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For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

If you give this film a chance for the sake of Orson Welles, you will be disappointed. By all means, he is the first actor to appear in the film, but in one scene only. The rest of the film is mainly worth seeing for the sake of Omar Sharif at his most dashing and Anthony Quinn as Kublai Khan - he never failed to fulfill a character.For the rest of the film, it's a feast to the eyes, and the music is perhaps the best part. The worst part is the script.They always do that with the Marco Polo story. They never stick to his own book but make just anything up as romanticized as possible to avoid the casual scientific and extremely dry documentary of the book, which tells nothing of the characters but only of facts. The episode of the old man of the mountain is always especially screwed up into any fabulous extravaganza, and especially so here. He was a historical figure and actual leader of the assassins, but for some reason in every new version of Marco Polo they have to do anything to exagerrate his legend as much as possible. Here it is simply made ridiculous, and Akim Tamiroff is the only miscast of the film. They could have turned it into a real horror episode but only make it fall flat in absurdity.Originally, it was planned to become a great epic directed by the qualified veteran Christian-Jacques with Alain Delon as Marco Polo, and there was nothing wrong with that idea. Unfortunately the project shipwrecked, and this was made instead some years later, still with a mainly French technical crew, but much cut down and shot almost entirely in Serbia.So it's just another among the number of Marco Polo distorted fantasies, but it's not the worst one. I believe the worst one was the soap opera with Gary Cooper 1938, which was anything but the Marco Polo story. The best one though was the great television series of 1982-83 in eight long meticulous episodes with Ken Marshall, Denholm Elliott as the father, David Warner, F. Murray Abraham and Ruocheng Ying as the ultimate Kublai Khan, which TV-series so far also came closest to at least almost reaching the truth.

It is difficult to judge a movie objectively if the movie in question happens to have been a childhood favourite, so let me start off: yes, the movie didn't stand the time and, yes, even back when it was on the big screen, it came across as a B-version of the big budget Hollywood epics, invariably starring Charlton Heston. The direction often seems helpless, which often seems to infect the actors. Hence, this film is almost forgotten, only resurfacing occasionally on obscure TV-channels and dusty videotapes. But there are many reasons to like this film, especially if you're among those viewers who often find themselves muttering, "they don't make them like that anymore".Firstly, one cannot help but generally like the cast: Horst Buchholz as Marco Polo brings a good mix of charm and big-eyed innocence when facing the wonders of the Orient. It's impossible dislike the young Omar Sharif and Akim Tamiroff gives an excellent performance as mysterious 'Old Man from the Mountain', giving it just the right amount of ham, theatrics and even a shot of humour. As a fan one might even watch the film on the sole ground that it stars Anthony Quinn as Kublai Khan but I'm afraid you'll have difficulties recognizing him under heavy make-up. And if there's any doubt that this film is French and has been filmed in the 1960's, there's plenty of innovative kitsch that would not have been out of place in Roger Vadims "Barbarella". Evidence is the 'Woman with the Whip', played by a very young Elsa Martinelli, the Nizari Ismaili Assassins being depicted as leather-clad androids and a very imaginative torture device in form of a huge glass bell. Sure, historically accurate it's not but we could say same about many contemporary films – "300", anybody?After the many abysmal reviews this film got, I finally broke a lance for "La fabuleuse aventure de Marco Polo" and can conclude that the merits outweigh the flaws, even it it's not "El Cid".Five points out of ten, one more for sentimental reasons and another point because, you know, they don't make them like this anymore.

Immediate background:once upon a time there was a veteran called Christian -Jaque He had big ambitions: a production which would have no cause to be jealous of Hollywood.The highlight was to be a giant chess game (hence the previous title :"God's chessboard!").Alain Delon was Marco.Endless problems of production led Christian-Jaque to call it a day.Hence this movie ,much less ambitious in scope ,which was made by the odd job man of the French cinema ,Denys de la Patellière .Delon was replaced by his German equivalent ,Horst Buchholz -the younger generation saw as the doctor in "la vita è bella"- and a cast of thousand was gathered:Orson Welles and Akim Tamiroff,Kirk Douglas's ex-protégée Elsa Martinelli,Anthony Quinn,Omar Sharif,Gregoire Aslan ...is that all? On his way to China ,Marco will meet wicked people (Tamiroff's "Old man in the Mountains" ) attractive ones (Venice's women with whom he cuckolds all the husbands;the woman with the whip);traitors (the Mongolian prince),but,as history books tell ,and tell it so well,he will succeed and occident will make friends with orient.Thanks to the cast,and to a far-fetched but entertaining story,it's watchable.More than the version featuring Rory Calhoun (1961).

Cinematographer Armand Thirard (les Diaboliques, le Salaire de la peur) does a fabulous job with beautiful environmental shots, but unfortunately everything else in this movie is crap. This movie is terrible, but somehow visually reminiscent of Kwaidan (Kobayashi, 1964), which is one of the greatest fairy-tale films in the world, largely because of the sceneries and the lighting. 'Marco' could have been magnificent if there was another protagonist and another director. It is a pretentious and dumb movie with (2-minute performance) box-office attraction Orson Welles who wore a silly costume: don't bother to see it plz. Maybe nice for kids though as a supposed adventure movie. And to see Anthony Quinn in an unexpected role: I had to search the credits to find which part he played. I would be grateful if someone did a remake of these promising tales.