Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

arthur_tafero The Egyptian was a film before its time. Heavily steeped in philosophy and introspection, it was extremely unique for a Hollywood film. Only The Razor's Edge with Tyrone Power made a few years earlier had the kind of incisive content that this movie possessed. The idea that monotheism occurred almost 2000 years before Christianity is a bit misleading, however. The Hebrews were the founders of that concept that predated the Egyptians by several centuries.The production values are first-rate; as is the acting and direction. British actor, Edmund Purdom, gives a powerful performance; one that is highly underrated, as is this film. Victor Mature as a heavy is unusual in itself; as he was never cast as a heavy before or after this role. He carried it off well. Peter Ustinov, as usual, is a wonderful addition to the cast, and adds moments of lightness to a very heavy concept.Gene Tierney is the weakest entry in the film, but Jean Simmons shows off her immense talents, and is smoking hot, as well as convincing. Purdom falls for a Babylonian whore instead of Simmons; I found that to be a bit unbelievable. Otherwise, this film is a classic from beginning to end. Watch for Tommy Rettig, the owner of Lassie, as the son of Simmons. Highly recommended.

vincentlynch-moonoi I tried watching this film several years ago on television, and the print was so bad I simply turned it off. Thankfully, the print being used on TCM now is quite good, particularly important in this film which is filmed quite beautifully with impressive sets and great natural scenery.Movies about Egypt can be rather fickle. Sometimes they do well, other times not. This film made money, and rightfully so...it's a fairly impressive production.One criticism I have of the film is a need for tighter editing in some scenes. This is one reason the film lasts for 139 minutes! It's a good cast. Edmund Purdom plays the physician, around whom the plot turns. Many of Purdom's films were made overseas, so he is not well known to American audiences, but he seems like quite a good actor, and has the looks for it. Victor Mature is here, and essentially plays Victor Mature; I have never been impressed with him. Jean Simmons is here, at a period that was near peak for her career. Gene Tierney is also here as the pharaoh's sister -- a role that seems odd for her, but it works. Michael Wilding is very interesting as the pharaoh. It is interesting to see Peter Ustinov as an aide to the physician. John Carradine makes an appearance as a grave robber. Tommy Rettig ("Lassie") makes an appearance.There is one aspect of the plot, however, that seems very questionable to me. The physician's love affair that brings him to near ruin. It's just not logical. He supposed to be a man of extreme intelligence, advanced almost beyond his time. That he would sell out his parent's chance to live eternally in the Valley Of The Kings, that he would sell his parent's home, resulting in their suicide, seems totally illogical for the character. And all for a woman who was simply base. I just don't buy it.Aside from that, it's a good story. A young physician treats the pharaoh for seizures (epilepsy?). This is a forward thinking ruler who believes in one god (God?). The physician becomes close with a warrior, who eventually wants to murder the pharaoh. In between, he falls in love with 2 women, one of whom, as I indicated, leads him to ruin. The pharaoh's mother dies when the physician is unavailable, and so the physician is sentenced to death, and flees the country. He wanders around that part of the world with Ustinov for a while, eventually discovering the new iron weapons developed by the Hittites. This brings him back to pharaoh, who has forgiven him. The pharaoh is mentally ill and the physician, the royal sister, and the soldier plot to hill pharaoh with the soldier becoming the new leader of Egypt.And that leads to the one thing that I truly dislike about this film. Just before dying, the pharaoh has a soliloquy that sounds very, very Christian. And then, as if to prove that the film is suggesting Christianity, words appear on the screen that prove it. Shame, shame, shame...and pretty poor history.It's worth watching, despite its transgressions.

