LAND OF THE PHARAOHS/HELEN OF TROY - Andy's Warner Archive Reviews

[AndyDursin]

LAND OF THE PHARAOHS
7/10

HELEN OF TROY
6/10

Action, adventure, and Cinemascope splendor are ingredients that Hollywood studios attempted to inject into the box-office of the mid 1950s, with Warner Bros. offering a pair of often maligned epics now beautifully restored on Blu-Ray. Leading the way from Warner Archive is LAND OF THE PHARAOHS (104 mins., 1955), a spectacular restoration of director Howard Hawks’ widescreen box-office disappointment from the mid ‘50s. Less interested in adhering to the “Biblical Epic” formula of its time than some of its peers, this Cinemascope affair – co-penned by William Faulkner – is instead a fascinating portrait of Jack Hawkins’ Pharaoh wanting to construct a great pyramid and doing so with the assistance of an architect (James Robertson Justice) now a slave among his people.

Soapy intrigue via Joan Collins’ queen adds camp value to a film that’s high on spectacle (check out all the extras, back when they weren’t generated by computers!) and enriched by a marvelous Dimitri Tiomkin score. The movie is a little stilted and downright silly in places but it’s never less than entertaining – plus offers a marvelous ending – and it’s all enhanced by one of the year’s best catalog presentations on Blu-Ray.

Warner Archive’s restoration offers a colorful, detailed, nearly immaculate 1080p (2.55) transfer that makes all the strong components of Hawks’ production that much more enjoyable on home video. From its end-to-end stacking of extras to its vibrant color and the glorious Tiomkin orchestral score, presented here in a robust 5.1 DTS MA mix, this Archive Blu-Ray easily ranks as one of the finest restorations of its kind in recent years. Archival extras include Peter Bogdanovich’s commentary, interpolated with his vintage Hawks interviews, plus the trailer and WB cartoon “Sahara Hare.”

Shortly after “Pharaohs,” Warner dipped back into the well for another Cinemascope affair meant to steer audiences away from the cathode rays of their TV sets and back into theaters. HELEN OF TROY (121 mins., 1956), shot in Rome, offers director Robert Wise behind the helm of a romantic adaptation of Homer’s “Iliad,” pairing Rossana Podesta’s Helen with Jack (Jacques) Sernas’ Paris – the ill-fated lovers whose romance tore apart ancient Greece.

Though not appearing in the same crisp, pristine condition as “Pharaohs,” “Helen of Troy” still offers a color-drenched transfer and a gorgeous 5.1 stereo soundtrack. The picture boasts a wonderfully lyrical Max Steiner score that, like Tiomkin’s “Pharaohs,” works overtime to supply a sense of grandeur to big-screen dramatics that seldom support the level of spectacle – from sets worked on by future Oscar winner Ken Adam to its Harry Stradling cinematography and scores of extras – the movie offered to audiences. The dubbed-over leads don’t generate the star power many of its counterparts did at the time, and the characterizations outside of Helen and Paris are mostly lightweight, nearly comic book in nature. Instead, the accent is on a fast-moving story that packs most of its action into a rip-roaring finale.

Fans of the film ought to be thrilled with the transfer and sound, while Warner has included a few vintage TV segments that are marred only by their jerky frame-rate encoding. For Golden Age fans this makes for a terrific double-bill with “Land of the Pharaohs,” a pair of “Widescreen Spectaculars” as only Hollywood could make them back in the ‘50s.