started at Pinewood on August 9, 1965 then in September moved to Egypt. Once location filming finished, the shoot went on hiatus to give Olivier time to be available for interior scenes in December. It was the last movie filmed in Ultra Panavision 70 until The Hateful Eight, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino forty-nine years later. Reception Reviews for Khartoum at the time were generally positive. Sight and Sound described the film as being "beautifully photographed, lavishly mounted, intelligently acted, but ultimately dull." The Times praised the film for the screenplay. However negative reviews came from The Daily Telegraph and the New Statesman, which criticized the film for its historical inaccuracies (for example the Mahdi did not want to kill everyone in the capital and called for killing only soldiers). On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an average rating of 7/10. In the 21st century, popular historian Alex von Tunzelmann criticized the film for factual inaccuracies and Olivier's unrealistic accent and blackface makeup. Literature professor Edward Said criticized Khartoum for what he described as a pro-colonial propagandistic portrayal of good versus evil by clashing "despotically violent Arab masculinity against a noble, rational Western one." Film director Martin Scorsese said Khartoum was one of his guilty pleasures. "Charlton Heston... is marvelous; and Laurence Olivier has a lot of fun as the Mahdi, with a space between his front teeth. It isn't very good filmmaking, but it has a mystical quality about it. This was a holy war. At the end – when Mahdi killed Gordon, and then six months later he died himself – it was as if the two of them canceled each other out, religiously and historically. It's a story I want to be told, over and over again, like a fairy tale." Editor Dennis Schwartz described the film as "a visually stunning historical epic, smartly acted and lavishly produced, that gives one a good look at that period’s political intrigues but does little to tell us about the two religious zealots–Gordon and the Mahdi." Accolades References Notes Citations Bibliography Burton, Alan and O'Sullivan, Tim. (2009). The Cinema of Basil Dearden and Michael Relph. Edinburgh University Press Duiker, William and Spielvogel, Jackson. (2015). World History, Volume II: Since 1500. Cengage Learning Niemi, Robert. (2006). History in the Media. ABC Clio Santas, Constantine and others. (2014). The Encyclopaedia of Epic Films. Scarecrow Press Reid, John Howard. (2006). Cinemascope 3: