Opening Film

This month the cinematographic field celebrates one hundred and twenty three years since the birth of the famous German director Ernst Lubitsch (January 29, 1892 – November 30, 1947). Lubitsch was coeval to the silent and sound motion picture cinema and he attached importance to the Pharaonic Egypt in his films. He directed a silent short novelistic film in 1918 entitled “The Eyes of the Mummy”. Then he directed hid new silent full length also novelistic film “The wife of Pharaoh” which was very successful in the United States in February 1922. This film was lost among other lost films, and an incomplete version was found in Russian and another one in Italian as well as some German scenes in the Munich Stadtmuseum. The missing titles were taken from the Registry of Censor and the scenario. The versions were in a very bad condition, but with the high performance of the German company Alpha-Omega Digital presided by the expert restorer Thomas Bakels the film was restored and brought back to life. The version is now considered as the only nearly complete version all over the world.

The film’s storyline narrates that the mighty pharaoh, who the peoples strongly fear for his unmerciful oppression, deeply falls in love with a Greek slave girl of the Abyssinian king. The Abyssinian king claims his slave girl and the pharaoh refuses to deliver her and he marries her. The king of Abyssinia waged war on Egypt to get his slave girl back, he succeeded at the beginning leaving the pharaoh in the desert thinking he was dead.  This success changed into a defeat due to the precise plan that the competitor pharaoh had set forth for the love of the girl. During the celebration for the nomination of the competitor as king, the pharaoh returns claiming his wife. The king solicited the pharaoh to let him keep his girl giving up the throne. The military leaders were furious that the king gave up the throne for a lady betraying them. He leaves the castle with his lover but the people followed them and pelted them with stones killing them. The pharaoh was devastated by his wife’s death and went back to the castle destroyed and he died.

The film was directed in the German desert and the director built a complete Pharaonic city inspired from the temples of the southern Egypt. He attached high importance to Pharaonic and Abyssinian costumes in accordance with the film’s timing. The wide desert land helped in managing all the groups specially in the war time during the battle between armies.

dr. Farida Mareiy