When Ibn Saud captured Mecca, it is said that he personally chopped off the head of the defeated governor, and tossed it over the city wall.
Such a fate would be deserved by the screenwriter.
It is hard to know what to make of this beautifully filmed train wreck of a story. The one thing that is clear is that no one involved had ever seen an oil well, nor had any idea what the Middle East was like in an ill defined period in the early 20th century.
The anachronistic technical bits in the film came thick and fast - planes jumped from WWI biplanes to, unless I am mistaken, a late 1930s German Storch - cars went from Model-Ts to late 1930s Packards. Oil was produced, but there was no visible way to get it from the four, pokey wells to anywhere it could be used, no pipeline, no trucks - apparently the director thought that just producing the oil is enough to make you rich. Typical of a French intellectual like the director.
And the behavior of ALL the characters was so wildly at odds with the Arab world as to verge on farce. At one point there is the suggestion that there might be some Koranic mechanism for a wife divorcing her husband. Other cultural references mainly involved women's veils.
The turgid and strained dialog would have mortified a first year drama student. Antonio Bandaras and Mark Strong must have decided that the only solution was to chew scenery whenever possible and perhaps the whole effort would become camp. Both did what they could with the feeble screenplay, but that was not much.
There was a cartoon Texan, as well, although his role, outside of being a hate figure, was never wholly clear. The story is (VERY) loosely based on Saudi Arabia, but given imaginary names, but somehow there is no reference to the British, who really ran that part of the globe until WWII. Note to the writer at the end, in the 1930s, even Texaco was headquartered in New York City, not Houston. Pre air conditioning, Houston was quasi uninhabitable for half the year.
It only cost me £2 to rent it, but I still want my £2 back.
Such a fate would be deserved by the screenwriter.
It is hard to know what to make of this beautifully filmed train wreck of a story. The one thing that is clear is that no one involved had ever seen an oil well, nor had any idea what the Middle East was like in an ill defined period in the early 20th century.
The anachronistic technical bits in the film came thick and fast - planes jumped from WWI biplanes to, unless I am mistaken, a late 1930s German Storch - cars went from Model-Ts to late 1930s Packards. Oil was produced, but there was no visible way to get it from the four, pokey wells to anywhere it could be used, no pipeline, no trucks - apparently the director thought that just producing the oil is enough to make you rich. Typical of a French intellectual like the director.
And the behavior of ALL the characters was so wildly at odds with the Arab world as to verge on farce. At one point there is the suggestion that there might be some Koranic mechanism for a wife divorcing her husband. Other cultural references mainly involved women's veils.
The turgid and strained dialog would have mortified a first year drama student. Antonio Bandaras and Mark Strong must have decided that the only solution was to chew scenery whenever possible and perhaps the whole effort would become camp. Both did what they could with the feeble screenplay, but that was not much.
There was a cartoon Texan, as well, although his role, outside of being a hate figure, was never wholly clear. The story is (VERY) loosely based on Saudi Arabia, but given imaginary names, but somehow there is no reference to the British, who really ran that part of the globe until WWII. Note to the writer at the end, in the 1930s, even Texaco was headquartered in New York City, not Houston. Pre air conditioning, Houston was quasi uninhabitable for half the year.
It only cost me £2 to rent it, but I still want my £2 back.