CINEMA
Good Book Flops The Bible . . . In the Beginning. (Coliseum, 'U' certificate.) IN the beginning, 20th Century-Fox created many motion pictures, some bad, a few enter- taining, and sent them forth throughout the world, where they earned prodigious sums.
Then one day the masses ate of the forbidden tree of technology and out of a sense of shame covered themselves in TV, and films were no longer necessarily boffo. This was the original sin against Hollywood and many studio heads fell before Hollywood came up with an answer: the CinemaScope spectacle.
In the CinemaScope spectacle, Kirk Douglas was seen to think deep and Charles Heston to ride chariots and Victor Mature to do battle with lions. Until the people wearied of the same thing over and over again and the board of directors of 20th Century-Fox came together to ask themselves searchingly, what next? Which was when a messenger from Dino de Laurentiis in Rome materialised at the conference table and said, 'Dino's just read a hot one.' Here he paused dramatically. 'The Bible.'
So the Bible was begun and in the beginning they were going to film the whole book, em- ploying many name directors and stars, making a blockbuster that was going to last ten hours or more, but as things worked out there were stringent economies. They did only the first twenty-two chapters, John Huston directing it all and playing Noah himself. While Peter O'Toole, was hired to play three angels, possibly for the price of one.
What 20th Century-Fox, De Laurentiis and Huston have brought forth, I'm afraid, is an almost endlessly pompous and, boring film. The Bible is not bad in the manner of earlier Biblical epics, that is to say, entertainingly, Bible Comics bad: it is reverentially bad. Dull. Like God is everybody's co-star and from beginning to end actors are constantly straining their necks and looking up to the heavens wherefrom the Big Voice cometh. The heavens are either stormy or clear, depending on God's moods (and possibly on what the second unit found in what must have been a frenzied chase after weather shots).
To begin with, we see the void, Cinerama- "size; then God, who sounds uncannily like the man who narrates the Debonaire gas-heater com- mercials on channel nine creates heaven and earth, and on the sixth day, man in his own image, which turns out to be Michael Parks, yet another sub-Brando actor. Wisely, God or John Huston does not give Parks too many lines to speak.
This, like many another to follow, is a case of a very contemporary face in a Biblical place. His and other big scenes, which amount to a 'filling out' of gloriously economical and beautiful prose, are totally obnoxious; still-born illustrations for a classic. Only the ark sequence, with John Huston as Noah, has some life in it, enriched with spora- dic flashes of humour. Huston, who has such a fine, craggy, non-actor's face, seems to be en- joying himself hugely. Even so, he does go on and on, playing the engaging fool for us and with the animals, so that in the end even this smacks of self-indulgence.
After the interval, we have the story of Abraham, which I found uplifting because Ava Gardner plays Sarah. Though, at first glance, this might seem casting rather too heavily against type, it pleased me enormously to see the ravishing Miss Gardner as Sarah, the original Yiddish mama. Even after days of wan- dering through the desert on camel-back, Miss Gardner manages to look glamorous, just as if Vidal Sassoon were riding not too far behind.
Miss Gardner's embarrassing dialogue was written by Christopher Fry with the assistance of Jonathan Griffin, No Perilli, Vittorio Boni- cell and, if you like, God. It is very rhetorical stuff, a sort of blank prose, Hollywood classy, that was, I'm sure, never spoken anywhere, at any time or place.
Finally, there is the destruction of Sodom. God, who already has so much to answer for, is seen to flatten the sinful city with an atomic blast. When Lot's wife looks back, it is to see what is unmistakably a mushroom cloud. This troubled me, not because it is so out of period, so to speak, but because it smacked of cowardice. If, as Time magazine and some modern theologians have ventured, God is truly dead, then it's hardly cricket to accuse him of the first atomic blast when he can no longer answer. Conversely, if God, as others claim, is alive and well in Argentina, then I would strongly recom- mend that Dino de Laurentiis, Huston and company avoid exposed places. Do not walk where lightning can strike.
MORDECAI RICHLER
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