THE EGYPTIAN [NTSC-ALL Regions / IMPORT] (1954)
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Movie Reviews of THE EGYPTIAN [NTSC-ALL Regions / IMPORT] (1954)
Movie Review: Great Egyptain Story
Summary: 5 Stars
Love the plot line; all the way! Great story! Anyone looking for a great Egytain Story here is one great all the way!Movie Review: the egyptian
Summary: 5 Stars
great story - excellent actors - import; only complaint - copy, not great quality - could be better.Movie Review: A Great but Flawed Classic Epic
Summary: 4 Stars
When this film gets it right it really gets it right. And when it goes wrong... I'd say that a full 3/4s of the film is great. I can even isolate the bad bit. It's everything that has to do with the romance. Everything that you need to know about it is said in the first five minutes but it drags on for about 30. I'd recommend skipping that section if you can. It does nothing except explain his exile. It should have been a minor plot point quickly thrust aside. Fortunately, the period from about 0-30 and 1:00-2:19 (The End) is excellent.
There are a number of excellent performances in this film, and an equal number of terrible ones. Just like everything else in this movie the acting is either perfect or terrible. Peter Ustinov as the slimy one-eyed slave Kaptah is perfect. It is one of his best performances, up there with his role in Spartacus. Victor Mature as the ambitious Horemheb is also perfect. Again, one of his best roles. Jean Simmons is wasted as Merit, the perfect girl in love with our hero John Carradine gives a nice supporting role as a philosophical grave robber; and Michael Wilding is excellent as Akhnaton, the idealistic pharaoh who tries to bring peace and monotheism to Egypt only to see it fall apart due to his unwillingness to fight. Now for the bad. Edmund Purdom as Sinuhe is sadly miscast. This is doubly unfortunate as he is the main character. The entire film revolves around him. He actually does rather good as the disillusioned exile and the wise old man. This is because of his sorely limited range. He doesn't seem able to put any passion into his words. This is especially apparent during the love scenes which are beyond awkward. He spends the last half of the film as an old man, a performance at which he is decent enough at. He does have the perfect voice for the character. The less said about Bella Darvi as Nefer, the treacherous Babylonian woman, the better.
The costuming and sets are magnificent. This is the only film that I know of that attempts to depict life in Egypt that isn't overshadowed by Jews or Romans. The film takes place in the 14th Century B.C. which is before even Exodus. The only monotheists are the pharaoh Akhenaten and his followers. There is the same strong element of religious zeal that can be found in most epics, but it is done differently and it only shows up at the very end. An interesting note: by having Akhenaten followed by Horemheb as pharaoh, the film completely skips over the most famous pharaoh of all: Tutankhamen. Seems kind of a strange thing to do when using that name could increase awareness of the film.
The DVD of this film is really crummy. It's a region free Asian release and the film quality is terrible. It is widescreen although it's not anamorphic. There are no Special Features and the DVD menu is just a series of clips with options in English and Chinese. At least I think it's Chinese. This film really needs an official release.
Be warned: this is a 1950s epic film. If you don't like that type of thing then don't expect this one to be different. It is different, but it is still an epic. I appreciate this film, and I appreciate what it did and what it tried to do. This is a film that should be better remembered than it is.
Movie Review: The Egyptian: Religious Subtext Covers Political One
Summary: 4 Stars
When Mika Waltari wrote his bestseller THE EGYPTIAN, he created on paper a colossal overview of a period in Egyptian history that in a strange way prefigured the lives of Moses and Jesus. Before the ascension of Akhnaton to the throne, Egypt had been ruled by a series of rulers who worshipped a pantheon of gods ranging from those in heaven to those in hell. Akhnaton began the first of a series of monotheistic religions that not only subscribed to the belief in a single god but also imbued that god with humanistic attributes like justice and mercy that would not resound anywhere in the world until the rise of Christianity. Director Mike Curtiz made a gripping if occasionally ponderous transferral of legend from print to screen. Sinuhe (Edmund Purdom) and his best friend Herenheb (Victor Mature) catapult themselves from lowly physician and bodyguard to rise high in the ranks of the sun god Akhnaton (Michael Wilder), a benevolent but seriously naive ruler of imperial Egypt. The film is mostly melodrama but the real star of the film is the subtext of how religion and politics intermix to present the drama of a great nation whose fate curiously resembles that of the current United States. Worship of a sun god is presented in such a manner as to bring to mind the advantage of having a religion around which a proud people can unite and its concommitant disadvantage of a message of peace that other and more aggressive empires will deduce as a weakness. There are numerous allusions to a far distant Christianity: the very symbol of the sun god with its horizontal edges closely resembles the Cross of Christ. Further, the mention of the phrase "worship of the sun" brings to mind a STAR TREK episode in which Kirk and Spock participate in a parallel evolution of a Roman empire that included worship of a sun-son. Lying underneath the religious motife is a political one. Those nation states that refuse to defend themselves by seeking "accomodation" with aggressors are doomed to extinction. As I watched Akhnaton reach out to feel and understand the pain of the Hittites who sought only Egypt's destruction, I half expected him to ask the United Nations for permission to do the obvious. Back in 1954 when this film was released no one could have foreseen that the United States of 2007 might travel down the same road of leftist defeatism and multiculturalism that caused Akhnaton's Egypt to have to resort to a fascism embodied by the warrior king ethos as embodied by the new king (Mature), but repeated viewings of THE EGYPTIAN warn us that when the worst of a benevolent religion is combined with the worst of a pacifistic mode of thought, the end is predictable. Either that country will drift toward fascism or will collapse under invading hordes who care little about either. THE EGYPTIAN is a well-crafted film that entertains even as it edifies.Movie Review: No Resemblance to Actual History (but a lot of fun)
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a very, very bad movie. The acting is horrific, the storyline absurd. As for historical fact, well, they got a few things right: there was a king named Akhenaten, there was a place we call Ancient Egypt, and, yes, the Nile River ran through it. That's about all they got right. That said, this is a terrific fun totally fictional movie, and I love it!
Although the movie presents Akhenaten as a sort of pre-Christian martyr, please keep in mind that this movie bears almost no resemblance to historical fact. Akhenaten's religion was not monotheistic. Very simply put, it began with his father, Amenhotep III, who identified himself with the sun god Amun and had himself deified during his lifetime. Akhenaten then worshipped his dead father as the sun. He and his wife Nefertiti were portrayed as the ancient deities Shu and Tefnut, two of the children of the sun. Akhenaten expected the Egyptians to worship himself and his family in place of the other gods. It was "me, me, me" all the time.
And as far as Akhenaten being peaceful, well, no, not really! He was able to maintain power by using and promoting the military, although there were only a few minor foreign campaigns during his reign as he was busy using the military to enforce his ideas upon the Egyptians. Generally, he was simply not the nice "Christ-like" guy so many people nowadays want him to be.
But, anyways, back to the movie, if you keep in mind virtually none of it is true, just sit back and enjoy the gorgeous (but inaccurate sets) and try not to laugh too loud at the bad acting, this is very enjoyable fluff.