It is, if only for the overbearing production design, magnificently intrusive music score (co-written by two legendary screen composers), and sheer extravagance of it all. That's not to say this picture, like most epics of it's kind, isn't a worthy indulgence. The script quality ranges from the sublime (the bordello sequences) to the ridiculous (the royal palace scenes) while the performances, even the best of them (Ustinov, Darvi, Tierney), are mundane at best. The completed production is more a tribute to the state-of-the-art in mid-century production values and presentation than a high-quality example of epic filmmaking. Alas, Brando dropped out of the project and was replaced by Edmund Purdom, whose acting is the antithesis of "the method". Zanuck had high hopes for this extravagant production, including a major casting coup when Brando signed on for the lead. I learned to bend my body to them, but that was all. For ten years I served them in the school that I might earn the right to call myself a physician. All the learning of Egypt lay in the keeping of the gods. The future scientists, philosophers, statesmen and generals. In the School of Life were trained the chosen young men of Egypt. Until the day came when I was ready to enter the School of Life. I used to wander alone on the banks of the Nile. From the rich he could have commanded princely fees, for he alone, in Thebes, was master of the ancient art of opening skulls. My foster father lived there by choice because he was also, by choice, physician to the poor of the city. I grew up on the waterfront of the city in the house of my foster parents who had saved me from the river. Thus the city of Thebes was accustomed to dispose of its unwanted children. I rode alone on the bosom of the Nile in a boat of reeds dawbed with pitch and tied with fowler's knots. You must weigh the good against the evil, the passion against the tenderness, the crime against the charity, the pleasure against the pain.
I have tasted passion, crime and even murder. I will leave only this, the story of my life. Soon the jackals and the vultures will make a poor meal of what is left of me. In my place of exile on the shores of the Red Sea. Sinuhe: I, Sinuhe the Egyptian, write this.
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