Land of the Pharoahs

Land of the Pharoahs (Howard Hawks, 1955) Director Fritz Lang once said famously that Cinemascope—a popular widescreen movie format in one of the studios' experiments to lure people away from their televisions and back into theaters—was only good for shooting "a funeral, or for snakes, but not for human beings; you have a close-up and on either side, there's just superfluous space." 

The aspect ratio of 2.66:1 proved a challenge for film-makers and one determined to solve it was Howard Hawks, one of the least "showy" of directors when it came to camera-angles and presentation. Hawks' formula up until that time had been the standard boxy Academy ratio (1.37:1) in an unpretentious un-fussy style, shooting at mid-height and without a lot of distracting camera movement. The focus was actors and performances; you showed off in front of the camera, never behind.

But Cinemascope was a challenge for any film-maker and Hawks began to design a movie that might showcase the format's strengths by story, and chose the building of the pyramids as its theme (after all it was a great source for snakes and funerals). 

And parades...lots of parades. For the story, Hawks turned to his frequent collaborator, the acclaimed author William Faulkner (Hawks' brother was his Hollywood agent). Faulkner had worked wonders "breaking" problematic stories for the screen (including Hemingway's self-admitted "worst story" To Have and Have Not). To flesh out the story, Harry Kurnitz—who could be counted on to lighten up entertainments and would write Hawks' Hatari!—and Harold Jack Bloom (who had just won an Oscar for his first screenplay, Anthony Mann's The Naked Spur) were brought in to make something more of a movie about the construction of the pyramids.

What they came up with somewhat ingenious, mixing elements of biblical tales with soapy melodrama. In ancient Egypt, the conquering Pharoah, Khufu (Jack Hawkins), decides that the world is not enough and decides that he must make a place for himself in the after-life. He decides that he will create a great tomb for himself, using the labor garnered from all the civilizations that he has under his thumb. Knowing full well that he is approaching the end of his life and that the project may take years (if not decades), he begins the process of making his final kingdom. He begins by taxing all of the territories of his empire to pay for it (government is government), and to take as many treasures with him to impress the many kings and queens and gods that have gone before him.

From one of the kingdoms, he enlists the aid of the greatest architect, Vashtar (James Robertson Justice), but like any construction project there is a "punch list": the tomb must be vast to hold Khufu and his treasures and impressive in its scope; it must be impenetrable, unable to be entered or exited, in order to discourage any would-be grave-robbers attracted to the treasures within; to make sure that its secrets will never be disclosed, Vashtar must die upon the pyramid's completion—an extreme example of termination after work is finished. In return, Khufu will free Vashtar's people...the ones that survive building the thing, of course. No such concept as worker's comp in the slave trade. Vashtar agrees, and, with his son (Dewey Martin) Senta's assistance, begins the plans for the intricate tomb.

But, he's not the only one doing any planning, as the relationships plotline starts to get rather soapy ("like sand through the pyramid run the days of our lives..."). Cyprus, pleading poverty, instead sends its Princess Nellifer (Joan Collins) as tribute. She's haughty and gives Khufu so much attitude that he decides to have her whipped. Then, just to show how stable Pharoahs could be back in that day and age, Khufu takes her as his second wife over the objections of Queen Nailia (Kerima) and his old friend, confidante and High Priest, Hamar (Alexis Minotis). Sounds healthy...

Joan being Joan, she immediately starts to make big trouble in little Egypt: she begins by challenging just how much gold Khufu is amassing (since her kingdom contributed none of it), and demands to see it for herself. Khufu thinks she's being a little impudent, but, being Khufu, he has to prove his worth to the woman from the country that pled poverty. Nellifer is impressed and decides to take a necklace for herself, which really pisses off Khufu, who removes it forcibly and throws it back in the pile. But (Joan being Joan) all that does is to light the fire of some serious plotting, first seducing Khufu's captain of the guard (Sydney Chaplin) and plotting with him to kill Queen Nailia, her son, and Khufu himself, so that she can rule Egypt and keep all that gold for herself. She's just a bad person...

The project takes decades to complete, and Hawks keeps track with slave-working montages, the graying of characters' hair and Senta's growth from child to young hunk. It is an engineering marvel, but anyone who enters must be blindfolded, lest they betray the secrets of the tomb and be killed for it. Vashtar hedges the bet, though, for Senta, who his father tasks with completing the Pyramid should he die. Senta's knowledge is kept secret for the plan to work.

It's a good thing, too. On an inspection tour of the work, Khufu is injured by a falling beam and Senta reveals to him that he can prevent any premature burial by helping the Pharoah out of the complicated interior. Khufu, having better taste in friends than he does in wives, gratefully thanks Senta but refuses to forestall his death for knowing the secret of the Pyramid, but offers the young man anything in return for his help. Senta chooses to free Nellifer's slave-girl Kyra, who he's sweet on and who risks being punished with the lash by the evil Queen.

The plot is far less intricate than the tomb itself (which is something of a sand-powered marvel and would whip Indiana Jones), and turns out being the most effective thing in the script, becoming something truly sought after by all parties and a way to resolve all conflicts. For all the machinations in the court, it's the grave that...appropriately...settles all accounts in a very satisfying way. It just takes a long time to get there and tries the patience and nerves while the House of Pharoah unravels and the audience waits for anything that seems noble happens.

