Blu-ray Review: The Egyptian (1954)

As that newfangled invention they called television gained acceptance with the American public, movie studio execs found themselves in a panic. As such, they developed something they dubbed “Cinemascope” — a large wide screen to lure people out of their homes — and started shouted something to the effect of “Look, the movie screen is not square anymore like it is on the TV: it’s a big rectangle now!” to get their attention (ironically, following the advent of widescreen TVs in the 2000s, IMAX theaters would revert to a more “squarish” look — go figure). They even went the extra mile to create something called a “4-track magnetic stereo system,” or “Dolby” if you prefer.

OK, so new-and-improved screen format? Check. Weird-sounding audio structuring? Check. Now then, what else can you do in order to sell tickets? Why not take viewers all over the world. Better still: why not take them to new worlds — new worlds that are really rather old? And thus, the “Historical/Biblical Epic” was born. Throughout the ‘50s, movie studios cranked out one long, ambitious and oh-so-costly movie after another, with titles such as Demetrius and the Gladiators, The Ten Commandments and The Robe.

They swept moviegoers back to the times of kings, awarded Hollywood bigwigs like Darryl F. Zanuck with multiple opportunities to stamp their names across the country, engaged in America’s unbridled obsession with Christianity (thank you, Hayes Code!) and gave beefy Victor Mature many chances to strut his stuff. The Historical/Biblical Epic kick continued for many years, before its own boisterous weight gave way to its demise at the hands of movies like Cleopatra (1963). Prior to that (in)famous Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton flop, however, there was another box office failure that threatened to sink the career of Zanuck: The Egyptian.

Once again giving Victor Mature a part as the movie’s macho-kind-of-guy, The Egyptian immediately loses its foothold with its audience by not making him the main character, giving a newcomer by the name of Edmund Purdom the starring role as an Egyptian physician named Sinuhe. But it isn’t the casting of Purdom as the film’s bottom-billed titular protagonist that causes its audience to start examining the ceiling for cobwebs, it’s the fact that Sinuhe is a total antihero. Wimpy, aimless and without a whole hell of a lot of common sense, Sinuhe isn’t the kind of feller you can immediately warm up to — and, his story first progressed over the course of this two-hour-plus movie in 1954, the general public (as well as the critics) found it next-to-impossible to sympathize with him.

Article Author: Luigi Bastardo

Luigi Bastardo is the disgruntled alter-ego of Adam Becvar, a thirtysomething lad from Northern California who has watched so many weird movies since the tender age of 3 that a conventional life is out of the question. …

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