![]() The Swedish government hired him to plan the Göta canal, which in 1810 was the largest civil engineering project Sweden had ever seen. Glover thinks he may have been “quite possibly the most mobile” individual in history “before the coming of the railways”. ![]() Throughout his life he remained a peripatetic bachelor, hurrying from one job to the next, writing instructions to his subordinates from country inns by candlelight. Aged 25, he saddled a horse and rode the 300-odd miles to London, to spend the next half century in a frenzy of work and travel as the designer and builder of so much of the industrial revolution’s infrastructure.īritain owes some of its most sublime architecture to him: the elegant 19-span aqueduct at Pontcysyllte the graceful suspension bridge that took his London to Holyhead highway across the Menai Strait the majestic flights of locks on the Caledonian canal, which Telford cut through the Highlands to eliminate the roundabout voyage between the west and east coasts. An only child, he was raised by his mother in her cousin’s house and left school at 12 to work for a local stonemason. His shepherd father died when he was only a few months old. ![]() (About the only other movie which has such a high quotient of men writhing in pain in MGM's 1954 "Prisoner of War.") Today's special effects could make the Colossus and its eventual fate even more impressive, but alas, movies such as this just aren't made anymore.Telford was born in 1757 in Eskdale, a remote Scottish valley close to the English border, in a parish that (according to Smiles) was so far removed from progress that it possessed only two tea kettles. And then there are the prisoners in the arena who are dragged behind chariots or suspended by their wrists over a lion-pit. Later, he's placed inside a metal bell which is repeatedly struck with a hammer while two of his colleagues - stretched out on horizontal slabs - have caustic fluids dripped onto their bare torsos. Stephen Boyd or John Derek, Leone's original choice, would have done better jobs.) Also worth noting is the movie's apparent motto of: "Shirts off, chains on." Rarely have so many muscular men been subjected to such a variety of bondage and torture, beginning with the pre-title sequence in which a bare-chested, spreadeagled Georges Marchal, (who was born for this kind of role,) is rescued from a prison-camp. (Yes, I said Rory Calhoun, and he's as out of place here as you might imagine. Watching Rory Calhoun climbing out the ear of the statue and then engaging in a sword fight on the statue's shoulder is one of those moments for which movies were invented. ![]() Worth noting are the scenes involving the head of the giant statue which is of hollow construction. Notable now mainly as an early work by Sergio Leone, this ambitious entry in the sword-and-sandal genre has the kind of long, detailed story-line rarely seen in productions of this sort, and it's unencumbered by the religious "piety" which clings to, say, "The Revolt of the Slaves." If anything, "Colossus" may be a tad too ambitious, since the second half of its two-hours-plus running time could use a bit of trimming. ![]()
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