The Bible: In the Beginning... is a 1966 American-Italian religious epic film produced by Dino De Laurentiis and directed by John Huston. It recounts the first 22 chapters of the Biblical Book of Genesis, covering the stories from The Creation and Adam and Eve to the binding of Isaac.[4] Released by 20th Century Fox, the film was written by Christopher Fry, with uncredited contributions by Vittorio Bonicelli, Orson Welles, Ivo Perilli, Jonathan Griffin and Mario Soldati, photographed by Giuseppe Rotunno, and Ernst Haas shot the opening creation sequence, in Dimension 150 (color by DeLuxe Color), a variant of the 70mm Todd-AO format, and it stars Michael Parks as Adam, Ulla Bergryd as Eve, Richard Harris as Cain, John Huston as Noah, Stephen Boyd as Nimrod, George C. Scott as Abraham, Ava Gardner as Sarah, and Peter O'Toole as the Three Angels.
In 1967, the film's score by Toshiro Mayuzumi was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score.[5] The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures included the film in its "Top Ten Films" list of 1966.[6] De Laurentiis and Huston won David di Donatello Awards for Best Producer and Best Foreign Director, respectively.[7]
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The film[8] consists of five main sections: The Creation, Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, Noah's Ark, and the story of Abraham. There are also a pair of shorter sections, one recounting the building of the Tower of Babel, and the other the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The sections vary greatly in tone. The story of Abraham is somber and reverential, while that of Noah repeatedly focuses on his love of all animals. Cats (including lions) are shown drinking milk and Noah's relationship with the animals is depicted as harmonious. It was originally conceived as the first in a series of films retelling the entire Old Testament, but these sequels were never made.
Production[edit]
Seven Arts Productions contributed 30% of the budget.[9]
Casting[edit]
Ulla Bergryd was an anthropology student living in Gothenburg, Sweden when she was discovered by a talent scout, who photographed her in a museum there, and then promptly hired to play Eve.[10] In an interview for The Pittsburgh Press, Bergryd recalled the experience:
I was especially surprised by the fact that I started to work four days after signing a contract. Although I've always been interested in movies and the theater, I'd never seen any actual shooting, and it was all very exciting.[10]
Huston originally considered Alec Guinness (who was unavailable) and Charlie Chaplin (who declined) for the part of Noah until he finally decided to play it himself.[11]
Ava Gardner was reluctant at first to play the part of Sarah, but after Huston talked her into it, she accepted.[12] She later explained why she accepted the role:
He (Huston) had more faith in me than I did myself. Now I'm glad I listened, for it is a challenging role and a very demanding one. I start out as a young wife and age through various periods, forcing me to adjust psychologically to each age. It is a complete departure for me and most intriguing. In this role, I must create a character, not just play one.[12]
Anglo-Persian actress Zoe Sallis, who was cast as Hagar, was originally known as Zoe Ishmail, until Huston decided that she change her name because of its similarity to the name of Ishmael, her character's son.[13]
The film marks the debut of Italian actress Anna Orso, who portrays the role of Shem's wife.[14] It also introduced Franco Nero to American audiences; Nero, who was working as the film's still photographer, was hired by Huston for the role of Abel due to his handsome features. At the time, Nero could not speak English, and Huston gave him recordings of Shakespeare with which to study.[15]
Filming[edit]
The scenes involving the Garden of Eden were shot at a "small zoological garden" in Rome instead of a "beautiful place of trees, glades and wildflowers" which had been demolished shortly before the shooting began. Ulla Bergryd, who was cast as Eve, later recalled, "Paradise was, in fact, an old botanical garden on the outskirts of Rome."[10]
There were five reproductions of Noah's Ark built for the film.[17] The largest reproduction, which stood on the backlot of the De Laurentiis Film Center, was 200 feet long, 64 feet wide, and 50 feet high; it was used for the long shot of Noah loading the animals.[17] The interior reproduction, which was one of the "largest interior sets ever designed and constructed," was 150 feet long and 58 feet high and had "three decks, divided into a hundred pens" and a ramp that ran "clear around the ark from top to bottom."[17] The third reproduction was a "skeleton" ark, built for the scenes depicting Noah and his sons constructing the Ark.[17] The fourth reproduction was "placed at the foot of a dam" for the inundation sequences and the fifth reproduction was a miniature for the storm sequences.[17] The cost of building the five reproductions was more than $1 million.[17] The building took months and more than 500 workers were employed.[17] The animals were delivered from a zoo in Germany.[18] The whole segment of Noah's Ark had a total budget of $3 million.[17]