SanteeFats I found this movie to be pretty good for a Hollywood supposedly historical drama. It is not historically accurate, Victor Mature's character never took the throne, at least as depicted in the movie. The next Pharaoh appears to have actually been a son of Imhotep IV, his name before he changed it after about five years in to his reign.The rise and fall of a nobody physician of the time is the main focus of the plot. He rises to become Pharaoh's court doctor, falls for a very high priced whore who gets him to give here everything he has plus all of his parents including their burial site. After discovering her whoreness by seeing his best friend making it with her, he becomes very disillusioned, leaves Egypt and pursues a life of accruing wealth from his skills as a doctor. He returns to Egypt when he gets an iron sword for curing the Hittite leader. Turning the sword over to the army gets him reinstated in Egypt. The Hittites are invading and the Pharaoh will not fight them. The doctor ends up poisoning the ruler and Victor assumes the throne. The doctor is exiled because he had put poison in Vic's cup along with the Pharaoh's. So instead of becoming the ruler with his half sister he gets sent to the Dead Sea in exile where he writes his life story.

Steffi_P For many of the more highbrow producers, the holy grail of the 50s big picture was the so-called "intimate epic". Daryl F. Zanuck's production of The Egyptian opens with a spiel about the people of this ancient time being ordinary men and women, making this one of the earliest examples of a picture openly setting itself up for that lofty task.The human story of this epic is however unusually pessimistic, with its hero being ruined by his obsession for an evil woman, becoming a bitter rival to his best friend and losing the only woman who really loved him. This being the age of film noir, it's tempting to make parallels with pictures like Scarlet Street and Out of the Past. Of course, the femme fatale plot device is as old as Adam and Eve or Pandora's Box, but it is true that in the 50s there was a tendency for those cynical story lines to creep into the most unsuspecting of genres. There was also a convention in these ancient world epics of bringing Christian or Judeo-Christian philosophy into the picture (God not being a major figure in your typical film noir), although unusually The Egyptian is not a bible story. Instead it uses as its backdrop the rule of Akhenaton, a genuine historical figure who instated a brief period of monotheism in ancient Egypt. And oddly enough the conflation of Aton the sun deity with the Abrahamic God comes across as far more genuine and intelligent than, say, the rather dubious Easter story spin-off of The Robe, and its sermonising is far gentler than that of The Ten Commandments or Ben Hur.In the director's chair we have the highly-respected Michael Curtiz. Curtiz was in many ways a great choice because he was so adept at handling crowds and visual complexity, although old-timers like Curtiz (who made his debut in 1912) tended not to get on well with the cinemascope ratio. But while Curtiz continually makes the mistake of framing his actors from around the knees up as if they were in fullscreen, he balances out the extra width by keeping a lot of depth in his shots, occasionally highlighting the distant focal points for greater definition – such as the dancer in yellow in the bathhouse scene. Often he will place the deepest part of the shot to one side or another to give emphasis to that half of the screen. There's also some of his distinctive use of movement to drive the narrative forward smoothly. When we hear Edmund Purdom's voice-over telling us about the Jean Simmons character, the camera follows her, all the background business disappearing, with the exception of a single extra in one corner. This extra then gets to his feet, drawing our eyes to that corner, upon which the camera pans back to the right to reveal the procession announcing the pharaoh's death. This elaborate yet inconspicuous arrangement segues us neatly from one part of the story to the next.Unfortunately, that very mechanical nature of Curtiz's direction is not ideal for highlighting the acting performances. Then again, perhaps there is not much here to highlight. Lead man Purdom is by no means bad but he is astonishingly dull. This is a major failing with the picture because it becomes difficult to sympathise with him or believe in his actions. In contrast Jean Simmons and Victor Mature while not outstanding players at least had some character and intrigue about them. Thank goodness for Peter Ustinov, whose delightful and immaculate comic delivery here and there allows the movie to break free from its depressing austerity. There's also a colourful yet sadly short appearance by John Carradine as a grave robber. But while Ustinov and Carradine provide entertaining diversions, the only really strong dramatic performance is that of Gene Tierney, who gives a bit of realism to Baketamon, and actually manages to draw that line between folks ancient and modern as mentioned in the opening lines.The Egyptian is admittedly a noble effort to come up with an original and engaging spin on the ancient world epic. The trouble is it's not really enough of one thing or the other. The dramatic human story is simply not well-executed either by cast or crew, and while the whole production may be steeped in a look of authenticity, there is just not enough scope or spectacle to make this a satisfying epic either. The champions of the intimate big picture may have had high-minded intentions, but in truth the genre flourished most with the shameless splendour of Zimbalist and DeMille.