An edited
film review by Andrew Wickliffe for thestopbutton.com on 11 April 2006.
Eighty-six
minute movies are not supposed to be boring. Eighty-six minute sound films
anyway. Valley of the Kings manages
to be boring in the first twelve minutes. Even those twelve minutes are boring.
It takes the film until just over the halfway point to actually get moving. Not
interesting, not good but moving. There are three action scenes back-to-back: a
sandstorm, a Bedouin duel, and a fist-fight atop a giant Egyptian statue. The
film tries to start with action too: a horse-drawn buggy chase within the first
six minutes. But chases are hard enough to do in cars, much less buggies.
Valley of the Kings was filmed on location in Egypt, so I
imagine those visuals were much of the prospective appeal, but the writing’s
bad, in multiple ways, and the director doesn’t know how to make the visuals
work for the film. They’re background instead of attraction and the film still
tries to replace content with them. At eighty-six minutes, it’s hard for a film
to take much responsibility, and Valley
of the Kings tells the story of the archeological proof of Joseph in Egypt (something
archeology has yet to prove), and it’s a deep subject. A lot has to go on, and
nothing goes on in Valley of the Kings.
It tries to be a few films - one about this search for evidence, another about an
adulterous relationship, and yet another (action-filled one) about the intrigue
of grave-robbing, illegally selling antiquities and counterfeiting them. In the
end, it doesn’t take any of these subjects seriously and there’s little to hold
the film together except, of course, the locations - which are excellent in the
second half - and Robert Taylor. Valley of the Kings is Taylor and Eleanor Parker’s second of three films
together (for MGM). Their first, Above
and Beyond, was great. This one manages to waste Parker by changing her
character in the third act. She becomes positively unlovable in the last three
scenes, then the film expects the audience to embrace her. She has a cuckold,
played by Carlos Thompson, but the
opening credits tell us the film stars Taylor and Parker. Taylor is getting the
girl, so there aren’t many surprises once it gets going. Taylor is great in the
film and would have been even better had to been serious film about archeology
or adulterous affairs.
The film
has a lot respect for the Muslim characters it portrays, much more respect then
they get today in films - even in culturally sensitive films. It’s a reasonably
important footnote in the history of American perspective of Muslims (Islamic
fundamentalism hadn’t come around yet) and they’re treated with more respect than
the European character.
Valley of the Kings isn’t terrible, thanks to the second
half, but Robert Pirosh is a bad
writer and a bad director. Of the two problems, the writing hurts the film
most. With a good script and another twenty minutes, Valley of the Kings would still not be as good as Above and Beyond, but it wouldn’t be so
middling. [Wickliffe’s rating: * out of 4 stars (25/100)
Credits: Directed
by Robert Pirosh; screenplay by Pirosh and Karl
Tunberg, from a book by C.W. Ceram;
director of photography, Robert Surtees;
edited by Harold F. Kress; music by Miklos Rozsa; released by
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Starring:
Robert Taylor (Mark Brandon), Eleanor Parker (Ann Barclay Mercedes), Carlos
Thompson (Philip Mercedes), Kurt Kasznar
(Hamed Backhour), Victor Jory (Tuareg
Chief), Leon Askin (Valentine Arko,
Antique Dealer) and Aldo Silvani
(Father Anthimos).
Labels: action,
adventure, Eleanor Parker, romance