Release[edit]
The Bible: In the Beginning ... premiered at New York City's Loew's State Theatre on 28 September 1966.[19] The day after the premiere, Ava Gardner remarked, "It's the only time in my life I actually enjoyed working—making that picture."[20]
Critical reception[edit]
Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Director John Huston and his associates have wrought a motion picture that is not only magnificent almost beyond cinematic belief but that is also powerful, quaint, funny, thought-provoking and of course, this being the Old Testament, filled with portents of doom."[21] Variety noted that "the world's oldest story—the origins of Mankind, as told in the Book of Genesis—is put upon the screen by director John Huston and producer Dino De Laurentiis with consummate skill, taste and reverence."[22] It also commended the "lavish, but always tasteful production [that] assaults and rewards the eye and ear with awe-inspiring realism."[22]
Other reviews were less positive. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that the film had "extraordinary special effects" but was lacking "a galvanizing feeling of connection in the stories from Genesis," and "simply repeats in moving pictures what has been done with still pictures over the centuries. That is hardly enough to adorn this medium and engross sophisticated audience."[23] Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post described the film as "cautiously literary, impressive in some instances, absurd in others."[24] The Monthly Film Bulletin opined that "the seven or eight episodes are diffusely long, tediously slow, depressingly reverent. The liveliest of the lot is The Ark, with Huston himself as a jolly, Dr. Dolittle old Noah, and a lot of irrestistibly solemn and silly animals; but even here sheer length eventually wears down one's attention."[25] Episcopal priest and author Malcolm Boyd wrote, "Its interpretation of Holy Scripture is fundamentalistic, honoring letter while ignoring (or violating) spirit. John Huston got bogged down in material of the Sunday School picture-book level and seems unable to have gotten out of the rut. It is an over-long (174 minutes plus intermission) picture, tedious and boring."[26] In Leonard Maltin's annual home video guide the film is given a BOMB rating, its review stating, "Only Huston himself as Noah escapes heavy-handedness. Definitely one time you should read the Book instead."[27]
Box office[edit]
The film earned rentals of $15 million in the United States and Canada during its initial theatrical release,[28] which made it the second highest-grossing film of 1966.
The film was the second most popular Italian production in Italy in 1966 with 11,245,980 admissions, just behind The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and is the 15th most popular of all-time.[29]
According to Fox records, the film needed to earn $26,900,000 in rentals to break even and made $25,325,000 worldwide, making a loss of $1.5 million.[1][30]
Home media[edit]
20th Century Fox released the film on videocassettes during the later 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, DVD in 2002, Blu-ray Disc on 22 March 2011 and online for both permanent downloading and streaming video online rentals.[31]
Accolades[edit]
The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Jump up to:a b c Hall, S. and Neale, S. Epics, spectacles, and blockbusters: a Hollywood history (p. 179). Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan; 2010. ISBN 978-0-8143-3008-1. Retrieved 25 March 2011.
- ^ Solomon, Aubrey. Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0-8108-4244-1. p254
- ^ "The Bible: In the Beginning, Box Office Information". The Numbers. Retrieved 16 April 2012.
- ^ Shevis, James M. (15 July 1966). "John Huston Narrates Film, Directs, Portrays Noah". The Pittsburgh Press. Retrieved 4 April 2014.
- ^ "The 39th Academy Awards (1967) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 24 July 2013.
- ^ "National Board of Review of Motion Pictures - Top Ten Films of 1966". Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
- ^ "David di Donatello - La Bibbia". daviddidonatello.it. Retrieved 24 July 2013.[permanent dead link]
- ^ "The Great Bible Figures". Archived from the original on 12 August 2011. Retrieved 3 September 2011.
