The Egyptian (1954)

Director:

Michael Curtiz

Writers:

Philip Dunne (writer)
Casey Robinson (writer)

Release Date:

17 December 1954 (West Germany)

Genre:

Drama | History

Tagline:

To Nefer, shameless temptress of Babylon, he surrendered his parents' hope of immortality!

Plot:

In eighteenth-dynasty Egypt, Sinuhe, a poor orphan, becomes a brilliant physician and with his friend...

Plot Keywords:

Plot | Historical | Monotheism | Poison | Bronze Age

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 1 win

Cast

Jean Simmons	...	Merit
Victor Mature	...	Horemheb
Gene Tierney	...	Baketamon
Michael Wilding	...	Akhnaton
Bella Darvi	...	Nefer
Peter Ustinov	...	Kaptah
Edmund Purdom	...	Sinuhe
Judith Evelyn	...	Taia
Henry Daniell	...	Mekere
John Carradine	...	Grave robber
Carl Benton Reid	...	Senmut
Tommy Rettig	...	Thoth
Anitra Stevens	...	Queen Nefertiti
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Peter Reynolds	...	Sinuhe, age 10

Runtime:

139 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.55 : 1

Sound Mix:

4-Track Stereo (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

West Germany:12 (f) | USA:Approved (certificate #16965) | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | Argentina:13

Filming Locations:

Death Valley National Park, California, USA

Company:

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Trivia:

Average Shot Length (ASL) = 13 seconds

Goofs:

Factual errors: Akhenaten was succeeded by Tutankhamen, not Smenkhare. Smenkhare was the successor to the later pharaoh Aye, the man who succeeded Tutankhamen.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Sinuhe: [Older Sinuhe voiceover] I, Sinuhe the Egyptian, write this. In my place of exile on the shores of the Red Sea. There is no more desolate spot on earth. Soon the jackals and the vultures will make a poor meal of what is left of me. No monument will mark my resting place. I will leave only this...

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Passion: Films, Faith & Fury (2006) (TV)

This splendidly lavish film of Mika Waltari's tediously philosophic potboiler set in ancient Egypt, was ripe pickings for Darryl F. Zanuck's CinemaScope agenda.

Zanuck had high hopes for this extravagant production, including a major casting coup when Brando signed on for the lead. Alas, Brando dropped out of the project and was replaced by Edmund Purdom, whose acting is the antithesis of "the method". The completed production is more a tribute to the state-of-the-art in mid-century production values and presentation than a high-quality example of epic filmmaking. The script quality ranges from the sublime (the bordello sequences) to the ridiculous (the royal palace scenes); while the performances, even the best of them (Ustinov, Darvi, Tierney), are mundane at best. That's not to say this picture, like most epics of it's kind, isn't a worthy indulgence. It is, if only for the overbearing production design, magnificently intrusive music score (co-written by two legendary screen composers), and sheer extravagance of it all. It's all relative though, since only the largest TV screens and loudest high-end sound systems can provide anything close to the experience of the 2:55-to-1 CinemaScope ratio employed, featuring dialogue-panning, multi-track stereo. An expensive Fox laserdisc is currently the only available option for viewing this picture as closely as originally intended. It must have been quite a big deal when the movie palace curtains opened on this one in 1956!