Cairo

One of the greatest strengths of filmmaker John Huston was that he knew great source material when he read it and, just as importantly, not to change anything for the sake of change alone. This is a virtue also shared by the makers of ‘Cairo' – a very faithful adaptation of W. R. Burnett's wonderful novel ‘The Asphalt Jungle'. The only problem, of course, is that Huston got there thirteen years earlier.

The switch of locale from the brooding, empty streets of downtown America to the teeming bazaars and markets of Egypt's capital works surprisingly well but in every other department the film is vastly inferior to the Huston version. There is a slight switch of emphasis from the role of the hired gun (Richard Johnson instead of Sterling Hayden) to the criminal mastermind (played with typical cool detachment by George Sanders) and the object of the robbery this time is nothing less than Cleopatra's jewels in the Cairo Museum! Beyond that, however, it's almost a scene for scene remake of the earlier film.

Sanders and Johnson do surprisingly well, even though Johnson is hopelessly miscast as an Arab. The supporting cast is poor at best. ‘Cairo' compares favourably against the other two versions of the tale, ‘Cool Breeze' (1972) & ‘The Badlanders' (1958) – a western with Alan Ladd! – but that's not really saying too much.

Stick with the Huston version or, better still, find a copy of the novel – it's one of the outstanding works of 20th Century American literature.

A fairly decent remake of The Asphalt Jungle - on its own terms.

The director Rilla stuck reasonably closely to John Huston's film script.

I would have given this 6, but the presence of George Sanders and Walter Rilla add a touch of much needed class.

Richard Johnson 'browning up' as an Arab is somewhat outré, though Johnson is slightly more convincing than Sterling Hayden in the original. The scene where Sanders is entranced by a belly dancing lady is also more believable than Sam Jaffe being entranced by a young woman jiving to juke box tunes in a small diner.

Worth watching as a curio and to compare it scene by scene to The Asphalt Jungle.

... Asphalt Jungle (1950), the story of a well-planned jewel heist gone horribly wrong. That film was directed by John Huston. This one was directed by Wolf Rilla. Need I say more?

It makes the same mistake that many mediocre 60s movies made - They think they can film at an international ___location with international stars and substitute that for interesting characters and an intriguing plot. But this is practically a carbon copy of Asphalt Jungle, so wouldn't it have interesting characters and an intriguing plot by definition? Yes, but to succeed in execution you still need inspired acting and directing, and this film has none of that. Everybody involved seems so bored, and that made me bored.

There are a few changes. The focus shifts from perpetually angry street criminal Dix Hanley (Sterling Hayden) to the distinguished ex-con jewel thief mastermind Doc (Sam Jaffee). These were the characters and the actors who played them in the original. But here, the biggest star the production has is George Sanders as the mastermind, so the focus shifts to him. Sanders still has it, but it is hard to effectively frame the film around him since his character was originally a supporting role.

The biggest difference in the original Asphalt Jungle and this film is that the character of the crooked cop is completely missing. That could be because the Egyptians objected to an authority figure being portrayed as anything but perfect, or it could be because, in the original, the bad cop was a means to introducing some production code era moralizing and that would have made no sense in this environment and at this point in time.

I'd only recommend this as an object lesson in how important direction and acting and atmosphere are in the success of a production. And atmosphere does not equal pedestrian shots of an exotic locale.

I knew that Faten Hamamah, the Egyptian superstar, played a role once in am MGM movie. But it didn't know it was Cairo until I had seen the movie.

Faten Hamamah has been the biggest female superstar in Egyptian cinema since the 50s but unlike Omar Sharif, her ex-husband who became a Hollywood superstar after he got an excellent chance to show his abilities in Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago though he was not the best Arab actor at that time; unfortunately this movie did not give her a fare chance to be an international superstar.

Anyhow, still many Arabs, including myself, want to hear and see Faten Hamamah (and some other Egyptian stars at that time) speaks English!

George Sanders, fresh out of prison, has developed a plan to steal King Tut's jewels, worth a fortune. He enlists an old friend and then gets in contact with a small group of men. Unfortunately for these guys, there are lots of pitfalls along the way because of the human element, mostly that of greed. The guy who is going to finance the operation and the fencing of the artifacts, turns out to want the whole thing. The deed is done but a stray bullet takes out one of the men. There are others who want in and we also have an unstable man who is explosive and dangerous to himself an others. When it's all over, one wonders why he bothered. Even Sanders is sort of blah.