And that's unusual for Hawks. His films, at their most entertaining and thoughtful, feature disparate individuals forming a working unit, a clan, a force to be reckoned with. Land of the Pharoahs has disparate tribes and peoples working to build a pyramid, yes, but they're doing it as slaves, not by choice, which is a perversion of the Hawks paradigm. The lead figure is a complete narcissist, no matter how accomplished he may be, and a bit of a fool. The closest comparison Land of the Pharoahs comes to in previous Hawks films is, unusually, Scarface, where another "Kingpin" is undone by his weaknesses and passions. But, where Hawks could work contemporaneously with a gangster, the Pharoah left the filmmakers...and audiences...high and dry.

The film was a box-office failure, a rarity in Hawks' career and costly in both time and money—two years and 3 million dollars. Years later, he would offer up that he "should have had someone in there that you were rooting for. Everybody was a son of a bitch." Not exactly true, as Vashtar and Senta are at least noble people and competent, as well. But, it was missing Hawks' banter that generated wit and humor—Hawks told Peter Bogdanovich "we didn't know how a Pharoah talked." He did, however, make a picturesque film filled with crisp detail and thousands of extras that filled that daunting Cinemascope frame almost to bursting.*

The film's failure weighed on Hawks and he spent the next years travelling in Europe and when he came back, he came all the way back—to the western genre (he hadn't made one in ten years) and that film's star John Wayne, making Rio Bravo, which was a box office smash.

* Interesting about the old directors—they could figure out what to do with those unusual fame aspect ratios—John Ford was surprisingly adept using Cinerama during How the West Was Won.

The Big Sky

The Big Sky (Howard Hawks, 1952) A.B. Guthrie's novel about the exploration (and decimation) of the West by Eastern immigre's is considerably shortened by Hawks and Dudley Nichols, who start at the meeting of Jim Deakins (Kirk Douglas) and Boone Caudill (Dewey Martin) and their adventures of a keelboat going up the Missouri and leave it at that. Nothing about how Boone's a little savage who ran away from home after nearly killing his father, nothing about the unpleasantness that would follow, or the results of Boone's bad temper. No, this one's pretty much good times with some rough waters and bad rivals, and everybody gets along famously. It's vintage Hawks, but it ain't Guthrie. In fact, Hawks eliminates the one character in Guthrie's trilogy ("The Big Sky", "The Way West", "Fair Land, Fair Land") who endure throughout—trapper and guide Dick Summers.

Re-writing is nothing new to Hawks (as a work habit, he'd re-write the next day's script the night before just to keep things fresh, sometimes abandoning the plot altogether if he thought it wasn't going in the right direction).  His great western, Red River, was completed four years previously, he followed it up with a musical remake of his own Ball of Fire with Danny Kaye, gone overseas with Cary Grant to make I Was a Male War Bride, then made his first foray into science fiction (but very much in the Hawks tradition of team-building) with The Thing (From Another World).  The Big Sky is different—the 50's would be something of an experimental phase for Hawks, going deeper into his subjects and philosophies than previously—in that cowboys and cattle aren't the prime motivation. Fur trading is. And to do that, you don't go by horse, you go by boat and the challenges there are far different and maybe a bit more challenging than crossing the plains.  You go where the water goes and it's never a straight line and there are obstacles around every turn.

Guthrie's story is a bit like the Lewis and Clarke expedition (without the government funding), and both versions for page and film borrow the story of Sacagawea from the Corps of Discovery, whose presence (by coincidence) made acquiring ponies for the rugged trek across the Rocky Mountains from the Shoshones a foregone conclusion. This came about as, unbeknownst to the Corps, Sacagawea had been stolen from the Shoshones as a child and her translating skills brought her face to face with the standing chief...who happened to be her brother. In the same way, the character of "Teal Eye" (played by Elizabeth Threatt, in her only film) is brought back to her tribe to help in the fur negotiations. She also serves as a point of rivalry between Dawkins and Caudill, but it all gets resolved to everybody's satisfaction.  

It fits into the Hawks template of disparate groups coming together for a single purpose: Hawkins finds Caudill, they're looking for Zeb Calloway (Arthur Hunnicutt, nominated for an Oscar for this performance, and he'd be playing, basically, the same role in Hawks' 67' Western El Dorado), who they meet in jail (problem solved, efficiently), then once Zeb is bailed out by the keel-boat Captain "Frenchy" (Steven Geray, and we don't know if he's related to "Frenchy" in To Have and Have Not), and the adventure meanders, like a river, with some tributaries involving a rival fur trading company, Deakins' ability to get hurt (and heal rapidly, apparently, and at one point, Hawks makes a comic episode out of amputating one of the character's fingers!). He isn't nearly as concerned with ethnic authenticity as John Ford—he does use Ford's Hank Worden as a Shoshone guide as comic relief, but at least he's competent comic relief.

There have been a couple versions of this one floating around, and because it was done for RKO late in its life, and been passed from studio to studio, it's in fairly ragged shape. Russell Harlan's black-and-white cinematography was nominated for an Oscar, but it's a little dim to see why, given the shape the film is in, even the "complete" version that TCM is running on. It needs a major restoration, which is hard to come by if the film is in the second row seating of a director's Hall of Fame.
  
Perhaps one day, maybe, when someone mounts a Kirk Douglas retrospective, or decides to a DVD release of it, at all.