Land of the Pharaohs
Encyclopedia
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) 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.
(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.
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. Nailla throws herself on a poisonous snake sent by Nellifer in order to save Zanin. Then, Nellifer dispatches her servant Mabuna to kill Khufu at an 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 her lover, Treneh (Sydney Chaplin). 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 the kingdom for which she schemed and murdered.
Vashtar and Senta were released from their sentence of death by the High Priest. They take their now-free people back to their homeland.
1955 in film
The year 1955 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* November 3 - The musical Guys and Dolls, starring Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra, debuts.* June 27 - The last ever Republic serial, King of the Carnival, is released....
CinemaScope
CinemaScope
CinemaScope was an anamorphic lens series used for shooting wide screen movies from 1953 to 1967. Its creation in 1953, by the president of 20th Century-Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection.The anamorphic lenses theoretically...
epic film
Epic film
An epic is a genre of film that emphasizes human drama on a grand scale. Epics are more ambitious in scope than other film genres, and their ambitious nature helps to differentiate them from similar genres such as the period piece or adventure film...
made by the Continental Company, Ltd and presented by Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
It was directed and produced by Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
from a screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
by Harold Jack Bloom, Harry Kurnitz, and the novelist William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
. The film score was by Dimitri Tiomkin
Dimitri Tiomkin
Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin was a Russian-born Hollywood film score composer and conductor. He is considered "one of the giants of Hollywood movie music." Musically trained in Russia, he is best known for his westerns, "where his expansive, muscular style had its greatest impact." Tiomkin...
.
The film starred Jack Hawkins
Jack Hawkins
Colonel John Edward "Jack" Hawkins CBE was an English actor of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s.-Career:Hawkins was born at Lyndhurst Road, Wood Green, Middlesex, the son of master builder Thomas George Hawkins and his wife, Phoebe née Goodman. The youngest of four children in a close-knit family,...
and Joan Collins
Joan Collins
Joan Henrietta Collins, OBE , is an English actress, author, and columnist. Born in Paddington and raised in Maida Vale, Collins grew up during the Second World War. At the age of nine, she made her stage debut in A Doll's House and after attending school, she was classically trained as an actress...
, with Dewey Martin
Dewey Martin (actor)
-Career:Martin was born December 8, 1923 in Katemcy, Texas. His film debut was an uncredited part in Knock on Any Door . He also appeared in The Thing from Another World , co-starred with Kirk Douglas in The Big Sky , played younger brother of Humphrey Bogart in The Desperate Hours , and was...
, James Robertson Justice
James Robertson Justice
James Robertson Justice was a popular British character actor in British films of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.-Biography:...
, Kerima, and Alexis Minotis
Alexis Minotis
Alexis Minotakis, known as Alexis Minotis , was born 8 August 1898 or 1899 in Deliana , Chania, Crete and died on 11 November 1990 in Athens, Greece....
. It is a fictional account of the building of the Great Pyramid
Great Pyramid of Giza
The Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza Necropolis bordering what is now El Giza, Egypt. It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact...
of Khufu
Khufu
Khufu , also known as Cheops or, in Manetho, Suphis , was a Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom. He reigned from around 2589 to 2566 BC. Khufu was the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty. He is generally accepted as being the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of...
, 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) and was one of Hollywood's largest-scale, ancient world epics, in the spirit of The Robe
The Robe (film)
The Robe is a 1953 American Biblical epic film that tells the story of a Roman military tribune who commands the unit that crucifies Jesus. The film was made by 20th Century Fox and is notable for being the first film released in the widescreen process CinemaScope.It was directed by Henry Koster...
, The Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments (1956 film)
The Ten Commandments is a 1956 American epic film that dramatized the biblical story of the Exodus, in which the Hebrew-born Moses, an adopted Egyptian prince, becomes the deliverer of the Hebrew slaves. The film, released by Paramount Pictures in VistaVision on October 5, 1956, was directed by...
, Ben Hur
Ben-Hur (1959 film)
Ben-Hur is a 1959 American epic film directed by William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston in the title role, the third film adaptation of Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The screenplay was written by Karl Tunberg, Gore Vidal, and Christopher Fry. The score was composed by...
, and others.
The film was shot on location in Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
and in Rome's Titanus
Titanus
Titanus is an Italian film production company, founded in 1904 by Gustavo Lombardo . The company's headquarters are located at 28 Via Sommacampagna, Rome and its studios on the Via Tiburtina, 13 km from the centre of Rome....
studios.
Plot
In ancient Egypt, Pharaoh KhufuKhufu
Khufu , also known as Cheops or, in Manetho, Suphis , was a Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom. He reigned from around 2589 to 2566 BC. Khufu was the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty. He is generally accepted as being the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of...
(Jack Hawkins
Jack Hawkins
Colonel John Edward "Jack" Hawkins CBE was an English actor of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s.-Career:Hawkins was born at Lyndhurst Road, Wood Green, Middlesex, the son of master builder Thomas George Hawkins and his wife, Phoebe née Goodman. The youngest of four children in a close-knit family,...
) 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
James Robertson Justice
James Robertson Justice was a popular British character actor in British films of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.-Biography:...
), 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
Joan Collins
Joan Henrietta Collins, OBE , is an English actress, author, and columnist. Born in Paddington and raised in Maida Vale, Collins grew up during the Second World War. At the age of nine, she made her stage debut in A Doll's House and after attending school, she was classically trained as an actress...
) comes as the ambassador of the tributary province of Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
. 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.
One day, Vashtar's son Senta (Dewey Martin
Dewey Martin
Dewey Martin is the name of:*Dewey Martin , drummer/vocalist best known for his association with the band Buffalo Springfield*Dewey Martin , American film and television actor...
) 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. Nailla throws herself on a poisonous snake sent by Nellifer in order to save Zanin. Then, Nellifer dispatches her servant Mabuna to kill Khufu at an 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 her lover, Treneh (Sydney Chaplin). 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
Alexis Minotis
Alexis Minotakis, known as Alexis Minotis , was born 8 August 1898 or 1899 in Deliana , Chania, Crete and died on 11 November 1990 in Athens, Greece....
, billed as Alex Minotis), has Nellifer accompany him into the burial chamber because she "must give the order" to seal the sarcophagus
Sarcophagus
A sarcophagus is a funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved or cut from stone. The word "sarcophagus" comes from the Greek σαρξ sarx meaning "flesh", and φαγειν phagein meaning "to eat", hence sarkophagus means "flesh-eating"; from the phrase lithos sarkophagos...
. 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 the kingdom for which she schemed and murdered.
Vashtar and Senta were released from their sentence of death by the High Priest. They take their now-free people back to their homeland.