Change Your Image
nefernefer
Reviews
Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954)
Happy Ending for Messalina?
I doubt it. Still, this is a fun jaunt down Cinemascope Pepla Lane and the cast is terrific. It's a little hard to swallow Messalina as being repentant at the end and promising to be a good wife and empress to Claudius (we know that historically didn't turn out well) but Hayward is fun when she is wayward. For a more lurid account of the Messalina story, try out Messalina/The Affairs of Messalina (1951) with the great Maria Felix (dubbed, alas, in Italian). She is riveting as is the entire cast and the production values are remarkable.
The Egyptian (1954)
Gorgeous Restoration; "Epic" Fail by Commentators Ursini and Silver
As a die-hard fan of film pepla from the silent era through the golden age of widescreen epics of the 1950s and 1960s, I applauded the release several years ago, at last, by Twilight Time, of Michael Curtiz' The Egyptian (1954) on DVD and Bluray. The restoration is gorgeous, long overdue, and much appreciated.
However, and I have been meaning to set this right for several years, the accompanying commentary track by film historians Alain Silver and James Ursini, both nominal specialists on the noir style, is often egregiously inaccurate, and was apparently not vetted at all by any editorial hand.
First, the positives: it's true that the novel The Egyptian by Finnish writer Mika Waltari is one of the best of its kind, and that before he wrote it, Waltari had become famous in Finland as a popular and successful writer of noir-ish crime thrillers. The thread of noir in the film is astutely observed by Silver and Ursini, and as they say, resulted in a conflicted, isolated title character who was not the typical stuff of a heroic lead in a costume epic. This resulted in poorish box office and 20th Century Fox held back re- leases of the costly film, giving it its cult air. All that is true enough. And they comment sagely about the casting woes with Marlon Brando, who exited the film after day one of shooting, as well as the sad career trajectory of Bella Darvi and her involvement with the Zanucks (to Silver's and Ursini's credit, they praise her oft-derided performance as Nefer as striking just the right note of exotic detachment), and the excellent casting of Michael Wilding, Gene Tierney (more career and personal difficulties lay in her future at the time), the gorgeous production values, the 11th-hour casting of Edmund Purdom as Sinuhe, and the effectiveness of the classic score by Alfred Newman and Bernard Hermann. And about there, their combined credibility ceases, for all of that information is (and has been) readily known and available to any interested parties who can use a library or Google.
Now, the negatives: For starters, they insist the film was a "sequel" to Fox's huge hit and first widescreen production, The Robe. No, the sequel to The Robe was Demetrius and The Gladiators. Period. For sure, The Egyptian was meant to jump on the widescreen bandwagon of quasi-religious, historical epics, but a sequel it was not. Especially since the events of The Egyptian take place millennia before the events of The Robe.
They claim that Peter Ustinov's character of the lovable scoundrel servant Kaptah is a total invention of the screenwriters and that he never appears in the book. I have my well-worn edition (Putnam, 1949) of the book with me as I type, and Kaptah makes his first appearance on page 75. While still plunging ahead with their "sequel to The Robe" idee fixe, they cite the casting of Jean Simmons and Peter Ustinov as components of that plan by Fox, continually praising Ustinov's performance as Nero, apparently in The Robe. Really? Ustinov was Nero in MGM's 1951 mega hit Quo Vadis. The mad emperor of The Robe was Caligula, memorably played by Jay Robinson in that film as well as it's sequel, Demetrius and the Gladiators. Nero was not even in power during the events of The Robe. While discussing the (eventually) stalled career of Purdom, they omit any reference to his being cast as the title lead in MGM's widescreen epic entry of the following year, The Prodigal, as well as Mature's affinity for the role of Horemheb via not only his accomplishments as a tough guy action hero, the antithesis of Sinuhe, but his own spectacle credentials as well, viz. DeMille's 1949 biblical hit, Samson and Delilah. I am happy to observe that in the Wikipedia entries on both Mr. Silver and Mr. Ursini, The Egyptian is omitted from their list of credits as DVD commentators, for their work is unaccountably shoddy and poorly executed. Twilight Time: As the 3,000 run limited edition of The Egyptian was clearly a hit (all copies gone) don't you think it's time for another re-issue, and with a commentary track that is worthy of the film?
Saadia (1953)
Rates Much Higher Than 1 Star
Thank you TCM for airing this 1953 offbeat adventure drama, no doubt filmed to showcase the exotic beauty of talented Rita Gam. Her portrayal of the outcast Moroccan girl, Saadia, is worthy of one of today's "action heroines" - she rides bareback, she brawls, she is brave, tough, resourceful, and beautiful. Part of the problem with the movie's reputation may be the early 1950s novel on which the film is based, "Checkmate to Destiny: The Story of Saadia" by French writer Francis D'Autheville - it's a multi-layered work that combines adventure, colonialism, and culture clashes in post WWII French-governed Morroco (think Lawrence Durrell meets Khaled Hosseini) and was way ahead of its time. Though the dialog is somewhat stilted, it is remarkable how respectful it is, for the 1950s, towards Arab culture, avoiding most of the obvious stereotypes. Lushly filmed in color by MGM, on location, with excellent stunt work, this film absorbed me immediately. Worth seeing!