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Storm Over the Nile

Storm Over the Nile (1956)

June. 22,1956
|
6.2
|
NR
| Adventure Drama War

In 1885, while his regiment is sent to the Sudan to battle the rebellious Dervish tribes, British Lieutenant Harry Faversham resigns his officer's commission in order to remain with his fiancée Mary Burroughs in England. His friends and fellow officers John Durrance, Peter Burroughs and Tom Willoughby brand him a coward and present him with the white feathers of cowardice. His fiancée, Mary, adds a fourth feather and breaks off their engagement. However, former Lieutenant Faversham decides to regain his honor by fighting in the Sudan incognito.

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Reviews

ChanFamous
1956/06/22

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

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StyleSk8r
1956/06/23

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

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Jenna Walter
1956/06/24

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

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Guillelmina
1956/06/25

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

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clanciai
1956/06/26

It's impossible to make a bad film out of this story, and that is one of the reasons it has been filmed so many times. Since each version is good in its own way, it's also interesting to compare them with each other. The 1939 version is still the most spectacular and impressing but also the most superficial. The Beau Bridges version as Harry Fasversham is the weakest one, but for Robert Powell as Jack Durrance, who is always the most interesting character, and all depends on how he is acted. In this version Durrance is played by Laurence Harvey, who is always unmatchable. He is therefore the main attraction here, and he certainly makes the whole film interesting, no matter what advantages to it you find in the other versions. Here you also find a deeper pathos than in the other versions, and the scenery from the Nile transcends all the others.The most interesting detail is the conscience issue. Harry Faversham turns a conscientious objector (20 years before the first world war) and gets labelled as a coward by his soldier friends. He feels they are right in their way and that he has to prove them wrong, whereupon he sets out on the most impossible thinkable enterprise, masking himself as a mute Arab slave to reach his friends in the Sudan to save their lives from certain death when necessary. But he can't save Durrance from his blindness.His only friend at home, Dr. Sutton (Geoffrey Keen) plays an important role here and makes a memorable character. All the finest and most sensitive scenes are with him and Laurence Harvey. This version also gives the finest music of the four, by Benjamin Frankel. Also Christopher Lee has a small part, and James Robertson Justice adds to the flamboyance.It's a remake of the 1939 version but better, but the best version is the so far latest one: the Shekhar Kapur version of 2002 with Heath Ledger, and Wes Bentley as Jack Durrance.

