Producer Samuel Bronston is known for producing a series of epic, high-spectacle films with impressive casts and huge sets. Although Bronston's preference was always to build life-size sets, on several occasions matte painting and miniature tricks were used to complete large sets.
Bronston went to Spain in 1958 to make an adventure film, John Paul Jones, directed by John Farrow. He found extremely good conditions to finance films in Europe thanks to an American entrepreneur, Pierre S. Dupont III. Spanish government gave him preferential treatment in order to film on historical locations. He also found Spain’s low rates very affordable for filming. British and American productions started to use Spanish locations since the middle 50 ´s, and when Bronston arrived, he found a highly qualified crew in all departments.
Samuel’s Bronston created his Studios near Madrid, where they built enormous sets for his epic films played by some of the most famous Hollywood stars.
To recreate those fabulous sets, he contracted some of the most prestigious art directors and production designers of that moment. Other Hollywood epic films like Ben-Hur, Cleopatra, or The Ten Commandments are full of miniatures and matte paintings. At Bronston Films, everything had to be built real size. They had the money and the technicians to make it that way. There were only a few exceptions to that rule.
His first Epic film was King of Kings (1960), directed by Nicholas Ray and distributed by MGM. Art direction under George Whakevich and Enrique Alarcón. Although both of them were frequent and accomplished users of “in camera” tricks involving foreground miniatures and glass paintings, at Bronston Films they favored the post-production matte painting technique. The few matte paintings on that film were done by the MGM matte department under Lee Leblanc, with Matthew Yuricich as a matte painter.
They also used some huge background paintings of the city of Jerusalem. The construction department was under Francisco Prosper, who was also a miniature expert. Among his collaborators were scenic painters like Emilio Ruiz and Antonio de Miguel, who were responsible for the scenic backings. Although Emilio Ruiz was an accomplished glass painter, in most of Bronston's films, he only did backdrop paintings. Antonio de Miguel also did some work as a glass painter in the sixties, although he did not do too much of it, since his intention was to become an art director, which he achieved in the late seventies.
Bronston next film was a medieval epic about the Spanish knight El Cid (1961) directed by Anthony Mann, with John Moore and Veniero Colasanti as production designers.
Historical locations and huge sets were built. All the exteriors were full size this time, with no miniatures or matte paintings.
Only to enhance the impressive interior sets, they used a matte painting or a hanging miniature for the ceiling of the Throne Room. If it is a Matte painting, it was probably executed in London by a British matte artist, but if it was a hanging miniature (most probably), it was built by the art department constructors, Francisco Prósper and Francisco Asensio.
The fourth Bronston film was Nicholas Ray’s 55 Days in Peking (1963), again with Colasanti and Moore as production designers. After the success of El Cid, Bronston was at the height of his career. They built a gigantic set to represent the city of Peking. No miniatures or matte paintings were required this time. All buildings were full size, a real delight for Alex Weldon, head of the FX crew that had to destroy it.
Although 55 Days in Peking was not a box office success like El Cid, Bronston embarked again on an enormous epic film where they recreated ancient Rome for The fall of the Roman Empire (1964). The Roman forum set was the biggest ever built, with no miniatures or paintings.
A huge Roman fortress was also built at exteriors near Madrid. Below you can see the black-and-white illustration by art director Pierre Thevenet and the final image on the film.
All the interiors were full size, but there were a couple of interior ceilings that were done as hanging miniatures. One of them was the ceiling of the impressive set of the Temple. The second one was another ceiling of a different set. Both foreground miniatures were filmed with a nodal head to provide a tilt-down camera movement. I have made a composite of several shots of the camera movement to show the miniature with the set.
To show an exterior view of an Armenian city, they built part of the walls on location near Madrid, and the rest was a huge foreground miniature that fit perfectly with the far-away set. That miniature was made only for one shot filmed with a horizontal panoramic movement. The miniature was built by Francisco Prósper's team.
There is another big set that is shown as medium shots and only once as an establishing shot showing the upper part, in which they also used a foreground miniature.
The last big show for Bronston was The Circus World ( 1964), directed by Henry Hathaway. After the lack of success of the last two films, the budget of that one was abruptly reduced. They used reallocation for most of the Circus scenes, renting Circo Price.
Even so, they built some big sets that required impressive painting backings. They also used a miniature for the Circus fire sequence. Wally Veevers supervised the filming of the miniature with the assistance of Emilio Ruiz. For that film, one glass matte painting was used to show the Circus in Vienna city. Maybe painted by Emilio Ruiz or Francisco Prósper on location in Madrid, or perhaps it was done during post-production at Shepperton Studios.
There was another matte painting commissioned for that film, made at the Shepperton matte department, London. But it was not used on the final edition. That was probably painted by matte artist Doug Ferris or Peter Melrose.
The image without the painting as it appears on the film.
