The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception in Film 9781614513261, 9781614515616

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Abbreviations
General Introduction: The Bible
I. Biblical Characters and Stories (Hebrew Bible)
1. In the Beginning: Adam and Eve in Film
2. Noah and the Flood: A Cinematic Deluge
3. It’s All in the Family: The Patriarchs of Genesis in Film
4. The Cinematic Moses
5. Samson and Delilah in Film
6. There Might Be Giants: King David on the Big (and Small) Screen
7. Esther in Film
II. Film Genres and Styles
8. Scripture on Silent Film
9. Film Noir and the Bible
10. The Bible Epic
11. Western Text(s): The Bible and the Movies of the Wild, Wild West
12. Mysteries of the Bible (Documentary) Revealed: The Bible in Popular Non-Fiction and Documentary Film
13. From Skepticism to Piety: The Bible and Horror Films
14. “Moses’ DVD Collection”: The Bible and Science Fiction Film
15. The Word Made Gag: Biblical Reception in Film Comedy
16. Drawing (on) the Text: Biblical Reception in Animated Films
17. Anime and the Bible
III. Biblical Themes and Genres
18. God at the Movies
19. Satan in Cinema
20. Creation and Origins in Film
21. The Book of Job in the Movies: On Cinema’s Exploration of Theodicy and the Hiddenness of God
22. Lament in Film and Film as Lament
23. What Lies Beyond? Biblical Images of Death and Afterlife in Film
24. This Is the End: Apocalyptic Moments in Cinema
IV. Biblical Characters and Stories (New Testament)
25. Jesus and the Gospels at the Movies
26. Women in the Cinematic Gospels
27. Judas as Portrayed in Film
28. Jews and Judaism in New Testament Films
29. Paul and the Early Church in Film
30. Mythic Relevance of Revelation in Film
V. Cinemas and Auteurs
31. David Wark Griffith: Filming the Bible as the U.S. Story
32 Alice Guy Blaché and Gene Gauntier: Bringing New Perspectives to Film
33. Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates: Emergent History and a Gospel of Middle-Class Liberation
34. Cecil B. DeMille: Hollywood’s Lay Preacher
35. Reframing Jesus: Dreyer’s Lifelong Passion
36. Luis Buñuel: Atheist by the Grace of God
37. Robert Bresson: Biblical Resonance from a Christian Atheist
38. Roberto Rossellini: From Spiritual Searcher to History’s Documentarian
39. Federico Fellini: From Catholicism to the Collective Unconscious
40. John Huston: The Atheistic Noah
41. Stanley Kubrick: Midrashic Movie Maker
42. In the Wake of the Bible: Krzysztof Kieslowski and the Residual Divine in Contemporary Life
43. Peter Weir: Man of Mystery, Mysticism, and the Mundane
44. Cheick Oumar Sissoko: West African Activist and Storyteller
45. Lee Chang-Dong: Exploring the Hidden Christ
46. Mark Dornford-May: Transposing the Classic
47. Serious Men: Scripture in the Coen Brothers Films
48. Liberative Visions: Biblical Reception in Third Cinema
49. The Reception of Biblical Films in India: Observations and a Case Study
50. “A Ram Butts His Broad Horns Again and Again against the Wall of the House”: The Binding Myth in Israeli Film
VI. Voices from the Margins
51. Judaism and Antisemitism in Bible Movies
52. Ethnicity and Biblical Reception in Eve and the Fire Horse
53. A Slave Narrative for the “Post-Racial” Obama Age
54. The Temptation of Noah: The Debate about Patriarchal Violence in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah
55. Gay Male Villains in Biblical Epic Films
56. Imperialism in New Testament Films
Film Index
Scripture Index
Subject Index

Citation preview

The Bible in Motion

Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception Volume 2

The Bible in Motion A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception in Film Part 1 Edited by Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch

ISBN 978-1-61451-561-6 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-61451-326-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-0016-9 ISSN 2330-6270 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Acknowledgements First and foremost, I wish to acknowledge the authors who so generously contributed their time and expertise to provide essays for these volumes. I also wish to thank to staff at De Gruyter Press – especially Alissa Jones Nelson, Albrecht Doehnert, Sophie Wagenhofer, and Sabina Dabrowski – for their expert guidance in bringing this project to fruition. Thanks also to Eric Ziolkowski for responding to countless emails with spot-on advice and encouragement. Gratitude must also be expressed to my former colleagues at Greensboro College, where this project began, and to my current colleagues at Eastern University for embracing me and my research interests. Students have provided insightful feedback in my film courses at both institutions. Among my colleagues, I must make special mention of my dear friend Barnes Tatum, who first introduced me to the academic study of Bible and film and with whom I have shared many invaluable conversations, milkshakes, and French fries over the years. Finally, special acknowledgement goes to my family: my late father Bob Burnette, who loved movies, and my mother Betty Parrott Burnette, who worries that I will go blind from staring at my laptop screen; my husband John Bletsch, who is always prouder of my work than I am; and my boys, Jonah, Ethan, and Daniel, who enrich my life beyond measure.

Contents Acknowledgements

V

List of Illustrations

XI

List of Contributors

XIII

Abbreviations

XVII

Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch General Introduction: The Bible and Its Cinematic Reception

I

1

Biblical Characters and Stories (Hebrew Bible)

Theresa Sanders 1 In the Beginning: Adam and Eve in Film Anton Karl Kozlovic 2 Noah and the Flood: A Cinematic Deluge

17

35

Peter T. Chattaway 3 It’s All in the Family: The Patriarchs of Genesis in Film Jennifer L. Koosed 4 The Cinematic Moses

51

65

J. Cheryl Exum 5 Samson and Delilah in Film

83

Matthew Page 6 There Might Be Giants: King David on the Big (and Small) Screen Carl S. Ehrlich 7 Esther in Film

119

101

VIII

Contents

II Film Genres and Styles David J. Shepherd 8 Scripture on Silent Film

139

Robert Ellis 9 Film Noir and the Bible

161

Adele Reinhartz 10 The Bible Epic

175

Robert Paul Seesengood 11 Western Text(s): The Bible and the Movies of the Wild, Wild West Robert Paul Seesengood 12 Mysteries of the Bible (Documentary) Revealed: The Bible in Popular Non‐Fiction and Documentary Film 209 Mary Ann Beavis 13 From Skepticism to Piety: The Bible and Horror Films

223

Frauke Uhlenbruch 14 “Moses’ DVD Collection”: The Bible and Science Fiction Film Terry Lindvall and Chris Lindvall 15 The Word Made Gag: Biblical Reception in Film Comedy R. Christopher Heard 16 Drawing (on) the Text: Biblical Reception in Animated Films Fumi Ogura and N. Frances Hioki 17 Anime and the Bible 285

III Biblical Themes and Genres Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch 18 God at the Movies Peter Malone 19 Satan in Cinema

299

327

237

253

267

193

IX

Contents

Gaye Williams Ortiz 20 Creation and Origins in Film

341

Reinhold Zwick 21 The Book of Job in the Movies: On Cinema’s Exploration of Theodicy and the Hiddenness of God 355 Matthew S. Rindge 22 Lament in Film and Film as Lament

379

Sandie Gravett 23 What Lies Beyond? Biblical Images of Death and Afterlife in Film Tina Pippin 24 This Is the End: Apocalyptic Moments in Cinema

405

391

List of Illustrations 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

Eve reaches for forbidden fruit in The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966) Margaret offers Bud an apple in Pleasantville (1998) Animals help build the ark in Michael Curtiz’s Noah’s Ark (1928) Animal pairs in The Green Pastures (1936) Abraham and Isaac in The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966) Leah, Dinah, and Rachel in The Red Tent (2014) Potiphar examining Joseph at the slave market in Joseph (1995) Moses proclaims liberty in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956) An older Moses in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923) Goliath issues a challenge to Saul’s camp in David et Goliath (1910) Bathsheba bathing on a rooftop in David and Bathsheba (1951) Bathsheba bathing on a rooftop in The Bible (2013) A romantic sexual audition in Esther (1998) Esther’s wedding and coronation in One Night with the King (2006) Jael prepares to kill the sleeping Sisera in Jaël et Sisera (1911) Betty Blythe in Queen of Sheba (1921) The flood destroys Akkad in Noah’s Ark (1928) The Bible is featured extensively in The Night of the Hunter (1955) Harry Powell’s tattoos explained with reference to Cain and Abel Caught in the bulrushes in The Night of the Hunter (1955) Moses before Pharaoh in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923) Celebrities Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward as David and Bathsheba (1951) Title character reading the KJV in The Book of Eli (2010) Detective John Smith before a cruciform window in The 23rd Psalm (2007) Advertisement for a virtual paradise in Cargo (2009) Asha receives a mysterious soil sample in Pumzi (2009) Katharine Hepburn learns to pray in Spitfire (1934) God and Bruce walk on water in Bruce Almighty (2003) A century of animation from 1914 to 2014 Continuing characters in animated Bible series A cross rises in Shin seiki evangelion, shito shinsei (1999) “The Story of Noah” in Tezuka Osamu no kyūyakuseisho monogatari (1993) Peter O’Toole as God/angel in The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966) God and Jesus in La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (1902 – 05; 1907) Rex Ingram as De Lawd in The Green Pastures (1936) Noah as a superhero in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah (2014) The DVD cover image of Creation (2009) The mystery of creation in Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011) Ivan, devastated by Adam’s interpretation of Job in Adam’s Apples (2005) Mrs. O’Brien mourns her son’s death in The Tree of Life (2011) Fr. Quintana, visiting the poor in To the Wonder (2012) Tyler Durden, about to burn the narrator’s hand in Fight Club (1999)

19 28 36 37 52 58 60 67 68 102 105 114 125 128 145 149 155 166 167 168 176 180 229 231 247 248 259 263 268 273 291 292 301 310 312 342 343 358 365 382 385 388

List of Contributors Nathan Abrams (Part 2) Professor of Film Studies, Bangor University Wales, United Kingdom Lloyd Baugh (Part 2) Pontificia Universita Gregoriana (retired) Rome, Italy Mary Ann Beavis (Part 1) Professor of Religion and Culture, St. Thomas More College Saskatoon, Canada Meghan Alexander Beddingfield (Part 2) Princeton Theological Seminary Princeton, N.J., United States Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (Parts 1 and 2) Professor of Biblical Studies, Eastern University St. Davids, Penn., United States Peter T. Chattaway (Part 1) Freelance Writer and Film Critic Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Carl S. Ehrlich (Part 1) Professor of Humanities and Director of the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies, York University Toronto, Canada Robert Ellis (Part 1) Principal of Regent’s Park College Oxford and member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford Oxford, United Kingdom J. Sage Elwell (Part 2) Associate Professor of Religion and Art, Texas Christian University Fort Worth, Tex., United States J. Cheryl Exum (Part 1) Professor Emerita of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield Sheffield, United Kingdom Dwight H. Friesen (Part 2) Independent Scholar Calgary, Alberta, Canada Samuel D. Giere (Part 2) Associate Professor of Homiletics and Biblical Interpretation, Wartburg Theological Seminary Dubuque, Iowa, United States Sandie Gravett (Part 1) Professor of Religious Studies, Appalachian State University Boone, N.C., United States R. Christopher Heard (Part 1) Associate Professor of Religion, Pepperdine University Malibu, Calif., United States Carol A. Hebron (Part 2) Lecturer, Charles Sturt University School of Theology Brisbane, Australia

XIV

List of Contributors

N. Frances Hioki (Parts 1 and 2) Research Associate, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture Nagoya, Japan Stephenson Humphries-Brooks (Part 2) Professor and Chair of Religious Studies, Hamilton College Clinton, N.Y., United States Clayton N. Jefford (Part 2) Professor of Scripture, Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology St. Meinrad, Ind., United States Nathan Jumper (Part 2) Princeton Theological Seminary Princeton, N.J., United States Joseph G. Kickasola (Part 2) Professor of Film and Digital Media, Baylor University Waco, Tex., United States J. R. Daniel Kirk (Part 2) Associate Professor of New Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary Pasadena, Calif., United States Jennifer L. Koosed (Part 1) Professor of Religious Studies, Albright College Reading, Penn., United States Anton Karl Kozlovic (Parts 1 and 2) Research Associate, Flinders University and Deakin University Adelaide and Melbourne Burwood, Australia Richard A. Lindsay (Part 2) Instructor of Communication, University of Louisiana-Lafayette Lafayette, La., United States Chris Lindvall (Part 1) Associate Writer for Walt Disney Hollywood, Calif., United States Terry Lindvall (Part 1) C. S. Lewis Endowed Chair of Communication and Christian Thought, Virginia Wesleyan College Norfolk, Virg., United States Marie-Therese Mäder (Part 2) Research and Teaching Associate, University of Zurich Zürich, Switzerland Peter Malone (Part 1) Film Reviewer, SIGNIS, World Catholic Association for Communication Melbourne, Australia Catherine O’Brien (Part 2) Senior Lecturer of Film Studies and French, Kingston University London, United Kingdom Fumi Ogura (Parts 1 and 2) Assistant Professor of Media Theories and Production, Aichi Shukutoku University Nagoya, Japan Gaye Williams Ortiz (Parts 1 and 2) Independent Scholar Augusta, Ga., United States

List of Contributors

XV

Matthew Page (Parts 1 and 2) Independent Scholar Loughborough, United Kingdom Tina Pippin (Part 1) Wallace M. Alston Professor of Bible and Religion, Agnes Scott College Decatur, Ga., United States Jeremy Punt (Part 2) Professor of New Testament, Stellenbosch University Stellenbosch, South Africa Adele Reinhartz (Parts 1 and 2) Professor of Classics and Religious Studies, University of Ottawa Ottawa, Canada Matthew S. Rindge (Part 1) Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Gonzaga University Spokane, Wash., United States Erin Runions (Part 2) Associate Professor and Chair of Religious Studies and Affiliate Faculty of Gender and Women’s Studies, Pomona College Claremont, Calif., United States Theresa Sanders (Part 1) Associate Professor of Theology, Georgetown University Washington, D.C., United States Robert Paul Seesengood (Part 1) Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of Classical Languages, Albright College Reading, Penn., United States David J. Shepherd (Part 1) Lecturer of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Trinity College Dublin Dublin, Ireland Antonio D. Sison (Part 2) Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology and Chair of the Historical and Doctrinal Studies Department, Catholic Theological Union Chicago, Ill., United States W. Barnes Tatum (Part 2) Jefferson Pilot Professor Emeritus of Religion and Philosophy, Greensboro College Greensboro, N.C., United States Frauke Uhlenbruch (Part 1) Independent Scholar Berlin, Germany Caroline Vander Stichele (Part 2) Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Netherlands Sara Anson Vaux (Part 2) Lecturer of Religious Studies, Northwestern University Evanston, Ill., United States Richard Walsh (Part 2) Professor of Religion and Co-Director of the Honors Program, Methodist University Fayetteville, N.C., United States Anat Y. Zanger (Part 2) Associate Professor of Film and Television, Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv, Israel

XVI

List of Contributors

Reinhold Zwick (Part 1) Professor of Biblical Studies and Didactics, Westfälische Wilhelms-University of Münster Münster, Germany

Abbreviations Country Codes AE AR AT AU BE BF BG BR BS CA CH CN CU CZ DE DK EG ES FI FR HK HU ID IE IL IN IR IS

United Arab Emirates Argentina Austria Australia Belgium Burkina Faso Bulgaria Brazil Bahamas Canada Switzerland China Cuba Czech Republic Germany Denmark Egypt Spain Finland France Hong Kong Hungary Indonesia Ireland Israel India Iran Iceland

IT JP KE KR MA ML MT MX MY NL NO NZ PH PL PS PT RU SE SG SN SU TN TW UK US YU ZA

Television Networks and Film Production Companies ABC AFI BBC BFI BSB CBS ICAIC MGM NBC OFI ORTF RTI STPC

American Broadcasting Company American Film Institute British Broadcasting Corporation British Film Institute British Satellite Broadcasting Columbia Broadcasting System Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer National Broadcasting Company Organizzazione Film Internazionali Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française Research Technology International Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Producción Cinematográfica

Italy Japan Kenya South Korea Morocco Mali Malta Mexico Malaysia Netherlands Norway New Zealand Philippines Poland Palestine Portugal Russia Sweden Singapore Senegal Soviet Union Tunisia Taiwan United Kingdom United States Yugoslavia South America

XVIII

TBN TMC TMS WFD

Abbreviations

Trinity Broadcasting Network The Movie Channel Tokyo Movie Shinsha Wytwórnia Filmów Dokumentalnych

Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch

General Introduction: The Bible and Its Cinematic Reception [A] text is not a finished product, but is an ongoing production which continuously emerges in and through the activity of interpretation. ¹ Mark Taylor Since this book came into being, it has confronted generation after generation. Each generation must struggle with the Bible, in its turn, and come to terms with it. ² Martin Buber No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved. Matthew 9:16 – 17

Biblical authors and editors were well aware that new wine requires fresh wineskins. Otherwise, the skins would not be able to stretch to accommodate the fermentation process and would burst; the wine would be lost. In each new historical and cultural situation faced by ancient Israel and the early church, members of these communities continually adapted their inherited traditions to meet the requirements of new contexts. In his landmark study of inner-biblical exegesis, Michael Fishbane notes that the Hebrew Bible, as we have it, is overlaid with commentary (traditio) that secures and transforms the underlying tradition (traditum). This reflects, he argues, the work of scribes or schools facing new sets of challenges, who were seeking to preserve and contemporize older traditions on behalf of new generations of readers for whom the old forms had ceased to be compelling (Fishbane 1988, 422– 25). This practice gave later generations a way to maintain their tradition while applying it in new social situations, attempting to bridge the gap between ancient and contemporary life and, at times, attaching new meanings to the received text. A similar process is at work in the Christian New Testament. The evangelists each adapt and recontextualize received oral and written traditions in their presentation of the gospel to specific communities of Jesus-followers. The Apostle Paul, likewise, translates and Hellenizes aspects of the original Jesus movement to make it understandable and compelling to Gentiles. And so on. This practice does not end with the establishment of canons.³ Indeed, the long history of biblical interpretation is an eloquent testimony to scripture’s capacity to  Taylor , .  Buber , .  In his recent work examining the theoretical foundations of reception history, Brennan Breed () argues persuasively against the assumption that there is a clear distinction between the production and the reception of a text. The concept of a simple, uniform ‘original’ text belies convoluted

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mean different things at different times. Interpretive communities have always produced new ‘wineskins’ that allow them to pose fresh questions and bring diverse viewpoints to bear on inherited traditions. Far from being a transparent text that transcends the culture in which it is understood, the Bible⁴ has been proved by its history of reception to be a multi-voiced, dialogical text, which lends itself to being endlessly rethought. This open-ended conversation between text and reader can escape the limiting confines of confessional and academic communities and spill out into the broader culture, as illustrated by the pervasive presence of biblical tropes and images in literature and the visual arts. Film,⁵ as the dominant narrative mode in contemporary culture, has become one of the most powerful vehicles for the production and dissemination of biblical texts in the (post)modern world. The mass-market reach of mainstream cinema and television extends far beyond that of the Church, the synagogue, or biblical scholarship. Since the late nineteenth century, this medium has created for mass audiences audio-visual ‘texts’ that imitate, parody, translate, and co-opt biblical traditions, often in subtle and unexpected ways. The Bible in Motion was conceived as an academic handbook illuminating the variety of ways that film uses and reimagines biblical texts, characters, and motifs. The cinematic tradition has a long and complex relationship with Jewish and Christian scriptures. Filmmakers draw on the Bible, both consciously and unconsciously, in numerous ways and for a variety of reasons. This can be seen most easily in movies that take direct inspiration from scripture and explicitly translate its narratives to screen. Yet, it is now widely recognized that films not overtly connected to the Bible can also be heavily indebted to the biblical tradition. Thus, we must give serious consideration to what kinds of engagement between the Bible and film might ‘count’ as biblical reception. It would be helpful to preface that discussion with several important points for consideration. First, as part of the Bible’s ongoing reception history, an overtly biblical film should not be evaluated based on its so-called ‘fidelity’ to source material. While fidelity may be a stated goal for some biblical films, all cinematic translations of the Bible are in fact interpretations. A better approach is to understand biblical films as we would any other act of inner- or post-biblical interpretation: as historicalprocesses of composition, redaction, transmission, and translation. Similarly, Timothy Beal (,  – ) has pointed out that there is no singular ‘Bible’ to be received through history, making it difficult to find a point where the text is finalized and reception begins. The Bible is not merely ‘received’ but culturally made and remade through the centuries in different cultural contexts.  For the sake of simplicity ‘the Bible’ is used throughout this collection to reference both Jewish and Christian scripture. However, we recognize that, even beyond issues of canon, ‘the Bible’ is an everevolving rather than stable text (see footnote ). Films participate in the ongoing, culturally specific production and interpretation of bibles.  The authors in this collection use the terms ‘film’ and ‘cinema’ loosely in reference to motion pictures (of whatever length and in whatever form) produced for theatrical release, made-for-television, or transmitted via other audio-visual media outlets.

