Swan Songs

Sorry folks, but this tender moment NEVER HAPPENS in the film.

Twilight Time’s latest DVD release  - The Left Hand of God [M] (1955) - (limited to 3000 and available only via Screen Archives Entertainment) features a really lovely transfer of this extremely peculiar drama that isn’t wholly satisfying, but maintains a strange aura of sadness because it marked the career swan songs of its two leads, Humphrey Bogart and Gene Tierney. Both actors still appeared in a few films, but certainly for Bogart, the sadness is being aware he was a mere two pictures away before cancer stole him from the art form that gave fans so much pleasure.

The Return of The Egyptian (1954)

A cautionary note: Edmund Purdom never experiences this moment in THE EGYPTIAN with miniature Egyptian queens, Babylonian whores, and lower caste barmaids.

Perhaps due to its long periods of unavailability, The Egyptian [M] (1954) has developed cult following among connoisseurs of ancient / Biblical epics, fans of composers Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Newman, and cineastes with a taste for big budget productions starring iconic silver screen stars Victor Mature, Jean Simmons, and Gene Tierney.

It’s also the film Marlon Brando walked away from because he had issues with the script, its director, and supporting actress Bella Darvi; Bella Darvi herself, a shapely concoction written off by period critics as an incompetent if not wooden, cross-eyed actress, and sometime lover of Fox CEO / Egyptian’s producer Darryl F. Zanuck; and co-star Edmund Purdom, who never clicked with audiences, and disappeared in a series of European genre outings for a few decades.