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tieman64
1956/06/27

This is a review of "Storm over the Nile" (1955), "Khartoum" (1966) and "The Four Feathers" (2002), three films based on British actions during the Mahdist War (1881-1899).The 19th century saw colonial powers scrambling across Africa. As the British Empire expanded from Southern Africa to the Mediterranean, the Ottomans expanded from Turkey to Northern Africa and the French from West Africa to the Red Sea. All three would converge upon Egypt, which would continually shift hands between the three Empires.Britain eventually emerged victorious, becoming defacto ruler of Egypt in 1882. Egypt would henceforth become a base for further British expansion southward into Sudan. The Sudanese would attempt to fend off these advances. They'd rally behind Muhammad Ahmad, an Islamic messianic or "Mahdist" figure. Muhammad Ahmad was denounced by Sudanese elites, but embraced as a revolutionary leader by marginalised Nilotic tribes.Experts at using divide-and-rule tactics, the British divided Sudan into loosely demarcated northern and southern zones. The north became Muslim and Arab dominated and was integrated with the economic networks along the Nile. The south, steeped in poverty, was treated as an "African zone". A cocktail of Muslim, Christian and tribal groups, the south Sudanese were indoctrinated into thinking themselves culturally/biologically distinct and inferior. Promising independence and even salvation (he claimed to be paving the way for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ), Muhammad Ahmad set out to overturn this. Like the countless Christian messianic figures who sprung up as a result of Roman occupation, and a precursor to contemporary Islamic militants, he was the inevitable product of naked Imperialism.The city of Khartoum straddled northern and southern Sudan. To the North, the British suppressed the slave trade, heavily invested in social, educational and health services, and essentially nurtured a "liberalised" form of Islam. As colonialism recruitment policies favoured educated Arabs, a new socio-economic class was created so as to offer a bulwark against Mahdism and secular nationalism. An ideological bulwark, however, is no match for guns.In 1884, after a three month siege, Khartoum fell to the Mahdists, who stormed the city and executed British governor-general Charles Gordon. The Empire reacted swiftly. British forces under Herbert Kitchener rolled in and slaughtered tens of thousands of Sudanese. By 1898, most Mahdists were crushed. Sudan henceforth became subject to joint Anglo-Egyptian governance.Unsurprisingly, the British set out to exacerbate regional, religious and racial divisions amongst the Sudanese. In 1922, in what became known as the "Southern Policy", the Empire declared that southern Sudan would be considered a "Closed District". Islamic proselytisers were banned, Arabic languages and clothing were discouraged, and Christian missionaries were brought in to convert southerners. Meanwhile, southern Arab merchants were relocated to the north and interactions between the peoples of the north and the south were forbidden. Such segregationist policies were designed to keep the south economically backward and foster divisiveness.Today, little has changed in Sudan. Artificially carved out of a myriad of peoples, with more than 400 ethnic and linguistic groups lumped together within its borders, the country remains ravaged by the divide-and-rule tactics of modern neo-Imperialists. Milking the nation's oil fields and precious metals, the United States, and recently China, have today become expert at funding and arming militias and bloody regimes in both the north and south.Zoltan Korda would produce and co-direct "Storm Over the Nile" in 1955, a film based on "The Four Feathers", a 1902 novel by Alfred Mason. The plot? Refusing to sail with his regiment to the Sudan, Harry Faversham (Anthony Steel), the cowardly scion of a military family, overcomes his disgrace by travelling to Africa. Here he helps his regiment defeat Sudanese forces. As with many Imperialist adventures, the film glorifies queen and country, assumes the rightness of British rule, romanticises colonialism and posits loyalty and responsibility to the ruling classes as the highest ideal. Though stiff and dull in places, the film boasts several impressive action sequences, filmed in expansive Cinemascope.The 1950s/60s saw the release of numerous films which attempted to rejuvenate British nationalism and which were determined to white-wash the realities of colonialism ("Zulu", "North West Frontier", "Khartoum", "55 Days at Peking", "The Black Tent" etc). Supercharged by the civil rights and independence movements of the 1950s-60s, such perspectives were slowly contested ("Gandhi", "Guns at Batasi", "Burn!", "The Man Who Would Be King", "Passage to India" etc), eventually giving rise to the latest adaptation of "The Four Feathers", a 2002 film which was so politically correct as to be ridiculous.Directed by Shekhar Kapur, "The Four Feathers" (2002) tells virtually the same story as "Storm over the Nile". Here actor Heath Ledger plays Harry Faversham, who is no longer a "coward" but a man of conscience who has "ethical objections to colonialism". Harry travels to Sudan, where he befriends and fights alongside Africans and where he teaches us to question nationalism, exceptionalism and pride. Dull and conventionally shot, the film's attempts at "rectifying" its source material are mostly hokey. In some ways it is even more racist than Korda's film, Africans reduced to props, whole cultures reduced to ridiculous musical choices and second-hand "exotic" signifiers.Released in 1966, and directed by Basil Dearden, "Khartoum" stars Charlton Heston as Charles Gordon, a British General sent to Sudan to battle Muhammad Ahmad (Lawrence Olivier). Gordon valiantly defends a fortress in Kartoum, but is eventually overrun.By having its heroes outnumbered, like cowboys surrounded by hordes of manic Indians, "Khartoum" manoeuvres its audience into siding with colonialists. Elsewhere it uses Gordon's demise to criticise political leaders who refuse to rally behind valiant troops. Heston, who spent the decade battling hordes of on-screen "savages", is himself a caricature of British bravery, whilst Ahmad never rises above the level of black-faced bogeyman. Still, "Kartoum" has its merits. Impeccably shot, tense, filled with impressive battles and awesome landscapes, it remains the best of a certain brand of 1950s/60s, pro-Imperialist adventure.5/10 - Worth one viewing.

