 the peplum film (pepla plural), also known as sword-and-sandal, is a genre of largely italian-made historical or biblical epics (costume dramas) that dominated the italian film industry from 1958 to 1965, eventually being replaced in 1965 by the spaghetti western. the pepla attempted to emulate the big-budget hollywood historical epics of the time, such as spartacus, samson and delilah and the ten commandments. the terms "peplum" (referring to the tunic-style greek and roman garment often worn by characters in the fims) and "sword-and-sandal" were used in a condescending way by film critics. italian director vittorio cottafavi called the genre "neo-mythology".p.14 m. winkler, martin troy: from homer's iliad to hollywood epic wiley-blackwell, 2007 ==background== while hollywood filmmakers, such as d. w. griffith with his 1916 intolerance, peopled their historical epics with dramatic conflicts and naturalistic protagonists, many of the pepla merely took a real historical or biblical event and used it as a backdrop for a simplistic heroic adventure tale. the pepla are a specific class of italian adventure or fantasy films that have subjects set in biblical, medieval or classical antiquity, often with contrived plots based loosely on mythology, legendary greco-roman history, or the other contemporary cultures of the time, such as the egyptians, assyrians, and etruscans. most pepla featured a superhumanly strong man as the protagonist, such as hercules, samson, goliath, ursus or italy's own popular folk hero maciste. these supermen often rescued captive princesses from tyrannical despots and fought mythological creatures. not all the films were fantasy-based, however. many featured actual historical personalities such as julius caesar, cleopatra, and hannibal, although great liberties were taken with the storylines. gladiators, pirates, knights, vikings, and slaves rebelling against tyrannical kings were also popular subjects. ==the maciste silent film series (1914â1927)== the 1914 italian silent film cabiria was one of the first sword-and-sandal films to make use of a massively muscled character, maciste (played by actor bartolomeo pagano) who served in this premiere film as the hero's slavishly loyal sidekick. maciste became the public's favorite character in the film however, and pagano was called back many times to reprise the role. the maciste character appeared in at least two dozen italian silent films from 1914 through 1926, all of w
Film_genres Historical_fiction Italian_films_by_genre Peplum_films