General Introduction: The Bible and Its Cinematic Reception

3

ly and culturally situated attempts to preserve and contemporize older traditions for new audiences. Second, our understanding of the Bible/film relationship benefits when we treat both Bible and film as equal partners in a conversation. Film must be taken seriously on its own terms, not simply mined for biblical references. Likewise, we must seek to avoid a heavy-handed, reductionist approach that uncritically imposes biblical interpretations without allowing films to speak with their own voice. Even when a film’s use of biblical material can be persuasively established, this intertextual connection cannot be imagined to exhaust the film’s potential field of meaning. The Bible is but one of many syncretistic literary and cultural influences on cinema, all of which operate simultaneously. My third point – which I consciously posit in tension with the previous – is that both filmmakers and film-viewers should be recognized as active participants in the interpretive process. In other words, establishing the meaning(s) of a film is not the sole domain of the filmmaker. I have elsewhere proposed the term ‘filmic exegesis’ to describe the twofold process of interpretation that takes place when (1) historically and culturally situated filmmakers appropriate biblical texts during a film’s production and (2) equally situated film-viewers perceive (or fail to perceive) this connection during the film’s reception (Burnette-Bletsch 2014, 129). Like the readers of a text, film-viewers are not passive recipients of meanings encoded in a filmic ‘text’ but actively participate in the construction of a film’s meaning. Therefore, my operating premise is that biblical reception occurs, in the broadest possible sense, whenever a situated reader/viewer notes what they perceive to be a significant connection between the Bible and a given film. However, to extend beyond the idiosyncratic, such an interpretation must prove persuasive to others and promote a genuine and mutually beneficial conversation between Bible and film. The critical implications of these three points are considered in the discussion below.

What Counts as Cinematic Reception of the Bible? This project has turned out to be rather timely since films with explicitly biblical subject matter have returned in force to theaters and television in recent years. Bible films were a staple in the early days of cinema; the developing medium favored biblical scenes because these stories were familiar to audiences and lent themselves to visual spectacle (Shepherd 2013). Biblical epics peaked in popularity in the 1950s and 60s before all but disappearing in the late twentieth century, as audiences seemed to lose interest. Like the classic American Western, this film genre appeared to have exhausted itself and become the product of a bygone era. However, Jesus’ return to mainstream cinema in 2004 with Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ has sparked a renewed interest in Bible films and miniseries that currently shows no sign of abating. Refurbished biblical epics move in unexpected directions, often incorporating elements of action, fantasy, and horror film in their audio-visual

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storytelling. While the artistic quality of these productions and the interpretive lenses they employ vary widely, the last decade has seen an increasing number of filmmakers mining scripture for its cinematic potential. The apparent rebirth of biblical epic films has ignited scholarly interest in the ways in which these productions appropriate old canonical texts for new cultural situations. The films under consideration in the following chapters include not only costume dramas that explicitly translate biblical stories to screen but also films that, while not overt adaptations of the Bible, nonetheless draw upon biblical texts and images. The Bible’s illustrious film career encompasses virtually every possible cinematic genre and the full spectrum of intertextual possibilities between direct adaptation and indirect appropriation (Sanders 2006). As early as 1996, Alice Bach published a seminal collection of essays exploring interdisciplinary connections between biblical studies and film studies. Contributors to that volume adopted one of two objects of analysis: (1) films that self-consciously depicted biblical narratives or (2) films that incorporated “basic biblical tropes and themes.”⁶ Likewise, in her study of the Bible and cinema, Adele Reinhartz distinguishes between traditional biblical epics and biopics (“Bible on film”) and films of other genres in which biblical elements “figure in significant ways” (“Bible in film”).⁷ As a result, one of the greatest problems faced when analyzing film as a medium of biblical reception is the vast amount of material from which to select. Where does one begin? What kind of connection must exist between the Bible and a given film in order for their intertextual relationship to be deemed “significant”? This judgment, of course, rests primarily with the interpreter, who then bears the responsibility of convincing others that a purported connection is meaningful and enriching for both film and its literary precursor.⁸ As Arthur Koestler noted in his study of conscious and unconscious processes in science and art: “[T]he collecting of data is a discriminating activity, like the picking of flowers, and unlike the action of a lawn-

 Bach (,  – ) explicitly recognized this distinction when she reflected back on the earlier Semeia volume in a later study of religion, politics, and media in the broadband era. Her earlier volume had included essays on films such as Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven () and King Vidor’s Hallelujah () alongside essays on Moses and Magdalene films (Bach ).  Reinhartz (a, xvi) edited a collection of essays examining twenty-three direct biblical adaptations and twenty-seven other biblically influenced films. She also published a companion monograph, which adopts the binary distinction of the “Bible in film” and the “Bible on film” as its organizational structure (Reinhartz b).  It should be noted that terms such as ‘original’ and ‘adaptation’ (or ‘text’ and ‘pre-text’) might erroneously suggest that influence flows in only one direction. A later adaptation can (re)inflect its precursor, leading readers/viewers to encounter it in new ways. This is especially the case when readers/ viewers encounter the adaptation before (or instead of) its precursor, as is often the case with biblical films.

General Introduction: The Bible and Its Cinematic Reception

5

mower; and the selection of flowers considered worth picking, as well as their arrangement into a bouquet, are ultimately matters of personal taste.”⁹ While “personal taste” will always play a role in the selection and arrangement of “flowers” (= biblically inflected films) for reception history “bouquets,” the scholarly community rightly expects reception historians to reflect critically on this “discriminating activity.” As a step in this direction, I have offered a classification of ways in which the Bible is used and represented in cinema that moves beyond a simple distinction between scripture in film and scripture on film.¹⁰ This classification does not attempt to establish airtight categories; indeed, I recognize that many films will fit into several. Rather I offer this model primarily to clarify methodological issues at stake in tracing the Bible’s cinematic reception history and to provide readers with conceptual hooks on which to hang the essays that follow. In brief, I distinguish among cinematic uses of biblical texts based upon the main intertextual strategies that these films employ – spanning the continuum from obvious cinematic adaptations to more obscure (and perhaps even unintentional) appropriations of biblical stories, characters, and motifs.

Celebratory Adaptations Celebratory adaptations attempt to establish historical and cultural verisimilitude in films featuring recognizable biblical storylines and characters (e. g., Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, 1956). Publicity around these works typically focuses on their supposed historical accuracy (understood as fidelity to biblical sources), which may be evidenced by reliance upon expert advisors and the use of locations, sets, and costumes that are evocative of the period. Usually, however, the producing culture draws on its own popular conceptions of the biblical world – imaging characters in terms of its own aesthetic ideals and interpreting narratives in line with its own values.¹¹ While claiming fidelity to the source text, these films actually make numerous changes to render this text more suitable for filming – such as compressing or expanding the originating narrative, selecting which details to highlight visually,

 See Koestler (, ). I thank Eric Ziolkowski for bringing Koestler’s image to my attention as an apt metaphor for the work of reception history (personal correspondence).  See Burnette-Bletsch () for a more thorough description of this classification, along with examples. This model draws on recent work in adaptation studies such as that of Hutcheon (), Corrigan (), Leitch (), Sanders (), Stam/Raengo (), Aragay (), and Elliott (). A few of the categories within my classification were anticipated by Reinhartz (,  – ), namely quotations, paradigms, and the use of the Bible as a prop.  Celebratory adaptations produced in Europe and America typically cast Caucasian actors in the roles of Middle Eastern and North African characters (Gaffney ). See also the classic work by Edward Saïd on Western perceptions and representations of the Middle East, originally published in  (Saïd ). For more recent discussions of orientalism in film, see Bernstein/Studlar (), Edwards (), and King ().

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and other adjustments that make the text more palatable or more engaging for film audiences (Leitch 2007, 96 – 98). What makes celebratory adaptations distinctive is their pretension to accuracy and/or fidelity; what makes them interesting is the multitude of ways in which they adapt and interpret their source texts for contemporary audiences.

Transposed Adaptations Other films also feature recognizable biblical storylines and characters but intentionally transpose the story’s setting culturally, geographically, or temporally. Literary critic Gérard Genette describes this kind of adaptation as a “movement of proximation” because it often brings the source text closer to an audience’s frame of reference and, thereby, demonstrates its supposed universality (Genette 1997, 304). As with any biblical translation, the explicit transfer of a text from one time and place to another cannot be ideologically neutral, but produces commentary upon the politics of the source text and its possible relevance (or lack thereof) for modern audiences. Rather than emphasizing historical accuracy or biblical fidelity, transposed adaptations claim to capture the precursor text’s “timeless spirit,” usually identified with authorial intention.¹² This allows filmmakers to dress their own political and ideological agendas in the aura of scriptural authority. An obvious recent example would be Mark Dornford-May’s Son of Man (2006), which transposes the gospel narrative into a contemporary South African context and conflates the story of Jesus with speeches by anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko.

Genre-Determined Adaptations These films reshape a biblical narrative around a particular set of genre conventions. Of course, all biblical films are more or less genre-determined, although (as evidenced by recent biblical epics) genres do change over time, and the boundaries between them are permeable. Many Jesus films, for example, impose a biopic template on the gospel narratives (Reinhartz 2013b, 63). Biblical stories have also been recast as musicals (e. g., Jesus Christ Superstar, dir. Norman Jewison, 1973), comedy films (e. g., Monty Python’s Life of Brian, dir. Terry Jones, 1979), and animated productions (e. g., VeggieTale’s Esther: The Girl Who Became Queen, dir. Mike Nawrocki, 2000). Genre conventions provide another means by which filmmakers might appropriate biblical material for purposes of parody, satire, cultural commentary, didacticism, etc.

 Such adaptations may purport to capture “what the author had in mind.” This category has similarities to Kamilla Elliott’s (,  – ) “psychic” conception of adaptation, which claims to preserve the “spirit” of the literary source rather than the “letter.”

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Hagiographic Adaptations Life of Brian also provides an example of a hagiographic adaptation, or a film that develops the story of a minor biblical or, in this case, non-biblical character on the margins of the canonical narrative. These films often take the form of prequels, sequels, or side stories while filling in narrative gaps and providing midrashic expansions of the biblical text. They may also offer an alternative perspective on biblical stories, possibly even giving voice to marginalized and silenced characters (Sanders 2006, 97– 100). For example, Giacomo Campiotti’s Maria di Nazaret (2012) retells the gospel story while privileging the perspectives of Mary and Mary Magdalene. Likewise, Roger Young’s The Red Tent (2014) adapts to television Anita Diamant’s midrashic expansion of the biblical Dinah.

Secondary (Tertiary, Quaternary…) Adaptations Young’s version of The Red Tent is also a secondary adaptation of a biblical text. This category includes films that are dependent upon novels and plays that are themselves biblical adaptations (e. g., Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, 1988, which adapts Nikos Kazantzakis’s 1953 Greek novel, O Teleutaios Peirasmos). When a literary work based upon biblical sources is repeatedly adapted into film, this can create a complicated web of intertextual allusions in which prior adaptations also become pre-texts alongside the Bible and the novel.¹³ This applies, for example, to the many cinematic retellings of Lew Wallace’s novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880) or film versions of Oscar Wilde’s oft-adapted stage play Salomé (1891).

The Bible as a Book or Cultural Icon Moving away from overt retellings and expansions of biblical stories, other films trade upon the Bible’s value as a cultural icon by simply featuring it as a visual prop and/or a topic of conversation. In many horror films, characters wield the Bible as a magical talisman against evil. The Bible-as-prop might function cinematically as an object of ridicule or reverence, a tool of oppression or a symbol of liberation. Often the Bible is depicted as the neutral focus of an external struggle between good and evil, for example, between the mentally challenged Karl Childers and his abusive parents in Sling Blade (dir. Billy Bob Thornton, 1996) or between the wrongfully convicted Andy Dufresne and a corrupt prison warden in The Shawshank Redemption (dir. Frank Darabont, 1994).

 See Leitch (,  – ) and Sanders (, ). A similar situation is also created when a biblical story is repeatedly adapted to film. Successful earlier productions exert influence on later films, which imitate particular shots, camera angles, mise-en-scène, etc.

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Citations, Quotations, Paraphrases Another category of the Bible’s cinematic reception includes the wide array of films that (accurately or inaccurately) cite, quote, or paraphrase a biblical text. For viewers who are familiar with the appropriated text, the Bible and the digetical world of the film may reciprocally interpret one another. However, because modern audiences (and filmmakers) often lack basic biblical literacy, films more often treat these texts as empty vessels to be filled with new meaning derived from the semiotic richness of the work’s mise-en-scène, music, plot, and dialogue, as interpreted through its culture(s) of production and reception.¹⁴ An intriguing example is Paul Haggis’s In the Valley of Elah (2007), in which the tale of David and Goliath (here appropriated as a bedtime story) becomes a lens through which the film examines ideologies of masculinity and American militarism.

Paradigms Other films make use of biblical paradigms – narrative structures or character archetypes – in the context of an ostensibly nonbiblical storyline (e. g., Hal Ashby’s Being There, 1979).¹⁵ Visual and/or auditory signs, establishing a resemblance between the film and its biblical precursor, might suggest the more or less intentional use of a biblical model. Viewers who recognize a film’s use of such paradigms are rewarded by the pleasure of noting similarities and differences between the two works – an experience that may illuminate both adaptation and precursor in unexpected ways. Yet, no matter how meticulously these connections are established, this one interpretive angle cannot exhaust the semiotic potential of a film.¹⁶ Nor should biblical paradigms be imposed on the basis of scant evidence, as is often the case with the uncritical multiplication of cinematic Christ-figures (or, for that matter, God-figures, Paul-figures, Adam-figures, Judas-figures, Job-figures, and Moses-figures).¹⁷ Not every character that assumes a cruciform pose or opts for self-sacrifice on behalf of another qualifies as a Christ-figure. This archetype is at times defined so loosely that almost any cinematic hero(ine) can be seen as Christ-like in some way, robbing the category

 This category of reception resembles Elliott’s (,  – ) ventriloquist concept of adaptation, which “blatantly empties out the [source] novel’s signs and fills them with filmic spirits.” Leitch (,  – ) describes this kind of adaptation as colonization, which might develop ideas implicit in the text or “go off in another direction entirely.”  Compare Elliott’s (,  – ) genetic concept of adaptation in which what transfers from the precursor to the adapted work are its raw materials and/or “deep” narrative structures.  Walsh (,  – ) points out that an exclusive focus on biblical influence upon a film can lead interpreters to minimize or overlook other cultural influences in the syncretistic presentation of cinematic heroes. For example, Neo in The Matrix (dir. Wachowski Siblings, ) is not merely a Christ-figure but also bodhisattva, Platonic philosopher, and Alice in Wonderland.  Studies that have attempted to establish definable criteria for the identification of cinematic Christ-figures include Baugh (), Kozlovic (), Reinhartz (), and Walsh ().

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of any heuristic value. Christopher Deacy has rightly questioned the significance of an all-consuming “quest for cinematic Christ-figures” that never bothers to ask how the identification of visual and thematic parallels between Bible and film might enrich our understanding and appreciation of both (Deacy 2006). Any analysis that does not engage a given film on its own terms fails to engender a genuine conversation between the Bible and cinema. Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that cautious identification of biblical paradigms in film has generated a number of convincing interpretations. While methodological caution is warranted, this continues to be an important category of the Bible’s cinematic reception. Ultimately, interpreters bear responsibility for demonstrating a paradigmatic connection between Bible and film and for persuading others of its interpretive significance.

Allusions and Echoes Many films contain biblical allusions and/or echoes that point viewers back to the Bible as a precursor text. In place of a sustained engagement with the Bible as a pre-text, these films make passing, sidelong glances at biblical traditions by incorporating fleeting images, situations, or dialogue that might bring the Bible to mind for audiences. Because these allusions and echoes may not be explicitly acknowledged within the work, their effectiveness depends upon the assumption that biblical stories are part of a shared body of cultural knowledge available to film audiences.¹⁸ Placing these words or images in a new cinematic context creates new meanings as audiences negotiate between their original sense within the source text (however that may be recalled) and their use within the film. A distinction is sometimes drawn between allusions as deliberate and conscious gestures toward a pre-text and echoes which may appear unintentionally simply because the producing culture has been broadly influenced by the pre-text (Hollander 1981, 64). The concept of authorial intentionality becomes especially complex in relation to the collaborative activity of filmmaking. To whatever extent the ‘author’ of a film can be identified, is that hypothetical author’s intention required for the film to count as an instance of biblical reception? Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999) might function as a test case for this question. Although Anderson has repeatedly insisted that he was unfamiliar with the book of Exodus when he directed this film (Denzey 2004), many viewers clearly understood the sudden downpour of frogs at its climax in relation to the biblical exodus story. Moreover, the redemption symbolized by this moment within the film resonates in significant ways with exodus

 Viewers may enjoy a film without recognizing its biblical allusions, but awareness of intertextual connections between the Bible and film enhances understanding. It is possible that, at some point, images and motifs loose their biblical association and become part of common cultural currency. See Leitch (,  – ) and Sanders (,  – ).

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themes and their reception.¹⁹ In this case, biblical reception occurs when viewers recognize a biblical pre-text regardless of authorial intentionality.

Analogues This raises the possibility of a final category of films that might be considered in relation to the Bible. If meaning is not the sole property of a sacrosanct author/filmmaker, then how much weight should be given to the idiosyncratic interpretations of film-viewers? What prevents viewers from making the Bible an intertext for almost any film? In the introduction to their volume Screening Scripture, Richard Walsh and George Aichele call into question the assumption that meaning resides in a film, awaiting discovery and exegesis by trained interpreters. Instead, they argue that situated viewers play an active role in the production of a film’s meaning in negotiation with other cultural codes and narratives (Walsh/Aichele 2002, x-xi). Does reception history presuppose that the readers of a biblically inflected text or the viewers of a biblically inflected film are the passive recipients of its influence? Might a credible case be made for reception whenever a viewer discerns mutually enriching points of analogy between a film and the biblical tradition? Such films might be understood as biblical analogues although they are not properly adaptations or even intentional appropriations of the Bible.²⁰ The methodological issue at stake in this category is how reception historians should handle questions of authorial intent versus reader response. What counts as biblical reception in film? The evident danger with this category is that it seems to open the door to virtually any interpretation, so that the concept of ‘reception’ itself might become meaningless. As with Christ-figure analyses, it would be necessary to exclude interpretations that impose biblical categories without adequate engagement with the film on its own terms. The Bible’s cinematic analogues must be convincingly argued and must promote a genuine and mutually beneficial conversation between the film in question and the biblical tradition. However, it is not necessary to demonstrate that filmmakers deliberately employed a biblical allusion, archetype, or paradigm for such an interpretation to be valid. One can only ask whether such a reading facilitates an interesting and enriching interpretation of the film and whether it enhances our appreciation of biblical texts.²¹ Ultimately, the concern of filmic exegesis is not to establish the meaning of a film by appealing to the filmmaker’s inten See the discussions of this film by Denzy () and DeGiglio-Bellemare ().  See Leitch (,  – ). This category bears a kinship to Elliott’s (,  – ) “de(re)composition concept of adaptation,” in which signs of the so-called source and the so-called adaptation decompose and merge in audience consciousness together with other cultural narratives.  This recalls Larry Kreitzer’s () now-classic expression “reversing the hermeneutical flow.” For discussions of various types of biblical analogues see Johnston (), Deacy (), Walsh (), and Rindge (). These and other excellent studies indicate the value of pursuing the category of filmic analogues.

