Cairo

Of course don't expect to find in this British movie the magnificence of the John Huston's genuine, authentic material. But George Sanders brings his own touch and nobody can regret that. The basic scheme remains the same as in the original. The actors are less powerful as the American cast but this Wolf Rilla's movie is worth watching, and also a bit rare, hard to catch. I won't say it is a masterpiece but for anyone interested in crime films from all over the world, and from old times, this one is absolutely for you. And Cairo atmosphere, settings brings something exotic, quite different from the urban jungle of the ASHALT JUNGLE;

I knew that Faten Hamamah, the Egyptian superstar, played a role once in am MGM movie. But it didn't know it was Cairo until I had seen the movie.

Faten Hamamah has been the biggest female superstar in Egyptian cinema since the 50s but unlike Omar Sharif, her ex-husband who became a Hollywood superstar after he got an excellent chance to show his abilities in Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago though he was not the best Arab actor at that time; unfortunately this movie did not give her a fare chance to be an international superstar.

Anyhow, still many Arabs, including myself, want to hear and see Faten Hamamah (and some other Egyptian stars at that time) speaks English!

George Sanders, fresh out of prison, has developed a plan to steal King Tut's jewels, worth a fortune. He enlists an old friend and then gets in contact with a small group of men. Unfortunately for these guys, there are lots of pitfalls along the way because of the human element, mostly that of greed. The guy who is going to finance the operation and the fencing of the artifacts, turns out to want the whole thing. The deed is done but a stray bullet takes out one of the men. There are others who want in and we also have an unstable man who is explosive and dangerous to himself an others. When it's all over, one wonders why he bothered. Even Sanders is sort of blah.

A b&w crime caper starring George Sanders, Richard Johnson, and several leading Egyptian movie stars, including Faten Hamama, Ahmed Mazhar, Kamal El Shinawi, Shwikar, Salah Nazmi, Nahed Sabri, Ezzat El Alaili, Yousuf Shaaban, and Said Abu Bakr.

Sanders is a British thief who comes to Cairo to recruit and lead an international team of villains to rob a collection of King Tut jewels from the Cairo Museum. The team includes a Brit lock-busting expert who has settled in Cairo and married a local girl; a Greek underground gambling-joint operator, a Turkish import/export businessman, an Egyptian driver, and an young Egyptian hashish addict.

Each character on the team is attached to a subplot.

Not a bad production. Filming took place in Cairo. Rewarding scenes from bazaars, marketplaces, cabarets, inner city streets; as well as rural scenery. Some claim that the film is a nearly scene-by-scene remake of John Huston's "The Asphalt Jungle". Available on YouTube. Rated a weak to fair 5.4 on IMDb.

... Asphalt Jungle (1950), the story of a well-planned jewel heist gone horribly wrong. That film was directed by John Huston. This one was directed by Wolf Rilla. Need I say more?

It makes the same mistake that many mediocre 60s movies made - They think they can film at an international location with international stars and substitute that for interesting characters and an intriguing plot. But this is practically a carbon copy of Asphalt Jungle, so wouldn't it have interesting characters and an intriguing plot by definition? Yes, but to succeed in execution you still need inspired acting and directing, and this film has none of that. Everybody involved seems so bored, and that made me bored.

There are a few changes. The focus shifts from perpetually angry street criminal Dix Hanley (Sterling Hayden) to the distinguished ex-con jewel thief mastermind Doc (Sam Jaffee). These were the characters and the actors who played them in the original. But here, the biggest star the production has is George Sanders as the mastermind, so the focus shifts to him. Sanders still has it, but it is hard to effectively frame the film around him since his character was originally a supporting role.

The biggest difference in the original Asphalt Jungle and this film is that the character of the crooked cop is completely missing. That could be because the Egyptians objected to an authority figure being portrayed as anything but perfect, or it could be because, in the original, the bad cop was a means to introducing some production code era moralizing and that would have made no sense in this environment and at this point in time.

I'd only recommend this as an object lesson in how important direction and acting and atmosphere are in the success of a production. And atmosphere does not equal pedestrian shots of an exotic locale.