- ^ "7 Arts 30% 'Bible' Share: $4,550,000". Variety. 6 October 1965. p. 3.
- ^ Jump up to:a b c Heimbuecher, Ruth (19 October 1966). "'Bible's' Eve Disliked Her Fig Leaf Costume". The Pittsburgh Press. Retrieved 4 April 2014.
- ^ Pearson, Howard (19 October 1966). "A Director Speaks - Huston: 'Bible' Unique Film". The Deseret News. Retrieved 2 April 2014.
- ^ Jump up to:a b "Biblical Role Scares Ava". The Spokesman-Review. 6 September 1964. Retrieved 2 April 2014.
- ^ "What's In A Name?". The Pittsburgh Press. 13 December 1964. Retrieved 2 April 2014.
- ^ "E' morta l'attrice Anna Orso, Aveva recitato con Al Pacino". la Repubblica. 14 August 2012. Retrieved 11 September 2012.
- ^ Texas, Adios (Franco Nero Bio) (DVD). Los Angeles, California: Blue Underground. 1966.
- ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h "Ark Easier For Noah To Build". The Deseret News. 2 February 1965. Retrieved 2 April 2014.
- ^ Hughes, p.70f
- ^ Crowther, Bosley (29 September 1966). "The Bible (1966) The Screen: 'The Bible' According to John Huston Has Premiere:Director Plays Noah in Film at Loew's State Fry's Script Is Limited to Part of Genesis". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 April 2014.
- ^ Boyle, Hal (5 October 1966). "Ava Gardner Declares Public Image Not Real". Sarasota Journal. Retrieved 1 April 2014.
- ^ Scheuer, Philip K. (2 October 1966). "Movies: 'The Bible' Powerful and Faithful". Los Angeles Times. p. 9.
- ^ Jump up to:a b "Review: 'The Bible – In the Beginning . . .'". Variety. 31 December 1965. Retrieved 1 April 2014.
- ^ Crowther, Bosley (29 September 1966). "The screen: 'The Bible' According to John Huston Has Premiere". The New York Times. p. 59.
- ^ Coe, Richard L. (30 October 1966). "The Bible". The Washington Post. G1.
- ^ "La Bibbia (The Bible ... In the Beginning)". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 33 (394): 163. November 1966.
- ^ Boyd, Malcolm (27 November 1966). "Houston's [sic] 'The Bible' Fails to Make a Moral Statement". The Washington Post. G5.
- ^ Maltin, Leonard, ed. (1995). Leonard Maltin's 1996 Movie & Video Guide. Signet. p. 107. ISBN 0-451-18505-6.
- ^ Solomon p 230
- ^ "La classifica dei film più visti di sempre al cinema in Italia". movieplayer.it. 25 January 2016. Retrieved 4 October 2019.
- ^ Silverman, Stephen M (1988). The Fox that got away : the last days of the Zanuck dynasty at Twentieth Century-Fox. L. Stuart. p. 325.
- ^ "Bible-In The Beginning Blu-ray". TCM Shop. Archived from the original on 1 April 2014. Retrieved 1 April 2014.
- ^ "AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers Nominees" (PDF). Retrieved 13 August 2016.
Bibliography[edit]
External links[edit]
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Pauline Kael/July 30, 2011
TNR Film Classic: ‘The Bible’ (1966)
Movie Epics
When the announcement was made that Norman Mailer’s An American Dream was to be made into a movie, my reaction was that John Huston was the only man who could do it. And what a script it could be for him! But Huston was working on The Bible. A quarter of a century had passed since The Maltese Falcon, it was a long time since San Pietro and The Treasure of Sierra Madre and The Red Badge of Courage and The African Queen. It was a decade since the stirring, often brilliant, but misconceived Moby Dick, and Huston had gone a different route—away from the immediacy of men testing themselves and the feel and smell of American experience. He had become a director of spectacles. Possibly, because of the way that big movie stars and directors live in a world of their own, insulated and out of touch, he might not even recognize that An American Dream was the spectacle of our time; was, even, his spectacle.