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tion, but to consider how biblical texts might be (re)produced and interpreted by filmmakers and film-viewers operating in particular cultural contexts.

Approaching the Bible in Motion Cinematic appropriations of the Bible play an important role in that area of biblical research known as reception history. Reception historians approach film – as they do literature, art, music, theater, liturgy, theology, and exegesis – as an important vehicle for thinking about and interpreting biblical texts. Moreover, the critical study of Bible and film is coming of age as an academic field in its own right within the discipline of biblical studies. This is evidenced by many telltale signs, such as the upsurge of relevant publications over the last three decades, the establishment of a Bible and Film program unit in the Society of Biblical Literature, and a growing number of undergraduate and graduate courses devoted to this topic. Most importantly, it is evidenced by the wide variety of increasingly sophisticated methodological approaches being adopted by scholars working in Bible and film. The Bible in Motion comes along at a crucial point in the development of this field. Its focus is primarily on film as a medium for biblical reception, but, as the above discussion should make clear, my aim is to advocate for a broad rather than a narrow understanding of what the Bible’s cinematic reception entails. Some of the contributors to this work offer expansive surveys of films that take as their starting point a biblical story, character, or theme. Others offer an in-depth look at the use of biblical texts and images in a single film. Some contributors focus on direct biblical adaptations; others tease out more subtle cinematic connections to the Bible. All take filmmakers and film-viewers seriously as active participants in the long history of biblical interpretation. One concern from the very beginning of this project was to extend the discussion of cinematic reception beyond the usual canon of American and European films to include, as far as possible, films produced in other cinemas. That most work in Bible and film has focused on European and American cinemas is not particularly surprising, given the Bible’s historical importance in the West and Hollywood’s hegemonic control over film markets.²² Many contributors to The Bible in Motion have made efforts to incorporate a wider-than-usual range of films from world cinema into their discussions. I have also intentionally structured these volumes to include essays on filmmakers and cinemas outside of the Euro-American mainstream. Reception studies at their best reach beyond familiar canons of interpretation to in-

 The American film industry exerts a kind of cultural imperialism that can be inimical to diversity and local expression. According to avant-garde Brazilian director Glauber Rocha (, ), “When one talks of cinema, one talks of American cinema. […F]or this reason every discussion of cinema made outside of Hollywood must begin with Hollywood.” However, discussions of cinema should not remain and end in Hollywood.

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clude readings from a variety of cultural contexts. This enriches our conversation through the inclusion of more voices and, by introducing new and unfamiliar ways of reading biblical texts, reminds Westerners of the ways in which our own readings are culturally informed and situated rather than natural and self-evident. Among the contributors to The Bible in Motion are many of the preeminent scholars of Bible and film, representing twelve countries and five continents. I have arranged their contributions into two parts, each divided into three sections. Part 1 begins with studies of the cinematic reception of characters from the Hebrew Bible. Each of these chapters moves from direct biblical adaptations to the appropriation of these characters and their stories in mainstream cinema. The next section contains studies of biblical adaptation and appropriation within specific cinematic genres (e. g. epics, Westerns, etc.) and styles (e.g., silent film, animation, etc.). Chapters in the third section of Part 1 take as their starting point overarching themes in Jewish and Christian scripture that have distinctive filmic afterlives. God and Satan, theodicy and lament, death and afterlife, as well as apocalyptic themes are considered in these chapters. Part 2 begins with the cinematic treatment of key figures and texts from the Christian New Testament. The second section of Part 2 focuses on directors whose bodies of work evidence sustained engagement with biblical texts and images. Selectivity was required in compiling this list of filmmakers, and no doubt many potentially relevant names were omitted. At the same time, efforts were made to reach beyond the familiar Euro-American canon and include a broader range of filmmakers as well as studies of biblical reception in Indian cinema, Israeli cinema, and Third cinema. Part 2 concludes with a diverse set of studies that bring Bible and film into conversation around issues of racial and ethnic discrimination, patriarchal violence, antisemitism, imperialism, and the villainization of people who do not identify as ‘straight’ or cisgender. These chapters interrogate ways in which the Bible and film have been used to reinforce or, more rarely, to challenge oppressive ideologies aimed against various groups located on the ‘margins’ of society and academia. What I aim to demonstrate with this broad-ranging collection is the great variety of ways that film functions as a vehicle for biblical interpretation. Often this diverse body of films illuminates biblical texts, shining fresh light on words and images that have been dulled by familiarity and giving rise to new readings. The breadth and depth of the Bible’s cinematic reception challenges the supposed clarity of scripture and underlines the Bible’s capacity to mean many different things at different times, as situated interpreters bring their own questions and concerns to this ancient collection of texts.

Works Cited Aragay, Mireia, ed. 2005. Books in Motion: Adaptation, Intertextuality, and Authorship. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.

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Bach, Alice. 2005. Religion, Politics, Media in the Broadband Era. The Bible in the Modern World 2. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press. —, ed. 1996. Biblical Glamour and Hollywood Glitz. Semeia 74. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Baugh, Lloyd. 2001. Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ-Figures in Film. Frankklin, Wis.: Sheed & Ward. Beal, Timothy. 2011. “Reception History and Beyond: Toward the Cultural History of Scriptures.” Biblical Interpretation 19: 357 – 72. Bernstein, Matthew, and Gaylyn Studlar, eds. 1997. Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Breed, Brennan W. 2014. Nomadic Text: A Theory of Biblical Reception History. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Buber, Martin. 2000. “A Man of Today and the Jewish Bible.” In On the Bible: Eighteen Studies [1982]. Ed. Nahum N. Glatzer. New York: Shocken Books. Pp. 1 – 13. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda. 2014. “The Bible and Its Cinematic Adaptations: A Consideration of Filmic Exegesis.” Journal of the Bible and Its Reception 1.1: 129 – 60. Corrigan, Timothy, ed. 2012. Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader [1999]. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge. Deacy, Christopher. 2006. “Reflections on the Uncritical Appropriation of Cinematic Christ-Figures: Holy Other or Wholly Inadequate?” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 13. http://www. usask.ca/relst/jrpc; accessed June 2, 2013. —. 2001. Screen Christologies: Redemption and the Medium of Film. Religion, Culture, & Society. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. DeGiglio-Bellemare, Mario. 2000. “Magnolia and the Signs of the Times: A Theological Reflection.” Journal of Religion and Film 4.2: http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/magnolia.htm; accessed May 14, 2015. Denzey, Nicola. 2004. “Biblical Allusions, Biblical Illusions: Hollywood Blockbuster and Scripture.” SBL Forum. http://www.sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?ArticleId=227; accessed April 28, 2015. Diamant, Anita. 1997. The Red Tent. New York: St. Martins Press. Edwards, Holly. 2000. Noble Dreams, Wicked Pleasures: Orientalism in America, 1870 – 1930. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Elliott, Kamilla. 2003. Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fishbane, Michael. 1988. Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gaffney. Wil. 2013. “A White Savior Epic of Biblical Proportions.” Flood of Noah. http://www. floodofnoah.com/#!noah-movie-white-savior-epic/c245r; accessed March 14, 2015. Genette, Gérard. 1997. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree [1982]. Transl. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press. Hollander, John. 1981. The Figure of Echo: A Mode of Allusion in Milton and After. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Hutcheon, Linda. 2013. A Theory of Adaptation [2006]. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge. Johnston, Robert K. 2004. Useless Beauty: Ecclesiastes through the Lens of Contemporary Film. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic Press. King, Homay. 2010. Lost in Translation: Orientalism, Cinema, and the Enigmatic Signifier. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Kazantzakis, Nikos. 1960. The Last Temptation of Christ [1953]. Transl. Peter A. Bien. New York: Simon and Schuster. Koestler, Arthur. 1964. The Act of Creation. New York: Macmillan Kozlovic, Anton. 2004. “The Structural Characteristics of the Cinematic Christ-Figure.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 8. http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc; accessed June 2, 2013.

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Kreitzer, Larry. 1993. The New Testament in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Leitch, Thomas. 2007. Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to the Passion of the Christ. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Reinhartz, Adele. 2013a. Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films. London and New York: Routledge. —. 2013b. Bible and Cinema: An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge. —. 2009. “Jesus and Christ-figures.” In The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film. Ed. John Lyden. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 420 – 39. —. 2003. Scripture on the Silver Screen. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox. Rindge, Matthew S. 2016. Profane Parables: Film and the American Dream. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press. Rocha, Glauber. 1997. “History of Cinema Novo.” In New Latin American Cinema. Ed. Michael T. Martin, Studies of National Cinema 2. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Saïd, Edward W. 1994. Orientalism [1979]. Vintage Books Edition. New York: Random House. Sanders, Julie. 2006. Adaptation and Appropriation. The New Critical Idiom. London and New York: Routledge. Shepherd, David J. 2013. The Bible on Silent Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stam, Robert, and Alessandra Raengo, eds. 2005. Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Taylor, Mark. 1982. “Text as Victim.” In Deconstruction and Theology. Ed. Thomas J.J. Altizer. New York: Crossroad. Pp. 58 – 78. Wallace, Lew. 1995. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ [1880]. London: Wordsworth Classics. Walsh, Richard. 2013. “A Modest Proposal for Christ-Figure Interpretations: Explicated with Two Test Cases.” Relegere 3.1: 79 – 97. http://www.relegere.org/relegere/article/view/569; accessed April 28, 2015. —. 2005. Finding St. Paul in Film. New York and London: T&T Clark. —. and George Aichele, eds. 2002. Screening Scripture: Intertextual Connections Between Scripture and Film. Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International. Wilde, Oscar. 2002. Salomé [1891]. Transl. Lord Alfred Douglas. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications.

Films Cited Being There (dir. Hal Ashby, 1979, BSB, US). In the Valley of Elah (dir. Paul Haggis, 2007, Warner Independent Pictures, US). Jesus Christ Superstar (dir. Norman Jewison, 1973, Universal, US). The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988, Universal, US/CA). Life of Brian [a.k.a. Monty Python’s Life of Brian] (dir. Terry Jones, 1979, Handmade Films, UK). Magnolia (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999 Ghoulardi Film Company, US) Maria di Nazaret [a.k.a. Mary of Nazareth] (dir. Giacomo Campiotti, 2012, Lux Vide, DE/IT). The Matrix (dir. Wachowski Siblings, 1999, Warner Brothers, US/AU). The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004, Icon Productions, US). The Red Tent (dir. Roger Young, 2014, Kabash-Film Tanger, US). The Shawshank Redemption (dir. Frank Darabont, 1994, Castle Rock Entertainment, US). Sling Blade (dir. Billy Bob Thornton, 1996, Miramax, US). Son of Man (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2006, Spier Films, ZA). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956, Paramount, US). VeggieTales: Esther, The Girl Who Became Queen (dir Mike Nawrocki, 2000, Big Idea Entertainment, US).

I Biblical Characters and Stories (Hebrew Bible)

Theresa Sanders

1 In the Beginning: Adam and Eve in Film

Movies about Adam and Eve date back nearly to the beginning of cinema itself.¹ As early as 1912, two short films invoking the story of the Bible’s first couple were released: The Tree of Knowledge (dir. George L. Cox) and Adam and Eve (Vitagraph). Three years later, Children of Eve (dir. John H. Collins), The New Adam and Eve (dir. Richard Garrick), and Forbidden Fruit (dir. Ivan Abramson) premiered. In 1918, no fewer than seventeen films were released that made reference in some way to Adam and Eve, including Eve Assists the Censor and Eve and the Nervous Curate (both directed by J. L. V. Leigh). Cinematic interest in Adam and Eve is not really surprising. For one thing, this biblical man and woman have come to represent all people.² Featuring them as characters gives moviemakers a shorthand method to explore the very nature of what it means to be human, including the complexities of gender roles and dynamics.³ For another, the creation story in Genesis 2– 3 deals with themes like temptation, disobedience, and evil: perennial box-office favorites. And it doesn’t hurt that for most of the narrative, the two people are naked.⁴ In fact, in 1920 the Vatican excoriated a biblical film precisely because it showed a nude Adam and Eve. According to one report, Pope Benedict XV was so shocked by what he saw at a special Vatican screening of La Bibbia (dir. Pier Antonio Gariazzo/ Armando Vey, released in the U.S. in 1922 as both The Bible and After Six Days) that he tried to have the film destroyed. In the end, he had to settle for issuing a proclamation forbidding Catholics from seeing the picture (New York Times 1920).

 Most of the material in this article is taken from my book on the reception of Adam and Eve in popular culture (Sanders ).  This is shown most starkly in Christian teachings, which understand the story of Adam and Eve as an account of the Fall of humanity (i. e. original sin). The Catechism of the Catholic Church, for example, explains: “The whole human race is in Adam ‘as one body of one man’. By this ‘unity of the human race’ all men are implicated in Adam’s sin….” (Catholic Church , ).  Innumerable interpreters read back into the Genesis story their own ideas about maleness and femaleness. One early Jewish commentator, for example, explained, “Many of the physical and psychical differences between the two sexes must be attributed to the fact that man was formed from the ground and woman from bone. Women need perfumes, while men do not; dust of the ground remains the same no matter how long it is kept; flesh, however, requires salt to keep it in good condition.” The same writer also attributed woman’s shrill voice and her inability to be easily placated to her having been formed from bone. See Ginzberg (, :).  The  movie Garden of Eden (dir. Max Nosseck) actually takes place in a nudist camp. In addition, many films that feature Adam and Eve are of a genre best described as “adult entertainment.” For an analysis of these, see Schearing and Ziegler (, especially chapter ).

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Not much had changed by the time Mickey Rooney directed The Private Lives of Adam and Eve in 1960 (with co-director Albert Zugsmith). Prior to Rooney’s movie, the Production Code Administration (PCA), which between 1930 and 1968 enforced standards of decency in cinema, had already rejected several proposed films because of the nudity inherent in the Genesis story. When the PCA saw the first cut of Private Lives, it objected to one actor’s costume because it showed her navel (TMC 2015).

Inside the Garden By 1966, John Huston’s movie The Bible: In the Beginning… was able without protest to depict the nakedness of Adam and Eve, though it shied away from frontal nudity and at times used strategic camera angles and props to shield the actors’ bodies from view. The movie was deemed suitable for general patronage by the Catholic News Service and was the top-grossing film that year.

The Biblical Epic Questions of nudity aside, biblical epics like The Bible: In the Beginning…, as well as movies that simply include scenes set in the Garden of Eden, raise pressing issues concerning the relation between the biblical text and the moving image. For example, most biblical scholars contend that Genesis 2 – 3 was written by an author called “the Jahwist” between the tenth and sixth century B.C.E. By contrast, even though it appears earlier in the Bible, Genesis 1 was written by the so-called “Priestly” author, quite possibly as a response to and alternative version of what the Jahwist had written.⁵ However, in popular imagination, the two stories have merged to become one seamless narrative. Thus the biblical text that is “received” by audiences is often quite different from what the Bible actually says. Precisely this conflation of creation narratives occurs in Huston’s movie.⁶ The film opens with a dramatic reading of the opening words of Genesis 1. A deep male voice intones, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” The voice then recounts the events of the first five days of creation as told by Genesis 1. Clouds appear, and then oceans, volcanoes, rivers, trees, mountains and plains. Next the sun, moon, and stars take shape, and finally sea creatures, birds, and land animals appear.

 On the question of biblical authorship, see Friedman ().  A similar mixing together of Genesis  and  occurs in the first episode (titled “In the Beginning”) of the History Channel’s The Bible (dir. Crispin Reece, ), as well as in the Mexican film Adán y Eva (dir. Alberto Gout, , released in the U.S. as Adam and Eve in ). Also see Ortiz’s chapter on the cinematic reception of biblical creation stories in Part I (Pp.  – ).

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The next thing that viewers see is a desolate landscape in which a sandstorm blows. Gradually the wind uncovers a male human form while the narrator recounts, And God said, “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.” The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And God brought unto Adam every beast of the field and every fowl of the air to see what he would call them.

Most viewers will not be aware that the narrator has just skipped from Genesis 1:26 (“Let us make man…”) to Genesis 2:7 (“The Lord God formed man…”). Nor will they realize that after the creation of the woman, the narrator will double back. After Eve appears, the voiceover returns to the Priestly account: “So God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him. Male and female created he them” (1:27). The differences between the movie and the biblical text continue. Oddly, the movie leaves out one of the most striking details of the biblical narrative: the creation of the woman from the “rib” (or “side,” depending on translation) of the first human. Viewers of the movie are not told how exactly God has produced this second person. They are told, though, that God urged Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply,” though that commandment occurs in Genesis 1 and does not appear in Genesis 2 – 3. Moreover, in the Bible, God tells the first human not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil before the woman has been created. And yet, in the film, God directly orders both the man and the woman not to eat from the forbidden tree. The effect of this is to increase viewers’ sense of Eve’s responsibility for her act, as instead of hearing about the prohibition from an unknown source, the woman is expressly told by God not to eat from the tree. Moreover, in the movie, as God issues the order, Eve stares with fascination at the succulent fruit. Adam, by contrast, hears God’s command and turns dutifully away from the tree.

Fig. 1: Eve reaches for forbidden fruit in The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966)

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The movie adds other non-biblical details, which further serve to heighten Eve’s responsibility for the downfall of humanity.⁷ For example, in a scene or two after God has enjoined the couple not to eat the forbidden fruit, Eve is awakened in the night by a low voice beckoning her: “Eve! Eve!” She leaves the sleeping Adam behind and follows the serpent’s call.⁸ Eventually she ends up standing before the tree once again, and once again she stares at it as if her very life depends upon her tasting its fruit. After a conversation with the snake, she bites into a golden apple that hangs from a branch of the tree. (Though the biblical text mentions only a “fruit,” culture has come to think of that fruit as an apple, and the movie has adopted this convention.) When Adam finds her, she holds the fruit out to him and says, “Taste it, there’s no harm.” Adam resists: “It is disobedience.” At Eve’s urging, though, he too submits to temptation.

Evil Eves Such portrayals of Eve as a temptress abound in cinema. One of the clearest and most explicit connections between Eve and evil is made in the romantic comedy Second Time Lucky (dir. Michael Anderson, 1984). The premise of the movie is that God and Satan have made a wager to see if a contemporary man and woman will make the same choice to disobey God that their predecessors made the first time around.⁹ In order to test their subjects, God and Satan transport two college students (named, of course, Adam and Eve) back to the beginning of time. Adam is taken to the Garden of Eden by the angel Gabriel. Eve, on the other hand, is chosen by Satan himself. When Gabriel first catches sight of the nude Eve in the garden, he comments, “That Satan sure knows how to pick ’em.” In other words, Satan has chosen the most beguiling woman he can find in order to tempt Adam into disobedience. Eve is literally the devil’s instrument. She is Satan’s tool for winning the cosmic wager.

