LAND OF THE PHARAOHS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 894, 21 September 1956, Page 15

LAND OF THE PHARAOHS

(Howard Hawks-Warner Bros.) G Cert. NOTHING but the biggest and best | seems to satisfy Howard Hawks, in names or backdrops, and it may surprise the cognoscenti to learn that William Faulkner figures in the credits of this extravaganza as one of the scriptwriters. | I strongly suspect that his buddies, | Harry Kuntz and Harold Jack Bloom, were responsible for most of the dialogue (some of which sorts oddly with a 2880 B.C. setting), but that didn’t prevent a |} large audience of part-time egyptologists | having a cheerful evening’s fun. Land of | the Pharaohs is all about the reign of | Khufu (Cheops to you), who national- | ised the building industry and used it to | construct the Great Pyramid. Khufu (Jack Hawkins), you see, was an acquisitive type, and since the Pharaohs were not among those who subscribed to the you-can’t-take-it-with-you philosophy, he felt the need of some secure retreat where he could stash his bullion and his sarcophagus when the time came. To construct the pyramid he employed (according to Mr. Hawks-or Messrs. Faulkner and Co.) not only the entire Egyptian labour force, but a shrewd architect (James MRobertson Justice), whom he had acquired as a p.o.w. Vashtar is a sort of Mosaic character, who takes on the job provided that Pharaoh will let his people go when it’s over, and not unnaturally it’s a sort of mosaic pyramid he designs-one fitted with an ingenious self-sealing device which double-locks the entire 85,000,000 cubic feet of masonry more or less at the turn of an urn, This not only makes the pyramid about as safe a deposit as Fort Knox, but ensures that the scheming second wife of Khufu (Joan Collins) gets her deserts-or at least a sufficient area of them-#in a super-colossal finale. "The Great Pyramid represents, I suppose, what can be achieved with cheap labour. Howard Hawks, who has hardly left one of its stones unturned (a good deal of the film was shot on location), left me with the same general impression. But don’t imagine that it is all unintentional comedy. A lot of ingenuity has gone into the film, the colour is lively, and if the dialogue is generally bunk the magnitude of the show is enough to- put de Mille on his mettle.