The Egyptian is a 1954 epic film made in Cinemascope by 20th Century Fox, directed by Michael Curtiz and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck. It is based on Mika Waltari's novel and the screenplay was adapted by Philip Dunne and Casey Robinson. Leading roles were played by Jean Simmons (Meryt), Victor Mature (Horemheb), Gene Tierney (Baketamon), Michael Wilding (Akhnaton), Edmund Purdom (Sinuhe), Bella Darvi (Nefer), Peter Ustinov (Kaptah) and Tommy Rettig (Thoth). Cinematographer Leon Shamroy was nominated for an Oscar in 1955.
Plot
In 18th dynasty Egypt (14th Century B.C.), Sinuhe (Edmund Purdom) is an elderly man in exile on the shores of the Red Sea, writing the story of his life. He says he has always been alone, but has had a long, full life. Cast adrift as a baby in a reed boat on the Nile (common practice in that period and not limited to Moses), he was adopted by a middle-aged couple in the city of Thebes. His adoptive father Senmut (Carl Benton Reid) was a physician who served the poor. As a young man, Sinuhe graduates from the School of Life and is respected as a brilliant physician by his classmates, including his best friend Horemheb (Victor Mature), the son of a cheese-maker, who plans an army career.
Sinuhe wants to work for the poor like his father, but has a hard time finding clients. He is approached by Kaptah (Peter Ustinov) who offers to become his servant and garner him some publicity. Another friend of Sinuhe's is Merit (Jean Simmons), a quiet, shy tavern-maid, who is secretly in love with him.
When Pharaoh Amunhotep III dies, the nation goes into mourning. Horemheb and Sinuhe stay up late at Merit's tavern drinking and carousing. Horemheb was refused an appointment by the Royal Guard because he is of lowly birth. Frustrated, he goes out into the desert on a lion hunt and invites Sinuhe along. They encounter a white-clad young man engrossed in prayer. He recites the first lines of a poem honoring the sun god Aten before falling into an epileptic seizure, which Sinuhe recognizes as "the holy sickness" and knows how to help. The young man turns out to be the new Pharaoh Akhnaton (Michael Wilding). Grateful, he asks that Sinuhe remain on call in case anyone in the royal family falls ill; and he assigns Horemheb to the Royal Guard. Sinuhe is summoned by Akhnaton's sister, Princess Baketamun (Gene Tierney) to examine Queen Mother Taia (Judith Evelyn) who is ill as a result of her alcoholism. She asks him strange questions about the circumstances of his birth before dismissing him.
Sinuhe and Horemheb attend a party thrown by courtesan Nefer (Bella Darvi), with whom Sinuhe rapidly becomes infatuated. Learning that she's fond of gifts, he gives her things of increasing value in hopes of impressing her. He even gives her the deed to his parents' house, and the money that would have gone for their embalming and burial, which the Egyptians believe is crucial for the afterlife. She tires of toying with Sinuhe and banishes him from her home. In a rage, Sinuhe attempts to strangle her, and after Nefer's guards toss him into the street, Sinuhe goes to his parents' home, where he learns that they have committed suicide. Devastated, he takes the bodies to the House of the Dead and offers to work there to pay for their embalming. He then buries them in the Valley of the Kings, so they can share in the wealth of the Pharaohs.
Merit finds him there and warns him not to return to Thebes. Because he was in the House of the Dead anonymously and worked there several months, he was unavailable when one of Akhnaton's daughters took ill, and she has died. Akhnaton, mad with grief, has condemned Sinuhe to exile. Sinuhe realizes that Merit has loved him all along, and they share a desperate passion before he leaves with Kaptah.
Sinuhe and Kaptah spend the next ten years wandering the world, At first a penniless beggar in foreign lands, Sinuhe begins to practice medicine again and soon gains an excellent reputation. Called to treat the king of the Hittites, he asks in payment only a Hittite sword of black metal. The black metal was iron.
Upon his return to Egypt, Sinuhe is arrested, and is brought before Horemheb, now the supreme commander of the army. Sinuhe warns that the Hittites plan to attack Egypt and are forging thousands of these iron weapons, which could cut through Egyptian bronze swords. Incidentally, this supposed fact is incorrect. Bronze is actually harder than wrought iron, but iron deposits were more common than the copper and tin needed to make bronze, and thus more weapons could be produced more quickly. This was the reason the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age.[1]
Horemheb takes Sinuhe to Akhnaton's temple where the peace-loving Pharaoh and his family worship Aton, the One God, with flower offerings instead of animal sacrifice. Akhnaton understands about the Hittites but won't declare war, believing that peace is the only way. Horemheb, frustrated, explains to Sinuhe what's been going on in Egypt. Economic instability has caused increased criminal activity, riots and violence in the streets. Pharaoh is disengaged and oblivious, but the priests of the Old Gods are even worse; they've been spreading rumors and fomenting the riots. Many other people, especially the poor and working-class, worship Aten, the One God, as Akhnaton does. Committed to peace and brotherhood, they wear the ankh, which is repeatedly described as "the cross of life".
