The Loves of Pharaoh

The fabulous restoration of this film alone makes it worth viewing. The pictures are glossy and luscious as to be almost magical. It makes you realize that even though the movies were still silent in the 1920's, the quality of the film was first rate.

Also extremely noteworthy of the version recently shown on TCM is the spectacular orchestral score, really one of the best. Try to actively listen to the music if you can from time to time - especially in the late battle scenes, it is worthy of Wagner.

The sets are over the top, and the cast begins as a cast of dozens, then scores, then hundreds, and then literally thousands as the climactic battle scenes are reached. The Germans really outdid themselves here, easily matching the Hollywood spectacles of the same era. With great skill, director Ernst Lubitcsh was able to interweave outlandish spectacle with a lot of close-up tragedy, perhaps having learned this technique from watching D.W. Griffith fliks.

Unfortunately, the exaggerated emotive acting is a little painful to watch at times. This is the kind of over-acting histrionics that would be mocked by some for many years after the advent of sound.

The plot occasionally borders a bit on the unbelievable as well. I think the silliest thing was when, early in the film, the pharaoh is about to sign a peace treaty with the Ethiopians, when suddenly he is informed that someone is "approaching" the Treasury! In great shock, the king abandons the ceremony to deal with this incredible event personally! This would be like President Roosevelt walking out on the Yalta Conference in order to deal with a dog that had piddled in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House. Silly indeed.

The actor playing the hero "Ramphes" may also have the ugliest haircut in the history of serious film.

But these are minor distractions. "The Loves of Pharaoh" is art, and it is movie history, and the glorious restoration makes it well worth viewing.

TCM presented a beautiful print of Ernst Lubitsch's Egyptian epic THE LOVES OF PHAROAH (1922). Released by Paramount in the US, the film was Lubitsch's last feature in his home country of Germany before setting up camp in Hollywood. (That's another story all together.) The "Lubitsch Touch" in his historically-based epics, such as CARMEN, MADAME DUBARRY, SUMURUN, or ANNA BOLEYN, is the director's ability to present us with the overwhelming sight of the plight of the crowd and then gradually direct our attention to a personal drama taking place within the epic sweep of time and destiny. (He does so more genuinely than DeMille, who seemed to have imitated this approach.) Then, of course,there are the sexual situations, the uncontrollable attractions, and the inevitable rejections that determine the fates of the characters, a theme continued into the director's sophisticated comedies and, later, witty musicals that followed this film. LOVES OF PHAROAH has stunning visual moments both large and small: the crowds working, revolting, being manipulated by rulers to the turning of Emil Jannings to a wall and dropping an outstretched hand, showing his reluctant realization of the futility of his affections. The film is deliberately paced but never draggy. Though there are moments of regret (the depiction of the Ethiopians is particularly stereotyped and inconsistent), this foray into Arabian exotica is a dramatic improvement over the stilted presentations seen in SUMURUN from a couple of years before. With THE LOVES OF PHAROAH, Lubitsch reaches the apex of his epic years (though THE PATRIOT may have reached greater heights, though we'll never know until a print is found).

Ernst Lubitsch's final German film was a conscious effort to appeal to American producers. He had made several large-scale historical, romantic tragedies, but he ended with his best of them with The Loves of Pharaoh. I still wouldn't quite call it good, though. Perhaps its part of the incomplete nature of the film, missing about a fifth of the original film due to the very early cutting of the film in different territories that left a complete print impossible to assemble, but my problems don't seem to align with the missing footage (filled out with explanatory intertitles and a few production stills like the restored version of Erich von Stroheim's Greed). Still, it's a large scale production that mostly manages to accomplish its character-based goals. However, it's beset by Lubitsch's inability to find ways to provide depth to characters in the silent film medium once again, holding it back.

