La Bible : Au commencement des temps...

I was impressed by the various settings of the book, and the depicting of various accounts in the Bible, all the way from beginning to end. And as a minister I'm sensitive to this. Seldom if ever have I seen, in particular, the accounts of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, and then the slaying of Abel by Cain. (As Cain, Richard Harris was his hostile, feisty self, perfect for the role of the vindictive brother.) Also, I have never seen any depicting of the flood of Noah, nor of the fall of the tower of Babel. I have seen the depicting of Sodom and Gommorah, but this was unusually well-done here. All the scenes appeared to be authentic.

And I liked the cast. Michael Parks was adept at playing Adam, and his female counterpart was excellent as Eve. I was impressed with, again, the flood of Noah, though in places it maybe was a bit more comical than it was intended to be. John Huston performed well his part of Noah, and he had a good voice, that of God and his narration voice was excellent. Stephen Boyd was as mean as ever as Nimrod. George C. Scott conveyed well an aging Abraham, Peter O'Toole acted well his triple role (that of the three angels who visited Sarah,) and Ava Gardner was her beautiful self as she betrayed to the screen that Sarah was still a beautiful lady even in her older years. But I do have one objection to the production. While I liked the scenes and, again, the manifestation of the various Biblical stories, I frankly thought the acting left something to be desired. I'm not trying to rescind, but while I still think the actors came across well in their individual roles, they seemed to just say their lines and, thus, in places did not put much feeling into what they said.

But overall, it was an outstanding work for Dino DeLaurentiis and John Huston, and is highly recommendable.

This film was released in September of 1966, which placed it at the close of a long tradition of Hollywood Biblical epics. I was around ten years old and had a vinyl LP of its great musical score which I played over and over before I finally saw the movie on the big screen of a theater. Our family was not particularly religious, but this film was one of those that had a profound influence on me and made me interested in knowing more about the Bible.

Looking at it today, I see more depth. The opening footage from all over the world of the days of the Creation is still breathtaking. As a child I felt uncomfortable with the partially nude scenes of Adam and Eve, and even now I believe nudity needs to be implied. Otherwise my mind stops focusing on the story and thinks "I just saw a naked actor!". Also, a theory of some Bible commentators is that animals are clothed with feathers or fur, and Adam and Eve were clothed with a glow of light emanating from within them. When they sinned that glow disappeared and they were then totally naked before they hit on the idea of fig leaves. (This interpretation would not likely have been known to John Huston). Beyond that, the film rolls on quite nicely through the first twenty-two chapters of Genesis. The cinematography is rich and beautiful. I do think a few too many scenes were interpreted as desert settings, since many of the Bible lands were lush and only outskirted by desert as a result of the climatology of the region being somewhat different more than 4,000 years ago (though of course that's controversial). Either way the storyline still follows the episodes of salvation history. One reviewer said it looks like they just kept shooting until they ran out of film and decided to call it quits. To me it was essential they kept going until they climaxed the film with the sacrifice of Isaac, which pointed forward to the day when God would inaugurate a new creation. Thus there is a great arc of theme in the epic from "In the Beginning" to "The New Beginning".

Overall the movie looks like a live-action version of Sunday School art. By that I mean most of the scenes are like pictures I've seen in religious artworks. For example, Adam and Eve are portrayed by clean-shaven white people. Cain bashes Abel over the head instead of slitting his throat (like the sacrifices he'd watched - see I John 3:12 in the original Jerusalem Bible [1966], not the New Jerusalem Bible [1985]). This Tower of Babel somewhat rightly resembles a Sumerian ziggurat, yet more resembles Renaissance paintings of it. Modern researchers have discovered that Noah could have been a king, and the ark was actually a huge flat barge shaped like a giant shoebox to ride the tidal waves of the Flood. The movie pictures things like I've seen them all my life: a peasant Noah, and a rounded boat with a house on top (and that shape would capsize in no time). The only thing they didn't have was a giraffe sticking out of the window.

