Cinema: Death on the Nile

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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 the story of a complex military hero who died in one of history's more fascinating lost causes.

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 passage out, died with a dervish's spear in his chest.

Heston, whose movie career has consisted mostly of impersonating Great Heroes of History (Moses, Michelangelo, Ben-Hur), plays Gordon with a swaggering virility complicated by moments of fierce introspection. At times, though, his crisp British officer's manner lapses into a fair imitation of Jack Benny, as when he stands on the battlements with dervishes tumbling in on all sides and stiffly observes: "Well! Here we are!" By contrast, Olivier's Mahdi is a small masterpiece of single-minded religious insanity—the lambent black eyes never blinking, the measured voice conjuring up holy terrors from his private heart of darkness.

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.