Attila (1954 film)

Attila (Italian: Attila, il flagello di Dio; French: Attila fléau de Dieu) is a 1954 Italian-French co-production, directed by Pietro Francisci and produced by Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti for Lux Film. Based on the life of Attila the Hun, it stars Anthony Quinn as Attila and Sophia Loren as Honoria, with French leading man, Henri Vidal, as the Hun's antagonist, Flavius Aetius. Irene Papas, in the second of three contract pictures for Lux Film, plays one of Attila's wives, Grune. Ettore Manni, Christian Marquand, and Claude Laydu are among the supporting cast of mostly French and Italian actors. American Scott Marlowe (1932–2001) made his screen debut in the film. Along with The Pride and the Passion and Houseboat, it was one of Loren's biggest box-office successes during the 1950s.

Filmed immediately following the breakthrough Italo-American co-production, Ulysses (Lux Film / Ponti-DeLaurentiis / Paramount Pictures, 1954), Attila, Scourge of God represented an independent attempt by the same Italian producers to make a film with an American lead actor in hopes of licensing it to an American studio for distribution on more lucrative terms. It failed to secure this goal for a variety of reasons unforeseen at the outset. However, three and a half years later (retitled, Attila) it proved to be the vehicle which launched the career of Joe Levine -- Joseph E. Levine presents—as a producer and distributor of international films, many of them Italian in origin. While never to be a financially or critically acclaimed motion picture, Attila ultimately achieved the status of a significant product in the evolution of world film markets.