This Polish epic about the intrigues that went on in the court of Ramses XII and his young successor Ramses XIII is the very antithesis of anything Hollywood might have turned out. It's certainly stately and visually superb and its battle scenes smack of 'realism' rather than artifice but it's also ponderous and with a plot that's convoluted at best, (being a mid-sixties Polish film its problems had to reflect the Poland of the time), and is finally something of a bore.
Yes, Jerzy Kawalerowicz's (he of "Mother Joan and the Angels" fame), "Pharaoh" is an intelligent epic, modern not just in its outlook but in its style and with none of the anachronisms of DeMille or those widescreen American spectacles of the fifties but there were times when I would have given my right arm for something cruder, something garish, for a dollop of bad taste but no such luck; this is a Polish art-movie after all and it's as po-faced as they come.
On the plus side Jerzy Zelnik, (still only twenty-one when the film was made), brings real gravitas to the part of the young pharaoh, (he also plays his double, the scheming Lycon), though again I wished he would lighten up a bit on occasions and it was clear even at this early stage his career was assured. It's certainly not a bad film by any means and it does have its admirers, ( critic and scholar Michal Oleszczyk being one as he clearly demonstrates on his very in-depth 'Afterword'), but if I must go back to ancient Egypt give me Hawks' "Land of the Pharaohs" any day.
