Pharoah (Faraon) (12) |Home Ents Review

This stately and austere Ancient Egyptian political thriller is absolutely unique and riveting to watch. It is, in fact, a sort of anti-epic, which refrains from using many of the engaging if excessive elements of Biblical/Ancient Egyptian epic cinema. 

The young aristocrat who is destined to be Ramses XIII (Zelnik) has grand if costly ideas of making life better for his people and expanding the army to counter the threat of Assyrian invaders. But the priests behind the throne of Egypt want to preserve the sacred treasury as well as their own power. The priests use a beautiful Phoenician priestess (Brylska) as ‘honey trap’ leverage, and follow it up with a doppelganger and a peace treaty with the Assyrians, brokered by a Phoenician merchant who has also agreed to help fund Ramses’ military endeavours. 

It is fair to say that some viewers will find Pharoah ponderous to watch. I think it is a question of expectations. As critic Michal Oleszczyk says in the feature length extra in which he discusses the source novel and the film’s production, Pharoah comes across ‘as if Antonioni had made an Ancient Egyptian epic’. Keep that in mind and you’ll enjoy this immensely. 

There are magnificent sets recreating temples and palaces but their desert setting still overwhelms them; and these sets include minimal details of décor. Again, even though there is a widescreen, Techniscope format, there is also a restricted palette of ochre, white, black and gold. The grey-white backgrounds make external scenes look rather like papyrus drawings of that time.

Don’t expect Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor actorly histrionics as seen in the near-contemporary film Cleopatra either. This film intentionally restricts actorly expression and movement – except for in the battle sequences, which use mobile cameras to great effect. 

Pharoah was immensely popular with Polish audiences when it came out, perhaps partly because it was based on a novel by a nationally treasured 19^th century novelist. As a 1964 newsreel extra also demonstrates, potential audiences would have been aware that the production was both prestigious and stamped with a very Polish identity. It was a mammoth, arduous 3-year undertaking with location shoots in Egypt but most notably the Kyzyl Kum Desert in present-day Uzbekistan. It is pretty hot there: summer temperatures average 50 degrees Celsius and the crew filmed in summer. The 2000 extras were all Soviet army conscripts – lucky them!

All you woke warriors out there will pick up that the Polish actors play Ancient Egyptians with spray-on tans. Michal Oleszczyk’s extra puts this in the context of other films at the time and refers kindly to “the gleeful overreach of Western culture”, the belief that, for example, because Alec Guinness is a good actor, of course he can play a Bedouin or a Hindu prince. Not that he does either here, mind. It may also be worth pointing out that the look and racial origin of the Ancient Egyptians is still a contested subject, although they probably weren’t as Slavic looking as this set of actors. 

Pharoah (Faraon) is out on Blu-ray on 16 September 2024.