Old Movie About Salamis

[Cheirisophus]

       I am trying to find an old movie about ancient times that includes fairly detailed and exciting scenes from the naval battle of Salamis, Greeks versus Persians.  It was shown at our elementary school in the late 1960s.  It was in a foreign language that I did not recognize.  I have searched for this movie for a long time with no luck.  Can anyone suggest what the title of the movie might have been?  It was in color.

  - Chris Salander

[von Lucky]

Welcome to LAF Chris.

Is it 'Les Perses' (television film)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_book-based_war_films_%28wars_before_1775%29#Battle_of_Salamis
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Perses_%28t%C3%A9l%C3%A9film%29

Google/YouTube is useful if you want to verify it is the film you seek:
https://www.google.com.au/#q=%22Les+Perses%22+film

[Cheirisophus]

   I checked, and I don't think it was that movie.  I want to find it because it had great battle scenes, with ships ramming each other and the queen commander making her escape.  Image the scenes from Cleopatra going on for much, much longer.  Darker, though.  Not as well lit.  Might have been a Greek movie.

- Chris

[sukhe_bator]

The best researched ancient naval battle in cinema was actually the 1959 William Wyler 'Ben Hur'. The sea battle was filmed using miniatures in a huge tank on the back lot at the MGM Studios in Culver City, California. It has the lot, rams, oar rakes, turrets, rhodian firepots, ballistae and corvae...
http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/magicians-of-miniature.html
To partially defray the exhorbitant production costs, reels of the battle scene were sold and reused in every B/Z movie thereafter and even featured in episodes of TV programmes like the Sci-Fi series 'Time Tunnel'
To all ancient naval enthusiasts it remains one of the best depictions of naval warfare to have been shot. Wyler was keen to incorporate the latest thinking on what the galleys looked like and his researchers consulted widely among academia. Cleopatra (1963) also benefited from that research. Its such a shame they're Roman!

Salamis would be a difficult one to reenact since the Greco/Roman practice of leaving all but battle sails ashore would make it look more like rows of menacing submarines facing off against one another...
I'm guessing anything shot pre-1948 would show Greek and Persian Triremes in a less than accurate way using the Renaissance style oar banks, rather than as we now believe them to have been arranged. I think we are all pretty convinced by both the look and performance of Prof. Morrison & J F Coates's reconstruction of an Athenian Trireme. I was fortunate enough to speak at length with Prof. Morrison about his work back in the day and I found his arguments pretty compelling.
http://www.marineinsight.com/maritime-history/the-salient-features-of-ancient-greek-ships/