It turns out he was, at least, testing himself as, earlier, he had attempted to do in Moby Dick, and, even after that, in parts of The Roots of Heaven. If, in making The Treasure of Sierra Madre he risked comparison with Creed, and if with The Red Badge of Courage, he risked comparison with The Birth of a Nation, The Bible risks comparison with Intolerance. It is a huge sprawling epic—an attempt to use the medium to its fullest, to overwhelm the senses and feelings, for gigantic myth-making, for a poetry of size and scope.
In recent years the spectacle form has become so vulgarized that probably most educated moviegoers have just about given it up. They don’t think of movies in those terms anymore because in general the only way for artists to work in the medium is frugally. Though there might occasionally be great sequences in big pictures, like the retreat from Russia in King Vidor’s War and Peace, those who knew the novel had probably left by then. But if you will admit that although you may have gone to see Lawrence of Arabia under the delusion that it was going to be about T. E. Lawrence, you stayed to enjoy the vastness of the desert and the pleasures of the senses that a huge movie epic can provide, the pleasures of largeness and distances, then you may be willing to override your prejudices and too-narrow theories about what the art of the film is, and go to see The Bible.
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For John Huston is an infinitely more complex screen artist than David Lean. He can be far worse than Lean because he’s careless and sloppy and doesn’t have all those safety nets of solid craftsmanship spread under him. What makes a David Lean spectacle uninteresting finally is that it’s in such goddam good taste. It’s all so ploddingly intelligent and controlled, so “distinguished.” The hero may stick his arm in blood up to the elbow but you can be assured that the composition will be academically, impeccably composed. Lean plays the mad game of super-spectacles like a sane man. Huston (like Mailer) tests himself, plays the crazy game crazy—to beat it, to win.
The worst problem of recent movie epics is that they usually start with an epic in another form and so the director must try to make a masterpiece to compete with an already existing one. This is enough to petrify most directors but it probably delights Huston. What more perverse challenge than to test himself against the Book? It’s a flashy demonic gesture, like Nimrod shooting his arrow into God’s heaven.
Huston shoots arrows all over the place; he pushes himself too hard, he tries to do too many different things. The movie is episodic not merely because the original material is episodic but also because, like Griffith in Intolerance, he can find no way to rhythm together everything that he’s trying to do. Yet the grandeur of this kind of crazy, sinfully extravagant movie-making is in trying to do too much. We tend, now, to think of the art of the film in terms of depth, but there has always been something about the eclectic medium of movies that, like opera, attracts artists of Promethean temperament who want to use the medium for scale, and for a scale that will appeal to multitudes. I don’t mean men like De Mille who made smallminded pictures on a big scale, they’re about as Promethean as a cash-register. I mean men like Griffith and Von Stroheim and Abel Gance and Eisenstein and Fritz Lang and Orson Welles who thought big. Men whose prodigious failures could make other people’s successes look puny. This is the tradition in which Huston’s The Bible belongs. It’s one in the eye—a big one in the eye—for those who talk about how artists should strive for excellence.
Huston’s triumph is that despite the insanity of the attempt and the grandiosity of the project, the technology doesn’t dominate the material: when you respond to the beauty of scenes in The Bible, it is not merely the beauty of photography but the beauty of conception.
The stories of Genesis are, of course, free of that wretched masochistic piety that makes movies about Christ so sickly. Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew was so static that I could hardly wait for that loathsome prissy young man to get crucified. Why do movie-makers think that’s such a good story, anyway? If He could save Himself, why didn’t He? Did He die just to make everybody feel rotten? The only thing that gives the story plausibility is, psychologically, not very attractive. And whether it’s told the De Mille way, loaded with hypocritic sanctity, or the Pasolini way, drabness supposedly guaranteeing purity and truth, it’s got a bad ending that doesn’t make sense after those neat miracles.
