Cinema: A Large Barbarian Camelot

Genghis Khan is another chapter in the history of the world, as hacked out by some of the planet's best-paid specialists at turning mountains into molehills. This droll biography casts Omar Sharif as the greedy Mongol conqueror, and suggests that his greed was all for the good. In his youth, cruelly confined by his enemies to a doughnut-shaped yoke, the future Khan keeps his eye upon the whole of Asia, plus adjacent territories. He dreams idealistically not of sacking, plundering, pillaging and rape, but of a large barbarian Camelot in which every man will be a Mongol or a Mongol's brother. Opposed to progress is the evil Jamuga (as usual, Stephen Boyd), whose notion of sharing is to have his way with Genghis' ravishing wife (Françoise Dorléac).

Most of the time, though, Genghis just idles along in Peking, where the Chinese let him in on the discovery of gunpowder. Other odd bits of wisdom are supplied by Emperor Robert Morley, who apparently can't tell one Oriental from another, since his dynasty resembles a road-show Mikado. The high pooh-bah in charge of comedy relief is Kam Ling (James Mason), sporting almond eyes, malocclusion and a washee-quickee accent. As befits a ham, Kam Ling is sliced up just before a lively duel to the death between Jamuga and Genghis. Hordes of loyal Mongol mourners think the great Khan's demise untimely—and well they might, since the real Genghis lived to be 65, and died in bed.