Three hundred Spartans (film, 1962)

480 BC Persian king Xerxes leads a huge army to Greece , intending to repay his father for the defeat. The Spartan intelligence agent Agathon is brought to him, but Xerxes orders to let him go so that he tells about what he saw at the meeting of Greek policies in Corinth . At this meeting, Themistocles transfers command to the hands of Tsar Sparta Leonid . However, the Spartans remain to celebrate their holiday, and only Leonid with 300 of his bodyguards sets off to meet the Persians. He expels the young Filon, since he met his father, Gril Agathon, at the exit from the Persian camp (at the same time, Agathon himself tells Filon in person that the meeting took place when the Persians tortured him, Agathon). Philo, along with his fiancée Ella, nevertheless hurries to Thermopylae to join Leonid. On the way, Ella gets sick, and they stop at the local shepherds. The old shepherd tells Philo, and then Leonid, who arrived, that through the mountains there is an old goat path along which barbarians can go to the rear of the Greeks. The conversation of the old man with Philo overhears Efialt , who lives with the old. 700 Thespians join Leonid .

Xerxes rejects the offer of Gidarn to send cavalry to capture Thermopylae and waits until all the Greek army has gathered to destroy it. The body of a brother who was killed by the Spartans along with the rest of the Persian scouts is brought to him. An angry Xerxes orders the next morning to go into battle. In the evening, 30 Spartans, led by Leonid himself, raid the Persian camp, Philo secretly joins them. The Spartans burst into the royal tent, but Xerxes is not there - he went to his beloved Artemisia , Queen of Halicarnassus . During this sortie, the father of Ella Pentheus is injured, but Filon and Leonid save him and take him to the Spartan camp. Leonid forgives Philo and receives the news that the Greek army will not come to his aid. He decides to stay and protect the passage.

In the morning, the Persians begin the attack, behind the ranks of the infantry the cavalry stealthily approaches, which suddenly attacks the Spartans. However, Leonid unravels Xerxes’s plan, the first line of Spartans misses the cavalry and, having split, attacks it from the rear, squeezing between the first and second lines. Persians take flight. In talks with Gidarn, Leonid refuses to surrender in exchange for mercy. The Spartans beat off the attack of the Persian chariots, exposing them to fire from bows and slings . On the advice of Gidarna Xerxes sends his personal guard into the battle - the formidable " immortals ." But they fall into the trap of Leonid. Filon, pretending to be killed, sets fire to dry hay, cutting off the Persians, although he gets a wound, trying to set fire to hay too early. Spartans drive opponents into the fire. On the advice of Artemisia, Xerxes orders the troops to retreat to Persia. But here Gidarn leads Ephialt, who offers the king his services. Xerxes sends Hydarne with the "immortals" to the rear to the Greeks, and he decides to attack from the front the next morning. Being warned about this by Ella and Gril, who escaped from the Persians, Leonid sends with Philo and Ella an order to the rest of the detachments to retreat (only the Thespians remain), and Themistocles orders them to withdraw the ships that covered them from the sea. Understanding that Thermopylae cannot be restrained, in the morning Leonid leads the Spartans to attack in order to kill Xerxes, but dies before his chariot. The Spartans endure his body, but Gidarn cuts the return path, destroying the Thespians. Courageous Spartans refuse mercy in exchange for the body of Leonid and die under the shower of Persian arrows.

Greeks

• Richard Egan - Leonid , the Spartan king, leader of the detachment of 300 Spartans.
• Anna Sinodinu - Gorgo , wife of Tsar Leonid.
• Ralph Richardson - Themistocles , Athenian statesman.
• Barry Coe - Philo, Spartan warrior.
• Diane Baker - Ella, Philo's Bride.
• Robert Brown - Pentheus, Leonid's deputy, Ella's father.
• John Crawford - Agathon, Spartan Scout.
• Ivan Trieso - Democrat , the exiled king of Sparta.

Persians

• David Farrar - Xerxes , Persian king, son of King Darius .
• Anne Wakefield - Artemisia , Queen of Halicarnassus .
• Donald Houston - Gidarn the Younger , satrap of Hyrcania, an approximate of Xerxes.
• Kieron Moore - Efialt , a local resident, his origin is unknown, pointed to the Persians a hidden path bypassing the Thermopyllian Gorge.