The Egyptian pharaoh Amenes (Emil Jannings) receives the king of Ethiopia Samlak (Paul Wegener) who brings along his daughter Makeda (Lyda Salmonova) to marry Amenes. On their way to the Egyptian capitol, Makeda's Greek slave girl Theonis (Dagny Servaes) comes across Ramphis (Harry Liedtke), the son of pharaoh's architect Sothis (Albert Bassermann) who steals her away and takes her home with him. This angers Makeda and, by extension, Samlak so that when they meet Amenes they bring it up, extracting a vague promise from Amenes to pursue the thief, though he obviously has no intention of following through. He's more concerned with the large gift of treasure that Samlak offers Amenes in an effort to forge an alliance between the two nations, only paying attention to Makeda because of the jewels around her neck.

One of the early issues with the film is how Theonis ends up in the grasp of Amenes. The pharaoh is building a great treasury (it's the name for his final resting place) in the form of a sphinx, and he has forbidden anyone from getting near it, including himself. So, Ramphis decides that, in the middle of the night, to impress Theonis, he's going to take her to the treasury on a lark where they get captured by pharaoh's troops. This is where the thinness of character begins to bite the film. I think it was a single intertitle that said that Sothis was the architect of the treasury at this point (it becomes more explicit and important later), so the film implies a lot of what goes into Ramphis' decision, so much that it feels like it comes out of nowhere and is completely reckless in a way that doesn't really seem to make a lot of sense. This section is where it seems most of the missing footage would be, but it's more about the introduction of Theonis to the Sothis household than Ramphis' doomed excursion.

The commotion brings Theonis to Amenes' attention, and he's instantly smitten with her. This is the other side of the early part of the film that feels thin. It's an instant attraction, more in alignment with lust than love, and the entire rest of the film relies on it. I mean, I get it, but I don't think the film puts in the work to make the emotion from Amenes feel real. In order to appeal to her, Amenes offers Ramphis a pardon that manifests as a lifetime of hard labor in the quarry. So, we have a slave girl attached to a powerful man she doesn't love, a rival nation angered at the disrespect they experience when they find out that Amenes won't give up Theonis, and a young man being crushed by the powerful man. The actual moving of pieces to get them into this place is a bit weaker than it could have been, but it largely works in some rudimentary ways.

It's about the halfway point where the film starts cranking along in a more efficient fashion, taking the early pieces that feel underdeveloped and making the most of them. Lubitsch set out to make an epic to prove to producers that he could work on Hollywood scales, and it's where the movie shines. There's a large battle as Ethiopia invades that's handled really well. It's not just for show either, providing a plot twist that the film follows through on, changing dynamics late in the game in rather drastic ways. It seems like, for a moment, that we're getting some sort of storybook ending where all is well and it's a weird feeling, but there's tragedy to be had hinging on the surprise return of a thought-dead character. These historical movies from Lubitsch really do embrace the tragedy (my favorite final moment being the title character's head in a basket in Madame DuBarry), and he's only ever hampered by his weakness with characters in the silent film space.

I don't think he quite overcomes the inherent weaknesses of character, but Lubitsch ends his German period with his strongest historical film. I still think he's demonstrated a more natural strength in silly, witty comedies than this heavier stuff, but he's also proven to be a competent filmmaker in a variety of genres, if he hasn't really demonstrated a strong command of the silent film form that someone like Fritz Lang had done in the same environment. I look forward to him finishing out the silent period working in Hollywood and making the transition to sound. If anyone needed the transition to sound most, it probably was Ernst Lubitsch.

I viewed an incomplete print of 'The Wife of the Pharaoh' that was reconstructed (from several sources) by Stephan Droessler of the Film Museum in Munich. Even in remnant form, this is a phenomenal film: an epic piece of film-making, with 6,000 extras and elaborate sets. 'The Wife of the Pharaoh' is the nearest Ernst Lubitsch came to making a film like 'Metropolis'.

'The Wife of the Pharaoh' was released in 1922, the same year that Englishman Howard Carter unsealed Tutankhamen's tomb ... but at this time, much of the most important work in Egyptology was being done by Germans, and German interest in ancient Egypt was high indeed. This film is set in dynastic Egypt (Middle Kingdom, by the look of it) ... and the sets, costumes and props are vastly more convincing than anything done by Hollywood in this same era in films such as 'King of Kings', "Noah's Ark" and the Babylonian sequences of 'Intolerance'.

