Scheduled viewing for 28 November 2008

LAND OF THE PHARAOHS

Land of the Pharaohs (Howard Hawks, 1955) is scheduled for our 28 November viewing. It was filmed in CinemaScope, a widescreen format that requires careful compositional design in order to fill up the entire screen effectively.
Thus this is a good opportunity to study how a director designs a screen image in a balanced or dynamic way. The film is also one of the simplest examples of widescreen design, since much of the action occurs in long shots and crowd scenes.
Besides production design, as it's related to the film's theme and subject, the viewer should also enjoy the complicated mise-en-scene, often of many laborers hewing or dragging large stones to use for the pyramid. Scope adds to the realism of these scenes, since scope includes a unity of space (avoidance of editing) less likely in regular screen ratio, which relies more on editing to establish screen space.
Although a discussion of musical scores is in a later chapter of your textbook, still you should pay attention to the wall-to-wall musical underscore by Dmitri Tiomkin. This nearly continuous score increases the epic distance of the images, even in close shots. To test this, when you view the film imagine the scenes you're watching without the underscore and notice how dull or shallow the scenes become.
Indeed, the film has little substance. In fact, director Howard Hawks disowned the film and asked it not be shown at retrospectives of his career.
Which brings up the issue of an "auteur" director. An "auteur" ("author") is a director who has a point-of-view or vision and does not merely direct screenplays without personal involvement in the characters and themes of the film. He is, in other words, the true "author" of the film, not merely the assigned director of a screenplay.
The problem with directing epics, such as Land of the Pharaohs, is that the director begins to lose personal control of the film as technicians take over instead. An auteur can put his or her stamp (personal signature) on two or three actors in a frame, but it's more difficult to do with thousands of actors in the frame and a setting thousands of years from one's own time. Hawks complained that he didn't know how an ancient Egyptian should talk.
Yet the auteur critic studies patterns in a director's work. Such patterns can be found even in Land of the Pharaoahs.
For example, Hawks was always interested in groups of men unified by a main goal, whether to defend a jail in Rio Bravo or fly airplanes in Only Angels Have Wings. In Land of the Pharaohs, the slaves are unified by their main goal to build the pyramid and to be set free.
Another Hawksian theme that can be found in Land of the Pharaohs is the emphasis on this life and the "now" moment, rather than following an abstract philosophy of life; in this case, an afterlife such as the ancient Egyptians (among others) believed in.
In fact, the story suggests the conflict between the ancient Egyptians, who used slaves in support of their afterlife, and the ancient Hebrews (Jews) who did not believe in an afterlife but in the dignity of man instead. The film scorns a belief in an afterlife for which humans are sacrificed.
But themes cannot be separated from mise-en-scene, or the staging of the scenes (the way the actors move and talk). Most critics agree that Land of the Pharaohs lacks Hawks' usual touch, especially in the direction of the actors and the way they speak.
Yet the most effective parts of the film are in the superb long shots of the building of the pyramid; the masses of slaves and attendants, especially at the beginning of the film; and the sealing of the pyramid. That's enough to make this a worthwhile film to watch and study, even if it doesn't rank with the best of Howard Hawks.

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