 Eve is frequently villainized in theology and movies. The early Christian commentator Tertullian denounced Eve as “the devil’s gateway” and accused her not just of defying God’s order but of persuading her mate to disobey as well. See “On the Apparel of Women,” in Kvam, Schearing, and Ziegler (, ). In the Mexican film El pecado de Adán y Eva (dir. Miguel Zacarías, , released in the U.S. as The Sin of Adam and Eve, ), Eve is so narcissistic that she repeatedly gazes into Adam’s eyes solely so that she can see her own reflection there. For more on evil Eves, see Higgins ().  Interpreters of the biblical text differ on the question of whether or not Adam was with Eve when the serpent spoke to her. Much hinges on how one translates the Hebrew word ’immah in :, which can mean either “with her” or “also.” The New Revised Standard Version, for example, says “…she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.” The Good News Translation says, “Then she gave some to her husband, and he also ate it.”  It should be noted that though Jewish and Christian traditions frequently interpret the serpent as a devil, the text itself describes the snake simply as one of the wild animals made by God, albeit the craftiest (Gen. :).

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For his part, Adam is utterly innocent and does not even know the difference between men and women. Gabriel has to watch him closely and gives him a stern warning: “If you eat the apples, you succumb to Eve, God’s bet is lost and the evil one will triumph. But the Good Lord in his infinite wisdom has provided you with a warning signal.” That signal is Adam’s ability to get an erection. When he finds himself sexually aroused, Gabriel tells him, Adam should remember God’s warning and should refuse to succumb to Eve’s wiles. Of course, Adam does indeed succumb to Eve’s invitation to eat the forbidden fruit, and the two spend the rest of the movie attempting to undo the damage that they have brought to themselves and to the cosmic order. Most of Second Time Lucky is a romp through history, with Adam and Eve morphing into, among other things, a soldier and an empress in the Roman Empire, and an English captain and a French nurse during World War I. In each case, Adam is an upright, decent man, and Eve is a treacherous, wicked woman. By the end of Second Time Lucky, however, Eve has been reformed and professes devotion for her mate. Together, the couple manages to defeat Satan, who complains that they cheated: “You brought true love into it!” As the movie concludes, the college students Adam and Eve are restored to the present day and to the comfort of each other’s arms. In Howard Hawks’s Fig Leaves (1926), Eve is not so much evil as she is acquisitive.¹⁰ The movie opens in the Garden of Eden, where Adam wakes up to an alarm clock that triggers a coconut to fall on his head. Adam then reads the morning stone tablet at the breakfast table, and Eve muses about a sale on fig leaves. After Adam has gone off to work via brontosaurus, a friendly serpent visits Eve and explains to her that “men don’t realize women must have pretty things.” Then the scene shifts to modern New York; Adam is a plumber, Eve is again complaining that she does not have enough money to buy the clothes that she wants, and the serpent has been transformed into a lovely blonde who lives across the hall from the couple. Eve serendipitously meets a clothing designer and, without Adam’s permission, becomes a fashion model. She is so attracted to the revealing costumes she wears on the job that Adam complains, “A fig leaf would be an overcoat to you.” In Fig Leaves, the original sin is associated primarily with consumer appetites and only secondarily with sex. At one point Adam says to Eve, “Ever since you ate that apple, you’ve had the gimmes.” What Eve longs for is not carnal pleasure but

 Interpreters disagree on the question of why Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. The biblical text says that Eve ate because “the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise” (:). However, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas both attribute the transgression to pride, and Ambrose attributes it to a desire for bodily pleasure. See Augustine, The City of God XIV: (Dods , ); Aquinas Summa Theologiae II... (quoted in Kvam, Schearing, and Ziegler , ); and Ambrose’s Paradise (Savage , ). In the movie Adamo ed Eva, la prima storia d’amore (dir. Enzo Doria and Luigi Russo, , released in the U.S. as both Adam and Eve and Adam and Eve vs. Cannibals), Eve eats primarily because she is bored.

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the acquisition of things. However, in the movie, as often occurs in life, money is inseparable from sex; it is also inseparable from power. When Eve takes a job outside of her home, she threatens Adam’s economic superiority, and by displaying her sexuality outside of the marital bedroom, she threatens her husband’s control of her body. After he sees his wife modeling skimpy negligees, Adam complains to Eve that “every man’s right is to respect his wife and not have her parade around half naked.”¹¹ He is threatened both by the thought that she is not dependent on him for money and by the thought that she might offer herself sexually to another man. In the end, both Adam and Eve renounce their respective temptations, and at the conclusion of the film they are together again, though Eve is still complaining that she has nothing to wear.

Innocence Lost A bleaker take on the Genesis story occurs in director Mike Figgis’s The Loss of Sexual Innocence (1999). The movie consists of a series of short stories set in modern times (several of which portray the protagonist’s early sexual memories), intercut with scenes from the story of Adam and Eve. In the first of these biblical scenes, a naked dark-skinned man emerges slowly from a shimmering lake. In the second, a pale, red-haired young woman emerges from the same lake.¹² In subsequent short takes, Adam and Eve will hold hands, enter the lake in order to catch fish, and laughingly explore each other’s genitals. All of this is performed with the curious interest and innocence of children. The man and woman are not alone in their wilderness, however. A serpent looks on while they splash delightedly in the water. As events in the modern-day scenes unfold, the cinematic Adam and Eve begin their descent from innocence. Apparently tired of eating grass and weeds, Eve strikes out on her own. She enters a ruined garden and sees a tree in which rests the snake. She eats fruit from the tree, and the fruit’s juice runs down her mouth like blood. A few scenes later, Adam joins her in eating; both stuff the fruit into their mouths as if they cannot get enough. They then both begin to retch even while continuing to eat. Doubled over in pain and nausea, the couple enters a small house in the garden where they copulate with brutal intensity. This Adam and Eve have brought fear and shame into the world. After their copulation, they look at each other with sadness. Suddenly, fascist police invade the garden with spotlights and dogs. Adam and Eve are terrified and begin to run through the densely wooded garden, but they are no match for the police and their German

 Quoted in Allen (, , ). See also Basinger (, especially pp.  – ). At this writing, the movie is not available for home viewing.  In his director’s notes, Figgis states, “Adam had to be black, Eve had not just to be white but Nordic white,” though he does not explain why. See Figgis (, xi). In Western films, Adam and Eve are nearly always white.

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shepherds. The naked man and woman are driven outside the garden gates and emerge onto a crowded street in Rome, suddenly surrounded by more spotlights and by paparazzi. From the chaotic swirl of flashbulbs and jeering onlookers, someone tosses clothes at them, and Eve and her mate manage to cover themselves and flee. The world has now become harsh and menacing, and the innocence of the man and the woman is gone forever. With the loss of their sexual innocence have come violence and discord.

Adam and Eve Outside the Garden of Eden All of the movies considered so far include at least some scenes that take place inside the Garden of Eden and thus situate Adam and Eve in their biblical setting. A large number of other films, however, are not set in the Garden but simply weave elements of the Genesis story into their plots. Such elements might include, for example, characters named Adam and Eve, an apple, a serpent, or a fig leaf.

More Evil Eves The horror film Carrie, for instance, directed by Brian De Palma (1976) and based on the 1974 novel of the same name by Stephen King, makes reference to the creation story in only one scene. The movie’s protagonist, Carrie, is a shy and awkward teenager whose social development has been thwarted by her fervently religious mother. When the girl begins to menstruate, her mother accuses her of having sinned and thus of having brought “the curse of Eve” upon herself. Reading from a (non-biblical) tract called “The Sins of Woman,” her mother castigates her: “And God made Eve from the rib of Adam. And Eve was weak and loosed the raven on the world. And the raven was called ‘sin’.” Commanding her daughter to repeat her words, she continues, “The first sin was intercourse. And the Lord visited Eve with a curse. And the curse was a Curse of Blood!”¹³ Here Eve resembles Pandora who, according to Greek mythology, released suffering and evil into the world. Eve’s method of introducing sin, according to the film, was intercourse, and her punishment was menstruation. Another harsh assessment of Eve can be found in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve (1950). Though witty and filled with ironic banter, All About Eve presents a dim view of the title character. The Eve in this film has no redeeming qualities, and viewers feel no remorse in despising her. Director Mankiewicz explains, “Eves are predatory animals; they’ll prefer a terrain best suited to their marauding techniques, hopefully abundant with the particular plunder they’re after. Eve is essentially the

 A similar scene takes place in the  remake of the movie (dir. Kimberly Peirce), though in the newer version Carrie protests, “I’m not gonna say that! That’s not even in the Bible. It doesn’t say that anywhere!”

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girl unceasingly, relentlessly on the make.”¹⁴ Another image of Eve as a temptress hungry for sex and power who is willing to bring down anyone who stands in her way is found in Elia Kazan’s 1955 film East of Eden (based on the 1952 novel by John Steinbeck), in which an Eve resists the goodness of her husband and leaves both him and her newborn children in order to become the proprietor of a whorehouse. Given the pervasiveness of this image of Eve as a cold-hearted villain it is easy to forget that in the biblical story itself, there is no mention of the woman seducing the man into eating the forbidden fruit or of her tricking him. The text says simply that she took some of the fruit and ate, “and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate” (3:6). Even the biblical Adam does not accuse Eve of treachery; he simply tells God, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate” (3:13). A less damning portrayal of Eve occurs in Preston Sturges’s 1941 movie The Lady Eve. In the film, Henry Fonda plays Charles Pike, a naive scientist whose interest is wholly taken up with various species of snake. Charles is set to become the heir to his family’s lucrative brewery business and is thus the object of considerable interest from various eligible ladies despite his bumbling, nerdy manner. Barbara Stanwyck plays Jean Harrington, a con artist who travels the world with her equally disreputable father in order to execute various scams. Jean and Charles meet on a cruise ship when Charles is returning from a scientific expedition to South America, and Jean and her father are trolling for easy marks. Jean first attracts the attention of Charles by dropping an apple on his head from above-deck, an obvious allusion to the Genesis story (as are, of course, Charles’s beloved snakes). At the start of their relationship, Jean wants only to play Charles for a sucker, as both she and her father are after the Pike family fortune. It does not take long, however, before she finds herself falling for the awkward zoologist, and he for her. One thing leads to another, and soon the happy couple becomes engaged. Just then disaster occurs, as the ship’s security officer learns the real identities of Jean and her father and exposes the pair to Charles. Charles breaks off the engagement, and he and Jean part on bitter terms. As fate would have it, though, Jean gets an unexpected opportunity to wreak revenge on Charles for the humiliation that he caused her. She teams up with another con artist and pretends to be British aristocracy: a high-class woman named the Lady Eve Sidwich. As Eve Sidwich, Jean again lures Charles to fall in love with her, and the two marry. Jean/Eve then has the chance to enact revenge, telling stories to Charles on their wedding night about all of the various lovers she has had in the past. Charles attempts to divorce her, but she refuses. Charles then seeks to flee back to the Amazon to be with the snakes he loves, and he books passage on a boat to South America. Jean/Eve, realizing that she truly loves Charles, follows after him

 Carey and Mankiewicz (,  – ).

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and finally catches up with him on the ship. When Charles stumbles upon her, he takes her for Jean, and he professes that he is still in love with her. He invites her to his cabin, still not realizing that she is not only Jean but also his wife Eve. As the door to the cabin closes behind them, Charles explains, “I have no right to be in your cabin. Because I’m married.” To this Eve replies, “But so am I, darling. So am I.”¹⁵ The fact that the movie ends happily, with Charles falling in love with the woman who is his wife, does not entirely erase the unease that viewers feel with this Eve. Yes, in the end, she herself succumbs to love. And yes, she is basically good-hearted and only schemes against Charles because she was hurt by his rejection. However, the fact remains that throughout the movie, she is a conniver; she plays Charles for a fool, and even at the end of the film it is not clear that Charles will ever fully understand exactly what has transpired. When Eve tries to explain to him how she has come to be on the ship with him again, Charles interrupts: “I don’t want to understand, I don’t want to know. Whatever it is, keep it to yourself. All I know is I adore you.” Charles decides not to have his eyes opened by Eve. He remains in deliberate ignorance or, as one might put it, innocence.

Affable Adam Indeed, most cinematic Adams are good-natured and likeable.¹⁶ In the 1961 comedy Bachelor in Paradise (dir. Jack Arnold), for example, the affable Bob Hope plays a character named Adam Niles who makes his living writing about the sexual habits of foreign peoples. When Adam needs to make money quickly to pay off a tax debt, he moves into a town called “Paradise Village” and sets about documenting the sexual lives of married couples in suburban America. As the movie progresses, Adam becomes less a sexual anthropologist than a marriage counselor, who advises the bored housewives who inhabit the community on how to keep their husbands interested in them. By the end of the story, Adam himself is in love and proposes marriage to the object of his affections.

 Released in , this movie fell under the authority of the Production Code Administration, which would have prohibited any sympathetic portrayal of non-marital sex. On “comedies of remarriage” such as The Lady Eve, see Cavell .  Here film mirrors theology and literature. For example, Augustine speculates that Adam ate the fruit offered to him by Eve only because the man “could not bear to be severed from his only companion” (Dods , ). Thomas Aquinas concurs and cites Augustine’s opinion that Adam “consented to the sin out of a certain friendly good-will, on account of which a man sometimes will offend God rather than make an enemy of his friend” (Kyam et al. , ). John Milton (, ) imagines that Adam eats because he has been “fondly overcome with Female charm.” A less flattering portrayal can be found in the movie Young Adam (dir. David Mackenzie, ).

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Edenic Marriages The Garden of Eden (dir. Lewis Milestone, 1928) also concludes with a marriage. The movie tells the story of a young Viennese singer named Toni who leaves home in order to seek fame and fortune in Budapest. Instead of finding a job at an opera house, as she had dreamed she would, Toni ends up singing at a sleazy nightclub. After suffering several sexual humiliations, Toni flees and checks into the Hotel Eden, a beautiful establishment with a lush garden on the grounds. In the hotel, she meets the man of her dreams, is wed in a Christian ceremony, and, presumably, lives happily ever after. Paradise is thus imagined as true love that is sanctioned by society and religious authority and that expresses itself sexually only within those boundaries. Marriage here, as in several other films, appears as the solution to the problem of unlawful sexual desire. In The Garden of Eden, the serpent (that is, the debauchery of the cabaret) threatens Toni before she enters Eden, but once she is safe within the walls of the Garden, she is no longer troubled by illicit sexuality.

Adam and Steve It should by now be clear that almost all of the movies that refer to Genesis in their exploration of sexuality focus on heterosexual relationships. One exception is the 2005 romantic comedy Adam and Steve (dir. Craig Chester). The movie’s plot concerns two men named, not surprisingly, Adam and Steve. Throughout the film, the characters encounter frequent and sometimes violent expressions of disapproval of their love and sexual attraction for each other. One neighbor in particular is quite vocal with his opinions, yelling, “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!” Towards the end of the movie, after the two lovers have gone through the same ups and downs in their relationship that make up the plot of any romantic comedy (boy meets boy, boy loses boy, boy gets boy), Steve finally confronts the neighbor who has been taunting him throughout the film. After beating him up, he forces the man to say that God did, in fact, make Adam and Steve: “Because here we are.” In the end, Adam and Steve marry one another in a wedding attended by their family, friends, and the formerly-hostile neighbor. Another exception to the heteronormativity of films invoking Adam and Eve is Big Eden (dir Thomas Bezucha, 2000), a romantic comedy that tells the story of a successful New York artist named Henry. When his grandfather in Montana has a stroke, Henry returns to the town of Big Eden to care for him. There he manages to catch the eye of a Native American man who owns the local general store, and, with the help of the good-natured conspiring of practically the entire town of Big Eden, the two men are eventually able to find true love.

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Utopian Dreams Big Eden’s portrayal of communal support for homosexual romance is so unrealistically positive that the movie might be considered utopian; it depicts a “no-place” that is, at least in the view of the movie, an ideal place (Harding 2010). Numerous other films that incorporate the story of Adam and Eve are similarly utopian. Director Gary Ross’s 1988 movie Pleasantville, for example, tells the tale of two contemporary teens who, like many of us, are daily bombarded with bad news, including reports of joblessness, global warning, drought, famine, and the spread of HIV. Even their own home does not offer respite from the complexities of modern life, as their parents are divorced and their father shows little interest in living up to his parental responsibilities. After a visit from a mysterious television repairman, the two are magically transported into a 1960’s-era sitcom where they adopt the names Bud and Mary Sue. In their new world, they discover, nothing unpleasant ever occurs: the home team always wins and the weather is always sunny and warm. At the same time, though, everything in Pleasantville appears in black-and-white or in some shade of gray, including the flowers. While it is true that Pleasantville lacks all the ills of our contemporary world, what it offers in return is only banality. No one thinks deeply about anything. No one questions anything. Though there are books in Pleasantville, all of the pages are blank. That begins to change with the arrival of the two teens. One day while talking with his new friends, Bud summarizes the plots of novels like Catcher in the Rye and Huckleberry Finn; instantly, the pages of those books magically fill themselves in so that everyone can read them. In addition, Bud and Mary Sue introduce knowledge of sexual pleasure and of foreign concepts such as “rain.” Women stop slavishly cooking and ironing for their husbands, young people discover rock and roll, and the townsfolk must reckon with the fact that their safe, predictable world is now appearing in living color. There are three scenes in Pleasantville that make clear the connection between the movie and the story of Adam and Eve. The first takes place after the owner of the local soda fountain shyly confesses to Bud that he loves to paint. Bud borrows a book about art from the suddenly bustling library and brings it to him to study. The first painting that the two examine together is Masaccio’s “The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden” (1425, Brancacci Chapel, Florence). In commentary on that scene, director Ross explains that the whole movie is a “bit of an edenic allegory” (Ross 1998). Just as Adam and Eve were banished from Eden, the denizens of Pleasantville are being forced from the safety and triviality of their perfect world. The second scene that evokes the Genesis story takes place after a number of the young people in the town have begun to appear in color. Bud and his girlfriend drive to a nearby lake, and there they join small groups of teens discussing poetry as they relax on emerald-green lawns planted with pink-petaled fruit trees. When evening falls and Bud and his date are alone in the moonlight, the girl approaches one of

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the apple trees and spies a bright red fruit hanging from its branches. She plucks the apple and holds it out to Bud, saying, “Go ahead. Try it.”

Fig. 2: Margaret offers Bud an apple in Pleasantville (1998)

The camera then cuts away to a new scene, so we do not know right away whether or not Bud accepts the girl’s offer. This is remedied later in the movie, however, in a third reference to Genesis. As the town becomes more and more divided over the changes that are taking place, Bud happens to walk past a store selling televisions. He hears a voice calling to him, and when he enters the store, Bud sees the face of the mysterious repairman appearing on every TV screen in the shop. Not only is the repairman omnipresent, but he is wrathful, as he accuses Bud of ruining Pleasantville. When Bud protests that he has not done anything wrong, the repairman asks, “Oh, no? Let me show you something.” What appears then is a picture of Bud taking a healthy bite of the apple that his girlfriend had offered him. It is almost as if God had planted a video camera in Eden in order to capture Adam’s transgression. The repairman circles the scene and draws an arrow pointing to Bud’s teeth sinking into the fruit. “Boom! Right there!” he exclaims. “What do you call that? You know, you don’t deserve this place. You don’t deserve to live in this paradise!” The repairman then threatens to exile Bud from Pleasantville and demands that he hand over the magical remote control that had landed them there in the first place. Bud refuses and instead runs from the store. By the end of the movie, Pleasantville is no longer the safe and happy world that it was before the two teens entered it. Young people have discovered the pulsing music of Buddy Holly, and society has been forced to reckon with diversity in appearance, thought, and opinion. This is not, implies the movie, a bad thing. When his girlfriend asks him what life is like outside of the town, Bud answers that it is louder, scarier, and a lot more dangerous. To this the girl replies eagerly, “Sounds fantastic.”