There are of course a few errors in this movie: the elaborate Double Crown symbolising the two kingdoms of Egypt is the proper size and shape, yet the actors heft it about so easily that it's clearly a prop made from some improbably light substance. The pharaoh receives papyrus scrolls bearing messages written in hieroglyphics; this is wrong (the messages would have been written in hieratic, and the king would probably require a scribe to read them on his behalf), yet somebody made a commendable effort to use the proper hieroglyphics ... which is more than Universal Studios bothered to do in any of those 1930s mummy flicks.

Emil Jannings gives an operatic performance as the (fictional) king Amenes. The king of the Ethiopians (Paul Wegener), hoping to make peace with Egypt, offers his daughter Theonis to become the wife of Amenes.

But Theonis falls in love with Ramphis, the handsome son of the king's adviser Sothis. (Ramphis wears a hairdo stolen from Prince Valiant: one of the few really ludicrous errors in this film.) Amenes sentences the lovers to death, then offers to spare Ramphis from execution (sentencing him to hard labour for life) if Theonis will consent to love only Amenes.

There are some truly spectacular scenes in this film, very impressive even in the partial form which I viewed. Paul Wegener gives a fine performance as Samlak, king of the Ethiopians, but he looks like he escaped from a minstrel show: to portray an Ethiopian, Wegener wears blackface and body make-up, and a truly terrible Afro wig. And since his daughter Theonis is presumably also an Ethiopian, why is she white?

There are fine performances by Lyda Salmonova as a (white) Ethiopian slave-girl (the nearest equivalent to Aida in this operatic story) and by Albert Bassermann as the adviser who is spitefully blinded at the pharaoh's order. Theodor Sparkuhl's camera work is superlative, as always, and the art direction is brilliant. Although I viewed only an incomplete version of this film, I've read a surviving screenplay; the script (with some lapses in logic) is definitely the most ridiculous part of this film. But the favourable aspects of this movie very definitely outweigh its flaws. I'll rate 'The Wife of the Pharaoh' 9 out of 10.

It is very difficult to adequately judge "The Loves of a Pharaoh" today. Most of this is because the film has been pieced together--much like a jigsaw puzzle that is still missing a few pieces. While the restored film is better than the insane re-creation of "London After Midnight" (where NONE of the original film exists and it is basically just a slide show with intertitle cards to fill in the gaps), it still isn't exactly complete. About a half dozen times during "The Loves of Pharaoh", scenes are missing and intertitle cards and stills are employed. Because of this, I am choosing not to give a numerical score for the film.

The story is set in ancient Egypt and I'd sure love to know exactly where it was filmed. According to IMDb, it was filmed in Berlin--but what about the desert scenes with huge dunes--they sure don't look like Berlin!

It begins with the king of Ethiopia pledging his daughter to the Pharaoh in order to cement an alliance. However, soon after, the Ethiopian princess' slave, Theonis, is spirited away by the rather dumb Ramphis. When Ramphis and Theonis are caught hiding in the Pharaoh's treasury, they are sentenced to death. But, inexplicably, the Pharaoh is so smitten with Theonis that he agrees to instead send Ramphis to work as a slave and marries Theonis. Considering he doesn't know this woman at all AND marrying her would bring on a war with Ethiopia, Pharaoh's behaviors seem irrational and silly. Just what happens next? See this epic silent and find out for yourself.

While the acting and style of the film is rather dated (even compared to other silents), the film is still rather impressive. It features a huge cast, terrific sets and lots of nice costumes. So, while the story is very weak and overly melodramatic, the overall look of the film is nice. Director Ernst Lubitsch clearly created an spectacle here--albeit one with a plot that needed a re-write as much of it just made little sense. Worth seeing once and a chance to see Oscar-winning Emil Jannings in an early film role as the Pharaoh.