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ianlouisiana
1956/06/28

Harry Faversham,the Public School Man's Public School Man,together with his whinnying cronies,is the future of his regiment.Handsome,dashing,heavy with hair oil and gleaming of teeth he seems destined to die futilely in battle in the corner of some foreign field that will remain forever England or at least until it's returned to its rightful owners a few years down the line when his remains will be ploughed up and thrown to one side. But HF is not a happy soldier,he only signed on to please his father,and once engaged to the daughter of a retired General he resigns his commission.At the very least he is guilty of not very good timing as his regiment is leaving at dawn for Africa and the assumption of his contemporaries and superiors is that he lacks intestinal fortitude. Anxious to prove his courage(I'm a bit hazy on this point.If he was that anxious to prove his courage it would have been easier to stay in the army)he makes his way to the Sudan (walked,hitch - hiked?I think we should be told)he proceeds to save the lives of his former chums who are undoubtedly the worst officers ever to put on a uniform. They may have ruled the roost at Eton or wherever,but they should have never been let out of their tent on their own. Cue an appalling performance by Mr L Harvey who wanders off into the desert on his own presumably to top up his tan and promptly ends up blinded by the sun.Did you miss that bit at Sandhurst Larry? Just as he is about to blow his brains out(I seriously doubt if he's that good a shot) HF pops up and wrestles the gun from his fingers. Disguised as a Dervish with speaking difficulties (don't ask - it would take too long)he eventually rescues all his old pals from fates worse than death and is reunited with his estranged fiancée.Floreat Etona. My grandfather as a boy read a book called "With Kitchener in The Sudan" which was full of nonsense like this.It inspired him and thousands like him to volunteer for the colours in 1914.He was lucky and worked as a medic on a troopship,but an awful lot of aspiring Harry Favershams were slaughtered wholesale,choked by gas,drowned in the mud or simply blown to bits on bloody battlefields. I can only assume this film was meant to be taken seriously even though by 1955 the Empire it celebrates was long dead.The term "Fuzzy - Wuzzy" was beginning to be frowned upon and only the Guards and Cavalry regiments had many officers like messrs Harvey and Steele. I don't profess to know what purpose was served by the making of "Storm on the Nile".At home the Angry Young Men were stirring,former colonies were ridding themselves of those they saw as their oppressors,the Cold War was under way.Bad times were just around the corner.Perhaps it was a plea for the return of war as a game for Gentlemen. Mr L. Harvey in a rather bizarre scene gets to read a speech by Caliban in braille and proves - if further proof apart from his "Romeo"was needed - that he was one of the biggest hams ever to grace the British Cinema.Mr A.Steele's limitations are cruelly exposed in even such a one - dimensional part as Faversham.The lovely Miss M.Ure is wasted as his fiancée.Only Sir Lancelot Spratt - sorry,Mr.J.Robertson Justice - is worth watching as her father,although his beard greys at rather an alarming rate. You can see the birth pangs of "Zulu" in "Storm on the Nile".If you can truly and honestly say you thought "Zulu" was a great film rather than a film about a great military action then you may find "Storm on the Nile" acceptable.If not,next time it comes on TV pop out to your favourite Indian restaurant and think about how the world has changed whilst drinking your Cobra" and waiting for your takeaway.

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greenheart
1956/06/29

A lot of critics gave this movie a really hard time. I never read critical reviews until I've seen a film and I must confess that I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Maybe it did use footage from a previous shoot and there were certainly flaws. But all in all, this was a good schoolboy yarn. I liked the lengthy build up to the scenes in Sudan, it really helped set the scene and made you care about the characters. The plot lingered long enough to give the viewer a feel of the longevity of the piece. The plot was well moved along and there was suitable emotion shown. James Robertson Justice so often just barks out his lines and in this movie he....Well, just barked out his lines! A real shame. A small blemish on an otherwise enjoyable movie.

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