O Filho Pródigo

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

Based on the parable that Jesus told in St. Luke, The Prodigal is one of those biblical tales that isn't a biblical tale. Jesus told the parable of the prodigal son to show how God rejoices over any of his people who stray from the fold and return. Since it was a story to make a point the writers had a free hand to make a plot with proper biblical quotations in the script.

Edmond Purdom plays the starring role as one of two sons of Walter Hampden, the other being John Dehner who are seemingly content with their life. Dehner certainly is, but Purdom has a taste for some excitement.

While in town shopping for supplies Purdom makes essentially a grandstand play, good act that it was when he frees a mute slave played by James Mitchell from Neville Brand who is an overseer for the Baal high priest Louis Calhern. Later on Purdom cavalierly humiliates Calhern who plots a bad revenge for this slight to him and his religion.

He finds Purdom's weakness fast enough. Lana Turner who is THE Baal high priestess is something special, a lot of that due to the fact that blonds are scarce in that region of the world. And that by the way is a fact duly noted in the story. One look at her and Purdom is putty in her hands.

She leads him on quite a path of degradation, but our Prodigal hero works his way back to his father and the religion of his people.

Not that this is a great story anyway, but The Prodigal suffers from the fact that Edmond Purdom is not an actor of any great warmth. Technically proficient, Purdom never made it to the top because he was not charismatic enough to be a hero. His career was a lot like Stephen Boyd's, except Boyd realized it and became a great portrayer of villains like Messala in Ben-Hur.

As for Lana Turner, sexy yes, but Turner always fought being cast in period pieces of any kind, she always felt her best roles were in modern day dress films. Blonds did not have more fun in this film in the end. MGM was getting rid of its high priced contract players at this time and Turner was not being showcased with any great care.

The Prodigal did follow the DeMille formula of high falutin' dialog about virtue sprinkled with sex. In this film with Turner, sex laid on with a steam shovel. But it wasn't as good as those fabulous DeMille Bible epics, Samson And Delilah and The Ten Commandments.

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.

Lana Turner was pure magic, emotion and sensation in her long walk through the temple of love... And "The Prodigal" will remain the best showcase ever equipped for her excellent figure... The film is M.G.M.'s entry in the CinemaScope Bible race...

Lana was cast as Samarra, the lightly-clad temptress who incited history's first juvenile delinquent to leave home…

The film was based on the Biblical story of the prodigal son as told by St. Luke in Chapter XV of his gospels… There, in fewer than 300 words is the bare suggestion of a youth who "wasted his substance in riotous living," later to return, repentant to farm and father…

The screenplay portrayed the prodigal as Micah (Edmond Purdom), the model son of a Hebrew patriarch named Eli (Walter Hampden). As the film begins he has honored his father by becoming engaged to Ruth (Audrey Dalton), a gentle girl of his own faith…

While visiting Damascus, however, the youth enters the tent of Samarra, the high priestess of Astarte, goddess of the flesh, and he is dazzled by her beauty… To his father's bitter dismay, he demands his share of the family fortune, leaves his fiancée on the eve of their marriage, and goes off to the city in pursuit of the pagan woman, whose duties include presiding over human sacrificial rites…

Among the fleshpots of Damascus, Micah's uncontrollable infatuation for the priestess plunges him into a variety of mishaps… He is victimized by Nahreeb (Louis Calhern), the sinister high priest of Baal, who conspires to destroy him for his irreverent interest in Samarra; by Bosra (Francis L. Sullivan), an unscrupulous moneylender; and even by Samarra herself, who withholds her love until he produces a certain valuable pearl as a gift for her goddess

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."