Le fils prodigue

In 70 BC, the middle eastern seaport city of Joppa is bustling with business. A major disruption occurs when handsome Edmund Purdom (as Micah) saves runaway slave James Mitchell (as Asham) from nasty Neville Brand (as Rhakim). A mute, Mr. Mitchell is wounded and taken home to live with Mr. Purdom's family. They worship one God (Jehovah), according to the opening narration; they are Hebrew. Going against his religion, Purdom is smitten with high priestess Lana Turner (as Samarra). An uncommon blonde, she worships the pagan Baal, male God of the flesh...

Our protagonist and star decides to leave home and "have" (sex with) Ms. Turner. Purdom takes Mitchell and relocates to Damascus. Turner's likewise aroused, but requires a payment of pearls, as is customary for Baal. Meanwhile, high priest Louis Calhern (as Nahreeb), the previous owner of Mitchell, desires revenge. Turner does little to justify her star billing. This is an adaptation of "The Prodigal Son" story from The New Testament, Luke 15: 11-32, which is mentioned in the introduction. It's only an average story, but competently produced and expensive looking.

***** The Prodigal (2/27/55) Richard Thorpe ~ Edmund Purdom, Lana Turner, James Mitchell, Louis Calhern

A sadly boring spectacle of a biblical film, even though almost all the production values are of a high quality (except that special effect vulture). The script and direction of are simply too bland for the story, but more importantly we simply do not care about the character, and most of them are rather unsympathetic. The one redeeming performance is that of Frances L. Sullivan - and this was his last film. He deliciously adds something to each of the scenes he is in, whereas Edmund Purdom gives little throughout the film. Lana Turner is beautiful, but not sensual and her character seems too undefined to be really intriguing -that is until her demise. It is interesting to see a film such as this, where no expense has been spared, with great MGM art direction and costume design, intriguing choreography and movement, the then novel CinemaScope cinematography, and realizing fairly quickly that is simply does not hold. The above mentioned factors prevent it from being utterly boring, but my overall reaction is one of disappointment.

Luke's New Testament Bible story of the son : Edmund Purdom of a wealthy old man : Walter Hampden . The young Hebrew called Micah is insatisfied with his dad's rural life and tries his luck in the town. There he is seduced by greed, squandering his money , and by a gorgeous woman : Lana Turner , High Priestess of Gods Baal and Astarte , being regularly transfered to the silver screen by Richard Thorpe . Two years in the making , a fortune to produce ! . The story of woman's beauty and man's temptation ! . MGM's magnificent Cinemascope and Color Spectacular !

A big budgeted but empty Hollywood rendition based on a famous Parable of the Sacred Scriptures and full of interesting Biblical issues . The main attraction results a be a colorful cast with a large number of prestigious secondaries . Stars Edmund Purdom in his second movie venture into the realms of ancient story , and it has similar virtues , drawbacks and misfortunes to the the first , Sinuhe the Egyptian directed by Michael Cutiz . While Lana Turner is really wonderful as the ambitious priestess of the Goddess Astarte . Outstanding the huge production design , settings and gowns , all of them are magnificent . The large support cast include the most notable among them , the nasty priest Louis Calhern, as well as a bald Neville Brand , the beautiful young Audrey Dalton , Joseph Wiseman , the villain fat man Francis L SullIvan, John Dehner as envious brother , Walter Hampden as the redempter father , Cecil Kallaway , Paul Cavanagh , Henry Daniell, and Taina Elg in his first Hollywood film .

It displays a brilliant and glamorous cinematography in CinemaScope and Technicolor by Joseph Ruttenberg , though a perfect remastering is extremely necessary . As well as a rousing musical score by Bronislau Kaper , including religious sounds and musical choirs . The picture was middlingly directed by Richard Thorpe, packing some flaws , shortcomings , and gaps . Richard was a prolific director who made slickly a lot of films of all kinds of genres . As he directed the following ones : "Thin Man goes home" , "Three little words" , "Knights of the Round Table" , "The Black Hand" , "Great Caruso" , "Prisoner of Zenda" , "King of the Kongo" , "Fun in Acapulco" , "Jailhouse Rock" , "Vengeance Valley" , among others . Rating : 5.5/10 . Average , though passable and acceptable . The picture will appeal to Lana Turner fans .

Even when they weren't very good, those widescreen Biblical epics of the 1950's were usually "fun" in a campy sort of way. This leviathan from MGM piles on the lavish sets and costumes but manages to evoke little more than polite boredom mixed with the occasional snicker. There's no historical atmosphere here -- everything is "soundstage" -- and there's no chemistry between its leading man and leading lady. Some worthy players do pop up in the supporting cast -- Louis Calhern, Cecil Kellaway, Joseph Wiseman, etc. -- but they're usually stuck in silly headdresses which look like overturned wastebaskets. James Mitchell probably delivers the liveliest performance in the movie and he plays a mute! Poor Edmund Purdom. He starred in 20th's biggest production of 1954, "The Egyptian" -- after Marlon Brando turned down the part -- and then starred in this, MGM's biggest production of 1955, and yet this almost unprecedented, one-two whammy of multimillion dollar spectacles failed to ignite his acting career. This is puzzling inasmuch as he was a good-looking fellow with a fine voice and real acting talent but perhaps the cold, cynical nature of his two major roles kept audiences from warming to him. He soon wound up in Italian B-movies. The flogging he suffers while chained in a dungeon in "The Prodigal" did, however, win him a bit of unexpected honor. It ranks 66th in the book, "Lash! The Hundred Great Scenes of Men Being Whipped in the Movies."

I recall that Senator Estes Kefauver made a great deal of political hay out of his holding up to (self-)righteous scorn the publicity campaign for this lavish five million dollar spectacle. Lana, featured in one of her more strategically beaded creations, was front and center in several of the advertisements used to promote this next-to-last of her M-G-M contract obligations. The Senator did his best to bring the studio to its knees over this blatant exploitation of (gasp!) sex in what was, after all, thinly veiled titillation, designed to unglue the American hoi polloi from its presumably chaste TV screens. (How he must have gloated when several theater owners had the lobby posters retouched to show somewhat less of the Luscious Lana!) Other comments about this one are pretty much "right on" but the Senator's fulminations were far more revealing of his hypocrisy than anything Lana was required to enact as the High Priestess Samarra. How little has changed in Washington, D.C. to this very day. Sometimes I think that politicians distract us more successfully than the most skilled artists of the cinema!