Otto Preminger. Billy Wilder. William Wyler.
These are just a few auteur-considered directors who made at least one film in their career unlike anything they had done up to that point. Preminger had
Skiddoo. Wilder had
The Emperor Waltz. Wyler:
The Liberation of LB Jones.
John Huston had
The Bible...in the Beginning. Whaa.?
Yes, a Biblical epic. Today's post will examine that 1966 epic film which was a big hit. As successful as it was at the box office, it's still considered by
some critics to be a "clinker". Also explored in this post: why Huston decided to direct the film and how it compares with some of his others.
The Late 1960s
After the enormous success of 1959's
Ben Hur, a new theatrical film based on a biblical event was released almost every year:
1960
The Story of Ruth (USA)
1960
Esther and the King (USA-Italy)
1961
King of Kings (USA)
1961
Barabbas (USA-Italy)
1963
Sodom and Gomorrah (France-Italy-USA)
1965
The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
"Genesis: In the Beginning" was the original vision of producer Dino De Laurentiis (
Barabbas). He conceived this to be the first in a string of epic films chronicling the Bible. As the late 60s emerged, so did a counter cultural revolution in America. It was a time of social and cultural change, and cinema was changing too. A new style of filmmaking was having an influence on American films and filmmakers. The sexual revolution also had its influence on films, and the Bible was one of the first big studio films to show nudity (tastefully of course). This was the era when the Beatles were supposedly "more popular than Jesus".
So, in this turbulent time of the late 1960s, did the world need
The Bible?
The Bible...in the Beginning is a chronicle of accounts from the first chapters of Genesis. An intermission divides the anthology into pre- and post- Antediluvian periods. (Sidenote - the Intermission needs to make a comeback. How can a person sit in a theater for 3 hours at a time? Not good for the spine.)
Faithfully adapted, the film makes for a good primer for those who are not familiar with the Bible, Judaism, or Christianity. (Cliff Notes and study guides are optional)
The film features 7 accounts:
1) The creation of the world, a paradise without sin, and earth's first human inhabitants - Adam and Eve (Michael Parks and Ulla Bergryd), who are tempted by the devil and perform the first act of disobedience. Huston creates an evil being that hides in the shadows of the tree; the camera focuses on the creature, but we can't quite make out what kind of being it is at first. Parks was an unknown and was promoted in some magazines as an actor "to watch". (Unfortunately he didn't have a very big career.) Bergryd was a Swedish actress, chosen after an international search.
In his review in the New York Times (Sept 29, 1966), Bosley Crowthers wrote:
"The scenes of the formation of the earth—the ecology of Creation—are awesomely evolved out of vast shots of gathering vapors, overwhelming clouds, mightily rushing waters, mountains of molten rock and eventual oceans, plains, giant forests and great fields of sparkling flowers."
2) The first offspring - Cain and Abel (played by two of the stars of the 1967 film version of
Camelot - Richard Harris and Franco Nero, interestingly), and the first murder. This segment is relatively short compared to the others.
4.) Noah (played by Huston himself) and the great flood. In the account, Noah is commanded by God to fill the enormous ark with two of every kind of animal so they will repopulate the earth after the flood.
5.) The Tower of Babel, shows how humanity rebelled with a tower, and how languages and nations were originally formed.
6.) The three messenger angels; they search for righteous people in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. They find none but Lot and his family. Only one of the messengers is visible to the audience; he is played by Peter O'Toole.
7.) the account of Abraham (George C. Scott), his wife Sarah (a lovely Ava Gardner) and their son Isaac, from whose lineage came the Jewish people. The last ninety minutes tells the account of their trials, and could have been a film all to itself. The segment has a little something for everyone - romance, suspense, and even a battle scene. There is a great line when they are wandering in the wilderness: Abraham says to a pessimistic character, "Only in the promise of what is to come shall we prosper."
If you’re looking for the account of Moses, you're in the wrong film. You're looking for
The Ten Commandments (1956), directed by Cecil B. de Mille.
