Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 109

The M u m m y

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and no little revulsion to Imhotep’s physical appearance and quest for Helen. The
story’s beauty lies in how Imhotep’s longing over the years puts the pathos of his
situation on display while also eliciting concurrent joyful reactions from the
audience that he has been subdued counterbalanced with sorrow that his love has
not been consummated.
Balderston’s use of the reincarnation m otif to specify Helen as the
contemporary version of Anck-es-en-Amon goes a long way toward making Boris
KarlofiPs Imhotep a character the audience can identify with more easily than Arnold
Vosloo’s depiction in the remake, for the latter’s Imhotep merely latches on to the
first woman he sees as the perfect sacrifice necessary to bring his lover back from
the underworld. Stephen Sommer’s film thus gives the audience less reason to
identify with Imhotep’s plight and Arnold Vosloo’s character is nowhere near the
focus of mixed emotional response that Karloff is in the original.
At the same time, Karl Freund passed up the opportunity to invest the
original’s story with more pathos when he decided to excise or cut back scenes in
Balderston’s script showing Anck-es-en-Amon’s trip through time via her multiple
lives. Expanding upon the reincarnation motif would surely have added to the
story while establishing firmer ground for Helen/Anck-es-en-Amon’s decision at
the film’s conclusion to forsake Imhotep’s ageless love as that of a soul already
dead. Perhaps Freund’s background as one o f the industry’s best-known
cinematographers conspired to work against him in this case; for while The Mummy
features fluid tracking shots and atmospheric lighting, it tends to lack the touches
someone such as James Whale or Val Lewton would have included to fully realize
the characters and mis-en-scene. The Mummy was Karl Freund’s debut behind the
camera, and one cannot help but surmise that he fell back on that with which he
was most familiar while eschewing the little flourishes that help film aspire to art
in order to meet his shooting schedule. Zita Johann, the actress who plays Helen
Grosvenor, had little positive to say about Freund’s directorial style, accusing him
of feeling he needed a scapegoat in case the film did not turn out well. Thus,
Freund made Johann’s time on the shoot ‘Very unpleasant,” although she claims to
have seen through his tactics immediately (Brunas 52). Indeed, Freund directed
only a few films following this success before returning to his beloved career as a
cinematographer.
The 1999 version of The Mummy, scripted and directed by Stephen
Sommers, might best be described as an extension of the popular Indiana Jones
series. Upon an initial viewing, one can easily imagine the film titled Indiana
Jones Meets the Mummy As Pat Cadigan tells us in his book. Resurrecting the
Mummy: The Making o f the Movie, Sommers chose to justify his remake in action
film terms: