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Khartoum - Movie 1966 - Part 5 of 11 - The City's Defences Are Strengthened.
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Siege of Khartoum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Khartoum
Charles George Gordon - Major-General - known as Chinese Gordon, Gordon Pasha, and Gordon of Khartoum, was a British army officer and administrator. He is remembered for his campaigns in China and northern Africa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_George_Gordon
Muhammad Ahmad - religious leader, in Sudan, who proclaimed himself the Mahdi - the prophesied redeemer of Islam who will appear at end times - in 1881, and declared a jihad against Egyptian authority in Sudan. He raised an army and led a successful religious war to topple the Egyptian occupation of Sudan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ahmad
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Khartoum (film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khartoum_%28film%29
Khartoum is a 1966 film written by Robert Ardrey and directed by Basil Dearden.
The film stars Charlton Heston as General Gordon, with Laurence Olivier as the Mahdi (Mahommed Ahmed), and is based on Gordon's defence of the Sudanese city of Khartoum from the forces of the Mahdist army during the Battle of Khartoum.
Khartoum was filmed by cinematographer Ted Scaife in Ultra Panavision 70, and was exhibited in 70 mm Cinerama in premiere engagements.
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Plot:
The film is about the last months before the British lost their emplacement in Sudan - in theory a subject territory of Egypt - in January 1885. Britain had occupied, but did not formally annex, Egypt in 1883. This is why Gordon, who is technically the "Egyptian" governor of the Sudan, wears a red Egyptian fez.
The political origins of the Khartoum affair are unclear. The film postulates a meeting between the Prime Minister, Mr Gladstone (correctly shown wearing a finger-stall to cover a finger lost in a shooting accident as a young man), and other officials, which Gladstone ends by declaring never to have taken place.
In a shortened and simplified way the film shows how Khartoum was under siege by the Mahdist army while General Gordon had been planning last strategies before Khartoum fell and he was killed in action.
The secret meeting between Gordon and the Mahdi in the Mahdist camp, as portrayed in the film, is entirely fictional.
The final shot of Gordon descending a staircase before being speared to death, is based on a famous painting.
Major Kitchener, who played a role in Wolseley's relief expedition, was himself later a famous general and commanded the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of the Sudan in 1898. He was known thereafter as Lord Kitchener of Khartoum.
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The closing scene:
The following words are from the closing scene of the film, spoken by a narrator (Leo Genn):
"The relief came two days late. Two days. And for 15 years the Sudanese paid the price with pestilence and famine, the British with shame and war. Within months after Gordon died, the Mahdi died. Why, we shall never know. Gordon rests in his belov |
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