Omar Khayyam (1957)

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Blistering performances.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

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.

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.

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).

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.