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The movie ends, in fact, by rejecting the very idea of paradise. When Bud decides to return home, he discovers that only one hour has passed in his own world. He also discovers that his mother, who had set off on a trip with her new boyfriend, has had second thoughts about her relationship and is now crying in the kitchen. As he comforts her, she sobs that at one point in her life she had thought that everything was perfect—she had the right house, the right husband, the right car, and the right life. Now, however, she is divorced and struggling financially. “It’s not supposed to be like this,” she cries. To this her son, filled with the wisdom of his recent sojourn into paradise, replies, “It’s not supposed to be anything.” Life, in other words, is not something to be measured against an imagined ideal but is a messy, unpredictable process through which we muddle as best we can. Rather than being a “Fall” into sin and death, leaving paradise, in the view of this movie, is an entrance into freedom and responsibility. One of the final scenes in Pleasantville hints that perhaps the transformation of the town was not accidental but was rather part of a larger plan initiated and overseen by the mysterious TV repairman. As David makes the decision to return to his own world, and as he presses the magical red button on the television remote, the movie includes a brief shot of the repairman. The man sits in his truck and gazes at Bud’s house, in effect looking almost straight into the camera and thus straight at the viewers. He offers a knowing and somewhat sad smile, and then he puts the truck into gear and drives off. The repairman’s smile might indicate that he is glad that the boy has left Pleasantville; perhaps now the town can be restored to its original innocence. This interpretation is undercut, however, by a subsequent shot of two of Pleasantville’s residents sitting on a park bench, now both fully colorized and admitting happily that they do not know what will happen next. If the repairman intends to force the citizens of the town to return to their previous way of life, he will have his work cut out for him. A better interpretation might be to say that the repairman had intended all along to insert the teens into Pleasantville with two goals in mind. The first goal was to change the two young people themselves for the better, as during the film both brother and sister make a transition from adolescence into adulthood. Second, though, the teens’ sojourn in Pleasantville allows the town itself to grow from innocent triviality into mature complexity. If this interpretation of the TV repairman’s smile is correct— that is, if the repairman intended all along for Pleasantville to be liberated from its banality, then we must ask how this affects a reading of the story of Genesis. Is it plausible to contend that God likewise was secretly pleased with Adam and Eve’s transgression, and that God willed for the couple to leave Eden (Mercadante 2001)? Such a rejection of paradise mirrors the view of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (dir. William Shatner, 1989), in which the crew of the Starship Enterprise is highjacked by an explorer who hopes to find the planet Eden. The explorer has the uncanny ability to heal people of their most painful memories and to bring calm and peace to everyone he touches. The intrepid Captain Kirk, however, rejects the premise

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that discomfort should be erased. Pain and guilt, he says, “are the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don’t want my pain taken away. I need my pain.” He rejects the possibility of utopia and opts instead for a difficult but rewarding life. Similar perspectives can be found in Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998) and the animated film Wall-E (dir. Andrew Stanton, 2008).

The Tree of Life Several movies invoke yet another element of the biblical story: the Tree of Life.¹⁷ Darren Aronofsky’s 2006 film The Fountain, for instance, opens with a description of the expulsion of Adam and Eve: “Therefore, the Lord God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and placed a flaming sword to protect the tree of life.” The movie interweaves past, present, and future as it meditates on the nature of death and the quest for immortality. One plotline involves a fifteenth-century explorer who sails to the New World in search of the biblical Tree of Life. A second, set in contemporary times, involves a dying woman and her husband, who is a scientist consumed by his efforts to “cure” death. Finally, a third narrative depicts an astronaut floating through space, who discovers that death is not, as he feared, the end of life, but is simply part of an eternal process. Death, he realizes, is a creative act that brings regeneration. The science fiction film The Island (dir. Michael Bay, 2005), a futuristic thriller, also tries to imagine what would happen if we could find the biblical Tree of Life. The premise of the movie is that a scientist has figured out a way to clone human beings and thus create “spare parts” to replace humans’ organs as they wear out. The effect of the process would be to ensure immortality, as deteriorating bodies could continually be repaired. The scientist in the movie describes his Institute as “a Garden of Eden,” and other allusions to Genesis include an encounter with a snake and a reference to an apple. The movie uses these evocations of the biblical story to reflect on innocence, curiosity, sex, death, and immortality. Like many other works of popular culture, it ends up praising human curiosity and ingenuity even when those traits lead to disobedience of authority. At the same time, though, it cautions against trying to reverse the course of human mortality. We are free, the movie seems to say, to question God. We are not free, however, to become like God.

 See, for example, director Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (). Though the film is largely a meditation on the Bible’s book of Job, its title refers to Genesis.

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Monkeyshines Finally, no consideration of Adam and Eve in film would be complete without mention of the 1960 movie Inherit the Wind (dir. Stanley Kramer, remake dir. Daniel Petrie, 1999), based on the 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, which is a fictionalized version of the famous 1925 Scopes Trial. That trial, which took place in Dayton, Tennessee, tested the legality of teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in public schools. Though Inherit the Wind takes place in a fictional town named Hillsboro and in an unspecified era, it deals with the same issues that electrified the Scopes Trial, including the scientific accuracy of the Genesis creation story, the relation between faith and science, and the liberty of human beings to pursue knowledge wherever it takes them (Kramer 1997, 174). Seen as a vehicle to promote the sacredness of human inquiry, Inherit the Wind is spectacularly successful. As the burly, agnostic lawyer Henry Drummond (the movie’s counterpart to real-life defender Clarence Darrow), actor Spencer Tracy is powerful and compelling. During the trial to defend the fictional high school teacher, Drummond argues that there is nothing holier than the human mind and that “an idea is a greater monument than a cathedral.” Questioning Matthew Harrison Brady (the film’s version of William Jennings Bryan) on the witness stand, he demands, “Why do you deny the one faculty of man that raises him above the other creatures of the earth: the power of his brain to reason?” When Brady counters that the Bible should be trusted because God “spake” it, Drummond retorts, “How do you know that God didn’t spake to Charles Darwin?” The movie also features another quasi-historical character named E. K. Hornbeck, a cinematic counterpoint to the real-life journalist H. L. Mencken. Mencken was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, and during the Scopes Trial he turned his caustic wit squarely against a literal interpretation of Genesis. The movie’s first glimpse of Hornbeck comes when the journalist arrives at the jail where the science teacher has been imprisoned. Hornbeck appears in the foreground, and we see him bite into an apple. He then offers the fruit to the jailed man’s girlfriend, and when she refuses to take it, he laughs: “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not the serpent, little Eva. This isn’t from the Tree of Knowledge. Oh, no. You won’t find one growing in Heavenly Hillsboro. A few Ignorance Bushes, perhaps, but no Tree of Knowledge.” Though the movie ridicules religious zealotry, in the end it moderates its view and suggests that one need not choose between faith and reason. In the very last scene of the film, as Drummond gathers his belongings after the trial is over, he picks up a copy of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859). Spying his copy of the Bible as well, he picks that up, and he holds the two books in his hands, balancing them against each other. Finally, he places the Bible squarely on top of Darwin and carries both books from the courtroom.

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Conclusions Adam and Eve have played starring roles in cinema for over a century. They have been used both to portray paradise and to reject utopias: to dream of immortality and to warn against such dreams. At times they endorse heterosexual marriage, and at others they celebrate gay relationships. Eve is both a nudist and a fashion model, and Adam is both a hapless victim and a stalwart lover. In short, the Bible’s first people are, in cinema, all the various things audiences have imagined themselves to be. It is for that reason that viewers must keep a careful, critical eye on films that incorporate the creation story. When we watch Genesis unfold on the big screen, it is easy to forget that we are watching an interpretation of what is, in the end, a very short few biblical chapters. By conflating the Priestly account of creation with the Jahwist’s version, directors choose to make a cohesive narrative out of otherwise disparate texts. By inserting into their scripts dialogue and action not found in the Bible itself, writers give their own interpretations of the characters’ desires and motives. By using particular actors to portray the biblical couple, movies convey sometimes subtle messages about ideal manhood and womanhood, messages that can reinforce harmful assumptions about race, gender, and sexual orientation. Most people will never sit down and actually read Genesis 1– 3. Their knowledge of the story will be based in cultural memories and associations that may bear little resemblance to the biblical version. Careful analysis and reflection are key to informed reading of both the Bible and its cinematic presentations.

Works Cited Allen, Jeanne Thomas. 1990. “Fig Leaves in Hollywood: Female Representation and Consumer Culture.” In Fabrications: Costume and the Female Body. Eds. Jane Gaines and Charlotte Herzog. New York: Routledge. Pp. 122 – 33. Basinger, Jeanine. 2012. I Do and I Don’t: A History of Marriage in the Movies. New York: Knopf. Carey, Gary, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz. 1972. More About All About Eve: A Colloquy. New York: Random House. Catholic Church. 1994. Catechism of the Catholic Church. New York: Doubleday. Cavell, Stanley. 1984. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Dods, Marcus, transl. 1950. Augustine: The City of God. New York: Modern Library. Figgis, Michael. 1999. Loss of Sexual Innocence. New York: Faber and Faber. Friedman, Richard Elliott. 1989. Who Wrote the Bible? New York: Harper Collins. Ginzberg, Louis. 1937. The Legends of the Jews. Transl. Henrietta Szold. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Harding, Rosie. 2010. “Imagining a Different World: Reconsidering the Regulation of Family Lives.” Law and Literature 22.3 (Fall): 440 – 62. Higgins, Jean M. 1976. “The Myth of Eve: The Temptress.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44.4 (December): 639 – 47.

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King, Steven. 1974. Carrie. New York: Doubleday. Kramer, Stanley. 1997. A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: A Life in Hollywood. New York: Harcourt Brace. Kvam, Kristen E., Linda S. Schearing, and Valarie H. Ziegler, Eds. 1999. Eve and Adam: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Readings on Genesis and Gender. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. Mercadante, Linda A. 2001. “The God Behind the Screen: Pleasantville & The Truman Show.” Journal of Religion and Film 5.2: http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/truman.htm; accessed February 17, 2015. Milton, John. 1968. Paradise Lost. Ed. Christopher Ricks. New York: Penguin. New York Times 1920. “Report: Pope Bans Film of Adam and Eve, Minus Clothes, as Pictured by Italian Firm.” (November 10): http://search.proquest.com/docview/97988390?accountid= 11091; accessed February 17, 2015. Ross, Gary. 1998. “Audio Commentary.” Pleasantville. DVD. Directed by Gary Ross. Pasadena: New Life Cinema. Sanders, Theresa. 2009. Approaching Eden: Adam and Eve in Popular Culture. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Savage, John J. transl. 1961. Ambrose: Hexameron, Paradise, and Cain and Abel. Fathers of the Church Series 42. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. Schearing, Linda S., and Valerie Ziegler. 2013. Enticed By Eden: How Western Culture Uses, Confuses, (and Sometimes Abuses) Adam and Eve. Texas: Baylor University Press. Steinbeck, John. 1992. East of Eden [1952]. Penguin Twentieth Century Classics Reissue Edition. New York: Penguin Books. TMC. 2015. “Notes for The Private Lives of Adam & Eve (1961).” http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title. jsp?stid=87214&category=Notes; accessed February 17 2015.

Films Cited Adam and Eve (dir. Unknown, 1912, Vitagraph, US). Adam and Steve (dir. Craig Chester, 2005, Funny Boy Films, US). Adamo ed Eva, la prima storia d’amore [a.k.a. Adam and Eve or Adam and Eve vs. Cannibals] (dir. Enzo Doria and Luigi Russo, 1983, Alex Film International, IT/ES). Adán y Eva [a.k.a. Adam and Eve] (dir. Alberto Gout, 1956, Adam & Eve Productions, MX). All About Eve (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Bachelor in Paradise (dir. Jack Arnold, 1961, MGM, US). The Bible (prod. Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, 2013, Lightworkers Media, US/UK). The Bible: In the Beginning… (dir. John Huston, 1966, Dino de Laurentiis, US/IT). Big Eden (dir. Thomas Bezucha, 2000, Chaiken Films, US). Carrie (dir. Brian De Palma, 1976, United Artists, US). Carrie (dir. Kimberly Peirce, 2013, MGM, US). Children of Eve (dir. John H. Collins, 1915, Edison, US). East of Eden (dir. Elia Kazan, 1955, Warner Brothers, US). El pecado de Adán y Eva [a.k.a. The Sin of Adam and Eve] (dir. Miguel Zacarías, 1969, Azteca Films, MX). Eve and the Nervous Curate (dir. J. L. V. Leigh, 1918, Gaumont, UK). Eve Assists the Censor (dir. J. L. V. Leigh, 1918, Gaumont, UK). Fig Leaves (dir. Howard Hawks, 1926, Fox Film Corporation, US). Forbidden Fruit (dir. Ivan Abramson, 1915, Ivan Film Productions, US).

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The Fountain (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2006, Warner Brothers, US/CA). The Garden of Eden (dir. Lewis Milestone, 1928, Feature Productions, US). Garden of Eden (dir. Max Nosseck, 1954, Excelsior Pictures, US). Inherit the Wind (dir. Stanley Kramer, 1960, Stanley Kramer Productions, US). Inherit the Wind (dir. Daniel Petrie, 1999, MGM Television, US). The Island (dir. Michael Bay, 2005, DreamWorks/Warner Brothers, US). La bibbia [a.k.a. After Six Days] (dir. Pier Antonio Gariazzo and Armando Vey, 1920, Appia Nuova, IT). The Lady Eve (dir. Preston Sturges, 1941, Paramount, US). The Loss of Sexual Innocence (dir. Mike Figgis, 1999, Newmarket Capital Group, US/UK). The New Adam and Eve (dir. Richard Garrick, 1915, Gaumont, US). Pleasantville (dir. Gary Ross, 1988, New Line Cinema, US). The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (dir. Mickey Rooney and Albert Zugsmith, 1960, Albert Zugsmith Productions, US). Second Time Lucky (dir. Michael Anderson, 1984, Broadbank Investments, NZ). Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (dir. William Shatner, 1989, Paramount, US). The Tree of Knowledge (dir. George L. Cox, 1912, Selig Polyscope Company, US). The Tree of Life (dir. Terrence Malick, 2011, Cottonwood Pictures, US). The Truman Show (dir. Peter Weir, 1998, Paramount, US). Wall-E (dir. Andrew Stanton, 2008, Walt Disney /Pixar, US). Young Adam (dir. David Mackenzie, 2003, Recorded Picture Company, UK/FR).

Anton Karl Kozlovic

2 Noah and the Flood: A Cinematic Deluge

The biblical flood (Gen. 6 – 9)¹ is an archetypal disaster story that exists in various renditions throughout world cultures (Frazer 2013) and artwork including film (Chattaway 2014, Williams 2009), which can be sorted into six basic heuristic (sometimes overlapping) taxonomic categories. These Bible-based stories make audio-visually explicit what was sometimes only implicit (or missing) within Holy Writ by intermingling biblical stories with (sometimes incredulous) poetic license and other plot extrapolations for dramaturgical effect.

Biopic Films: Being There Films that take this tact attempt to recreate Bible stories as if viewers were actually there seeing “real” historical events, however crudely done. For example, The Deluge (Vitagraph, 1911) was America’s first pictorial presentation of the great flood. Set in 3317 B.C., God decides to destroy human wickedness, except for Noah and family who build an ark, load two of every living creature onboard, and survive a fortyday worldwide inundation. Beached upon Mount Ararat, Noah builds an altar and gives thanks, whereupon God’s rainbow physicalizes his covenant to never again destroy the world with water (Campbell/Pitts 1981, 6). Noah’s Ark (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1928) was a melodrama contrasting a World War I story with Noah’s narrative starting with a beached ark, rainbow and two biblical quotes: “And the Lord said…I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake…neither will I again smite anymore everything living, as I have done…Gen. Chap. 8[:21],” and “I do now set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth…Gen. Chap. 9[:13].” The biblical portion of the film ends with the Babylonian city of Akkad inundated, then transitions to a (then) modern-day minister clutching his Bible and entreating: “Above this deluge of blood, and the graves of ten million men, shall not the rainbow of a new covenant appear—the covenant of peace?” (Solomon 2001, 227). Unfortunately, alongside Noah (Paul McAllister), Curtiz confusingly inserts the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11), golden calf worshipping (Exod. 32), a Samson-like blinding of Japheth (cf. Judg. 16:21), the mystical restoration of his sight, his romantic reunion with Miriam, and God opening the ark door for them. Although Akkad’s flooding took hours, not forty days and forty nights (Gen. 7:12), it awed audiences with its liquid ferocity (which reputedly drowned some unsuspecting film extras).

 All biblical references refer to the King James Bible (KJV).

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Fig. 3: Animals help build the ark in Michael Curtiz’s Noah’s Ark (1928)

The Bible: In the Beginning… (dir. John Huston, 1966) showcased Noah (played by Huston) as “a simple peasant…an innocent protected by his belief and lack of guile…the child figure in the Bible. He’s always a little bit absurd and delightful” (Kaminsky 1978, 164). God tasks Noah to “make thee an ark of gopherwood…the length… 300 cubits, breadth 50 cubits, height 30 cubits [Gen. 6:15],” which he fills with animals (tediously trained off-set to walk in two-by-two) enticed by Noah’s piped piperlike flute playing. Tumultuous rains inundate the world, the ark beaches upon a mountaintop, and the animals disembark under a rainbow. The docudrama, In Search of Noah’s Ark (dir. James L. Conway, 1976) also recreates Noachian scenes (Bailey 1989, 105 – 9), as does The Incredible Discovery of Noah’s Ark (dir. Henning Schellerup, 1993); whilst Genesi: la creazione e il diluvio (dir. Ermanno Olmi, 1994, a.k.a. Genesis: The Creation and the Flood) features a tribal storyteller recounting (with onscreen recreations) the story of Noah (Omero Antonutti). Regrettably, it lacks shock-and-awe value because of underwhelming production values, notably a stick house-ark, scant farmyard animals, drizzle rain leaving a campfire unextinguished, and no visualized flood.

Semi-Biopic Films: Biblical Extrapolations These films employ scriptural characters, events and props, but in non-historical or other imaginative circumstances.² For example, the Noah segment within The Green

 For example, within The Librarian : The Curse of the Judas Chalice (dir. Jonathan Frakes, ),

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Pastures (dir. Marc Connelly/William Keighley, 1936) features an all-black cast wearing westernized clothing. “De Lawd” visiting Earth decides to destroy wicked humanity via deluge because: “I’m a God of wrath and vengeance.” Actual ark-building is eschewed, but amidst public ridicule, Noah (Eddie Anderson) and family load it with (physically labeled) animals, two-by-two. Its ark was a small house atop a boat that beaches atop a mountain, the waters recede, a dove-with-branch returns, and a rainbow shines. Interestingly, Noah’s drinking problem (cf. Gen. 9:21) is comically highlighted when he repeatedly requests “two kegs of liquor” for the ark stores, but God decrees “one keg!”

Fig. 4: Animal pairs in The Green Pastures (1936)

Hallmark’s TV-movie, Noah’s Ark (dir. John Irvin, 1999), recounts the biblical tale so fancifully that gut-wrenching incredulity results. For example, the disbelieving neighbors of Noah (Jon Voight) behave like British soccer hooligans; Lot from Sodom appears in the story as an evil mercenary, wearing his wife’s detached finger-turned-to-salt (Gen. 19:26); overnight God provides neatly stacked cut-lumber with coded symbols for easy ark assembly; a post-flood peddler in a boat-cart offers Noah’s family goods in exchange for food and water; a pirate flotilla led by Lot at-

Flynn Carsen finds Noah’s ark displayed in “The Library,” a private Smithsonian-like institution full of magical, mythological and historical artifacts.

