Omar Khayyam (1957) User Reviews

Great story, average movie

[AFernandez58 · 7/10 · 16 June 2005]

"Omar Khayyam" is in many ways a typical 50s Hollywood oriental sword and sandal epic but with a few twists and tremendous (unmet) potential. The actual story of three friends (Hassan, Omar and Nizam) goes back hundreds of years and is pretty engaging. The historical personalities of Omar and Hassan al-Sabbah are quite interesting characters. There is potentially a great film here.

The actual production is not great but it has some nice things: Michael Rennie gives a great performance as Hassani. It is one of his best things, right up there with the alien in "The Day the Earth Stood Still." It also has Raymond Massey and the great Abraham Sofaer, a distinctive character actor, as Tutush, the Sultan's brother. It has a fine score by Victor Young and some neat matte paintings of Alamut. Some of the lines are great: "I know of some other heads that should be sealed with wax and honey." But in the end it is too formulaic of a Hollywood spectacular. Cornel Wilde is too stolid. Such a rich historical backdrop and fascinating subject matter is worthy of a better film.

Cornel Coins the Rhymes, Rennie Starts the Rebellion

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 19 October 2006]

Omar Khayyam, medieval poet and scholar and quite the scientist as it turns out in this film, stars Cornel Wilde in the title role. Khayyam is a guy content to do his scholarly thing, but there's a whole lot of treachery going in Persia and it's coming from people close to him.

The legend of Omar Khayyam has him involved with two others, a rich merchant Hisreini who becomes leader of the assassin cult and Nizam who is prime minister to the Shah, played respectively by Michael Rennie and Sebastian Cabot. Rennie who is as always cultured and refined, is the 12th century Osama Bin-Laden of the piece. His is probably the best performance of the film.

By the way Omar Khayyam gives one an opportunity to see both the men who Cecil B. DeMille considered for the role of Joshua in The Ten Commandments in the same film. John Derek who is the crown prince played Joshua and Wilde was the one originally offered the part.

The film was done at Paramount which was a bit unusual itself because the Arabian knights type films were an in house staple of Universal Studios.

Probably Cornel got the part after Tyrone Power who was freelancing then turned it down. It was that way all Wilde's life, getting sloppy seconds from either Power or Errol Flynn.

The film is all right, but should have had Wilde doing a bit more swordplay. He was in real life a champion at fencing.

Nostalgic Fun Adventure

[Tweetienator · 6/10 · 28 May 2023]

Omar Khayyam is no biopic or documentary on the life and works of the poet, astronomer and mathematician but a fine adventure romance flick of the 50s shot in beautiful Technicolor. So if you are in the mood for some classic shot of the 40s and 50s (Arabian Nights, The Thief of Bagdad, Son of Ali Baba and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad to name a few), Omar Khayyam may just provide the right shot of adventure and nostalgia. I watched this one per chance for the first time these days and the movie send me right back to that glorious and simple times of Hollywood adventure movies in Technicolor. For sure not one of the best of that era, but a solid and fun one.

Decent watch.

[Blueghost · 1 January 2013]

Other reviewers said it best; this is your typical 1950s period pic actioner with lots of adventure and some sword play. I never pictured Omar Khayyam as much of an infiltrator, but the movie, being a movie from the 50s, takes liberty with Khayyam's life, and spices things up for the audience. Think about it. If you were a young man needing to take his girl on a date in 1957, would you want to see some existential docu-drama about the Persian poet's life and works? No, more like you'd want to see something that had action, romance, adventure, and heroics over bad guys to cap off the evening.

Well, this movie delivers. It's not an outstanding movie, but it's a good simple basic film that, to be honest, was a little ahead of its time in terms of addressing the turmoil in the middle east. Allusions to caliphates, the "one true religion", secret hideouts in the mountains certainly ring bells with events since our own September 11th, 2001. But, fortunately our hero, Omar Khayyam played by Cornel Wilde, uses his learned ways and scholarly teachings to fight a familiar foe we know today, whose roots are seated in past pride.

The story is right out of Hollwood 101, and everyone here is from central casting. The performances are a little wooden, and SFX are easily spotted but do their job, and overall the production values are fairly solid. Omar Khayyam doesn't give us too much of his poetry as he's too busy saving the kingdom of those he serves, but we are treated to a few lines of his poetic brilliance before the movie ends.

It's worth seeing once, and perhaps again on a rainy weekend afternoon. It's that kind of a movie. Watch it, enjoy it for what it is, but don't take it too seriously.

Overall a decent watch.

Enjoy.

