Omar Khayyam (1957)

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Other reviewers said it best; this is your typical 1950s period pic actioner with lots of adventure and some sword play. I never pictured Omar Khayyam as much of an infiltrator, but the movie, being a movie from the 50s, takes liberty with Khayyam's life, and spices things up for the audience. Think about it. If you were a young man needing to take his girl on a date in 1957, would you want to see some existential docu-drama about the Persian poet's life and works? No, more like you'd want to see something that had action, romance, adventure, and heroics over bad guys to cap off the evening.Well, this movie delivers. It's not an outstanding movie, but it's a good simple basic film that, to be honest, was a little ahead of its time in terms of addressing the turmoil in the middle east. Allusions to caliphates, the "one true religion", secret hideouts in the mountains certainly ring bells with events since our own September 11th, 2001. But, fortunately our hero, Omar Khayyam played by Cornel Wilde, uses his learned ways and scholarly teachings to fight a familiar foe we know today, whose roots are seated in past pride.The story is right out of Hollwood 101, and everyone here is from central casting. The performances are a little wooden, and SFX are easily spotted but do their job, and overall the production values are fairly solid. Omar Khayyam doesn't give us too much of his poetry as he's too busy saving the kingdom of those he serves, but we are treated to a few lines of his poetic brilliance before the movie ends.It's worth seeing once, and perhaps again on a rainy weekend afternoon. It's that kind of a movie. Watch it, enjoy it for what it is, but don't take it too seriously.Overall a decent watch.Enjoy.

With respect, I submit that it is the mindset of 50 years ago that cannot be remade, rather than the film itself, which was an admirable effort in its time, eerily prescient in its relevance to our present-day fears and therefore practically commanding a newly-filmed version ( or, at the very least, greater attention given to the original ).Sad but nonetheless true it may be, that gone indeed are the days when the Middle East and Islam itself conjured up in the Western ( read "Hollywood" ) mind only quaint and archaic tropes of the "Thousand-and-One Nights"---'harems, slaves, sultans, thieves and intrigues', decked in robes and turbans and speaking in a quaintly flowery fashion ( "By the beard of the Prophet!"), moving in and out of gaudy buildings capped everywhere by onion-domes. Then the Arabs found themselves in a position once more to make their power felt on a world scale, and perceptions ( and stereotypes ) changed irrevocably---the new images generally being of languid Saudis replacing Texans as the archetype of the oil zillionaire, and wild-eyed, wild-bearded, greasy fanatics ready to throw bombs in support of their beliefs ( the Arabs here merely being the latest to fill an archetype going back at least a century-and-a-half to the anarchists of Europe ).The great days of Islamic glory in the arts and sciences well deserve to be brought back into the Western ( read "Hollywood" ) consciousness. It was due in great part to the efforts of Islamic scholars that the heritage of the Greco-Roman classics was preserved while Europe sank into Christian dogmatics. Much of the ancient observations were improved upon by Arabs from Cordoba to Ferghana, most notably in astronomy---and here Omar Khayyam may be said to enter the scene. Well versed in the natural sciences and mathematics, Omar was indeed the author of an improved Muslim calendar ( which unfortunately was rejected by the more traditional-minded in power ). Renowned also as a warrior, his greatest fame stems from the collection of quatrains called the "Rubaiyat", which gave us---by Hargreaves's translation---such familiar lines as 'A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou' and 'Could you and I alone with Fate conspire' (both of which are to be heard in this movie).Oh yes, this movie---I should get round to that now. EXCELLENT settings and costumage, entertainingly photographed. Cornel Wilde may seem too subdued to be the swashbuckler, but he plays the gentle poet and scholar foremost, a quiet and stolid center around which tumultuous events unfold and chase each other. A stellar cast supports him---Debra ('The Ten Commandments') Paget as the great love of his life, Raymond ('Things to Come') Massey as the dignified yet wry old Shah, John ('The Ten Commandments') Derek as handsome young Prince Malik, and---as Omar's old schoolmates---the always endearing Sebastian ('Family Affair') Cabot as the minister Nizam al-Mulk, and Michael ('The Day the Earth Stood Still') Rennie as the imposing, capable Hassan-i Sabah. Other colorful characters keep things hopping---a scheming Queen, her petulant son and half-brother to Malik, a timid but loyal slave girl and, just when you think it can't get any better---Edward ('Get Smart') Platt as a prior in the sect known commonly as the 'Assassins', who menace the Shah's rule from within while the Byzantine Romans threaten from without.This movie should be seen today if for no other reason than that the machinations of the Assassins will easily bring to mind the plottings of Osama bin-Laden and al-Qaeda, and Omar's ringing, climactic speech to the Assassin's ruler is both uneasily accurate but also heartening to us of today who face their spiritual descendants. It really ought to be remade for that reason if for no other...but there is just so much else about Omar---and his world in particular---that is deserving of big-budget attention today, to return it to Westerners' ( read "Hollywood's" ) attention. Posted on 23 August 2007 (the 50th anniversary of the film's premiere).

Leaving aside whether this film has some accuracy on the Persian poet and matemathician's life or not (history doesn't know much about him), I agree with a review here that states a better movie could have been made with this story.The picture is very slow in its first part -almost boring- and it gets more interesting when the plot to kill the Sultan by the Assassins appears and some action with it. The settings are acceptable -no more than that- if we consider this a 1957 product and so are the costumes and the musical score by Victor Young.But I think the major flaw in this movie is Cornel Wilde's casting as the main character. Wilde was never a more than average actor and here he is unable to support the weight of a film in which he is the center. He lacks charisma, strength and presence as Kayyahm and renders a dull performance. The rest of the cast is standard with the exception of Michael Rennie who plays a great villain worthy of a much better effort.Perhaps if the movie had focused on the second part only -that is the the Assassins sinister plans and the fight against them- and included a much more suitable actor in the main role, we would be talking about a really enjoyable epic adventure film.

The 11th century mathematician-poet Omar Khayyam who lived in Baghdad wrote quatrains in Persian which are still quoted. The exact details of his life are unknown, so Hollywood wrote a biography on the tabula rasa of his life. Cornel Wilde plays the often-drunk Omar Khayyam who longs for his sweetheart who the Sultan keeps in his harem as his third wife. Omar Khayyam works in the Sultan's court as a mathematician who is drawing up a new calendar. When the Sultan dies, Omar Khayyam stumbles upon a plot to kill off the Sultan's successor. The poet then goes off to foil the plot. He crosses swords with the Assassin sect whose members are deluded by their leader into thinking that they are in paradise when they actually are in a hashish-induced zombie-like state. In fact, the word "assassin" means "hashish-eaters".Cornel Wilde who plays Omar Khayyam is unable to be a debonair swashbuckler because he has to play a tortured poet. Michael Rennie as the sinister Hasani is wonderful. His aquiline features suit his Arab role. The rest of the cast is unremarkable. "Omar Khayyam" has all the Arabian Nights cliches - harems, slaves, sultans, thieves and intrigues. It is a type of movie which will not be made again because, these days, the Middle East brings up visions of fanatical terrorists, not innocuous fables of highly intellectual Arabs amidst the magnificence of ancient Baghdad.(Reviewed by Sundar Narayan)