One day, a diseased Nefer comes to Sinuhe for help, and the physician is surprised to find that he no longer desires revenge against her. He promises to cure her but cannot restore her beauty. Sinuhe returns to his old neighborhood and finds that Merit, now an Aton worshipper, has bought his father's house and lives in it with her son Thoth (Tommy Rettig), whom she says is adopted, but Sinuhe realizes this is his own child and offers to be Merit's husband.
Summoned to court by Queen Nefertiti, Sinuhe examines Akhnaton and believes him to be insane. Akhnaton asks Sinuhe to release him from his pain. The priests of the Old Gods, led by Mikere (Henry Daniell), demand that Sinuhe put Akhnaton out of the way so Horemheb can be made Pharaoh by popular acclaim. Sinuhe refuses and storms out. Baketamon confronts him, reminding him of the day he examined Taia. Before she died, Taia told Baketamon everything: from the information Sinuhe gave her in answer to her bizarre questions, Taia concluded that he was the first-born of Amenhotep III by another of the royal wives. Determined to have the credit for giving Amenhotep his first son, Taia stole the baby and put it in a reed boat on the Nile—where it was found and adopted by Senmut.
Thus, Sinuhe is technically Pharaoh, Baketamon's half-brother, and has the right to rule Egypt. As the Throne Princess (who must marry whoever is Pharaoh), she'll be happy to marry him -- she has previously and repeatedly rejected Horemheb. She asks that he kill Akhnaton, but kill Horemheb too; she'll back him up and so will the priests. Sinuhe is astonished by the news, but when he sees a statue of Amenhotep in the City of the Dead and recognizes the physical resemblance between them, he realizes she is telling the truth. But when she tells him that the army is moving against the Aton worshippers, Sinuhe dashes back to his father's house, fearing for his wife and child. The streets are filled with smoke and fire, and soldiers are arresting and killing the Aton worshippers. Sinuhe finds Thoth and puts him in the care of Kaptah, who escapes with him on a boat leaving Egypt. Sinuhe finds Merit in Akhnaton's temple with the other monotheistic worshippers, just as army troops batter the doors down and kill her, along with most of the others.[2]
Blinded by anger, Sinuhe now agrees to poison Akhnaton, and returns to the palace with Horemheb and seemingly goes along with Baketamon's plan. Pharaoh knows he's been poisoned, but says it is all right, and that now he sees clearly; God is much more than the face of the sun, and one day "other voices" will speak, more clearly than his, and people everywhere will believe.
Inspired, Sinuhe warns Horemheb not to drink from the cup he's been given, but to take the crown and be Pharaoh. Horemheb, rather than being grateful to Sinuhe for saving his life, is furious when he realizes that he could have drunk out of the poisoned cup. He first imprisons Sinuhe, then during a palace ceremony, exiles him from Egypt for good. The film concludes back on the Red Sea. As the now aged Sinuhe finishes up his autobiographical manuscripts, meant for his son to read, he dies, and the words "These things happened thirteen centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ" appear on the screen.
Production
This is very loosely based on The Story of Sinuhe, which does include references to Aten but was written many centuries before the 18th dynasty. The use of the "Cross of Life" ankh to represent Akhnaton's "new" religion reflects a popular and esoteric belief in the 1950s that monotheistic Atenism was a sort of proto-Christianity. While the ankh has no known connection to the modern cross[3], the principal symbol of Aten was not an ankh but a solar disk emitting rays, though the rays usually ended with a hand holding out an ankh to the worshipers. The sun-disk is seen only twice; when we first meet Akhnaton in the desert, he has painted it on a rock, and Sinuhe says "Look! He worships the face of the sun." It appears again at the very end as part of the wall painting above Akhnaton's throne. With that said, the ankh was used in the original novel. Likewise, Akhnaton's dying revelation that God is much more than the face of the sun is actually found among his best-known writings.[4]
Some of the sets, costumes, and props from this film were bought and re-used by Cecil B. DeMille for The Ten Commandments. As the events in that story take place seventy years after those in The Egyptian, this re-use creates an unintended sense of continuity. The commentary track on the Ten Commandments DVD points out many of these re-uses. Only three actors, Mimi Gibson, Michael Ansara and John Carradine, and a handful of extras, appeared in both pictures.The Prince Aly Khan was a consultant during filming, he was engaged to Gene Tierney. Marlon Brando was to star as Sinuhe, but did not like the script and dropped out at the last minute. Farley Granger was then offered the role but also turned it down. Finally it was handed to a young up and coming contract actor Edmund Purdom.
Music
Owing to the short time available in post-production, the composing duties on the film score were divided between two of the best-known composers at 20th Century-Fox: Alfred Newman and Bernard Herrmann.
Newman would later conduct the score in a re-recording for release on Decca Records. Musician John Morgan undertook a "restoration and reconstruction" of the score for a recording conducted by William T. Stromberg in 1998, on Marco Polo Records. The performance of the film score recorded for the film was released by Film Score Monthly in 2001.
Cast
Edmund Purdom and Bella Darvi in
The Egyptian
Marilyn Monroe coveted the role of Nefer, only to discover that it was earmarked for the protegee (mistress) of producer Darryl F. Zanuck, Bella Darvi. This would be the second of only three American films featuring Darvi, who returned to Europe and later committed suicide.
Trivia
See also
References
External links
