Word: khartoum
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...moviegoer will soon know all about Khartoum. That's where the well-known dervish leader Sir Laurence Olivier and thousands of white-turbaned extras rode out of a Cinerama desert in 1885 and did in Her Majesty's General Charlton Heston (see CINEMA). The movie stops there, but the British did not. Thirteen years later, they recaptured the city and slaughtered 11,000 dervishes, including all known male descendants of the character Olivier portrays, the fierce prophet El Mahdi...
...Khartoum looks something like the fall of the Alamo as told by Lawrence of Arabia. Three months in the filming in the desert along the Nile, this Cinerama spectacle enlisted the services of 2,500 Egyptian army troops for some of the noisiest slaughter scenes ever filmed. It took 70,000 gallons of water a day just to keep the cast from evaporating, and United Artists sent enough medical equipment out on location to serve a division in Viet Nam. Nonetheless Khartoum is not just another exercise in wide-screen warfare: emphasizing subtlety rather than savagery, it convincingly retells...
Britain's General Charles ("Chinese") Gordon blended military pragmatism with missionary zeal, a love of the Bible with a liking for brandy and soda. In 1884, after 100,000 Moslem fanatics had trapped an Egyptian army at Khartoum, Britain's Prime Minister William Gladstone sent Gordon (Charlton Heston) and one aide to rescue it. Gordon organized Khartoum for a 317-day defense against the dervishes of Mohammed Ahmed (Sir Laurence Olivier), who called himself the Mahdi, meaning "the Expected One." Khartoum finally fell on Jan. 26, 1885. Gordon, who had rejected the Mahdi's offer of safe...
Robert Ardrey's script much too neatly points up the similarity between fanatic Mahdi and fanatic general, and invents two dramatic confrontations between them that never occurred. But such blatant departures from history are rare. Vividly directed by Basil Dearden, Khartoum evokes the spirit and likeness of a brave, baffling soldier...
...Krim (law partners of Louis Nizer) took over, encouraged talented independent producers to make good films for United to bankroll and distribute. The list has since included such successes as Marty, High Noon, The African Queen, West Side Story, Tom Jones, and lately The Russians Are Coming and Khartoum. United backed two Beatle pictures, has made $10 million on them. On four James Bond films, its $13 million investment has so far returned $124 million...