Gengis Khan il conquistatore

I stumbled across this obscure movie earlier today and it was a pretty decent film. Based on the life of Genghis Khan, it's a little bit too scampy on the script but the scenery and music are gorgeous, and you can't go wrong when Bob Simmons (the early James Bond films) is your stunt coordinator. Omar Sharif gave a good performance, but I kept getting distracted by Stephen Boyd every time he appeared onscreen (mainly because in this movie he looks A LOT like a young Timothy Dalton, which is not a problem for me since I'm a big Dalton fan). The only performance I had a problem with was James Mason's campy Chinese ambassador. All in all, not a bad way to spend a couple hours.

This is a biopic of Temujin (Carlo Cura/Omar Sharif). This starts with the massacre of his tribe and being taken captive. He would escape and slowly rebuild his tribe. His shaman explains that there are three circles. Their middle circle is full of poor fighting tribes while the Chinese and the white Westerners are rich in the two outer circles. He would conquer the whole Mongolian steppe and meet the Chinese emperor.

This is an old Hollywood epic. It follows the tradition of western actors playing Asian characters. I don't expect any better but it is still very old fashion and dated. The story is fictional, but to be fair, the actual history is mostly written legends and oral traditions. The story does lose steam over time. There is no criticizing the caliber of the cast despite their incorrect race. It's all very grand and very old.

Irving Allen went all the way to Yugoslavia to make this foolish attempt in Technicolor and Panavision to capitalise on Omar Sharif's new-found celebrity which actually carried a disclaimer from Talking Pictures for the myriad racial caricatures on display.

The international cast represents every conceivable ethnicity except for a bona fide Mongolian. Familiar Asian types include Stephen Boyd, James Mason, Robert Morley, Michael Hordern, Telly Savalas, Eli Wallach, Woody Strode, Yvonne Mitchell, Kenneth Cope and Jacqueline Pearce (the latter pair playing Francois Dorleac's brother and Wallach's daughter; the craziest line being Miss Dorleac's description of herself as "ugly-looking").

This has about as much to do with the real Genghis Khan as the Hughes film"The Conquerer".If you want to know about the real historical figure,read Lamb's 1920s book.That aside,we have to appreciate the production values of the film.Sets,props,etc.,are all ok.None of these people,however,can scarcely be imagined as Central Asians.Greek Savalas and Alabaman Strode come closest.Wallach,as the Shah,makes an acceptable sly villain,and not an unbelievable Levantine.Everybody else is not only much too European,but much too Nordic,as well.(Sharif is only a minor exception to this generalisation.)And Morley,Mason,and Hordern all act as though they wandered in from a road company of "The Mikado".Watch this film for amusement,and perhaps free-wheeling historical fiction(aka Robert E. Howard),but don't take it too seriously.

I remembered enjoying this film when I saw it as a pre-teen on television in the '60's. I have remained an avid fan of adventure films and epics. So, when it was aired yesterday on TCM, I tuned in with anticipation. It had not aged well. Perhaps all of the anomalies are more difficult for a mature movie fan to accept.

The best parts of this film are the locations, the sets, the costumes and the props. Even so, the sets are never quite convincingly grand enough. They retain the flavor of sets. The photography never captures the locations in a way that conveys the vastness of Central Asia. And the impact of the costumes and props is diminished by the fact that they are at the service of a predominantly Caucasian cast attempting to portray the tribes of Mongolia.

Blonde Francoise Dorleac, who portrays Genghis Khan's wife is the most glaring racial anomaly. But the entire cast is similarly anomalous. At least Stephen Boyd and Omar Shariff aren't blond. But Englishmen, James Mason and Robert Morley look hopelessly out of place. (I personally wondered how people of Oriental heritage reacted to Mason's stereotypical pronunciation of the letter "L" as an "R!") I don't really find a lot of fault with the portrayals offered by Mason and Morley, although I do agree with the suggestion of several reviewers that they seem like they wandered in from a production of the Mikado.

Lastly, I cringed at the soundtrack - typically Occidental-sounding pseudo-epic orchestrations with grandiose flourishes. The heroic-sounding 4/4 marches were typical of the Sword and Sandal epics of the day. Only a stray chord here and there suggested an Oriental setting.

In that era, it was inconceivable to cast Orientals in the principal roles of a film of this one's pretensions. Under the circumstances Hollywood would have done better to simply avoid attempts to depict tales of Asian peoples.

In the end, bizarre casting and completely Occidental-sounding music render this film difficult to swallow for a film-goer looking for anything beyond a shallow adventure story. With the number of Oriental actors in Hollywood films today, a GOOD portrayal of the life of Genghis Khan is ripe for filming!