storyboard sketches: ‘‘The seer’s face becomes watery and is transformed.. .into Hermes’’ (Harryhausen and Dalton 2005:105). Harryhausen had some interesting ideas for Hermes’ transportation of Jason to Olympus:
In one of the early scripts Hermes, in the form of man, asks Jason to climb into his chariot, whereupon Jason witnesses his transformation into a god (but without any increase in size). The journey to Olympus is also interesting. With one pull of the reins the horses are transformed into unicorns and fire spits from the wheels of the chariot taking both Hermes and Jason into the sky. Sadly, the script was altered to save time and money, and we ended up with almost a straight transition to Olympus through a dissolve. (Harryhausen and Dalton 2003:155)
In the final film version, as he casts off his human guise, so Hermes grows in stature until Jason is dwarfed by the vast figure of the god. He places Jason in his hand and carries him heavenward before setting him down on a tabletop in the hall of the gods. Here the minuscule hero is examined by the giant figures of the Olympians, who loom over him like curious children.
The inspiration for this transformation scene is found in a famous passage from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, where the goddess casts off her restrictive mortal form and displays herself in all her divinity. As her golden locks fall around her shoulders, as sweet smells emanate from her robes, and light blazes from her body, so too she grows in size, dwarfing the frightened mortals at her feet (Homeric Hymn 2 [to Demeter] 275-80). The common Greek assumption that the gods are bigger than mortals is given wide rein in the movies. Jason and the Argonauts plays on this notion, employing camera trickery to convey the diminutive scale of mortals compared to the massive proportions of the gods. In The Clash of the Titans, Thetis’ giant hand scoops the sleeping Perseus off his island home and places him down in the city of Joppa as her face appears in the moon and dominates the night sky. Why is scale an issue in the on-screen retelling of these myths? In terms of Jason and the Argonauts, Harryhausen recalls that:
Both the Art Director and I discussed how we could depict the actors as gods. We didn’t want to cut from the mortal world to the gods with barely anything to differentiate between them, so we decided to use a variety of images and designs to give the impression that the gods were truly omnipotent and dominated the world of humans. The obvious trick was to make the gods huge versions of humans.... [Thus when] Jason arrives on Olympus in the hand of Hermes, he steps onto [a] board game that Zeus has before him. For this confrontation with Zeus we built a full-sized board with oversized pieces on which [Jason] would deliver his lines upward, towards the camera, so as to appear as if he were talking to a gigantic Zeus. I used a travelling matte of [Jason], against yellow backing... [showing him] with his back to the camera as Hermes places him on the chessboard.... Combined with the gods looking down at him, it seemed that a tiny Jason is standing in front of them. (Harryhausen and Dalton 2003:154-5)
World History