In
The Bible, which could be thought of as a prequel to
Commandments, the voice of the Lord is played by none other than the director himself, taking after deMille. Huston pretty much annotates the text of the King James Bible, though there are a few poetic liberties added.
Huston wanted scenes to resemble classic European paintings. And he succeeds fairly well. The film has sweeping cinematography, incredible scenery, thousands of extras, and hundreds of animals. It's all very impressive, affirmed by Crowthers:
"To be sure, the film is mechanically inventive."
Some familiar themes in Huston films
Though not instantly recognizable as a "Huston film", if you examine closely enough you will find themes similar to his other works, a number of them tackling religious subjects, such as
The African Queen, Heaven Knows Mr. Allison, and Wise Blood. Even the film for which was nominated for Best Supporting Actor -
The Cardinal is about religious life. This film, however, goes right to the source: The Good Book itself.
Many of his main characters in his other films are individualists who often deal with moral complications. And sometimes demonstrating decency compared to the hopeless world around them. I think this description fits well of the two most compelling characters in
The Bible: Noah and Abraham. Injustice was another theme of Huston’s. Rising above the persecution of his community are Noah and his family, very much a minority. Huston shows him being laughed at and publicly humiliated in front of his sons. Yet Noah continued to follow his inner voice. Something I think Huston could identify with; he’s even
been called the "the auteur of life on the ropes”;
In
an essay on John Huston on the blog 1morefilmblog, the author writes
:"Certainly Noah, Abraham, Ahab (in Moby Dick), and Hazel Motes (in Wise Blood) present a sort of Romantic idealization of individualism, avoiding charges of selfishness by grounding their rejection of the conventional society in a call for devotion or duty to a higher cause or rejection of conformity".
Christopher Fry, a poetic British playwright, was tapped to write the screenplay. His other works included the previous collaboration with de Laurentiis -
Barrabas - and the commentary for the documentary A
Queen is Crowned, in 1953. In that film, Sir Laurence Olivier provided the narration of the coronation of Elizabeth II. In
The Bible, he gives the dialogue an Old English flair. Ergo my children, we hear alot of "thee's" and "thou's" (Words like "ashamed" are pronounced with three syllables) In my opinion, some of the actors don't have the right accent to pull this off as convincingly. Huston originally asked Brits Alec Guinness and Charlie Chaplin to play Noah, but both had to pass. Huston does his best. He certainly has the perfect look for a man like Noah, with his shaggy clothes and full beard. And he certainly had the energy needed for the character.
BEHIND THE SCENES
The first time the character of Noah was seen on the big screen was in Darryl F. Zanuck's lengthy early talkie
Noah's Ark (1938) directed by Michael Curtiz (
Casablanca). 30 years later, it was deemed time for a CinemaScope version. The man who would bring this to the screen was producer Dino de Laurentis himself, dreamed of filming the entire Bible, which was an interesting prospect considering so many Biblical accounts had already been captured on film: David and Bathsheba, Solomon and Sheba, Samson and Delilah among those. In a biography of Huston by Axel Madsen, de Laurentiis is quoted as saying:
"Orson Welles will direct the Abraham and Isaac sequence, Robert Bresson will direct the Creation, Federico Fellini will direct the Flood, Luchino Visconti will direct the scene of Joesph and his Brethren and John Huston will have the responsibility of giving the entire project cohesion and continuity. Maria Callas will be Sarah, Mother of the Jews, and Sir Laurence Olivier will be God. Igor Stravinsky will write the music. It will be fantastic!"
That never happened, but Huston stayed onboard. By all accounts Huston enjoyed working on this film, especially with all the animals in the Noah sequence. In his autobiography he devotes almost 20 pages of anecdotes.
Filming took place over a period of 13 months (May 1964-March 1965) in 5 countries (Italy, Ecuador, Iceland, Egypt, and Israel), with reshoots and editing taking many more months. It was also the first film to be shot with a new camera process called
Dimension 150.
The Film's Reception
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| Postcard Scan Courtesy of Roloff de Jeu |
The film opened in late September, 1966. When the US receipts were counted, the inspiring
The Bible was the #2 film of 1966 (followed by the depressing
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at #3 -- I do not like that film!)