The legends that Huston uses are, fortunately, more remote in time, are indeed, all “miracles” and we are spared sanctity. The God who orders these events is so primitive and inexplicable that we may indeed wonder and perhaps be appalled. From Eve, whose crime scarcely seems commensurate with her punishment, on through to Hagar cast into the wilderness, and the cruel proof of obedience demanded of Abraham, it is a series of horror stories, alleviated only by the sweet and hopeful story of the Ark, where, for once, God seems to be smiling—no doubt, because we are taken inside the boat rather than left outside to suffer in the Flood. Huston tells it straight and retains that angry God, and Eve as the source of mischief, and phrases disquieting to modern ears, like “Fair are the angels of God.” He hasn’t taken the fashionable way out of trying to turn it all into charming metaphors and he hasn’t “modernized” it into something comfortable and comforting. He doesn’t, in the standard show business way, twist the story to make the hero sympathetic. Only with Peter OToole’s three angels do we get the stale breath of the New Testament with the familiar skinny figure and that suffering-for-our-sins Look.
The movie may present a problem for religious people who have learned not to think of the Bible stories like this: it is commonly understood now that although the childish take the stories for truth, they are then educated to know that the stories are “metaphorical.” The movie undercuts this liberal view by showing the power (and terror) of these cryptic, primitive tribal tales and fantasies of the origins of life on earth and why we are as we are. This God of wrath who frightens men to worship ain’t no pretty metaphor.
One of the worst failures of the movie is, implicitly, a rather comic modern predicament. Huston obviously can’t make anything acceptable out of the Bible’s accounts of sinfulness and he falls back upon the silliest stereotypes of evil: the barbaric monsters who jeer at Noah’s preparations for the Flood look like leftovers from a Steve Reeves-Hercules epic, and the posing, prancing faggots of Sodom seem as negligible as in La Dolce Vita. God couldn’t have had much sense of humor if he went to the trouble of destroying them. Even their worship of the Golden Calf seems like a night-club act, absurd all right, but not nearly as horrible as the animal sacrifices that God accepts of Cain and orders of Abraham. It is a measure of the strength of Huston’s vision that we are constantly shocked by the barbarism of this primitive religion with its self-serving myths; it is a measure of weakness that he goes along with its strange notions of evil without either making them believable or treating them as barbaric. Only in the rare moments when the Bible’s ideas of wrong and our ideas of wrong coincide—as in Cain’s murder of his brother—can Huston make sin convincing.
This movie has more things wrong with it than his Moby Dick, but they’re not so catastrophic. Though Huston might conceivably have made a great Ahab himself, Gregory Peck could not: that nice man did not belong in the whirling center of Melville’s vision. In The Bible it’s questionable if that Ahab-character Huston belongs in Noah’s homespun on the Ark. He plays it in the crowd-pleasing vein of his cute, shrewd Archbishop in The Cardinal: his Noah is puckish old innocent, a wise fool. He indulged his father Walter Huston in one scene of The Treasure of Sierra Madre, when the grizzled, toothless old prospector, tended by native lovelies, cocked an eye at the audience. Huston’s Noah keeps asking the audience’s indulgence, and Huston as director extends it. What was a momentary weakness in Huston Senior is the whole acting style of Huston Junior. His air of humility and wonder isn’t so much acted as assumed, like a trick of personality—a doubletake that has taken over the man.
The early part of the Abraham and Sarah story is poor: it looks and sounds like acted-out Bible stories on television. But then it begins to unfold, and we see that gentle, intelligent man Abraham raised to nobility by suffering. I mean we really see it. George C. Scott has the look of a prophet, and he gives the character an Old Testament fervor and splendor. Its a subdued, magnificent performance.
Probably the most seriously flawed sequence is the Tower of Babel, and as it is one of the most brilliant conceptions in the work, it is difficult to know why it is so badly structured and edited. The ideas remain latent: we can see what was intended, but the sequence is over before the dramatic point has been developed. And in this sequence, as in several others, Huston seems unable to maneuver the groups of people in the foreground; this clumsiness of staging, and the dubbing of many of the actors in minor roles, produce occasional dead scenes and dead sounds. It would be better if the musical score were dead: it is obtrusively alive, and at war with the imagery.
Now that Huston has done the Old Testament version of the beginnings of life, why doesn’t he do the story of evolution? I’m serious: I can’t think of a better story than how life probably developed on earth, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the public is ready for it.
Read More: Film, Russia, David Lean, John Huston, Norman Mailer, The Bible
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