Customer Reviews

The Eyes of the Mummy

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Perhaps the main reason why "The Eyes of the Mummy" is billed as a Silent Classic nowadays is for its impressive cast and crew, namely Emil Jannings, one of Germany's finest character actors, the popular Polish actress, Pola Negri, and highly esteemed director, Ernst Lubitsch. This 1918 Silent was made by the prolific German UFA studio before Ernst Lubitsch went to Hollywood a few years later to find more fame and fortune with popular productions in both the silent and sound era. But "The Eyes of the Mummy" seems to be a low budget production, no doubt intended to capitalize on the popularity of Ancient Egypt and legends about mummies' curses among Europeans at that time. With our modern-day familiarity with Ancient Egypt, some sets and the actual `eyes of the mummy' will probably make quite a few viewers laugh, and a dark-skinned Arabian Emil Jannings also takes a little getting used to. Nevertheless, I still found "The Eyes of the Mummy" intriguing and entertaining. Both Jannings and Negri put in a good performance, although for some it might appear over-dramatic at times. The story is perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the film, and the plot moves along very quickly in this version which is just under one hour in length. Jannings is very effective as the villainous Radu who abducts Pola Negri and uses her to create the illusion of the eyes of the mummy, but when she is rescued by a European visitor who takes her back to Europe with him, Radu swears to avenge her betrayal and get her back. More than half the film is set in Europe, in high society circles and variety shows where Pola Negri becomes a popular oriental dancer. It is at one of these shows that Radu sees her again and with his apparent hypnotic power over her, almost gets her back.

The overall picture quality is reasonably good, although some scenes appear blurry and others too light. The accompanying music is a somewhat repetitive modern-sounding piano score which feels dramatic and heavy, but is probably not all that unsuited to this film. Keeping in mind that this is only a low-priced DVD, the general presentation is not too bad, and it would certainly be of interest to silent film enthusiasts and fans of either Jannings, Pola Negri or Ernst Lubitsch.

For an old film this is not bad and Alpha Video did a great job on the restoration of this one. I expected this movie would be scary, but I felt that the musical tone changed the mood to a more serious picture. New score by Rachel Gutches. If you like these kind of Underground movies definetaly pick up a copy.

There really is no "Mummy" in this movie, so the title is a stretch probably to lure the would be Egyptologists of the day. In fact very little Egyptian stuff is in the show...not even the pyramids or the sphynx are shown. just a little pretend Egyptian stuff in the one scene and an apparently Egyptian market scene. In fact the story could stand on it's own without the Egyptian stuff, and it's simply thrown in to give the film an escoteric feel...and possibly justify the outcome. No doubt back then Egyptian or much of anything foriegn was looked on as a bit beneath the modern civilization of the Europeans.
The most distracting part of the movie was the music...it did not match or follow the mood of the movie as it played. And some of it was definitly not "original". some of the music was quite nice on it's own but I had to turn down the sound as it just detracted from the movie.
The story: well it was a forgone conclusion that the two tomb dwellers would meet again, but it was interesting to watch the remeeting unfold, and it had you wondering if it was plausable. I think that it was quite plausable. there were some editing flaws as the story didn't quite flow and you had to extrapolate, but it wasn't inderscipherable. The ending was abrupt and it wasn't clear at first until the last words were spoken...as...thankfully, graphicness was not a flaw the classics stooped to.
Part of my admiring of the old silents is the ornate speech cards. Sadly the original speech cards were not used, as the original movie is German so new screens were used with more modern English script and black backgrounds. I suspect as an early scene would indicate, that they could have created backgrounds for the text portions but were probably too lazy to recreate them, so the "flavour" of the silent is incomplete. there is a spot where a letter is shown, I couldn't read it and I suspect it is an original German script, but the content of that letter is made reasonably clear in context immediately after seeing it.
The story was captivating enough to be enjoyed even by todays standards.I found it curious that this movie from 1922 predates the big Egyptian find of 1925 and it spoke of similar things said to have occured from the 1925 find.

First of all, against another person's review about this DVD, Alpha did no restoration whatsoever. It is a copy of a DVD release from Grapevine Video and Alpha simply created their own generic title screen and superimposed their own logo in the corner of the screen. For those who have bought or watched this movie, I'd like to state that from the beginning. No restoration was done. Alpha hired someone to compose a music score, that's all. The film has been "altered" from the Grapevine Video release and doesn't even have the original title screen. Probably Alpha's way of branding the film so others cannot copy it. Secondly, it's NOT a horror movie. It's a drama that takes place in ancient Egypt. So if you are expecting a rare horror movie, forget it. Of course, Alpha alters almost all of the movies they release on DVD, superimposing logos in the corner, adding sound effects to the sound track of talking pictures, etc. You'd do better buying the Grapevine Video release on Amazon.com.