Faraon

Kawalerowicz extraordinary recreation of this lost world is by turns barbaric and sensual, austere and extravagant, and it makes Hollywood films on the same subject seem utterly superfluous. The compositions are stunning, with the interior shots of the Priests' meetings being particular standouts, transmitting a near spectral aura of clandestine ritual. Kawalerowicz's complete command of visual storytelling ensures that this tale of politics, power and corruption remains gripping at every turn.

With a striking opening shot of two dung beetles ambiguously working with or against each other, this takes Prus' Spencerian concerns with the effects of disharmony (between sovereign and priest) on the social organism – perhaps turning the novel's seeming anti-Semitism into a critique thereof – and creates a rather stunning portrait of ancient civilisation: both the foreignness of its rituals and cults and the Shakespearean familiarity of the problems of power, greed, hubris and corruption.

A film in two parts: in the first, the brashness of youth succumbs to leadership and corruptibility; in the second, a test of that integrity within a personal hell. There's a rare grandeur in the sparseness, and an even rarer fidelity to Egyptian religion. The wholesale first sequence - a fraught and (seemingly...) frivolous military campaign in the desert Wilderness, consisting of its own important Temptations, is a jaw-dropper and a must-see. It's almost a dream.

Stunningly beautiful and occasionally very evocative of a bygone era, despite the hamhanded Soviet contemporary Soviet sprinkled about and the miles of brownface. In a weird way I feel like Gore Vidal would like this one.