Wikipedia : Considered the earliest police procedural to be made for British TV, sharing many points of commonality with the U.S. series Dragnet which had gone on air in 1951.
Wikipedia :
In a 1978 article Martin Scorsese listed the film as among his favorites.
"I'd always been addicted to historical epics, but this one was different: it gave the sense that we were really there. This is the way people lived; this is what they believed, thought, and felt. You get it through the overall look of the picture: the low ceilings, the torchlit interiors, the shape of the pillars, the look of the extras. There's a marvelous moment when the dead are being taken away from battle in their coffins, and someone says, "Let us hear the gods of Egypt speak." The camera pans over to one of the statues of the gods, and it talks. That's it-the statue talks! You don't see the mouth moving, you just hear the voice. Then they pan over to the other god-and now he talks. Soon there are about four gods talking. You're never told, "This is how they did it: it was a joke, a trick." In a sense, you're taken into confidence by the Egyptians; you're let in on a religion. I watch this movie over and over again."
This is the first published novel of a stellar career. Agatha Christie is the world's most successful novelist with over 2 billion in book sales. Not a typo, 2 BILLION!