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tacks the ark; and so God destroys them in a giant whirlpool. After beaching the ark, Noah’s sons and daughters-in-law promptly depart with hand-drawn carts into the wilderness. Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2014) is a bizarre biblical blockbuster causing controversy with its non-canonical embellishments incorporating the ancient Jewish books of Enoch and Jubilees, rabbinic commentaries, and midrashic retellings (Heinegg 2014). These include Noah (Russell Crowe) treasuring Edenic serpent’s skin as a family heirloom; instantaneous flower-growing and forest-sprouting via one Edenic seed; self-navigating ground-turned-river water; scary giant Watchers (powerful fallen angels, depicted as six-armed rock-monsters who help build and defend the ark); a suicidal Methuselah with a magical flaming sword; a distant ‘Creator’; anesthetized ark-animals; the failed attempt to procure a wife for Ham; a stowaway (Tubal-Cain) eating ark-animals; Noah’s adopted daughter, Ila; her magically cured barrenness and accelerated child-birthing; a family mutiny against the murderous Noah; a burned ark escape boat; an aggressive and vegetarian Noah suffering disturbing water visions and taking ten years to build his ark (with multiple Watcher assistance!). Thematically speaking, Aronofsky’s flood is brought about by environmental despoiling more than human wickedness, corruption, and violence (cf. Gen. 6:5, 11)—thus making Noah Earth’s first eco-warrior. Innovative geyser-spouting ground water (cf. Gen. 7:11; 8:2) accompanies the rains, which Noah poetically describes as “the waters of the heavens, will meet the waters of the earth.” Later, a dove-with-olive branch appears, the ark is beached (broken in two) followed much later by a drunken, naked Noah (cf. Gen. 9:20 – 24), covered up by Shem and Japheth, but not Ham—who walks into the wilderness, worried and wifeless—with a brief, stylized rainbow thrown in as a post-flood afterthought. Overall, monster movie imagination overwhelms mainstream canonical scripture.

Science Fiction Disaster Films: Deadly Designs This speculative genre frequently contains tales of devastating disaster utilizing biblical references and resonances. For example, Deluge (dir. Felix E. Feist, 1933) opens with onscreen text that disclaims, and claims, a biblical source: Deluge is a tale of fantasy, an adventure in speculation, a vivid epic pictorialization of an author’s imaginative flight. We the producers present it now purely for your entertainment, remembering full well God’s covenant with Noah. “…And I will establish my covenant with you: neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of the flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.” Genesis 9:11

Earthquakes demolish the west coast of the U.S., tidal waves inundate the Statue of Liberty, New York City collapses, chaos reigns as people perish, whilst a Biblethumper preaches: “Jehovah said. ‘I will destroy man whom I have created

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[Gen. 6:7].’ Repent, repent before me. All things must repent,” followed by a truncated reading of Psalm 23. When Worlds Collide (dir. Rudolph Maté, 1951) opens with a red-leather Holy Bible (accompanied by thunder, lightning, and heavenly choir), displaying calligraphic text: And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth… [Gen. 6:12– 13].

Wandering rogue star, Bellus (analogously, God’s hand), with planet Zyra orbiting it, is on a collision course with Earth, but the international community dismisses the warnings of its Noah-figure—American astronomer, Dr. Cole Hendron (Larry Keating). Belatedly, they accept that humanity’s only hope is to construct a rocketship as their “20th-century Noah’s ark.” But when construction is stalled, Sydney Stanton, a selfish wheelchair-bound industrialist (morally and physically analogous to corrupt flesh—Gen. 6:12), finances its completion, not for “the salvation of a civilization,” but to delay his own death (Barcella 2012, 146 – 47). Forty people, (mostly) breeding couples (cf. Gen. 6:19) selected by lottery, board the rocketship with supplies and (two-by-two loaded) animals headed for (uncertain) safety on Zyra. The approaching interplanetary bodies trigger earthquakes, avalanches, and massive tidal waves that destroy New York City before Bellus obliterates Earth. The rocketship/ark lands safely upon the snowy Zyran mountains (cf. Gen. 8:4), wherein its sun-drenched, paradisiacal fields below foreshadow a fertile future. Earth’s survivors unload their animals (two-by-two), a heavenly choir sings, and calligraphic words appear: “The first day on the new world had begun… [cf. Gen. 8:13].” The Noah (dir. Daniel Bourla, 1975) is a psychological science-fiction drama starring the sole human survivor (Robert Strauss) of a nuclear holocaust who slowly goes mad and converses with imaginary companions whilst awaiting his inevitable death by radiation poisoning. This unnamed soldier accepts “The Noah” moniker from a disembodied voice he considers God but calls “Friday” (alluding to Robinson Crusoe’s companion). The film opens with an expansive sea and a biblical quote: And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart… And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth… And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heavens; and they were destroyed from the earth… And Noah only remained alive… Genesis 6

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However, the quote was from Genesis 6:6 – 7 and 7:23 with any reference to “they that were with him in the ark” strategically expunged. The sea scene switches to an arklike military life-raft beaching upon the shore (analogously, Mount Ararat); whereupon its Noah-figure lives a routinized, military lifestyle interspersed with eccentric actions. In one scene, for example, Noah embodies Moses-the-lawgiver by holding, Charlton Heston-like, two text-inscribed “tablets,” thereby interweaving madness, religion, politics, law, and death. Moonraker (dir. Lewis Gilbert, 1979) features megalomaniac billionaire, Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), as a deranged Noah-figure who builds an ark-like space station to house genetically engineered humans. He plans to flood Earth with “highly toxic nerve gas” to euthanize humanity and then repopulate the planet with his “new super-race.” Onboard the space shuttle, James Bond/007 observes the engineered pairs sitting affectionately side-by-side and muses: “The animals went in two-bytwo…Noah’s ark” (cf. Gen. 7:9, 15), he then watches them disembarking (two-bytwo) onto the space ark. The eco-dystopian film, Waterworld (dir. Kevin Reynolds, 1995), showcases a post-flood Earth—its skyscrapers submerged and forgotten—where dirt and pure clean water are scarce commodities sought by seafaring survivors, and “Dryland” is but a myth. When the gilled-mutant, Mariner (Kevin Costner), declares: “The world wasn’t created in a deluge. It was covered by it,” he is accused of “blasphemy!” His nemesis and negative Noah-figure, Deacon (Dennis Hopper), is the neo-cult leader of survivors living aboard a decrepit, ark-like Exxon Valdez that houses selected humans and dispatches sign-seeking Jet Ski “doves.” Dryland is eventually discovered—a lush, green mountaintop protruding through the expansive waters. Deep Impact (dir. Mimi Leder, 1998) concerns a massive comet (analogously, God’s hand) on a collision course with Earth. This “Extinction Level Event” triggers relocation of American citizens selected by “The Ark National Lottery” into the “ARK Cave Site” deep within Missouri’s limestone cliffs, along with animal breeding pairs and supplies. “It’s our new Noah’s ark. We’re storing seeds and seedlings, plants, animals, enough to start over,” according to its Noah-figure, President Beck (Morgan Freeman). However, in this film, “[e]xclusion from the ark is a matter of talent and circumstance, not ethics, lifestyle or religious faith” (Reinhartz 2013, 212). Simultaneously, the self-sacrificing crew of the spaceship, “The Messiah,” achieves salvation by destroying most of the comet, although deadly fragments hit Earth causing massive tidal waves that devastate the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty, and surroundings. When the waters recede, survivors celebrate their existence, and rebuild their reprieved world. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (dir. Kerry Conran, 2004) features a spaceship-ark loaded (two-by-two) with animals to avoid a worldwide catastrophe engineered by its evil God-turned-Noah-figure, Dr. Totenkopf (Laurence Olivier), who bore “witness to a world consumed by hatred and bent on self-destruction.” He decides to give humanity a second chance at greatness by wiping out the old

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order and re-populating the “world of tomorrow” with genetically prepared persons and menagerie. When Polly Perkins exclaims: “My god, Joe. It’s an ark. He’s building an ark,” then looks away, it agitates Joe ‘Sky Captain’ Sullivan: “You honestly think you’re gonna find something more important than every single creature on Earth being led two-by-two inside a giant rocketship?” Onboard, a holographic Dr. Totenkopf posthumously recites: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth [Gen. 6:5].…And God said unto Noah, the end [Gen. 6:13]….” Global disaster is averted, and the film ends with the onboard animals safely splash-landing on Earth’s waters inside the spaceship’s escape pods. Another eco-disaster film, The Day After Tomorrow (dir. Roland Emmerich, 2004), depicts melting polar ice caps, fatal hail in Tokyo, snowfalls in New Delhi, and walls of water flooding New York City heralding a new Ice Age triggered by burning fossil fuels—mankind’s environmental hubris. Scientists and cost-conscious governments dismiss the warnings of Noah-figure and paleo-climatologist, Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid).³ Jack’s estranged son, Sam, and a large band of weather refugees are advised to stay put in the local library; but, as the weather grows colder and deadlier, most decide to depart, despite Sam’s pleas, only to freeze to death in non-liquid water. The library survivors procure supplies from an ark-like Russian freighter (containing ravenous wolves) that beaches itself on Fifth Avenue. Searching helicopters (hi-tech “doves”) transport them to safety as the new age dawns, ritually presided over by a new President. Earth’s now crystal-clear air is nature’s correction and a spiritual symbol for purification.⁴ TV movie, Monster Ark (dir. Declan O’Brien, 2008), opens with Noah (Atanas Srebrev) loading his ark-sail ship with a wooden box that imprisons a creature controlled by his mystical staff. A truncated biblical quote states: “And God said to Noah ‘The end of all flesh has become before me, behold I will destroy them.’ Genesis 6:13.” Flash-forward to a modern-day archaeological dig described as “Qumran Ruins, West of the Dead Sea,” where atheist archaeologist, Dr. Nicholas Zavaterro, and his students discover an ancient clay jar containing “the last Dead Sea Scroll,” an “unabridged edition” of the book of Genesis, carbon-dated 380 B.C. Partially translated by Christian archeolinquist, Dr. Ava Greenway, the “Genesis Scroll” is described as the “oldest biblical document ever discovered.” It reveals that God had originally tasked Noah with building an ark-ship to banish the last surviving Nephilim (a demon of “The Darkness”), but Noah failed when “The Darkness” cleaved this first ark-ship in two. Scroll coordinates disclose the monster-ark’s current location in war-torn Iraq, now petrified in a desert rock formation (formerly a  The concerns of Emmerich’s biblically based climate catastrophe also characterize his commercially-released student film, Das Arche Noah Prinzip (dir. Roland Emmerich, , a.k.a. The Noah’s Ark Principle).  Similar conclusions are reached by Eskjær (), Rigby (), Salvador and Norton (), and Schneider-Mayerson ().

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seabed). Inside the re-discovered ark is a locked gopherwood box containing the stillliving Nephilim, who is released and begins a killing spree. Helped by the Noahdi secret order (Christian “first Masons,” who protected this secret for 5,000 years), modern-day Noah-figure, Dr. Zavaterro (Tim DeKay), retrieves Noah’s golden-tipped staff from his hidden tomb and mystically returns the Nephilim to its prison-box, now the “Property of the Church.” Emmerich’s next eco-disaster film, 2012 (theatrically released in 2009), dramatically depicts California sliding into the sea and the Himalayas flooded due to massive solar flares that destabilize Earth’s geophysics. As religious protestors quote John 3:16 and proclaim the usual slogans (“Get Ready for the Apocalypse” and “This is the End”), three (out of seven) metal ark-ships are successfully completed “to ensure the continuity of our species.” They are loaded with animals, supplies, and diverse segments of society, including young Noah Curtis (Liam James). An awesome tidal wave capsizes the cruise ship, “Genesis,” and drowns everything else, whilst the ark-ships ride the wild waves safely. The survivors head for the Cape of Good Hope to start again on this newly risen landmass, and yet: […] we cannot read Emmerich’s screenplay simply as an updated version of the Noah’s Ark story [because…] there is no divine context to the plot. Emmerich presents humans as surviving a natural catastrophe by their own means, symbolized by the severing of Michelangelo’s image of God and Adam as Emmerich simulates the collapse of the Sistine Chapel. And yet the global deluge is so unnatural in scale that readers could be forgiven for seeing the narrative as an allegory of the biblical story of Noah. (Hiscock 2012, 171– 72)

As the floodwaters recede, a zooming God-perspective reveals the vastly different physical shape of their geographically altered “brave new world.”

Comedy Films: Laughable? These films employ humor to explore biblical belief, which inherently downplays the dark and disturbing. For example, Disney’s The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark (dir. Charles Jarrott, 1980) features Captain Noah Dugan (Elliot Gould) flying an aging B-29 bomber towards a South Pacific island. It is full of farm animals (which he dislikes), along with Christian missionary, Bernadette Lafleur, and two stowaway children, but the plane crashes onto an uncharted island occupied by two marooned Japanese soldiers unaware that World War II ended decades ago. Becoming friends, they convert the plane into a “boat” named “Noah’s Ark,” reload the animals and set sail on stormy seas for civilization. Onboard, Bernadette reads: “Genesis 8:8: ‘And Noah sent forth a dove from him to see if the waters were abated off the face of the ground’” whereupon their pet duck, Petey, is launched with a message into the unknown, resulting in their rescue. Disney’s TV movie, Noah (dir. Ken Kwapis, 1998), stars contemporary construction contractor, Norman Waters (Tony Danza), as a Noah-figure commissioned by

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God’s angel, Zack, to rebuild Noah’s ark. This work-focused widower with three sons reluctantly does so, using Noah’s original blueprints, under a forty-day deadline. Ostracized by his friends, a pet-shop owner supplies the animals, which are loaded (two-by-two) before violent storms convert the doubters into believers whom Norman/Noah selflessly saves. When Zack mentions the family-only policy, Norman retorts: “This is my family! I’m not Noah, I’m Norman! And on Norman’s ark, there’s a place for everybody!” Thus, he demonstrates American egalitarianism and greater compassion than God, although the (unimpressive) flood appears designed so Norman can spend more time with his children. The B-grade spoof, Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls (dir. Bryan Michael Stoller, 2004), features Noah’s intact ark on a remote island whereupon beauty contestants crash-land and Miss Iowa confesses: “I always knew Noah’s ark existed, just like Santa Claus.” The ark is now needed to get “back to civilization, two-by-two, and more.” Onboard lives Noah (Stuart Pankin), a stereotypical Jew with mother-in-law complaints, playing cards with a talking, militaristic Ape Commander grateful for saving his kind, to which Noah retorts: “Two, of everything, right [cf. Gen. 6:19]!” They plan to re-launch the ark with a coming flood, but the Ape Commander complains about a lack of bathrooms and toilet paper for their forthcoming “forty days and forty nights” upon a “perfect storm.” This planned re-launch prompts the Pope, via “Agent MJ” (Michael Jackson), to activate the “Raiders of the Lost Noah’s Ark” to stop them. Meanwhile, mutinous apes confiscate the refurbished, computerized ark; imprison Noah; and plot world domination, which is thwarted when the ark’s newly-installed drain plug is unplugged. It quickly sinks with a rainbow overhead, a holographic Agent MJ saluting, and Noah safely swimming to shore using a huge swollen bagel. In Evan Almighty (dir. Tom Shadyac, 2007), former newsman and U.S. congressman turned Noah-figure, Evan Baxter (Steve Carell), is commissioned by God to build a “gopherwood” ark (actually pine and maple, but God likes the wordplay “go-4wood”) needed for a “September 22, midday” flood. Evan reluctantly succumbs after repeatedly confronting God, being stalked by animal pairs, and multiple “Genesis 6:14” encounters (via an alarm clock, the lumber delivery address and receipt number, a telephone extension, a baby’s weight, congressional plates, and the url www.Genesis614.com). Ridiculed by the media as “New York’s Noah,” Evan’s family and animals construct the ark with tools and materials supplied by “Alpha and Omega Hardware” (cf. Rev. 22:13) and the manual, Ark Building for Dummies. Upon completion and animal loading (two-by-two), public mockery quickly turns to misery when a ruptured local reservoir floods the neighborhood, whereupon the naysayers board the ark and ride the raging waters until it beaches itself upon Capitol Hill with rainbow overhead and iconic dove-with-branch. As God explains concerning Noah’s narrative: “They think it’s about God’s wrath and anger” but “it’s a love story about believing in each other. You know, the animals showed up in pairs. They stood by each other, side by side, just like Noah and his family. Everybody entered the ark side by side.” Furthermore, “whatever I do, I do

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because I love you,” and “ARK” actually means “Acts of Random Kindness,” which dramatically contrasts with traditional theological concerns with wickedness, disappointment, and corrective destruction.

Animated Films: Sketchy Storytelling This category is defined by production method rather than style, topic, or theme; but nonetheless it provides innovative biblical storytelling that frequently offers the animals’ perspective and identifies missing (mythological?) species. For example, The Tale of the Ark (dir. Arthur M. Cooper, 1909) interpolates live-action with puppet animation, and is arguably the first Noachian film (Campbell/Pitts 1981, 3). Father Noah’s Ark (dir. Wilfred Jackson, 1933) is a Silly Symphonies short depicting a singing Noah with family and animals joyously building the “Ark,” but when it rains, the animals are loaded (two-by-two) and depart, with the late-arriving skunks swimming quickly to catch up. After forty days of deluge, dove-with-branch, and rainbow, the ark beaches upon a large tree and uses a long ramp for unloading. Noah’s Ark (dir. Bill Justice, 1959) is a stop-motion animation wherein God commissions Noah to build a gopherwood ark within seven days. His three sons fell the trees in three days, construct “The ARQUE [sic]” 300x50x30 cubits (using their relocated house as cabin), name it “NOAhS ARK [sic],” collect “two of every living thing,” and load them (two-by-two) prior to the forty days and nights of rain. Noah’s sons play music to soothe the seasick animals, who then dance and sing “Love One Another” (except Harry-the-philandering-hippo). Eventually the rains end, a dove-witholive branch returns, the ark beaches atop a mountain, and the animals disembark (two-by-two) with their babies birthed onboard in tow. Japanese anime, Spriggan (dir. Hirotsugu Kawasaki, 1998), depicts Noah’s ark being discovered under Mount Ararat, but it is actually an ancient alien spaceship capable of spawning multiple species and controlling the world’s weather. At high school, teenager Yu Ominae’s classmate mysteriously suicides whilst wearing a top printed with “Noah will be your grave!” Yu is secretly a special agent, codenamed “Spriggan,” who belongs to ARCAM, a clandestine organization dedicated to preventing alien and lost technology being misused. Whilst exploring the ark, fellow agents cite Genesis 6 – 9 and the ark’s 300x50 cubits specification. The ark is violently defended against sadistic Pentagon super-soldiers and their evil child-prodigy master, who seeks world domination by starting another Ice Age; but the reactivated alien ark self-destructs. Sir Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” segment of Disney’s Fantasia 2000 (dir. Francis Glebas, 1999) features Donald Duck as Noah’s harried assistant directing animals (two-by-two) into a huge ark; but the unicorn, dragon, and griffin stay behind laughing. A massive wave forces the ark sealed, with a depressed Donald thinking that his girlfriend, Daisy, missed the boat. The rain stops, its dove-with-olivebranch returns, and animal love blossoms onboard. When the waters recede, the

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ark beaches upon a mountain with rainbow present, and the animals disembark (two-by-two); except the disheartened Donald who unexpectedly (and joyously) reconnects with Daisy. In El arca (dir. Juan Pablo Buscarini, 2007, a.k.a. Noah’s Ark), a black God unhappy with human wickedness warns the righteous (and bespectacled) Noah of a forthcoming forty-day flood. Noah’s family and “a pair of each existing species of animal” will renew the world and according to God’s “divine design – learn to love each other, respect one another, be just, practice solidarity, and multiply.” Noah fells a forest, builds the ark (without help from his three sons), and tasks doves to deliver hand-written warnings to the (talking) animals. When the doves get drunk at a salacious bar instead, their peer, Pepe, solicits help from Sabu, the lion-king, who calls an emergency meeting, organizes the animals, and directs them (two-by-two) towards Noah’s ark. However, Bigfoot, the unicorn, and the dragon mistrust the apocalyptic warning and stay behind. The huge ark (with a ship’s wheel and rudder) contains 13,000 double cabins, five bird towers, and four cabins plus a fishing platform for the humans; but the herbivores distrust the carnivores, who cause conflict. This prompts a (treacherous) peace pact. As the flooding begins, the animals board the ark trampling Noah, whilst human con-artists, Farfan and Esther, slip onboard disguised as “Grass-whoppers” (a fake species) and later instigate an unsuccessful coup. The animals quickly claim their rooms and create club “Dive” featuring Panty, a sexy black panther singing “I Want to Live/I Will Survive.” Topside, Noah’s whining daughters-in-law manipulate their husbands towards rebellion, and the carnivores below plot herbivore sacrifices, whilst the ark gets stuck at the South Pole. God stops the rain and snow, the sun shines, and the cold-weather animals stay behind (with Farfan and Esther as fleeing polar bear food). When the ark is ingeniously unstuck, it sails towards the sunset, Pepe returns with an olive leaf, then the remaining animals party, singing and thanking Noah for “showing them the way.” El lince perdido (dir. Raul Garcia/Manuel Sicilia, 2008, a.k.a. The Missing Lynx), features misguided eccentric millionaire, Noah, saving species from extinction by kidnapping them from animal rehabilitation shelters and relocating them aboard his ark-ship. Wall-E (dir. Andrew Stanton, 2008) is a robot love story that “could be considered a reimagining of the story of Noah and the flood. The robot EVE could represent the dove that returns to the ark with an olive leaf in its bill, indicating that the world is once again habitable (Genesis 8:10 – 12)” (Gordon/Eifler 2011, 42).