In the USSR, the film was dubbed by the Mosfilm film studio and was released in 1970 .

• Dubbing Director - Tatyana Berezantseva
• Sound engineer - Nikolay Prilutsky
• The author of the Russian text is Gennady Petrov
• Editor - Lidia Balashova

Roles duplicated:

• Felix Yavorsky - storyteller
• Vladimir Druzhnikov - Leonid
• Mikhail Gluzsky - Themistocles
• Olga Gasparova - Ella
• Leo Prygunov - Filon
• Yuri Chekulaev - Xerxes
• Eduard Izotov - Gidarn
• Nina Menshikova - Gorgo
• Klara Rumyanova - Artemisia
• Georgy Zhzhenov - Efialt
• Vladimir Ferapontov - Agafon
• Oleg Mokshantsev - Demarat
• Victor Finleib - Mardonius
• Alexey Alekseev - Megisty
• Vladimir Balashov - Gril
• George Georgiou - Pentheus
• Jacob Belenky - shepherd
• Larisa Danilina - the wife of a shepherd
• Alexander Belyavsky - Persian parliamentarian

Impressed by the movie, Frank Miller created a graphic novel about the exploit of 300 Spartans, filmed in 2007 by Zach Snyder . The 1962 painting is more historical credibility than the 2007 film.

• The film tells that only Leonid’s bodyguards participated in the battle - 300 people, plus 700 Thespians (the soldiers of the remaining policies are mentioned several times, but do not appear in the film). In reality, the army opposing the Persians numbered about 7,000, of which about 4,000 were lost.
• The exiled Spartan king Demaratus at a feast tells Xerxes about the Spartans and, among other things, answers the question of the Persian king about the rulers of Sparta: “The one who stole my throne, do not take into account, it is not he who rules the country, he is only a usurper.” At the same time, he refers to the co-ruler of Leonid, king Leotichid II (from the Euripontides clan). At the same time, it is known from history that Democrat was not expelled by Leotichid (belonging to the same genus as himself), but by his co-ruler from the Agid family, Kleomen Mad , elder brother and predecessor of Leonid on the royal throne.
• Before the first attack, Xerxes explained to Gidarna and Mardonia his cunning plan, saying that he had ordered the heavy cavalry to be placed behind the infantry and suddenly put it on the attack. However, in those days the Persians could not have had heavy cavalry - for the first time heavy armored cavalry - cataphracts - among the Iranian peoples appeared among the Saks and Parthians, three centuries later. During the time of the Achaemenids, the cavalry in their army was represented exclusively by equestrian archers who participate in the attack.
• When Xerxes is brought the body of his brother, he exclaims in a broken and angry voice: “Cyrus! .. My brother! How did this happen? ”The real Xerxes did not have a brother named Cyrus, his younger brother was called Masist, there is no information about his participation in the campaign against Greece. He later rebelled against the king and was killed along with his family.
• Several times in the film you can hear how Xerxes is called the “king of kings”. Although this title (shahanshah) comes from the era of the Achaemenids, the Iranian rulers became the official title only during the Sassanids, Ardashir Papakan became the first shahanshah.
• The main weapon of the Spartan hoplites ( xiston ) is a three-meter spear, which is very difficult for even a trained person to use as a throwing weapon, while attacking the Persian camp, Spartan warriors successfully throw their spears at opposing Persians. Apparently, there is a reference to an earlier period of the existence of the hoplites, when they were armed with a second spear, which was just used for throwing. In addition, in the film, the spears of the Spartan hoplites are too short - about the size of a person.
• From sources ( Herodotus ) it is known that the Spartan warriors wore beards and long hair, which, according to legend, they pointedly combed before the battle at Thermopylae . Meanwhile, in the picture of Rudolph Mate and Leonid ( Richard Egan ), and the rest of the Spartans, with few exceptions, are smoothly shaved and have short hairstyles.

• Thermopyllic battle

• “The 300 Spartans” on the Internet Movie Database
• King Leonidas and the 300 Spartans of Thermopylae (English)