Land of the Pharaohs
| Land of the Pharaohs | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Howard Hawks |
| Produced by | Michael Pandolfeli |
| Written by | Harold Jack Bloom William Faulkner Harry Kurnitz |
| Starring | Jack Hawkins Joan Collins |
| Music by | Dimitri Tiomkin |
| Cinematography | Lee Garmes Russell Harlan |
| Editing by | Vladimir Sagovsky |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 24, 1955 |
| Running time | 144 minutes (Canada), 106 (US), 104 (UK) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $2 (estimated) |
Land of the Pharaohs is a 1955 CinemaScope epic film made by the Continental Company, Ltd and presented by Warner Bros. It was directed and produced by Howard Hawks from a screenplay by Harold Jack Bloom, Harry Kurnitz, and the novelist William Faulkner. The film score was by Dimitri Tiomkin.
The film starred Jack Hawkins and Joan Collins, with Dewey Martin, James Robertson Justice, Kerima, and Alexis Minotis. It is a fictional account of the building of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, remembered in Greek as "Cheops". Collins, just 22 during production, played a beautiful greedy woman, a role she would repeat many times over a very long film and television career.
It literally had a cast of thousands (Warner Bros. claimed there were 9,787 extras in one scene[1]) and was one of Hollywood's largest-scale, ancient world epics, in the spirit of The Robe, The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, and others. The film was shot on location in Egypt and in Rome's Titanus studios.
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[edit] Plot
In ancient Egypt, Pharaoh Khufu (Jack Hawkins) is obsessed with acquiring gold and plans to take it with him into the "second life". Dissatisfied with his own architects' offerings, he enlists the aid of Vashtar (James Robertson Justice), an ingenious man whose devices nearly saved his people from being conquered and enslaved by Khufu. Khufu offers to free Vashtar's people if he can build a robber-proof tomb, although Vashtar will have to die when the pyramid-tomb is finished to preserve its secrets. During the years that the pyramid is being built, Pharaoh demands tribute and labor from all his territories.
Princess Nellifer (Joan Collins) comes as the ambassador of the tributary province of Cyprus. Nellifer says that her province is poor and cannot afford to pay the tribute of grain—so she offers herself to Pharaoh instead. She becomes the Khufu's second wife.
Nellifer questioned whether Khufu really had as much gold as he said he had and asked to see it, which he duly did. She is shown an enormous hoard of fine gold artifacts and jewels and more in an inner vault that Khufu is saving for himself in the second life. Nellifer puts on an ornate jewel encrusted necklass, which Khufu angrily demand she remove and when she doesn't he orders the captain of the guard, Treneh (Sydney Chaplin), to take it off her and leaves. Later, Nellifer starts an affair with the Treneh who has become besotted with her.
One day, Vashtar's son Senta (Dewey Martin) saves Khufu from being crushed to death by a runaway stone block. In order to get the injured Khufu out of the pyramid to help, Senta reveals that he knows the tomb's secrets, aware that he must now share his father's fate. A grateful Pharaoh offers him anything else within his power; Senta chooses Nellifer's slave Kyra to save her from being whipped for her fierce independence.
Nellifer plots to assassinate first Queen Nailla and her son Zanin, then Khufu, so she can rule Egypt herself by using a cobra obtained from a snake charmer with the help of Treneh. First, Treneh persuades Khufu that there is a rich hoard of treasure in a tomb far to the north in order to draw him away. Nellifer then gives Zanin a flute to practice and teaches him a tune the snake will be attracted to. Nailla sees the snake approaching Zanin and throws herself on to it to save her son. Nellifer then learns that Khufu, after hearing of the queen's death, had sent out investigators to look for snake charmers. Panicking, Nellifer dispatches her servant Mabuna to kill Khufu at the oasis, but Mabuna only manages to wound Khufu before being killed. Suspecting Nellifer, Khufu rushes back to the city. In her chambers, he eavesdrops on her and Treneh. He kills Treneh in a sword fight, but is himself fatally wounded.
During Pharaoh's funeral, his High Priest and lifelong friend, Hamar (Alexis Minotis, billed as Alex Minotis), has Nellifer accompany him into the burial chamber because she "must give the order" to seal the sarcophagus. When her order is obeyed, it releases a large stone in a lower chamber, triggering Vashtar's mechanism to seal the tomb. Nellifer breaks down in tears when she realizes that she is trapped inside with the gold she hungered for. Hamar tells her "there's no way out," adds that "this is what you lied and schemed and murdered to achieve. This is your kingdom."
Vashtar and Senta were released from their sentence of death by the High Priest. They take their now-free people back to their homeland.
[edit] Miscellaneous
When the Pharaoh was inspecting, and rejecting, the Egyptian architects' models for his tomb, the third model he looks at is a model of the actual interior of the pyramid built for Khufu.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ A. H. Weiler (July 27, 1955). "'Land of the Pharaohs' Is Standard Saga". New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?_r=1&res=9805E2DB103AE53BBC4F51DFB166838E649EDE&oref=slogin. Retrieved 2007-12-19.
[edit] External links
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