Another great biography parodies into fluff. Kitsch Entertainment

[NYLux · 6/10 · 17 August 2009]

Unfortunately we do not have a lot of biographical detail on Omar Khayyam, one of the world's greatest mathematician, astronomer and poet, and a philosopher as well. His tomb, still existent in Iran is a great monument of Islamic architecture. This movie is a monument to Hollywood's inability to capture any of those values and turn it all instead into a vapid adventure story with miles of cheap fabrics that look 'exotic'. We even get a band of "assasins' that is very similar in spirit, logical plan and training to today's Taliban.

Cornell Wilde is unable to project the charisma and genius of this Persian poet. He looks like a retired banker that lives in NY, has a mild interest in the theater and is doing this movie because he wants to have a tax right-off. He should have been played by Omar Shariff. Margaret Hayes is great camp as Queen Zarada, the queen mother whose ambition will stop at nothing to secure the throne for her sons. She is also capable of sustaining a platinum blond mane in the midst of the harem with great aplomb, as a symbol and reminder that all queens should be white, blond and preferably from Philadelphia. She is always trailing several yards of Technicolor blue cape behind her every move. Joan Taylor is so ferociously loyal and annoyingly organized as Yaffa, Omar's slave, that one is relieved to see her being pushed from a cliff. Debra Paget plays Sharain, Omar's great love and inspiration for his poems, as a secular nun who also clearly has a cross-eyed problem. This role should understandably have gone to Arabian Night-resident-Hollywood-expert Maureen O'Hara. Michael Rennie is the EVIL Hasani Sabah, and gives the best performance in his role as the ruthless leader of the Assassins sect. One laments not to see him shirtless and wearing a pendant cabochon emerald from one of his handsome earlobes.

As a vapid Arabian Night action movie it has all the polyester, plated gold, architectural plaster and Technicolor spectrum of saturated glamorama to while away a lazy summer afternoon. Great double feature with a Sinbad or Baghdad movie.

Watchable But Noting Else

[ragosaal · 5/10 · 9 October 2006]

Leaving aside whether this film has some accuracy on the Persian poet and matemathician's life or not (history doesn't know much about him), I agree with a review here that states a better movie could have been made with this story.

The picture is very slow in its first part -almost boring- and it gets more interesting when the plot to kill the Sultan by the Assassins appears and some action with it. The settings are acceptable -no more than that- if we consider this a 1957 product and so are the costumes and the musical score by Victor Young.

But I think the major flaw in this movie is Cornel Wilde's casting as the main character. Wilde was never a more than average actor and here he is unable to support the weight of a film in which he is the center. He lacks charisma, strength and presence as Kayyahm and renders a dull performance. The rest of the cast is standard with the exception of Michael Rennie who plays a great villain worthy of a much better effort.

Perhaps if the movie had focused on the second part only -that is the the Assassins sinister plans and the fight against them- and included a much more suitable actor in the main role, we would be talking about a really enjoyable epic adventure film.

Colorful piece of fluff. As corny as a corn puff.

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 15 August 2016]

The ever handsome Cornel Wilde looks great in colorful outfits obviously recycled from the last big Arabian knights adventure or simply rented from Western costumes. Obviously as fictional as Aesop's fables, this tells of a simple poet's influence on the Shah, here played as a basically decent ruler by an excellent Raymond Massey. When Massey makes young Debra Paget (whom Wilde loves) his newest bride, Wilde must practice what he proverbs and turn the other cheek, especially as he helps prevent assassins from slaying the Shah as one of his own sons attempts to absurb the throne.

More a feast for the eyes than for its silly dialog in spite of a plot that sounds more complicated than it is. Strictly entertainment, I didn't feel I knew anything more about Omar Khayyam coming out. Still, the sets are sumptuous and the costumes on scantily clad slave men and women are sublime, and there's plenty of great action sequences. For added camp, there's a musical sequence featuring Yma Sumac hitting notes that don't seem to be in any other human's range.

The moving finger writes...an amazing tale ( a reply to sunda-2 )

[crselvz · 8/10 · 23 August 2007]

With respect, I submit that it is the mindset of 50 years ago that cannot be remade, rather than the film itself, which was an admirable effort in its time, eerily prescient in its relevance to our present-day fears and therefore practically commanding a newly-filmed version ( or, at the very least, greater attention given to the original ).

Sad but nonetheless true it may be, that gone indeed are the days when the Middle East and Islam itself conjured up in the Western ( read "Hollywood" ) mind only quaint and archaic tropes of the "Thousand-and-One Nights"---'harems, slaves, sultans, thieves and intrigues', decked in robes and turbans and speaking in a quaintly flowery fashion ( "By the beard of the Prophet!"), moving in and out of gaudy buildings capped everywhere by onion-domes. Then the Arabs found themselves in a position once more to make their power felt on a world scale, and perceptions ( and stereotypes ) changed irrevocably---the new images generally being of languid Saudis replacing Texans as the archetype of the oil zillionaire, and wild-eyed, wild-bearded, greasy fanatics ready to throw bombs in support of their beliefs ( the Arabs here merely being the latest to fill an archetype going back at least a century-and-a-half to the anarchists of Europe ).

