HYDE PARK — The Oriental Institute spent the summer embracing campy depictions of ancient Egypt and is ending the film series with one of the campiest.
The museum will show 1955’s “Land of the Pharoahs” at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the museum’s Breasted Hall, 1155 E. 58th St.
The film is a jumble of 1950s Hollywood bias for casts of thousand, big name celebrities in the wrong roles and actual history distorted into nonsense.
Don’t worry, the museum will lead tours of its Egyptian gallery at 5:15 p.m. before the movie so viewers have some grasp of historical truth before jumping into “Land of the Pharoahs.”
The film oddly casts the very English-sounding Jack Hawkins as pharaoh Khufu, who late in the film marries Joan Collins.
Despite famed American novelist William Faulkner working on the script, there are still large holes in the plot.
And though the production went to great lengths to recreate the base of the pyramid in exacting detail and filmed in actual pyramids, in scenes where Khufu is going over designs for the tomb he discards historically accurate depictions of the real pharaoh’s tomb for one dreamed up by the production crew.
Still, the movie, which had nearly 10,000 extras in some of the largest scenes, remains one of director Martin Scorsese’s favorites.
The screening is free and open to the public.
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