Nevertheless, you may enjoy these traditional depictions. I'm just preferring literal Biblical research combined with the look of what has been discovered in archaeology. Yet, for me the overall effect of this film is still profound and quite moving. It's been said that George C. Scott's portrayal of Abraham was the low point of the movie, but I thought his crusty performance was inspiring! (I was also thankful they didn't picture Abraham like Santa Claus). For the most part, watching this film was an enjoyable and uplifting experience. Any Biblical movie should give us a taste of what things were like, and then we should always go back and read the Book. There we will find the authentic atmosphere of the actual words. Still, one line the scriptwriters put in the mouth of Abraham is not found in the Bible, yet it does reflect what the Bible says of him. It has helped me with my faith. It is the line where Abraham asks, "Shall the Lord speak, and Abraham not believe?"

a beautiful music score, and some interesting segments but this film suffers from sluggishness and some serious miscasting. Even with it's all-star cast it tends to drag, from a script that hasn't achieved the best pacing. The Noah segment is by far the best, with Huston himself playing both Noah and the voice of God. Peter O' Toole is very otherworldly as the angels, but George C. Scott (an actor I admire very much) is really out of his element as Abraham. And the script has been cursed with one of the great failings of the Bible itself. Translated into English of early seventeenth century England, the language used by the people in the bible has remained in that stilted form. As our language has evolved and changed over the centuries the Bible hasn't and it becomes truly tedious in a motion picture of this length. Even Hollywood realized this with most of the great religious epics they dropped the "thees" and "thous" and "thys" and "thines" which are no longer in general practice since the days of the puritans. Still it is a fair and reverent look at the book of Genesis.

Seemingly eposodic, there is little segue between the "stories." Even the title is misleading, since this film only covers from Creation through the story of Abraham - the first 22 chapters. But if the whole book was made into a movie it would be 162 hours at this rate. Too long for most audiences! (Hint - hint - miniseries).

Most of the acting comes across as stilted, except Huston, who's tongue-in-cheek portrayal of Noah wavers between refreshing and cloying. The highly touted "nude" scene of Adam and Eve may have raised a few eyebrows in 1966 but seems pretty tame by today's standards thanks to a few well-placed fern fronds. Scotts's rendering of patriarch Abraham was strong but uninspired.

This pic is adequate if you're not looking for in-depth religious interpretations. More could have been done with characterizations, but in the time given, was satisfactory. Just watch and enjoy for its face value.

Whatever religious beliefs John Huston did or did not have, he treated the Scriptures with a great deal of respect. I don't see why an atheist would do a movie like this in the first place. I would think he wouldn't have wanted to touch it. But the beauty and poetry of this film is simply awesome. I would have given it ten stars, but he did take some artistic license with Scripture and he did kind of ham it up in the Noah's Ark sequence. Also, he left out the part where Noah got drunk after the flood and cursed one of his sons because they made fun of his nakedness. Otherwise, this is a beautiful film. It reminded me a little bit of HOW THE WEST WAS WON, in that he chronicled a few generations in this story, and many of the actors had little more than cameo appearances. The Creation scenes were absolutely gorgeous. I read somewhere that he didn't want to use animation drawings for the Creation, because he felt that the world was in a constant state of creation, and he had a crew film some of the wonders of the world at work. The results are stunning. The world really looks fresh and new in this film. You can tell he put a lot of care in making this film.

As a musician, I have to comment on the music in this film. It is as beautiful as the film. Too bad the soundtrack is out of print now. I had the album when I was younger and I played it nearly every chance I got. I never knew until I saw on this site that Ennio Morricone had a hand in writing some of this score (don't know which parts) but was uncredited. Instead, a Japanese composer named Toshiro Mayuzumi did most of this score, a composer I haven't heard of since.

Until PASSION OF THE Christ, this was the last of the big Bible epics and is an underrated masterpiece worth seeing. (THE LAST TEMPTATION OF Christ doesn't count because it took the Scriptures and butchered them.) 9 out of 10.