Land of the Pharaohs

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Land of the Pharaohs

Directed by	Howard Hawks
Produced by	Howard Hawks
Written by	Harold Jack Bloom William Faulkner Harry Kurnitz
Starring	Jack Hawkins Joan Collins
Music by	Dimitri Tiomkin
Cinematography	Lee Garmes Russell Harlan
Editing by	Vladimir Sagovsky
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date(s)	June 24, 1955
Running time	144 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$2,900,000 (estimated)
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Land of the Pharaohs is a 1955 Cinemascope epic film made by the Continental Company, Ltd and presented by Warner Bros. It was directed and produced by Howard Hawks from a screenplay by Harold Jack Bloom, Harry Kurnitz and the novelist William Faulkner. The film score was by Dimitri Tiomkin.

The film starred Jack Hawkins and Joan Collins, with Dewey Martin, James Robertson Justice, Kerima and Alexis Minotis. It is a fictional account of the building of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, remembered in Greek as "Cheops". Collins, just 22 during production, played a beautiful greedy woman, a role she would repeat many times over a very long film and television career.

It literally had a cast of thousands (Warner Bros. claimed there were 9,787 extras in one scene^[1]) and was one of Hollywood's largest-scale, ancient world epics, in the spirit of The Robe, The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur and others. The film was shot on location in Egypt and in Rome's Titanus studios.

Existing prints such as the U.S. Warners DVD run 104 minutes but there are unsubstantiated reports of a 144 minute version.

1 Plot
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Plot

In ancient Egypt the Pharaoh Khufu (Jack Hawkins) is obsessed with acquiring gold and plans to take it all with him into the "second life." To this end he enlists the aid of Vashtar (James Robertson Justice), an architect whose people are enslaved in Egypt. The agreement is to build a robber-proof tomb in exchange for the slaves' release. During the years that the pyramid is being built, the pharaoh demands tribute from all the territories. Nellifer (Joan Collins) is the princess and ambassador of the tributary province of Cyprus. Nellifer says that her province is poor and cannot afford to pay the tribute of grain-- so she offers herself to the pharaoh instead. Nellifer becomes the pharaoh's second wife. Later she plots to kill Khufu and take the treasure for herself.