The Egyptian (1954)

Nefer: No. I brought you here only to show you the gate in my garden wall. Later, when all of my guests have gone... I will be here by my lotus pool.
Sinuhe: Why do you tell me this?
Nefer: Perhaps because I am fond of gifts, and the greatest gift any man can bring to a woman is his innocence, which he can give only once.

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[first lines]
Sinuhe: [Older Sinuhe voiceover] I, Sinuhe the Egyptian, write this. In my place of exile on the shores of the Red Sea. There is no more desolate spot on earth. Soon the jackals and the vultures will make a poor meal of what is left of me. No monument will mark my resting place. I will leave only this, the story of my life. I have lived fully and deeply. I have tasted passion, crime and even murder. It is for you to judge me. You must weigh the good against the evil, the passion against the tenderness, the crime against the charity, the pleasure against the pain. I began life as I am ending it, alone. I rode alone on the bosom of the Nile in a boat of reeds dawbed with pitch and tied with fowler's knots. Thus the city of Thebes was accustomed to dispose of its unwanted children. I grew up on the waterfront of the city in the house of my foster parents who had saved me from the river. My foster father lived there by choice because he was also, by choice, physician to the poor of the city. From the rich he could have commanded princely fees, for he alone, in Thebes, was master of the ancient art of opening skulls. From the beginning I kept to myself. I used to wander alone on the banks of the Nile. Until the day came when I was ready to enter the School of Life. In the School of Life were trained the chosen young men of Egypt. The future scientists, philosophers, statesmen and generals. All the learning of Egypt lay in the keeping of the gods. For ten years I served them in the school that I might earn the right to call myself a physician. I learned to bend my body to them, but that was all. My mind still asked a question. Why?

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Nefer: Have you ever looked on a woman before?
Sinuhe: Hundreds, and in the state the gods created them. I'm a physician.
Nefer: Your name?
Sinuhe: I am called Sinuhe. He who is alone. Is this your house?
Nefer: This is my house, and I have guests every evening. I dislike being along.
[claps her hands to summon her servant]
Nefer: Baraka!
[she handles the pendant around Sinuhe's neck]
Nefer: The inscription of the new Pharoah.
Sinuhe: His gift. I must leave now.
Nefer: Why?
Sinuhe: Because men bring you rich presents for as little as a smile.
[indicating the pendant]
Sinuhe: This is all I have.
Nefer: I have never asked a man for anything, but I ask you to stay.
Sinuhe: I can't.
Nefer: Is it because we women of Babylon have a bad reputation? Or do you find me so ugly. Do you?
Sinuhe: You're beautiful, beyond all dreams.
Nefer: Such flattery must come easily to a man who's known... hundreds of women.
Sinuhe: No one before has ever seemed to me so beautiful, so strange. When I look in your eyes, I... feel...
Nefer: What do you feel Sinuhe?
Sinuhe: I feel the fever of Thebes in my blood and I know that I was born to live in the sunset of the world and that nothing matters, nothing, but what I see in your eyes. It's late, I must be leaving.
Nefer: If you go fulfilled with wine and wild thoughts you will surely get into trouble with some designing woman.
Sinuhe: Would you care?
[he follows as she goes into her garden]

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Marilyn Monroe lobbied hard to play "Nefer," but Darryl F. Zanuck had earmarked the role for his then-mistress, Bella Darvi.
Average Shot Length (ASL) = 13 seconds
At a cost of five million dollars, the film took two years to research, the designers ultimately cataloging five million items of clothing and properties for the epic.
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