Throwback Thursday: Land of the Pharaohs

Howard Hawks was one of the greatest directors of all time with an unprecedented string of hit films between 1938 and 1952. Hawks directed classics like Bringing Up Baby, Only Angels Have Wings, His Girl Friday, Sergeant York, Ball of Fire, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Red River, I Was a Male War Bride, The Thing from Another World (although credited to Christian Nyby), The Big Sky, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes … there wasn’t a genre Hawks couldn’t handle. Until 1955.

The mid-1950s saw a boom in the “Biblical epic” genre of film with Samson and Delilah kicking the cycle off in 1949, followed by David and Bathsheba, Salome, Quo Vadis? and The Robe. With most of the major studios cranking out big budget spectacles, Warner Brothers wanted to get back in the game after the debacle that was The Silver Chalice (the film that introduced Paul Newman to movie audiences), so they hired Hawks, who was very interested in the building of the pyramids, to come up with a film that could rival the other epics. With Hawks in the director’s chair and William Faulkner having a hand in the screenplay, they came up with a pre-Biblical epic, Land of the Pharaohs.

The story was fairly simple: the Pharaoh Khufu is obsessed with his afterlife, so he needs to begin preparation for his after-death journey. He wants to make sure his wealth is protected from thieves, but none of the pyramid designs suits his needs, seemingly too easy to be looted as all the other tombs have been. Knowing that one of the slaves, Vashtar, has experience with clever engineering techniques, Khufu agrees to free Vashtar’s people if he will design and supervise the building of his pyramid. Princess Nellifer of Cyprus arrives to offer herself as tribute to the Pharaoh since her land is too poor to give him anything else, a romance develops but Nellifer is played by Joan Collins, so you know she has some scheme up her sleeve (this role shows that she was born to play Alexis Morrell Carrington Colby Dexter Rowan on Dynasty).

Most films have at least one character you care about and can root for, but Land of the Pharaohs is distinctly lacking. The Pharaoh is too self-centered and concerned with his wealth, his aides all seem shady, his wife and child are plot devices, and Nellifer is a greedy opportunist. At least Vashtar and his son are trying to work in the best interest of their people. The other problem is the corny dialogue, at times overwrought and other times just downright silly. The film was shot on location in Egypt, with a literal cast of thousands (with claims of 9,787 extras in one scene), and those scenes do have a certain grandeur to them. The interior sets, however, look cheap and cramped. Everything is just a bit too clean and stage-bound. Hawks was also a director who preferred to use long, wide single-take shots, reserving his close-ups to give a scene some impact. Because of this technique, the film plays very slowly for a modern audience, feeling much longer at 105 minutes than the following year’s The Ten Commandments at 220 minutes. Hawks admitted that the historical epic was not his forte and he was not pleased with the finished product.

The Warner Archive Collection is now making the out of print DVD available once again through their Manufacture on Demand service using the original DVD files. The Cinemascope film looks fine for its age with only some color shifting occurring during optical dissolves or at the end of a reel. The audio is also very solid, mastered in Dolby Digital with some apparent stereo separation. The DVD also features an additional audio commentary track with director Peter Bogdanovich, with excerpts of a recording he did with Howard Hawks sometime in the 1970s (Hawks died in 1977). The commentary is only slightly informative about the film with Bogdanovich spending way too much time telling us that this is not the kind of film Hawks usually made … over and over again. He also slightly disses Joan Collins, seemingly saying she never really had a career. I assume he meant in movies, but he never spells that out. It is refreshing,though, to hear both Bogdanovich and Hawks speak not so favorably of the film. Overall, it’s a nice bonus for an Archive Collection title, if not spectacular.

If you are a fan of the 1950s widescreen epics, then Land of the Pharaohs may be of some interest. Joan Collins fans may also be curious to see one of her early lead roles (and may also ponder why her voice seems to change octaves throughout the film). There is good talent and a great director here, but the plodding script did none of them any favors. The Warner Archive Collection DVD, however, treats the film fairly.