Other Genres: Echoing Noah Narratives Numerous flood stories appear in other film genres as sacred subtexts, mythic allusions or cultural echoes. For example, the Australian aboriginal story, The Last Wave

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(dir. Peter Weir, 1977), features abnormal rainfall, dreams of flooded urbanity, and a tribal prophecy-turned-reality about an apocalyptic last wave destined to destroy humanity. The crime film, Cape Fear (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1991), […] uses biblical imagery that recalls the Flood in Genesis; slow-motion reverse photography of the houseboat’s capsize in the river shows us Bowden [Nick Nolte as Noah-figure] and the waters flowing backward, an apocalyptic image that allegorically figures Bowden’s regression and undoing. However, unlike Noah’s family, the Bowdens do not survive the Flood unscathed, but are cast ashore in the post-Edenic mud. (Thompson 2007, 56)

Indeed, any feature film with a devastating flood, ruptured dam, or life-threatening inundation evokes Noachian resonances, whether emotionally, textually or subtextually. The fanciful film, Northfork (dir. Michael Polish, 2003), features the 1955 Montana community of Northfork being evacuated so that its valley can be flooded for hydroelectric power. The film opens with expansive scenes of dam water and a Godlike voiceover from Bible-toting Father Harlan quoting (strategically tweaked) scripture: “Then the water shall become a flood, and destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it, and I will remember, the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature, of all flesh that is upon the earth” (cf. Gen. 9:15 – 16). However, the film’s Noah-figure, a polygamist homeowner eponymously named Mr. Stalling (Marshall Bell), and his two wives zealously refuse evacuation and reposition their house atop a propped-up boat resembling popular images of Noah’s ark. This scene prompts evacuation agent, Willis O’Brien, to quip to Walter, his father: “You suppose he’s got two of everything in there?” Walter subsequently tells the religious zealots: “It appears to me that you folks are preparing for a flood in biblical proportions,” to which Mr. Stalling retorts: “You got that right son. A flood is gonna wipe through this place, cleansing the soil of all sin. […] This is God’s land, and by God, we ain’t movin’ until we get that sign from above.” So Walter tells a teaching tale (which is visually re-enacted): “One day, a town on the plains, let’s say Northfork, was hit by a catastrophic flood, similar to the days of Noah, and your husband and yourselves were standing up there on the roof waiting to be rescued.” Therein the Stallings rebuff two rescue boats waiting “for a sign from God” which never comes, but Willis quickly provides God’s response: “I sent you two boats to save your lives. What more of a sign did you three want?” Convinced, the two Mrs. Stallings depart but Mr. Stalling defiantly remains holding tight onto his arkship’s wheel. The Noachian theme is reinforced further by the Stallings’ home decoration containing two chirping caged canaries, and a menagerie of mounted wall animals displayed in balanced pairs alongside multiple balanced pairs of family photographs. Indeed, this pairing pattern prompts Mr. Stalling’s initial greeting to the agents (“Now all I need is a pair of sinners like yourselves to mount up there”), plus Walter’s

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surprised observation (“Pair of wives?”), and Willis’s cheeky retort (“At least they’re not mounted.”). The film closes with expansive water scenes of post-flood Northfork. In the psychological drama, Garden State (dir. Zach Braff, 2004), Andrew ‘Large’ Largeman (Braff) attends his mother’s funeral, and subsequently accompanies friends to visit a rickety boathouse on stilts in Newark quarry. Perched next to a deep geological fault, it looks like a beached ark upon a mountaintop. When it suddenly rains, caretaker/Noah-figure, Albert (Denis O’Hare), invites them inside and jokes: “Well…in a bad storm I like to pretend that this old boat’s my private ark. Um, unfortunately, if this is the apocalypse, I’m not quite sure it still floats.” In describing the film, Braff employs ark references to symbolize safety and renewal: I originally called the film LARGE’S ARK. […] I always liked the biblical story of Noah’s Ark, the idea of some great power starting the world again. For me, the idea was that Large himself is trying to begin anew. He’s trying to rescue all the parts of himself that he likes and start a whole new chapter of his life, the way Noah put the animals and people on the ark and saved them from the apocalypse and started again. He’s trying to find his ark. (Cinema Review 2015)

In dysfunctional family film, Mabul (dir. Guy Nattiv, 2010, a.k.a. The Flood), Yoni ‘Helium’ Roshko worries about his up-coming bar mitzvah. The film’s advertising employed many Noachian references including the tagline “Sometimes it takes a flood to save a family” and a promotional poster featuring them in a beached boat with dove-like airplane overhead. As director Nattiv explains: […] we have the biblical Tale of Noah that our story is constantly connecting and disconnecting from. MABUL contains many of the original story ingredients for this tale, but it reverses their meaning and morals; our righteous man is autistic, our animals are worms and ants, our boat is a dangerous trap instead of a rescue and our sinners aren’t punished, but get a chance for forgiveness. Our family is indeed trapped on a rickety boat, floating on stormy waters, but it is saved only after it nearly drowns. (Mabul Press Kit 2010, 6)

Within the children’s drama, Moonrise Kingdom (dir. Wes Anderson, 2012), “there are no quotations from Genesis 6 – 8, nor is a Bible present at any point on the screen. Instead, the film uses Benjamin Britten’s 1958 sacred opera, Noye’s Fludde [Noah’s Flood]” (Reinhartz 2013, 135), performed in 1964 by local New Penzance children in animal costumes (paired two-by-two), with the family of Noah (James Demler) aboard a stylized ark inside St. Jack’s Church. However, their scheduled 1965 production is cancelled due to flash floods, devastating hurricane, and a burst dam; whereupon the “church becomes a refuge for the community, as Noah’s ark was for the animals during the biblical flood, and the connection is explicit both through a shot of a stained glass picture of Noah’s Ark and by the animal costumes worn by the children” (Reinhartz 2013, 136). Innovatively, Noye’s Fludde is deployed diegetically (onscreen story) and non-digetically (offscreen mood-setting).

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Conclusion Noachian cinema is variously valuable for opening audiences’ eyes to the awesome powers of nature at God’s command, for faithfully following God’s commands no matter how incredulous or ridicule-worthy, and for exploring how they substitute scriptural concerns with contemporary societal concerns (e. g., environmentalism). Even “bad” films offer students great opportunities to deeply examine scriptural accuracy issues in via negativa fashion, and to explore their impact on the public’s reception of the Bible. One looks forward to imaginative filmic renditions that provide creative scriptural interpolations and extrapolations within biblical parameters that deepen one’s religious understanding, not provide distracting detritus that contributes to biblical illiteracy in our increasingly secularized, post-Christian, post-print world. Nevertheless, the archetypal flood story will forever entrance storytellers; only the creative permutations will alter, which will provide the impetus for future creative research projects.

Works Cited Bailey, Lloyd R. 1989. Noah: The Person and the Story in History and Tradition. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press. Barcella, Laura. 2012. The End: 50 Apocalyptic Visions from Pop Culture That You Should Know About…Before it’s Too Late. San Francisco, Calif.: Zest Books. Campbell, Richard H., and Michael R. Pitts. 1981. The Bible on Film: A Checklist, 1897 – 1980. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press. Chattaway, Peter T. 2014. “The Genesis of ‘Noah’.” Christianity Today (March 27): http://www.chris tianitytoday.com/ct/2014/march-web-only/genesisof-noah.html; accessed April 1, 2014. Cinema Review. 2015. “Production Notes: Garden State.” http://www.cinemareview.com/pro duction.asp?prodid=2621; accessed February 19, 2015. Eskjær, Mikkel F. 2013. “The Climate Catastrophe as Blockbuster.” Akademisk Kvarter 7: 336 – 49. Frazer, James G. 2013. The Great Flood: A Handbook of World Flood Myths. Albany, N.Y.: Jasoncolavito.com Books. Gordon, Charles B., and Karen E. Eifler. 2011. “Bringing Eyes of Faith to Film: Using Popular Movies to Cultivate a Sacramental Imagination and Improve Media Literacy in Adolescents.” Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice 15.1: 28 – 53. Heinegg, Peter. 2014. “Aronofsky’s Noah: The Water and the Fire Next Time.” Cross Currents 64.2: 287 – 94. Hiscock, Peter. 2012. “Cinema, Supernatural Archaeology, and the Hidden Human Past.” Numen 59.2 – 3: 156 – 77. Kaminsky, Stuart. 1978. John Huston: Maker of Magic. London: Angus & Robertson. “Mabul: The Flood” [press kit] 2010: http://www.offestival.com/images/upload/presse/PRESS-KITMabul2.pdf; accessed February 19, 2015. Reinhartz, Adele. 2013. Bible and Cinema: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Rigby, Kate. 2008. “Noah’s Ark Revisited: (Counter‐) Utopianism and (Eco‐) Catastrophe.” ARENA Journal 31: 163 – 77. Salvador, Michael, and Todd Norton. 2011. “The Flood Myth in the Age of Global Climate Change.” Environmental Communication 5.1: 45 – 61.

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Schneider-Mayerson, Matthew. 2013. “Disaster Movies and the ‘Peak Oil’ Movement: Does Popular Culture Encourage Eco-Apocalyptic Beliefs in the United States?” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature & Culture 7.3: 289 – 314. Solomon, Jon. 2001. The Ancient World in the Cinema [1976]. Rev. ed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Thompson, Kirsten M. 2007. Apocalyptic Dread: American Film at the Turn of the Millennium. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press. Williams, Roz. 2009. “The End of Creation and Catastrophism in Film Stories?” Second Nature: International Journal of Creative Media 1.1: http://secondnature.rmit.edu.au/index.php/2ndna ture/article/view/5/27; accessed December 20, 2010.

Films Cited 2012 (dir. Roland Emmerich, 2009, Columbia Pictures, US). The Bible: In the Beginning… (dir. John Huston, 1966, Dino de Laurentiis, US/IT). Cape Fear (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1991, Amblin Entertainment, US). Das Arche Noah Prinzip [a.k.a. The Noah’s Ark Principle] (dir. Roland Emmerich, 1984, Centropolis Film Productions, DE). The Day After Tomorrow (US, dir. Roland Emmerich, 2004, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Deep Impact (dir. Mimi Leder, 1998, Paramount, US). The Deluge (dir. Unknown, 1911, Vitagraph, US). Deluge (dir. Felix E. Feist, 1933, K.B.S. Productions, US). El arca [a.k.a. The Ark] (dir. Juan Pablo Buscarini, 2007, Patagonik Film Group, AR/IT). El lince perdido [a.k.a. The Missing Lynx] (dir. Raul Garcia and Manuel Sicilia, 2008, Kandor Graphics, ES). Evan Almighty (dir. Tom Shadyac, 2007, Universal, US). Fantasia 2000 (dir. Francis Glebas, 1999, Walt Disney, US). Father Noah’s Ark (dir. Wilfred Jackson, 1933, Walt Disney, US). Garden State (dir. Zach Braff, 2004, Camelot Pictures, US). Genesi: la creazione e il diluvio [a.k.a. Genesis: The Creation and the Flood] (dir. Ermanno Olmi, 1994, Lux Vide, IT/DE). The Green Pastures (dir. Marc Connelly and William Keighley, 1936, Warner Brothers, US) In Search of Noah’s Ark (dir. James L. Conway, 1976, Schick Sun Classic Pictures, US). The Incredible Discovery of Noah’s Ark (dir. Henning Schellerup, 1993, Charles E. Sellier Productions, US). The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark (dir. Charles Jarrott, 1980, Walt Disney, US). The Last Wave (dir. Peter Weir, 1977, Australian Film Commission, AU). The Librarian 3: The Curse of the Judas Chalice (dir. Jonathan Frakes, 2008, Electric Entertainment, US). Mabul [a.k.a. The Flood] (dir. Guy Nattiv, 2010, United Channel Movies, IL). Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls (dir. Bryan Michael Stoller, 2004, Island Productions, US). Monster Ark (dir. Declan O’Brien, 2008, Sci Fi Pictures, US). Moonraker (dir. Lewis Gilbert, 1979, Les Productions Artistes Associés, UK/FR). Moonrise Kingdom (dir. Wes Anderson, 2012, Indian Paintbrush, US). The Noah (dir. Daniel Bourla, 1975, The Noah Production Company, US). Noah (dir. Ken Kwapis, 1998, Walt Disney, US). Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2014, Paramount, US). Noah’s Ark (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1928, Warner Brothers, US).

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Noah’s Ark (dir. Bill Justice, 1959, Walt Disney, US). Noah’s Ark (dir. John Irvin, 1999, Babelsberg International Film Produktion, DE/US). Northfork (dir. Michael Polish, 2003, Paramount Classics, US). Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (dir. Kerry Conran, 2004, Paramount, US/UK/IT). Spriggan (dir. Hirotsugu Kawasaki, 1998, Banai Visual Company, JP). The Tale of the Ark (dir. Arthur M. Cooper, Alpha Trading Company, 1909, UK). Wall–E (dir. Andrew Stanton, 2008, Walt Disney/Pixar, US). Waterworld (dir. Kevin Reynolds, 1995, Universal, US). When Worlds Collide (dir. Rudolph Maté, 1951, Paramount, US).

Peter T. Chattaway

3 It’s All in the Family: The Patriarchs of Genesis in Film The book of Genesis is, as its name suggests, a story of beginnings or, rather, a collection of stories that describe how the world and the people in it came to be. Key among those stories is the account of how God chose and nurtured the people who would one day become the nation of Israel, starting with Abraham and continuing with his son Isaac, his grandson Jacob and his great-grandson Joseph. Together, these stories and the traditions that have grown around them try to explain where the Israelites came from, how they ended up in Egypt in the days before Moses, and how they began to practice some of their customs, such as the rite of circumcision and their refusal to practice idolatry like their neighbors. Filmmakers have been drawn to these stories for almost the entire history of the medium, partly because they are so dramatic – the story of Joseph and the jealous brothers who sell him into slavery, only to encounter him years later when he is a powerful ruler, has been especially popular – and also because they contain some of the most iconic moments in the entire Bible. The story of Abraham being told to sacrifice his son Isaac has had a particular resonance both within and outside the biblical epic genre, as it raises crucial questions regarding the morality of violence even when it is commanded by God. With the exception of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the stories of the patriarchs do not lend themselves to the sort of awesome spectacle that has characterized movies about Moses, Samson and the like, but the modest scale on which these stories take place may have made them easier to film. The stories in Genesis have also been tackled by a number of filmmakers who have attempted to adapt the entire Bible; whether they finished the job or gave up in the end, they usually finished at least a portion of Genesis along the way.¹ The patriarchs who have received the most cinematic attention by far are Abraham and Joseph, and there are a few films about Jacob as well. Isaac has rarely, if ever, been a protagonist in his own film because most of the stories about him in the Bible depict him in relation to the other patriarchs. Thus, when he does appear in film, it is usually as a supporting character: he is either Abraham’s son or Jacob’s father. A few films have also focused on Abraham’s nephew Lot and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

 The TV miniseries The Bible (prod. Mark Burnett/Roma Downey, ) and the Lux Vide series of TV-movies known as The Bible Collection ( – ) spanned the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation but had to omit a great deal in-between. John Huston’s The Bible: In the Beginning… (), which gets as far as Genesis , was intended to be the first in a series of films, but the sequels never materialized. The New Media Bible ( – ) produced word-for-word adaptations of Genesis and Luke, but no more.

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Abraham The earliest known films about Abraham were short silents produced by Pathé Frères in France and directed by Henri Andréani. Le sacrifice d’Abraham (1911) covered the near-sacrifice of Isaac, while Le sacrifice d’Ismaël (1912) covered the expulsion of Abraham’s concubine Hagar and their son Ishmael into the desert, where they are saved from thirst by an angel who points them to a spring of water. The advertising for the film said it was shot on location in Egypt, on the exact spot where the story had taken place.² Rébecca (1913) covered the efforts of Abraham’s servant Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac. There were fleeting references to Abraham in later films, such as The Green Pastures (dir. Marc Connelly/William Keighley, 1936), which dramatizes various Bible stories in a sort of African-American folk idiom. In one scene, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob appear briefly as angels in heaven, summoned by “De Lawd” to discuss the enslavement and possible liberation of their descendants in Egypt. But the first major treatment of Abraham’s story in a feature-length film came in John Huston’s The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966). While the first half of Huston’s film concerns the “primeval history” in Genesis 1– 11, from Adam and Eve to the Tower of Babel, the second half follows the life of Abraham (George C. Scott) from his arrival in Canaan to the near-sacrifice of Isaac some forty years later. The film – conceived by producer Dino De Laurentiis as the first in a series of biblical adaptations, though it ended up being the only installment (Corliss 2010) – takes much of its dialogue directly from the King James Version of the Bible, even going so far as to incorporate scriptures that are set centuries after Abraham’s lifetime. Thus, during a romantic interlude, Abraham and Sarah recite passages from the Song of Songs, while in another scene, Abraham takes Isaac through the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah and, along the way, he recites a passage from Isaiah 40 that describes God’s terrifying power over the princes of this world.

Fig. 5: Abraham and Isaac in The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966)

 Information about these early Pathé films can be found in the company’s online catalogue (http:// filmographie.fondation-jeromeseydoux-pathe.com).

