Khartoum (1966)
Country: GB
Technical: col/scope 134m
Director: Basil Dearden
Cast: Charlton Heston, Laurence Olivier, Richard Johnson, Ralph Richardson
Synopsis:
Africa, 1885: an Islamist demagogue dubbing himself the Mahdi threatens to engulf the Sudan in ruinous slaughter, and Gladstone's government wrings its hands, sending a principled maverick officer, General Gordon, to Khartoum to evacuate the Egyptian population, to which it owes moral support. Once arrived, he discovers the Mahdi has other plans, and strives to convince the British to send a relief column.
Review:
Reasonably intelligent and lucid bit of armchair history, doubling as another essay in upscale sixties movie-making along the lines of 55 Days at Peking. The production is relatively modest, much of it confined to Pinewood, and the desert battle sequences, though guided by the skilled hand of Yakima Canutt, are decidedly smallscale affairs. Heston contributes one of his more understated, and affecting, performances, while Olivier in his three or so scenes just about manages to allow professional gravitas to overcome memories of the Moor, in the contemporaneous National Theatre production of Othello. The screenplay begins by implying that the Mahdi and Gordon were both equally vainglorious visionaries, but ends up more or less sanctifying its subject.
Country: GB
Technical: col/scope 134m
Director: Basil Dearden
Cast: Charlton Heston, Laurence Olivier, Richard Johnson, Ralph Richardson
Synopsis:
Africa, 1885: an Islamist demagogue dubbing himself the Mahdi threatens to engulf the Sudan in ruinous slaughter, and Gladstone's government wrings its hands, sending a principled maverick officer, General Gordon, to Khartoum to evacuate the Egyptian population, to which it owes moral support. Once arrived, he discovers the Mahdi has other plans, and strives to convince the British to send a relief column.
Review:
Reasonably intelligent and lucid bit of armchair history, doubling as another essay in upscale sixties movie-making along the lines of 55 Days at Peking. The production is relatively modest, much of it confined to Pinewood, and the desert battle sequences, though guided by the skilled hand of Yakima Canutt, are decidedly smallscale affairs. Heston contributes one of his more understated, and affecting, performances, while Olivier in his three or so scenes just about manages to allow professional gravitas to overcome memories of the Moor, in the contemporaneous National Theatre production of Othello. The screenplay begins by implying that the Mahdi and Gordon were both equally vainglorious visionaries, but ends up more or less sanctifying its subject.
Country: GB
Technical: col/scope 134m
Director: Basil Dearden
Cast: Charlton Heston, Laurence Olivier, Richard Johnson, Ralph Richardson
Synopsis:
Africa, 1885: an Islamist demagogue dubbing himself the Mahdi threatens to engulf the Sudan in ruinous slaughter, and Gladstone's government wrings its hands, sending a principled maverick officer, General Gordon, to Khartoum to evacuate the Egyptian population, to which it owes moral support. Once arrived, he discovers the Mahdi has other plans, and strives to convince the British to send a relief column.
Review:
Reasonably intelligent and lucid bit of armchair history, doubling as another essay in upscale sixties movie-making along the lines of 55 Days at Peking. The production is relatively modest, much of it confined to Pinewood, and the desert battle sequences, though guided by the skilled hand of Yakima Canutt, are decidedly smallscale affairs. Heston contributes one of his more understated, and affecting, performances, while Olivier in his three or so scenes just about manages to allow professional gravitas to overcome memories of the Moor, in the contemporaneous National Theatre production of Othello. The screenplay begins by implying that the Mahdi and Gordon were both equally vainglorious visionaries, but ends up more or less sanctifying its subject.