Trailer
Plot summary
Helen, the queen of Sparta, finds a shipwrecked stranger on the shore: Paris, a prince of Troy, who has come to her city to secure peace between Troy and Sparta. A storm has driven his ship back and swept him overboard. Paris takes his rescuer for a slave, not the wife of King Menelaus, and the two fall in love. At the palace, Paris hears Menelaus, Agamemnon, Ulysses and Achilles debate whether to make war on Troy, and the Greek kings receive him rudely. Menelaus, refused by Helen, sees the pair's love and, under a show of friendship, plots Paris's death. Warned by Helen, Paris flees the palace.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Helen of Troy (1956)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- A filmmakers' professional journal reported that more than 200 people were injured and 3 were reportedly killed during the shooting; by December 1954 cinematographer Harry Stradling had returned from his work in Italy.
- The scene of the Greeks' initial assault on the walls of Troy uses shots copied directly from the Persian attack on Babylon in D. W. Griffith's silent classic Intolerance; some of those shots were then reused in the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts.
- Brigitte Bardot played Andraste, Helen's handmaiden, in the Italian-shot production; it was the first film production the French actress shot outside France.