It pretty much was as a pop culture mega-event.
For those already familiar with the stories, the thrill here is seeing it all come to life on the big screen, and seeing Noah and the animals would have a huge appeal with families and children. Magazines like TIME and LIFE ran sneak-peek pictorials featuring the animals during production. And sure enough, it that's what the advertisers used in their posters.
At Oscar time, the film was only nominated for 1 Oscar, for its beautiful music score. (I still can't believe that this film was not nominated for Best Sound,
but Who's Afraid of Virginia Woof was.)
The first time I watched the movie, it was on video in a terrible pan-and-scan version. Not the way to watch this one! You've got to see it in its widescreen format, the way it was meant to be seen. Example:
Those who are unaware that this is a Huston film might wonder if it's preachy or dogmatic. How could it be, when it's directed by a man who said he didn't believe?
John Huston: The Captain of the Ship
The Bible is unlike any of the other films in Huston's oeuvre. So why did he, a self proclaimed atheist, decide to film it? I don't know for sure; he never talked about the reasons much, not even in his autobiography.
The idea of a big screen film about the story of Noah is the ultimate animal extravaganza – this surely appealed to Huston, who loved animals.
But were there other reasons? Did he take on this project just for the money? It would be ironic; isn’t' capitalizing on God the theme of his 1979 film Wise Blood? He may have done it for personal reasons, perhaps for the same reasons Clint Eastwood keeps revisiting themes of death in his films. In Huston’s oeuvre you’ll find films cynical of religion, and some satirical. Yet this film, however, is very reverent. A very different style and mood. One could even look at it like an experimental film by a literary auteur.
In his review in LIFE magazine (Oct 7, 1966), Richard Schickel wrote:
"Huston's film reminds us again that in their statement of of the basic human condition these are truly inspired stories, full of the kind of simple truth that no amount of time or "progress" wille ver invalidate". IT is infinitely to the credit of the men who made the Bible that they sensed this fact and built their awesomely absorbing film around such a simple premise. "
Was Houston really atheist, or was he like many of us, agnostic? Perhaps unsure of what he believes. These days, noted atheist author Christopher Hitchens (“God Is Not Great”), facing his own mortality, has been
talking about God in a way where he seems almost open to the idea, especially now that he is getting treated for cancer.
I don’t know about you, but most people I know who call themselves atheists would never touch this film with a ten foot pole. Too religious they'd say, too pious. As I watched the film, I didn't see a film directed by a close minded, anti-religion atheist. The Abraham sequence and the sacrificial lamb sequence moved me. I was so impressed with what a self proclaimed "atheist" could create.
My favorite shot in the film is when Noah admires his ark, his creation, his work of art. Years of hard labor, now complete. It's a great shot of Huston looking at the ship. I think of this as Huston admiring not only this film, but all his films, smiling at them, proud of them.
The Maltese Falcon. Key Largo. Moulin Rouge. The Dead. Well done, Mr. Huston.
A quote from John Huston
"I'm not aware of myself as a director having a style. I don't recognize it. I see no remote similarity, for example, between The Red Badge of Courage and Moulin Rouge…. I admire directors like Bergman, Fellini, Bunuel, whose every picture is in some way connected with their private lives, but that's never been my approach.'' - "An Open Book" by John Huston, Published 1981.
REFERENCES
John Huston, Axel Madsen, Published 1980. (book, biography)
An Open Book, John Huston, Published 1981. (book, autobiography)
Simple Little Super Spectacle, Life, Richard Schickel, October 7, 1966 (film review, magazine)
The Ark That John Built, Life, August 13, 1965 (article & pictoral, magazine)
Life, November 27, 1964 (film review, magazine)
On Location: The Bible as Living Technicolor, Time, Jan 15, 1965 (article, magazine)
The Bible (1966), The New York Times, BOSLEY CROWTHER, September 29, 1966 (film review, newspaper)
John Huston: "It's as bad to be ahead of your time as behind it", Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times, August 27, 1975
This post has been submitted to be a part of the 2010 John Huston Blogathon hosted by Icebox Movies
