Land of the Pharaohs (1955)

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

A different way of telling a story

Blistering performances.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The one thing I did like about this was what everybody else hated... that there was no obvious good guy! That's what I loved when I first saw it at 7yrs old, and that's what I love now... all the 50's spectacle and nonsense, glamour and spangles, without the very 'disturbingly obvious' one faceted good guy.I found these silly people with their silly dialogues more real, as a consequence, even at that tender age.And I always was attracted to the macabre and gruesome, so the ending was perfect for me; I found it totally satisfying at the time. So much so, that I remembered the film and it's title for many years, after other, more polished films had faded.Silliness on a grand scale, and yet there is quite a dose of REAL flavour in there.

Land of the Pharaohs is directed by Howard Hawks and collectively written by Harold Jack Bloom, William Faulkner and Harry Kurnitz. It stars Jack Hawkins, Joan Collins, James Robertson Justice, Dewey Martin and Alex Minotis. Music is by Dimitri Tiomkin and cinematography by Lee Garmes and Russell Harlan.It falls into the filmic splinter of historical epics that thrived greatly in the 50s and 60s, where a cast of thousands are costumed up to the nines, the sets sparkle and location photography smooths the eyes. Land of the Pharaohs has all these things, what it does lack is a high end action quotient, the makers choosing to craft a picture about intrigue in Pharaoh Khufu's (Hawkins) court as the great pyramid is constructed. This is not to say it's a dull picture, it maintains interest throughout, with shifty shenanigans afoot, femme fatale connivings and plenty of slaves standing proud for their cause. While the big finale is devilishly potent.However, one has to really close off the ears at times to avoid the dreadfully wooden dialogue, and some scenes are painfully misplaced, such as the sight of a miscast 45 year old Hawkins wrestling with a bull, I kid you not. Also miscast is Collins, undeniably sexy, but never once does she convince as an Egyptian princess, and her make-up is awful. There are stars in the film, but it does in fact lack star power. The real stars are Tiomkin, Garmes and Harlan, who each bring the spectacle of the production to vivid life. It was a minor flop at the box office and Hawks pretty much disowned it, but it's not without intelligence and in spite of its flaws it's a good watch for historical epic loving adults. 6.5/10

It may take a nation to build a nation, but it takes 40 minutes for anything substantial to occur in this epic of boring exposition. O.K., we get it. The ancient pharaohs were obsessed with the after-life, and according to this, the most materialistic people until Imelda Marcos built pyramids out of shoes. But for the first quarter of this eternal movie, we get seemingly endless shots of the thousands of extras carrying the stones for the pharaoh's resting place and the gems he will go to eternity surrounded by. Until Joan Collins enters the scene, that's all that pretty much happens, and after that, you will be distracted by her frequent decrease in her vocal pitch.You have to give Collins' character a ton of credit. She knows how to make an entrance. Her neighboring princess from a near-by poor country sends her in place of monitory tribute and her scheming nature has her instantly after his eternal treasure and plotting to get rid of the pharaoh's wife in a truly sinister manner. But no matter how close she gets to her goal, the pharaoh's loyal men have their silent eyes on her and a scheme to make her as immortal as she wanted to be, albeit much sooner than she expected.An ambitious attempt to dramatize early Egyptian history, it partially succeeds as a view of how things could have been. Then, there's the scenes inside the pyramids where traps for future invaders literally are set in stone. And then, Collins gets so many evil looking close-ups that you can't wait for her come-uppance. This truly is a camp classic if you can stand the boring bits surrounding it.

Land Of The Pharaohs will go down in cinema history as Howard Hawks's attempt to out DeMille, the great Cecil B. in DeMille's own territory of cast of thousands spectacle. Hawks got a rather mixed reception for his film in that regard.In its way Land Of The Pharaohs is as campy a film as any DeMille ever gave us even without the arcane writing that typifies a DeMille product. Jack Hawkins as Pharaoh Khufu is the ruler that stretched Egypt's hegemony over its widest area and he's decided that he's going to have the biggest tomb around to symbolize his glory. To design such a tomb he drafts James Robertson Justice who is an architect among the prisoners of a recently conquered people. In a package deal Hawkins gets the son as well who grows up to be Dewey Martin and who during the course of the film incurs a big debt from Hawkins.The biggest problem in this film is that ultimately the subject of the film is ego and vanity. Hawkins with his bloody conquest and his desire to have a monument to stand for all time to his ego and vanity is just not a terribly sympathetic figure. But he's positively heroic to the vixenish young Joan Collins who starts out as a Cyprian princess given to Hawkins in return for tribute of a few thousand bushels of wheat. Right there Hawkins should have sent the baggage packing, trophy concubines he can get anywhere, but that grain was to feed his army of workers on that tomb.Once in the palace, Collins starts intriguing in her best Alexis Carrington manner, but she gets a rather fitting fate in the end.Land Of The Pharaohs does have some nice crowd scenes that DeMille might have envied. Some of the best scenes show the ancient methods of construction of the tomb with nice Dimitri Tiomkin music accompanying.But story and characters are the base of a really good film and Jack Hawkins is not a heroic Khufu by any means.