JOHN GROCH said: >(Incidently, I would take friendly issue with whomever suggested "Last >Temptation of Christ," simply because that film not only cost very >little but *looked* as if it cost very little, which runs counter to my >intuitive sense of what an epic is. In my book, AMERICAN RELIGIOUS AND BIBLICAL SPECTACULARS (1992), I agreed with Prof. Groch about "Last Temptation," discussing it in my chapter "After the spectacular. The spectacular/epic has three versions--the mythically displaced epic like the Die Niebelungen/Kreimheld's Revenge type, the historical epic, such as Cleopatra, War and Peace, and a host of others, and the natural environment epic (such as Lean's work where the protagonist is pitted against nature. The biblical and religious spectaculars are variations on the historical epic/spectacular. The key feature is what Matthew Arnold called "The Grand Style" in which the action is both on a personal and cosmic scale. Humans struggle in an arena far larger than their psyches and are tested. This brings about the second characteristic, the melodramatic archetype, where some force--often providence-is working through the trials and tribulations of the hero/heroine to bring about the desired result (Ben-Hur, Cleopatra, Reds). The hero, of course, is usually the same class as the intended audience, or at least given materials that suggest his empathy with the working class. The final key is that it is action, not psychology, being swept along in events. I agree about Reds, and I think that most of the epics are now miniseries on TV, where the scale is not the size of the screen, but the length of the picture. Gerald Forshey Humanities Dept. Daley College City Colleges of Chicago