‘المومياء’ /
Al-Mummia (1969)
aka The Mummy, The Night of Counting the Years
I have a thing for films that take themselves (too) seriously. Brooding and pompous
The Mummy fits that bill better than most. From the dialogue resembling reciting a poem to the camera lingering on stern faces and barren desert and broken relics of an ancient time, it demands the viewer to be earnest.
It's a shame that there's no good quality version of
The Mummy available. There is a restored version from 2009 but no Bluray or DVD release. The only available version appears to be a transfer from an old VHS tape, and it doesn't do justice to the movie; it's blurry, faded and has terrible audio. I do like the way the film appears to look, but the 4:3 aspect ratio isn't optimal (I hope the old video release was just another victim of pan and scan).
The story of selling the ancient artifacts and using the money to maintain the power of the ruling family in a small isolated community is interesting. The conflict between the generations focuses on greed versus the shame of being mere graverobbers. The concept that the treasures have more profound value seems lost to all but some civil servants in Cairo. There's an underlying sadness in
The Mummy, a disregard of the past that reaches our time in Taliban bombs blowing up the Buddhas (or leftists toppling the statues in the US and Europe).
I liked
The Mummy. It's one of the few cases where the quality of the copy affects the viewing, so I can't go further than like until I manage to see a cleaner copy. Anyways, a pleasant surprise and a great example of why I like to participate in HoFs.
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