WILLIAMDMcCRUM: And of course ... the famous and devastatingly beautiful Barbara Brylska from Russian movies as Kama (good pun on fate!) the vamp:
Actually all four of the ladies in this film are ... connoisseur material ...
You can say that again.
WILLIAMDMcCRUM: The film has all these little touches that are familiar from the tomb paintings and papyri ... like the baskets of severed hands from the defeated Libyan dead, and the wonderful wig structure.
One artistic decision seems to have been to use only very slim actors and actresses: the Egyptian costume flatters that, and doesn't cope with even a pick of fat.
There's a touch of the old Polish church/state tension and some class politics in the film too ... the priests are aligned to the young Pharaoh's mother, and the eclipse ties in with that symbolically, sun obscured by moon of course, his downfall is women and priests.
And there's not a SINGLE silly starched square dishcloth head-dress anywhere, not one. And there never was. A misinterpretation of the illustrations. Those damned head-dresses ruin DeMille's Egypt and belong squarely with Theda Bara.
Good observations.
Agreed on the headdress. But let's not hold it against Theda and C.B. Their wardrobe mistake reflects the historical understanding of their day.
I never heard of the film until this thread but I'm completely won over by it. So I've ordered the box-set on the director and a few of his other films on DVD.
This ebay seller is the only source I know, and he's absolutely reliable.
In region 0 PAL, the box set contains four restorations of Jerzy Kawalerovicz's film:
Night Train (1959) a film noir. Mother Joan of the Angels (1961) about nuns and witchcraft. Pharaoh (1966) intimate epic about Ramses Austeria (1983) a WW1 story
I like this director's austere style and his command over visual metaphor.
This ebay seller is the only source I know, and he's absolutely reliable.
In region 0 PAL, the box set contains four restorations of Jerzy Kawalerovicz's film:
Night Train (1959) a film noir. Mother Joan of the Angels (1961) about nuns and witchcraft. Pharaoh (1966) intimate epic about Ramses Austeria (1983) a WW1 story
I like this director's austere style and his command over visual metaphor.
Now there's a good opportunity to kill four birds with one stone. Thanks for the info.
This is Ramses XIII by the way, not II. Ramses is only a title, many Pharaohs were called that, it just means 'drawn forth from Ra', so it's not really a name as such, despite the DeMilles of the world.
There are region 1 DVD's for NIGHT TRAIN, MOTHER JOAN OF THE ANGELS, AUSTERIA and a few of his other films including his recent version of QUO VADIS which looks stunning. There are also region B blu-rays for some of his films.
