You don’t have to look far for contemporary parallels in this absorbing drama.
A charismatic and clever military strategist the Mahdi (Laurence Olivier) inspires a holy war in the Middle East. Ruling global power Britain wants to avoid “policing the world” and instead of sending in the army despatches in an unofficial capacity its hero of the day, the equally charismatic “Chinese” Gordon (Charlton Heston).
He is the do-gooder as man-of-action having quelled an uprising in China and destroyed the slave trade in Sudan, of which Khartoum is the capital. Offered £6,000 by local interests to become Governor of Sudan, he takes £2,000, “that’s all I need.”
But where a similar kind of hero, Lawrence of Arabia, was politically naive, Gordon is politically adept and much of the joy of this picture is seeing him out-maneuver British prime minister Gladstone (Ralph Richardson – compare this performance to his bumbling bore in The Wrong Box out the same year). Gordon’s ostensible task is to evacuate Egyptians from Khartoum. If he succeeds, Britain saves face, if he fails he takes the rap. Directed by British stalwart Basil Dearden (The Blue Lamp, 1950; Victim, 1961), the pictures cleaves closer to drama than spectacle.
I remember being quite bored by all the talk when I saw this as a twelve-year-old, but this time round found it completely absorbing, a battle of wits between Gordon and the Mahdi on the one hand and between Gordon and Gladstone on the othor. The action, when it comes, is riveting without the aplomb of Lawrence of Arabia, but audience interest is focused on the main characters.
Richard Johnson, removed from his Bulldog Drummond persona (Some Girls Do), is excellent as Gordon’s aide or, as he acknowledges, “Gladstone’s spy.”
This is a Cinerama picture (cue spectacular widescreen scenery) without the distracting Cinerama effects (a race downhill, a runaway train), a bold political drama poorly received at a time when Cinerama meant spectacular effects and much more action. Definitely worth a second – or first – look.
The Magnificent 60s 
Just to be controversial, but do you think Olivier’s casting is an issue here? Was similarly bored by this as a youngster, but expect that I might have matured as well as the film.
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Yes, I agree with you and there was controversy about this at the time as Olivier had also done a similar thing to play Othello.
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I guess it could be described as white privilege, since a black actor doesn’t get the chance to play white. Still, a thinking man’s epic, for all its faults.
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Good point. I’ve no idea why the producers went for Olivier. It could have been a role for Sidney Poitier or James Earl Jones. Both had the gravitas. Interestingly, Poitier and Heston were the same age, Jones a few years younger. Olivier was 58 when the movie came out but at the time of Khartoum the Madhi was just turned 40 so it would have made sense in any case for the younger men to have played him.
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Interesting. And yet Olivier generally meant prestige rather than box office…
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