"The Egyptian"

[TomJH]

On 10/11/2020 at 12:33 PM, NipkowDisc said:

I thought Bella Darvi's acting good but man is she a dog!

 

You wouldn't be saying that if she was 45 feet taller.

[TomJH]

On 10/10/2020 at 3:44 PM, scsu1975 said:

I saw it several years ago on TCM and liked it, although I'm not sure I would sit through it too many times. 

Just a note on the score: Alfred Newman and Bernard Herrmann both contributed.  Watch the scene where Darvi is being choked underwater; the background music has Herrmann's name written all over it.

Is that the scene in which Herrmann incorporates "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" into his score?

[TomJH]

I watched The Egyptian last evening for the first time in a few years, having forgotten most of it. I enjoy a good costume epic (Spartacus probably being my favourite) and, while I appreciated the film's sets and costumes I found it difficult to care about any of the characters in the film, least of all Sinuhe (Edmund Purdom), who spends the first half of the film degrading himself in his obsessive desire for a Babylonian seductress (the multi wigged Bella Darvi). Truth is when she finally tells her servant to not allow him access to her home any more I couldn't blame her for being contemptuous of him.

And for such a big costume production am I the only one to bemoan the fact that the film has nothing in the way of spectacular action scenes? It was interesting to try to identify which musical passages were done by Alfred Newman, as opposed to Bernard Herrman, though, unlike some other posters here, I don't regard this score as anywhere near the best of either composer. And I rolled my eyes with the screenplay's attempt to find Christian overtures to a story set in ancient Egypt 300 years before Jesus' birth.

Seeing Gene Tierney playing the ruthless ambitious  man-like princess just made me miss how lovely this actress had been just a few years earlier when she played feminine roles.

Overall, The Egyptian is an okay time waster but I can understand why it's not one of the more celebrated screen epics. And to think that it was directed by Michael Curtiz. It only made me more cognizant of the sad decline of the man who had once directed so many of those great Flynn costume adventures that have given me so much pleasure over the years.