To start with: I will admit I am That Guy. I am a lady, but nonetheless I am That Guy who, at any given ancient historical film, says, that’s not how it worked! They were using clay tablets for that, not papyrus or The nemes headress was for royalty only or She didn’t marry him, she married… In any case, it’s irritating of me.
For this movie, I hardly want to bother. Sure, it’s a wildly inaccurate retelling of history, but then the flaxseed pita with American cheese I had for lunch is a wildly inaccurate sandwich, and who cares? The point is not to be accurate; the point is to get the job done.
This 1961 film from Italy (see it here if you want) is a basic sword-and-sandal movie of the time. I am reminded of what TV’s Frank once said about the TV movie Stranded in Space: “Let’s face it: People need to kill time – it’s human nature. And for anyone watching TV on the night it was first broadcast, Stranded In Space did indeed kill time. A whole two hours!” That is what Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile did – killed time, provided jobs, put butts in seats, moved the economy along in its own little way. Myself, I cannot say I do as much.
The plot centers on Tumos, a sculptor – there was a historical Thutmose the sculptor in the Amarna Period, which suggests that someone involved at some point read a book. In any case, Tumos the sculptor is naturally best friends with Prince Amenophis, but what Tumos does not know is that Amenophis is going to marry the woman he loves, and she doesn’t know that either, and she also doesn’t know that she’s going to become Queen Nefertiti, because her evil father, whom she doesn’t know is her father . . .
Anyway, it is ridiculous throughout, and not in a campy or delightful way; it all becomes fairly dull in the middle. Vincent Price does show up to do some quality Vincent Pricing as the High Priest, though, so there is that. Interestingly enough, you can see that they couldn’t bring themselves to cast anyone who looked like Akhenaten as Akhenaten, and went with the basic ’60s-man looks of Amedeo Nazzari, who maybe had a longer chin than most guys, but only if you squinted.
In conclusion, if you want to experience being a sick child at home sometime in the late 1960s watching the matinee show that was the only bearable thing to stare at on one of the three channels you could get, Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile is indeed one of your options, but I don’t particularly recommend it.
Category: Amarna Period Fancruft
The Amarna Period: an ongoing fictional historiography
Like most anyone who asked themselves why King Tut was only ever a boy-king, I have had a fascination with the Amarna Period of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty since small times. I’ve decided to seek out novels, films, or other literature dealing with the crisis of the Amarna Period – that is, the late reign of Pharaoh Amunhotep III, his son Akhenaten the religious reformer, and his succession – and review them.
There are a great deal of books, many of them bad, some of them merely outdated, and I dare say I will never get tired of them. Personally, I think there should be more films. Why don’t we see nearly as many screen depictions of the Amarna Period as we do, say, the Tudors? I should think it offers as much, if not a great deal more, to appeal. Instead of poorly-bathed white people in badly heated castles, all backstabbing each other for the attentions of fat, rotten old Harry, you can have bright sun and golden palaces and characters in various states of bejeweled shirtlessness. You can even examine the same disputes over the power of Church in State. Is Akhenaten a mystic visionary or a tyrant, a Mad King Ludwig or a Kim Il-sung? Is Nefertiti a politician or an opportunist – an Evita or an Imelda? Is Ankhesenamun a pawn, a traitor, or in control of her own destiny?
All these things, we are in no position to know, and barring further discoveries, we never will. That is why they will be endlessly examined in fiction, and why I will endlessly read about them. What draws me to read and to write historical fiction is that, where we do not faithfully tell the stories of the past, we are telling instead stories about ourselves; and those, though inadvertent, are no less of interest to me.
L.T. Patridge 