Movie · 1966 · History, War, Adventure · 2h 14m · English
Curator score: 4.0/10 (12.6K ratings)
Where the Nile divides, the great Cinerama adventure begins!
Overview
English General Charles George Gordon is appointed military governor of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan by the Prime Minister. Ordered to evacuate Egyptians from the Sudan, Gordon stays on to protect the people of Khartoum, who are under threat of being conquered by a Muslim army.
Ratings
Curator score: 4.0/10
IMDb: 6.8/10
Letterboxd: 3.29/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 100%
TMDB: 6.3/10
Director
Basil Dearden, Eliot Elisofon
Production
Julian Blaustein Productions Ltd., United Artists
Cast
Charlton Heston, Laurence Olivier, Richard Johnson, Ralph Richardson, Alexander Knox, Johnny Sekka, Michael Hordern, Zia Mohyeddin, Marne Maitland, Nigel Green, Hugh Williams, Ralph Michael, Douglas Wilmer, Edward Underdown, Peter Arne, Alan Tilvern, Michael Anthony, Roger Delgado, Jerome Willis, Ronald Leigh-Hunt
Where to watch
Amazon Prime Video, fuboTV, MGM Plus, Philo, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A lavish old-school imperial epic with real spectacle, sturdy performances, and impressive desert-scale staging, but it is also deeply dated in its politics and racial representation. Worth seeing if you want a big 1960s historical war film and can engage critically with its colonial framing.
Best for
fans of 1960s roadshow epics
viewers interested in colonial-era history on film
people who enjoy large-scale desert warfare and practical spectacle
Charlton Heston completists
film students studying outdated historical epics and representation
Skip if
you are sensitive to blackface and colonialist storytelling
you want nuanced Middle Eastern or Sudanese perspectives
you prefer psychologically complex war dramas
you dislike long, stately period epics with heavy-handed dialogue
Overview
Khartoum is the kind of mid-60s spectacle that announces its budget in every frame: wide desert vistas, massed extras, mounted charges, and a sense of pageantry that still plays as impressive. The film has the sweep of a roadshow epic and enough production value to make the siege feel physically enormous, even when the script is working in broad, simplified strokes.
Worth noting
Its biggest problem is also impossible to ignore: the film’s colonial viewpoint is baked into the drama, and Laurence Olivier’s casting is a glaring reminder of how casually the era handled race. That makes the movie hard to admire uncritically, especially because the story leans on a white-savior structure and treats Sudanese politics with frustratingly little depth.
Bottom line
Still, there is a certain old-fashioned force to the filmmaking. If you approach it as a historical artifact as much as a narrative, Khartoum offers enough scale, craft, and period-movie grandeur to justify curiosity. It is more interesting than it is satisfying, and more revealing than it is progressive.
Top Letterboxd reviews
harrylime66 (2.5★) · 66 likes
As the most interesting conversations of my life have been in bars or restaurants (just as it happened to the actor who played my bad doppelganger in the book of discussions/interviews by Henry Jaglon), I want to tell you a specific episode: we were at the restaurant and we started talking about guilty pleasures… this is when I learnt about a harsh although cathartic truth about myself: I am a conservative regarding cinema. In the vortex of titles including Danish… more As the most interesting conversations of my life have been in bars or restaurants (just as it happened to the actor who played my bad doppelganger in the book of discussions/interviews by Henry Jaglon), I want to tell you a specific episode: we were at the restaurant and we started talking about guilty pleasures… this is when I learnt about a harsh although cathartic truth about myself: I am a conservative regarding cinema. In the vortex of titles including Danish… more
Daniel88 (3★) · 55 likes
“I don't trust any man who consults God before he consults me.”
I know there is a lot of contemporary criticism on the great Laurence Olivier acting black faced as the antagonist in Khartoum. To me that´s something that should be seen in the light of the era that the film was made and is not something that bothers me that much. If I were a director, I would have Laurence Olivier act in a Teletubbies costume if he could… more
Rock (3.5★) · 43 likes
The fact is I'm a sucker for these kind of old school epic war movies. The kind that were mounted at great expense and all the money can be seen onscreen, in the form of countless extras, human and equine, immaculate period set dressing and props, and locations where it must have no doubt cost a lot of money to have moved a large enough crew and all these cast members and equipment out there to shoot for however long… more The fact is I'm a sucker for these kind of old school epic war movies. The kind that were mounted at great expense and all the money can be seen onscreen, in the form of countless extras, human and equine, immaculate period set dressing and props, and locations where it must have no doubt cost a lot of money to have moved a large enough crew and all these cast members and equipment out there to shoot for however long… more
Allan Arkush (1★) · 35 likes
Charlton Heston is insufferable as the white savior. Lawrence Olivier is in brown face as a Sudanese leader. The elder British actors play colonialist. There is nothing in this false history worthy of making a major hugely expensive motion picture.
100% on RT!!! not for this a historical bullshit.
Harry Goodwin (2.5★) · 29 likes
good film to win colonial epic bingo-famous white actor in blackface-the english improving everything in destitute foreign lands-nice expansive landscape shots-sandy battles with lots of collateral (real) animal death-long
not terrible but not one of the best. Mum's uncle is an extra in it which was cool
1964 · Action, Drama, History · 2h 18m · NR · Curator 8.6/10 (46.3K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, FlixFling, Amazon Prime Video with Ads, Troma NOW
A similarly mounted British historical war epic with large-scale battle staging and a strong sense of period spectacle.