The great days of Islamic glory in the arts and sciences well deserve to be brought back into the Western ( read "Hollywood" ) consciousness. It was due in great part to the efforts of Islamic scholars that the heritage of the Greco-Roman classics was preserved while Europe sank into Christian dogmatics. Much of the ancient observations were improved upon by Arabs from Cordoba to Ferghana, most notably in astronomy---and here Omar Khayyam may be said to enter the scene. Well versed in the natural sciences and mathematics, Omar was indeed the author of an improved Muslim calendar ( which unfortunately was rejected by the more traditional-minded in power ). Renowned also as a warrior, his greatest fame stems from the collection of quatrains called the "Rubaiyat", which gave us---by Hargreaves's translation---such familiar lines as 'A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou' and 'Could you and I alone with Fate conspire' (both of which are to be heard in this movie).

Oh yes, this movie---I should get round to that now. EXCELLENT settings and costumage, entertainingly photographed. Cornel Wilde may seem too subdued to be the swashbuckler, but he plays the gentle poet and scholar foremost, a quiet and stolid center around which tumultuous events unfold and chase each other. A stellar cast supports him---Debra ('The Ten Commandments') Paget as the great love of his life, Raymond ('Things to Come') Massey as the dignified yet wry old Shah, John ('The Ten Commandments') Derek as handsome young Prince Malik, and---as Omar's old schoolmates---the always endearing Sebastian ('Family Affair') Cabot as the minister Nizam al-Mulk, and Michael ('The Day the Earth Stood Still') Rennie as the imposing, capable Hassan-i Sabah. Other colorful characters keep things hopping---a scheming Queen, her petulant son and half-brother to Malik, a timid but loyal slave girl and, just when you think it can't get any better---Edward ('Get Smart') Platt as a prior in the sect known commonly as the 'Assassins', who menace the Shah's rule from within while the Byzantine Romans threaten from without.

This movie should be seen today if for no other reason than that the machinations of the Assassins will easily bring to mind the plottings of Osama bin-Laden and al-Qaeda, and Omar's ringing, climactic speech to the Assassin's ruler is both uneasily accurate but also heartening to us of today who face their spiritual descendants. It really ought to be remade for that reason if for no other...but there is just so much else about Omar---and his world in particular---that is deserving of big-budget attention today, to return it to Westerners' ( read "Hollywood's" ) attention.

Posted on 23 August 2007 (the 50th anniversary of the film's premiere).

Persian Adventures with Cornel WILDE, Debra PAGET and John DEREK

[ZeddaZogenau · 6/10 · 10 January 2024]

This Hollywood film from the major studio PARAMOUNT is about the Persian poet and scientist Omar Khayam, who lived in the 11th century AD.

A perfect hero role for Cornel WILDE! Unfortunately, the film by Oscar nominee William DIETERLE (1893-1972), who was born in Ludwigshafen on the beautiful Rhine, turned out to be an overly slick studio production. The cardboard backdrops and artificial flowers are too obvious. That's just how films were made in the era of the big studios. But the attractive actors like Debra PAGET, who was soon to move to West Germany for TIGER VON ESCHNAPUR, and John DEREK, who was to make films in Italy shortly afterwards, are worth seeing.

The film offers an unusual setting by taking place in early Persia, but overall this is not used convincingly enough.

Typical "Arabian Nights" film of the 1950s

[sundar-2 · 22 April 2001]

The 11th century mathematician-poet Omar Khayyam who lived in Baghdad wrote quatrains in Persian which are still quoted. The exact details of his life are unknown, so Hollywood wrote a biography on the tabula rasa of his life. Cornel Wilde plays the often-drunk Omar Khayyam who longs for his sweetheart who the Sultan keeps in his harem as his third wife. Omar Khayyam works in the Sultan's court as a mathematician who is drawing up a new calendar. When the Sultan dies, Omar Khayyam stumbles upon a plot to kill off the Sultan's successor. The poet then goes off to foil the plot. He crosses swords with the Assassin sect whose members are deluded by their leader into thinking that they are in paradise when they actually are in a hashish-induced zombie-like state. In fact, the word "assassin" means "hashish-eaters".

Cornel Wilde who plays Omar Khayyam is unable to be a debonair swashbuckler because he has to play a tortured poet. Michael Rennie as the sinister Hasani is wonderful. His aquiline features suit his Arab role. The rest of the cast is unremarkable. "Omar Khayyam" has all the Arabian Nights cliches - harems, slaves, sultans, thieves and intrigues. It is a type of movie which will not be made again because, these days, the Middle East brings up visions of fanatical terrorists, not innocuous fables of highly intellectual Arabs amidst the magnificence of ancient Baghdad.

(Reviewed by Sundar Narayan)