Land of the Pharaohs dvd movie.|
Land of the Pharaohs cheap dvd videos, dvd movies for sale |
 |
List Price: $14.98 Our Price: $12.99 You Save: $1.99 Features • Closed-captioned • Color • Dolby • DVD-Video • Subtitled • Widescreen • NTSC In Theaters : 24 June, 1955 DVD Release : 26 June, 2007 |
| [ + Zoom ] [ Buy Now ] | DVD : Usually ships in 24 hours |
|
|
| ♥♥♥♥♥ | 'Her treachery stained every stone of the pyramid!' |
| Howard Hawks and Joan Collins may have spent years talking the film down after its failure at the box-office, but Land of the Pharaohs isn't the kind of guilty pleasure you might expect given its DVD release as part of Warners' Camp Classics Collection.' While it may be hokum (Jack Hawkins' gold-loving Pharaoh determines to build a pyramid that will keep him and his treasures safe from tomb robbers for all eternity while new wife Joan Collins plots to relieve him of them), there's some damn good filmmaking in there as well as a killer ending that help mark it out as one of the best of the 50s widescreen epics. The first 35 minutes, offering a truly spectacular introduction to the world of Ancient Egypt, are particularly impressive, and once the plot is set in motion it's a fascinating look at the sheer logistics of building a pyramid with only human labour at your disposal. The fact that these sequences are filmed with real human labour - literally thousands of real extras - rather than CGI trickery only adds to their real sense of awe.
Things do take a turn for the sillier with the arrival of Joan Collins' scheming temptress, pouting her way from Cypriot ambassador (yes, it's a stretch) to Pharaoh's latest wife and then plotting to separate him from his wife, his life and his beloved treasure in that order while he shows off his godlike powers by wrestling a bull barehanded. In the process, James Robertson Justice's conquered and captive architect trading his life and his talents for his people's freedom and his son Dewey Martin tend to get sidelined. Apparently the film was originally going to be longer but was trimmed down before release, and it's possible that their characters bore the brunt of the cuts. It's been done skilfully enough that it doesn't look like anything is obviously missing, although it does leave the film with no-one to root for: in Hawks' words, "Everybody was a son-of-a-b****." Yet that never really matters, since the film's S.O.B.s are much more interesting than any of the more decent characters, and the film throws in one of the screen's greatest and most delightfully ingenious poetic revenge endings as everyone gets what they richly deserve. A forerunner to his masterly work on The Fall of the Roman Empire, Dimitri Tiomkin's florid and grandiose score may not be subtle, but this isn't a film that calls for musical subtlety: often boasting surprisingly complex construction and deconstruction of themes, this is powerful, epic stuff determined to give voice to the thousands of extras and the be heard above all the wonders and gods of Ancient Egypt themselves. Unfortunately the DVD transfer is somewhat disappointing thanks to the combination of the deeply flawed WarnerColor system that is an absolute nightmare to restore and early CinemaScope lenses which occasionally give you a loss of detail and variable color in the same shot, with long shots suffering worst of all. It's certainly acceptable and there's nothing that can realistically be done to improve it, but it is a shame. On the plus side, Peter Bogdanovich's audio commentary thankfully includes plentiful extracts from his taped interviews with Hawks and the original theatrical trailer is included. Incidentally, for another, less Hollywood take on the subject, seek out Ismail Kadare's superb Albanian novel The Dust of Kings (published in English as The Pyramid) which uses the building of Cheops' Great Pyramid as an allegory for Stalin's Five Year Plans. |
|
|