Slaves of Babylon

I remember seeing William Castle's "Slaves of Babylon" at the local cinema on a Saturday afternoon during the 1950's; it was one I looked forward to.

Viewing it after 60 years is a bit like revisiting the place you lived in when you were a child - everything seems much smaller.

The film is set around 550 BC, after the Jews have been enslaved in Babylon for many decades. Their leader, Daniel, has a certain influence with King Nebuchadnezzar, but the Babylonians are cracking down on the worship of any god but their own, a dude called Bel Marduk - "Slaves of Babylon" may have relevance for today after all.

Daniel has a vision that the only way the Jews can return to Jerusalem is to find a young shepherd named Cyrus who is destined to become the king of Persia and defeat the Babylonians. Daniel dispatches a trusted follower, Nahum (Richard Conte) to locate the lad.

Nahum discovers that Cyrus is a callow youth who will no doubt end up drag racing donkeys unless taken in hand. Nahum also learns that Cyrus is keen on a princess named Panthera.

Linda Christian plays Panthera, and she is still one of the few reasons to see this movie. A minor actress maybe, but her off-screen life was far more interesting than any character she ever played. She was a magnet for rich and famous men and it's easy to see why, she was gorgeous.

Meanwhile Daniel has spent the night in the lion's den on the orders of Nebuchadnezzar. However when the door is opened, Daniel is standing unharmed, bathed in a shaft of light surrounded by purring lions, a tableau straight out of Illustrated Stories from the Bible.

Panthera falls for Nahum, but he has a plan for her so complex that you really need to see the movie to comprehend it all. What isn't complex in "Slaves of Babylon" are the sets; that sage advice to young actors about not bumping into the scenery applies doubly here because they would probably burst through it if they did.

After some lacklustre battles - fought in front of those Californian rocks familiar from scores of movies and television shows - Cyrus attacks Babylon, and Daniel's prophecies come true.

I enjoyed seeing "Slaves" again, but nostalgia played a part in that for sure. The whole film has a quality not unlike the naïve tapestries that we see when Nahum visits Cyrus' foster parents.

This was William Castle's last foray back into ancient times - he already had "Serpent of the Nile" under his belt. From here he went on to more contemporary pieces such as "Homicidal" - no doubt serious historians everywhere breathed a sigh of relief.

A swift canter through the Old Testament visualising in Technicolor for Sunday school students as vividly as the budget will allow the hanging gardens of Babylon, Daniel in the lions' den and Belshazzar's feast.

One of the most popular genres in American films of the 1950s were Biblical epics. Some of the films (such as "The Ten Commandments", "Ben Hur" and "Quo Vadis") were huge epics...others were silly and trivial ("David and Bathsheba")...but they were very popular. One of the lesser known Biblical films is this movie, "Slaves of Babylon". While it was filmed in color (as ALL these films were), it stars second-tier actors and tells the story of the Jews during their captivity in Babylon...as well as their rescue by the Persians.

When the movie began, I laughed because I noticed that almost all the Jews in the film were made to look 'Jewish' by having them wear Stars of David...even though the symbol only dates back to the 17th century. Plus, the omnipresent stars just look silly.

The story is based VERY loosely on the book of Daniel. Some of the characters have names from the Bible (like Nahum and Daniel) but otherwise almost none of this film is from any ancient writing...just some modern Hollywood writers.

The Jews are not happy in Babylon and Daniel sends Nahum to look for a shepherd named Cyrus and convince him to become the leader of the Persians as well as to free the Jews. Now, in real life, Cyrus was a prince...never a shepherd...and never being raised by foster parents. Together, Nahum and Cyrus do great things.

Like nearly all the Biblical epics, the language is rather stilted and they are only Biblical in a very broad sense. It also includes dancing girls and lots of other time-fillers. It's modestly entertaining but not much more.

Like many of the Katzman-Castle films of this era, Slaves of Babylon renders the color process a gimmick by purveying it through a hollow vehicle. This film is the hole in the biblical doughnut. The acting is poor (comical, in fact) and the dialogue is wasteful in service of irritating 'bible-speak' quips. I won't split hairs on the use of Stars of David embroidery for all Jewish characters, but will mention that the history is off by over a thousand years. As for Castle's direction, there are some moments of mobile framing and oblique staging, but they seem to remain in service of promoting the color process itself (Nahum at the river). Dramatic scenes are continuously cut short or dealt with indifferently from the point of direction. The most absurd example of this indifferent direction is when future King Cyrus is told by his father that his mother was raped to conceive him... we don't even get a front view of Cyrus at any point during this reveal! Continuous high and low angle framing never clarifies its purpose as being that of a transcendental historical subject or a diegetic critic of the relationship of servant and master. Needless to say, this film is the epitome of anti-dramatic and is conflated with inconsistency in tone, pace and sense of itself as a text. The mise-en-scene is too tableau to be considered painterly. The painted backdrops are positioned to announce themselves confidently as fake. There is a theme of tapestry in this film and that is perhaps the only true thing about the story. With no depth perceivable, I would have to remark the only single vanishing point as being the interest of the audience member.

Unreliable biblical sword and sandal (a genre which became very popular in US and mainly in Italy in the fifties and the early sixties ) , this little movie suffers from an obvious lack of means and from weak acting by Terry Kilburn as listless conqueror Cyrus and Linda Christian as a sulken princess "whose beauty would equal that of Helen of Troy "; the total absence of chemistry between them makes the viewer wonder why the victor wants to marry this vapid virgin.

The screenplay is based on the legend :Cyrus was never a shepherd ,except in bedtime stories ; here he is given a treatment which will remind you those of Oedipus ,Romolo and Remo and even Mosis ;hence the invention of the principal of the film :Nahoum ,the deus ex machina,without whom ....Fortunately ,he is portrayed by the great film noir character actor Richard Conte. He and Maurice Schwarz as prophet Daniel (who was really a king's counselor) give the peplum some substance ;anyway the Hebrews were not mistreated in Babylone and,except for Daniel's jealous enemies , their religion was respected .There's the de rigueur scene of the lions pit though . Cyrus did help them get back to their country ,but Daniel was too old to accompany them and according to historians,died in Babylon.