Marco Polo's Spices

Though Marco Polo is reputed to have journeyed all the way to Cathay in search of spices of the marjoram-and-thyme sort, the latest cinematic rendering of his travels has Horst Buchholz (as Marco) uncovering exotic dishes more of the sugar-and-sweetmeat variety. In its photographic paeans to the flesh, Marco Polo lends further substance to the observation that the "costumes" in costume epics, if not the films themselves, are becoming simultaneously skimpier and more spectacular. For Marco, French costume designer Jacques Fonteray was called on to produce brief garb for a horde of Mongol and Tartar types usually portrayed dressed to the teeth. As these pages show, he was up to the task of dressing them down.