Jason and the Argonauts (1963 film)

Film score

The film is one of the mythically themed fantasies scored by Bernard Herrmann. Apart from being the composer's fourth collaboration with Ray Harryhausen (The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, and Mysterious Island, made in 1958, 1960, and 1961 respectively), Herrmann also collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock, worked on Citizen Kane (1941), and scored the science fiction films The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959).^[5][6]

Contrasting with Herrmann's all-string score for Psycho, the film's soundtrack was made without a string section. This leaves the brass and percussion to perform the heroic fanfares, and the woodwinds along with additional instruments (such as the harp) to dominate in the more subtle and romantic parts.

In 1995, Intrada released a re-recording of the original score. The new version was conducted by American composer/conductor Bruce Broughton, and performed by the Sinfonia of London.

Differences from classical mythology

The film differs in some ways from the traditional telling in Greek mythology:

• Pelias does not kill his half-brother, King Aristo (Aeson),^{[nb 2]} but instead had him imprisoned. Eventually, it is Medea, and not Jason, who kills Pelias; she demonstrates to Pelias' daughters that she can rejuvenate an old ram^{[nb 3]} into a young one by killing, chopping and boiling it in a pot. She promises to do the same for Pelias, so his daughters kill and chop him. However, Medea breaks her word and Pelias remains dead.
• Hera does not attempt to kill Pelias herself by drowning him in the river Anavros. Instead, in order to prove Jason's virtuous heart to Zeus, she disguises herself as an old woman unable to cross on her own. Jason, feeling sympathy for the lady, ferries her across on his back but loses a sandal in its depths.
• In mythology, the Argonauts encounter Talos on their return journey after they had obtained the Golden Fleece. He is defeated not by Jason, but by Medea casting a spell, causing Talos to remove the bronze nail from his ankle which kept the ichor inside. Talos guarded Crete, not the "Isle of Bronze", and was protecting not a treasure, but Queen Europa.
• In the film, Hylas is killed when the crumbling remains of Talos crush him. However, in mythology, Hylas is actually kidnapped by a naiad who fell in love with him as he took a drink from a spring. Hercules stays behind on the island to look for him (as in the film).
• The harpies are not caught in a net or caged, but are chased away by the Boreads: Calaïs and Zetes (also Zethes)^[7]

  

• In the film, the god Triton saves the Argo from destruction passing through the Clashing Rocks: however; according to Apollonius of Rhodes, Phineus instructs Jason to release a dove and if the bird makes it through, row with all their might and the goddess Athena provides the extra push to the ship needed to clear them; "the Argo darted from the rocks like a flying arrow". Another source is Homer's Odyssey, in which Circe tells Odysseus: "One ship alone, one deep-sea craft sailed clear, the Argo, sung by the world, when heading home from Aeëtes shores. And she would have crashed against those giant rocks and sunk at once if Hera, for her love of Jason, had not sped her through."^[8]
• Jason is not betrayed by Acastus in the classical tale. Jason openly tells King Aeëtes that he has come for the Fleece. The king promises to let Jason take it if he performs three tasks, knowing full well they are impossible. However, Jason is able to complete the tasks with the help of Medea. It is not the Hydra that protected the Fleece, but rather a dragon. Jason does not slay it; instead, Medea casts a spell on it, causing it to fall asleep. Jason sows the dragon's teeth in the ground, not Aeëtes. He defeats the "dragon's offspring" (the spartoi) by making them fight amongst themselves and destroy each other, rather than battling them with his colleagues.
• The Children of the Hydra's Teeth are rotten corpses in the original legend, but because of the heavy censorship at the time the film was made, they were made skeletons instead.^[9]
• Castor and Phalerus are killed by the skeletons, but in Greek mythology Castor perishes much later as the result of a feud with Idas and Lynceus, while Phalerus survives the adventures of the Argonauts.
• The film ultimately omits the story of Medea killing and butchering her own brother, Absyrtus, to help Jason and the Argonauts escape;^{[nb 4]} and also the episodes with Cyzicus, the Gegeines and the Argonauts' stay on the isle of Lemnos.

Critical response

The film received critical acclaim and is now considered a classic. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 89% based on 45 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Don Chaffey's Jason and the Argonauts is an outlandish, transportive piece of nostalgia whose real star is the masterful stop-motion animation work of Ray Harryhausen."^[14] On Metacritic, the film received a score of 69 based on 10 reviews.^[15]

Variety magazine wrote: "The $3 million film has a workable scenario and has been directed resourcefully and spiritedly by Don Chaffey, under whose leadership a colorful cast performs with zeal."^[16]

Ray Harryhausen regarded the film as his best.^[17][18] Previous Harryhausen films had been generally shown as part of double features in "B" theatres. Columbia was able to book it as a single feature in many "A" theatres in the United States.

Accolades

At the special ceremony for the Academy Award for Technical Achievement held three weeks before the 1992 Academy Awards, Ray Harryhausen was honored with a lifetime-achievement award (the Gordon E. Sawyer Award). The ceremony's host, actor Tom Hanks, remarked: "Some people say Casablanca or Citizen Kane. I say Jason and the Argonauts is the greatest film ever made".^[19]

In 2008, the American Film Institute nominated the film for its Top 10 Fantasy Films list.^[20]

In April 2004, Empire magazine ranked Talos as the second-best film monster of all time, after King Kong.^[21]

In Great Britain, the film is recognized as an important children's film and is regularly shown on television during public holidays.^[22] The British Film Institute included Jason and the Argonauts in its 2020 updated list of "50 films to see by age 15", compiled with input from educators, authors, and critics.^[23]

The 2022 Oxford Handbook of Children's Film devoted an entire chapter to the motion picture entitled "Reading Jason and the Argonauts as a Children’s Film”. Film scholar Susan Smith sought to explain why "the film is able to speak so powerfully to childhood experience". She noted that, in addition to the film's widely praised Harryhausen special effects, there are elements of "contradictoriness and rebellion" in the story, with parallels in the relationship between the gods (depicted as gigantic in stature) to humans and between parents to children. In particular, the bronze giant Talos acts to punish the Argonauts after Hercules disobeys Hera's admonition to take only food and water on the Isle of Bronze and defiantly steals a huge golden pin stored in the treasury of the gods to use as a weapon. The act later results in the death of his close friend when Talos, drained of life, falls and crushes Hylas as he tries to retrieve the stolen pin dropped by Hercules.^[24]