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The story of Abraham received even lengthier treatment in Abraham (dir. Joseph Sargent, 1993), the second installment in The Bible Collection series of televised Bible movies produced by the Italian company Lux Vide. This film, which runs three hours in its longest form, includes details that Huston omitted, such as Abraham’s (Richard Harris) sojourn in Egypt. It sets the stage for God’s covenant with Abraham by detailing the role that covenants played in Mesopotamian life, and it spends some time exploring the novelty of Abraham’s monotheism, by contrasting it with the polytheism of his father and brothers, whose idols Abraham smashes at one point. When Abraham meets Melchizedek and realizes that they have both been granted visions by God, Sarah tells her husband, “You’ve met a man who understands you.” The film also foreshadows the binding of Isaac by having Abraham instruct his sons to kill the lambs that they love the most when they make their sacrifices. While most films about Abraham take their cues from the Hebrew scripture, he is also revered as a prophet within Islam, and at least one film has told the story of Abraham from a Muslim point of view. Ibraheem, the Friend of God (dir. Mohammad Reza Varzi, 2008), an Iranian film, shows Abraham (Mohammad Sadeghi) living in Babylon when Nimrod is king and refusing to worship the idols that are made by his uncle Azar. When Abraham is suspected of destroying the idols, he is catapulted into a fire and survives, which convinces many of the people who are watching that Abraham’s belief in the one unseen God must be correct. When Abraham and his family move to Canaan, Abraham sends Lot to Sodom to warn them against their evil ways. Finally, Abraham is instructed to sacrifice Ishmael, not Isaac, and after he passes the test – despite repeated attempts by the Devil to persuade him to disobey – he and Ishmael set up the Kaaba, the most sacred site in all of Islam. The Muslim belief that Abraham was told to sacrifice Ishmael rather than Isaac is also reflected in the Iranian film Mesih (dir. Nader Talebzedah, 2007), also known as The Messiah and Jesus, the Spirit of God, which tells the story of Jesus from a Muslim point of view. It includes a scene in which Jesus shocks his fellow Jews by declaring that it was Ishmael rather than Isaac that Abraham was instructed to sacrifice. The most recent – and by far the most subversive – depiction of Abraham in a widespread theatrical release came in the form of a gross-out comedy. Year One (dir. Harold Ramis, 2009) follows a hunter and a gatherer (Jack Black and Michael Cera) from a Stone Age tribe who encounter various characters from the book of Genesis, including Abraham (Hank Azaria), whom they interrupt during his attempt to sacrifice Isaac. (Embarrassed that they have spotted him, Abraham says that he and Isaac were playing a game called “Burny Burny Cut Cut.”) The film portrays Abraham as someone obsessed with circumcision, and it ends with one of the protagonists declaring to the people of Sodom that there is no need for a “chosen one” – and thus, perhaps, no need for a chosen people either – because “maybe we could all be chosen!” The story of Abraham has also been told in two episodes of The Greatest Heroes of the Bible (“Abraham’s Sacrifice” and “Sodom and Gomorrah,” dir. Jack Hively, 1979) as well as Testament: The Bible in Animation (“Abraham,” dir. Nataliya Dabiz-

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ha, 1996) and The Bible (prod. Mark Burnett/Roma Downey, 2013). The miniseries In the Beginning (dir. Kevin Connor, 2000) links the stories of Genesis and Exodus by having the staff of Abraham pass on to his descendants, including Moses and Joshua. An animated film based on stories from midrash about Abraham’s childhood, Young Avraham (dir. Todd Shafer, 2011), has also been produced. Of all the episodes in Abraham’s life, the one that has been cited most often in non-biblical films would have to be the near-sacrifice of Isaac (Gen 22).³ Films such as Bigger Than Life (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1956) and the horror film Frailty (dir. Bill Paxton, 2001) have played on the notion that anyone who would do what Abraham almost did must be insane. In the former film, the father who tries to kill his son is driven mad by experimental drugs, while in the latter film, the big twist at the end reveals that the father who taught his sons how to murder in God’s name might really have been receiving divine messages after all. Crimes and Misdemeanors (dir. Woody Allen, 1989) features an interview with a fictitious professor who cites the akedah as evidence that a truly loving image of God is “beyond our capacity to imagine.” The protagonist in The Believer (dir. Henry Bean, 2001) is a Jewish neo-Nazi who once argued in yeshiva school that the story of the binding of Isaac proves God is a bully. A young Hannibal Lecter wonders in Hannibal Rising (dir. Peter Webber, 2007) if God intended to eat Isaac. Elements of the story have also surfaced in the films of Darren Aronofsky: the title character in The Wrestler (2008) is known as “the Ram,” and is even described as a “sacrificial ram,” which harks back to the animal that was sacrificed in Isaac’s place; and the title character in Noah (2014) becomes convinced at one point that he should kill his own granddaughters, in a scene that numerous observers have noted is reminiscent of the Abraham story. Days of Heaven (dir. Terrence Malick, 1978) touches indirectly on another aspect of the Abraham story. It concerns an unmarried couple, Bill and Abby, who pretend to be siblings while working for a rich farmer; when they learn that the farmer may be dying, Bill encourages Abby to marry the farmer so that she can claim the inheritance. This loosely parallels how Abraham deceived Pharaoh when the king took Sarah into his harem (cf. Gen. 12:10 – 20).

Lot The story of Lot and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is often treated in film the way it appears in Genesis – as a tangent to the larger story of Abraham – but the annihilation of those two cities has been so attractive to spectacle-minded filmmakers that entire films have been devoted to it, and in a few cases, the destruction of those cities has even been transposed onto stories that are based on entirely different sections of the Bible.  For an in depth discussion of this biblical trope as it appears in recent Israeli cinema and television, see the chapter by Zanger in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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One of the first movies on this topic was the silent epic Sodom und Gomorrha (1922), directed by Michael Curtiz just a few years before he moved to Hollywood. Reputedly one of the biggest Austrian film productions of its time, the film followed the template set by D. W. Griffiths’ Intolerance (1916) in telling multiple stories set in multiple time periods. The modern narrative concerns a woman whose promiscuity drives at least one of her lovers to attempt suicide, but she is shocked into penitence by a dream in which she imagines that she is Lot’s wife, an idolatress and adulteress who perishes with the titular cities. David Shepherd notes that the groundbreaking pyrotechnics used to destroy the film’s sets onscreen may have had special resonance for European viewers in the years immediately following World War I (Shepherd 2013, 217– 24). Similarly, Huston’s The Bible: In the Beginning…, produced just four years after the nuclear panic of the Cuban Missile Crisis, conveyed the destruction of these cities using footage of a mushroom cloud. The biblical story was also depicted in the experimental short film Lot in Sodom (dir. James Sibley Watson/Melville Webber, 1933), which is noteworthy for its sexually charged imagery, including homoerotic shots of the topless men of Sodom and a prolonged sequence in which Lot not only offers his daughter to the men but tries to convince them of the virtues of heterosexual intercourse and, ultimately, procreation. The story received its most elaborate treatment yet in Sodom and Gomorrah (dir. Robert Aldrich, 1962), also known as The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah. This film depicts Lot as a Hebrew patriarch whose people get caught up in a war between the Sodomites and a tribe called the Elamites. Lot takes a strong stand against slavery throughout the film – this, despite the fact that the biblical patriarchs did own slaves – and it is he, rather than Abraham, who begs the angels to spare the city if he can find ten righteous men. More recently, films like Wholly Moses! (dir. Gary Weis, 1980) and the television miniseries Noah’s Ark (dir. John Irvin, 1999) have incorporated aspects of the Sodom and Gomorrah story into stories based on entirely different sections of the Bible. The former film, a comedy, follows a Hebrew named Herschel whose life roughly parallels that of Moses. In one sequence, he is told to look for his wife in “New Sodom,” a city built on the ruins of the biblical city, and he arrives just in time to see a group of angels decide to destroy the city all over again. Herschel’s wife meets the same fate as Lot’s, and he takes the pillar of salt home with him; along the way, he bumps into Satan, who tut-tuts that God has “a temper.” Later, Herschel’s father scrapes some salt off one of the pillar’s breasts while preparing a meal. Noah’s Ark, for its part, sets the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah before the Flood, and portrays Noah and his wife Naameh as residents who flee the fire and brimstone just as Lot does. (Lot, in this version, is happy to see his nagging wife turned to a pillar of salt.) Afterwards, Naameh remarks that “scribbling scribes” like to “change things,” and she says that, by the time the story is written down, “they’ll probably say we weren’t even there.” Later, when the Flood comes, Lot returns as a pirate who tries to take over the Ark.

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Filmmakers since have taken the story of Lot and Sodom in even more subversive and irreverent directions. As mentioned above, much of the American comedy Year One takes place in Sodom, though it never depicts Lot or his family. And one of the top-grossing Israeli films in decades is a “no-holds-barred slapstick comedy” called Zohi Sdom (dir. Muli Segev/Adam Sanderson, 2010), or This Is Sodom, which uses the story of Lot and his family “to send up all aspects of Israeli society” (Reinhartz 2013, 44). Among other things, it shows God pretending to destroy the cities as a way of tricking Abraham into accepting monotheism. One issue films have had to address in their depiction of Lot is his relationship with his wife and daughters. Did Lot’s wife “deserve” to be turned into a pillar of salt? Directors like Curtiz, Irvin and the makers of The Bible miniseries have made the character unsympathetic or downright sinful as if to justify her demise, while the Aldrich film imagines that she was a native Sodomite who married Lot, a widower, but never quite came to believe in his God; her death is portrayed in somewhat tragic terms, but there is still a “reason” for it. Similarly, all but the most faithful adaptations of the story (such as Huston’s) have altered it to get around the moral implications of the passage in which Lot tries to get the mob to rape his daughters instead of his angelic guests. In Curtiz’s film, Lot has no daughters and he offers the crowd gold instead (Shepherd 2013, 221). In the Watson/Webber film, Lot makes his offer only after a supernatural voice tells him to “withhold not even thy daughter” (cf. Gen. 22:16) – and far from simply giving her over to be raped, he tells the men to “set her as a seal upon thine heart” (cf. Song 8:6) for the purposes of procreation, “or ever the silver cord be loosed” (cf. Eccl. 12:6). In Sargent’s Abraham, Lot offers himself to the crowd multiple times and only mentions his daughters as a panicky afterthought: “Take me, don’t take them, take me. […] You can take me, you can take my daughters, but you can’t take my guests.” And in the Aldrich film, there is no mob scene, but Lot is devastated when he learns that the prince of the city has already slept with both of his daughters. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are also referenced in The Scorpion King (dir. Chuck Russell, 2002), which is set “before the time of the pyramids,” and thus takes place at least a thousand years before the lifetime of Lot and Abraham. Part of the film takes place in Gomorrah, and one character declares that, “after a long day of looting and pillaging, there is no greater city than Gomorrah – except maybe Sodom.” Another non-biblical movie that references this story is the Italian crime film Gomorra (dir. Matteo Garrone, 2008), which concerns a crime syndicate known as the Camorra, and takes its title from a real-life priest killed by the syndicate who said “time has come to stop being a Gomorrah.”

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Jacob While Abraham’s son Isaac has never had an entire film to himself, his grandson Jacob has had a few, most of which look at how he stole the birthright that belonged to his brother Esau, fled to live with his uncle Laban, married his uncle’s daughters Leah and Rachel, and then returned home and was reconciled to his brother. Giacobbe, l’uomo che lotto con Dio (dir. Marcello Baldi, 1963), also known as Jacob, the Man who Fought with God, follows this basic template, as do the first half of The Story of Jacob and Joseph (dir. Michael Cacoyannis, 1974) and The Bible Collection film Jacob (dir. Peter Hall, 1994). The latter two films, both produced for TV, draw explicit parallels between how Jacob tricked his father into thinking he was Esau and how Laban tricked Jacob into thinking he was marrying Rachel rather than Leah. The Cacoyannis film has Jacob comment that, in the darkness, Leah’s hair felt like Rachel’s, which harks back to how Jacob wore animal skins on his arms to trick his father into thinking he was his hairy-skinned brother. Similarly, the Hall film has Leah ask Jacob, “Have you ever wanted something so badly that you would deceive even the people you love to get it?” These films sometimes play up the religious element beyond what the text demands. The Hall film makes the difference between Jacob’s monotheism and Laban’s belief in his household gods a recurring theme, and, in the sequence where Jacob manipulates the look of the animals in Laban’s flock by showing them different kinds of branches when they mate, both the Cacoyannis and Hall films indicate that Jacob learned how to do this in a dream sent to him by God, which is not a part of the original story in Genesis.⁴ One of the most imaginative treatments of the Jacob story – and one of the few to tackle some of its darker elements – is La genèse (dir. Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 1999), also known as Genesis, produced in Mali with an all-African cast.⁵ The film rearranges the biblical chronology somewhat, so that the rape of Jacob’s daughter Dinah and her brothers’ revenge against the town of Shechem (Gen. 34) now happen while Jacob is mourning the presumed death of his son Joseph (Gen. 37), and both of these things take place while Jacob still fears retribution from his brother Esau, an issue that, in the Bible, had already been resolved in Genesis 33. Instead of presenting the crises of Jacob’s life in sequential order, Sissoko has them all coincide to highlight their the-

 The text offers two explanations for Jacob’s success in breeding streaked, speckled and spotted animals. Genesis : –  – following the folk belief in “maternal impression,” whereby the thoughts of a mother while she is copulating play a part in shaping her unborn offspring – describes how Jacob got the strong animals to produce patterned offspring by placing patterned pieces of bark where the mating animals could see them. Genesis : –  describes how God appeared to Jacob in a dream and took credit, after the fact, for getting only the patterned animals to mate with Jacob’s flock. But Genesis never describes a dream in which God tells Jacob how to use the pieces of bark.  For an in depth analysis of La genèse in a postcolonial Malian context, see Burnette-Bletsch’s chapter on Cheick Oumar Sissoko in Part II (Pp. -).

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matic interconnectedness. A title card that opens the film dedicates it to “all victims of fratricide” and to “all who make peace.” More recently, the Lifetime network aired The Red Tent (dir. Roger Young, 2014), a two-part miniseries based on the 1997 novel of that title by Anita Diamant, which tells the story of Jacob and his family from the perspective of his wives and daughter Dinah. In this version of the story, it is nervous Rachel’s idea, and not Laban’s, that Leah should take her place as Jacob’s first bride, and Jacob – who isn’t fooled at all – only pretends to be outraged so that he can trick Laban into letting him marry both sisters. Similarly, the relationship between Dinah and the prince of Shechem is portrayed as a genuine romance, rather than a rape, which makes the mass murder committed by Dinah’s brothers all the more tragic.

Fig. 6: Leah, Dinah, and Rachel in The Red Tent (2014)

Among non-biblical movies, the thriller Jacob’s Ladder (dir. Adrian Lyne, 1990) takes its title from the vision that Jacob had while he was resting on the journey to his uncle Laban’s place (Gen. 28:10 – 22).. Just as Jacob had a vision of angels bridging the gap between heaven and earth, the protagonist in the film eventually ascends a staircase into the afterlife in the company of his dead son Gabe, whose name is a diminutive of the angel Gabriel’s. In a different vein, the plot of the Israeli film Maqom be-Gan ‘Eden (dir. Joseph Madmony, 2013), also known as A Place in Heaven, is set in motion by a “contract” between an Israeli soldier and an army cook, in which the soldier gives his “place in heaven” to the cook in exchange for food,

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just as Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a bit of soup. The film also briefly re-enacts a post-biblical legend about a fight between Esau and the ancient king Nimrod.

Joseph Perhaps the most popular of the stories in Genesis is that of Joseph, the favored son of Jacob who is sold into slavery by his jealous brothers but then rises to become the second-most powerful man in Egypt. With its fall-and-rise character arc, the story has enough twists and turns to fill a feature-length film without much embellishment; and it also has elements of sexual temptation, interpersonal conflict, and reversals of injustice that lend themselves to the sort of melodrama that filmmakers sometimes gravitate towards. The story was filmed several times during the silent era, beginning with two films called Joseph vendu par ses frères, produced by Pathé (dir. Vincent Lorant-Heilbronn, 1904) and Film d’Art (dir. Georges Berr/Paul Gavault, 1909). These were followed by Giuseppe ebreo (prod. Cines, 1911), Joseph, fils de Jacob (dir. Henri Andréani, 1913) and Joseph in the Land of Egypt (dir. Eugene Moore, 1914).⁶ This was followed years later by a couple of films in the 1960s, including Giuseppe venduto dei fratelli (dir. Irving Rapper, 1960), released in the United States as Joseph and His Brethren, and the stop-motion film Ba‘al ha-ḥalomot (dir. Alina and Yoram Gross, 1962), also known as Joseph the Dreamer, which was the first animated feature film made in Israel. Three decades later, controversy erupted around an Egyptian film that was loosely based on the story of Joseph. Youssef Chahine, director of Al-mohager (1994), also known as The Emigrant, changed the names of the characters to distance his film from the biblical story somewhat – Joseph is now called Ram, for example – and he also eliminated some of the biblical plot points, such as Joseph’s ability to interpret dreams. Nevertheless, a Muslim lawyer tried to get the film banned because it depicted one of the Muslim prophets, while a Christian lawyer tried to get it banned because it deviated too much from the Bible (Documenta 2012). The following year, The Bible Collection added Joseph (dir. Roger Young, 1995) to its growing list of Bible-themed television productions, winning an Emmy for outstanding miniseries along the way. One of the remarkable things about this version of the story, given how strongly it was promoted to religious audiences, is the way it fleshes out Joseph’s brothers by incorporating the violent and sexual misdeeds that are described in the book of Genesis but are left out of most other adaptations of the text. Judah’s relationship with his daughter-in-law Tamar and the revenge that Simeon and Levi get for the rape of their sister Dinah would also be covered by Sissoko in La genèse a few years later, but even that film did not explore Reuben’s affair with  This last film is available for viewing online at: http://thanhouser.org/films/egypt.htm (accessed April , ).

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his father’s concubine Bilhah. Throughout Young’s film, the impression one gets is that Jacob is justified in preferring Joseph to his older brothers, and that the murderous threats made by some of the brothers against Joseph need to be taken seriously because those brothers have already proved that they are remorseless killers. Another noteworthy feature of Young’s film is how it often makes connections between different parts of the text and offers explanations for possible gaps within it. Why did Jacob settle near Shechem when he was supposed to be heading home to see his father for the first time in decades? Because Rachel was pregnant with Benjamin, and Jacob wanted to give her a chance to rest – so when Simeon and Levi slaughter the inhabitants of Shechem and the family is forced to leave, the death of Rachel during the difficult journey that follows becomes one more thing for which Jacob blames them. Later, why is a slave like Joseph merely imprisoned, and not killed, for allegedly trying to rape Potiphar’s wife? Because Potiphar can sense that his wife is lying, so he humiliates her by refusing to give their slave the ultimate punishment.

Fig. 7: Potiphar examining Joseph at the slave market in Joseph (1995)

Different films have embellished the characters of Potiphar and his wife in a variety of ways over the years. In the Moore and Andréani films, Potiphar’s wife plays a role in choosing Joseph at the slave market, which allows the filmmakers to underscore her lustful attraction to him right away – and in both of those films, Potiphar and his wife are both present for the elevation of Joseph and are reluctant to accept his new authority over them, when Pharaoh makes Joseph the second most powerful man in Egypt. The Moore film even cuts to a brief glimpse of Potiphar’s wife chained in prison while Joseph is reunited to his father and brothers. Young’s film goes further than any other in making Potiphar’s wife a sexual predator; in one discomforting scene, she sexually assaults Joseph when he happens to be bathing nude. The film also makes Potiphar (Ben Kingsley) a much more active part of the story, to the point where he’s almost the story’s protagonist. It begins with Potiphar visiting the slave market and finding Joseph there (the story of Jacob’s family, and how Joseph came to be a slave in the first place, is told in flashback later on). After Potiphar sends Joseph to prison, he actively connects Joseph with the baker and cupbearer who are

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also imprisoned there, and then with the Pharaoh himself. Potiphar is also there to signal his approval when Joseph, newly elevated, asks Potiphar’s slavemaster, who once beat him, to work for him. Curiously, though, Potiphar is absent from the final half-hour of the film, when Joseph encounters and tests his brothers. Other films have been more sympathetic to Potiphar’s wife. The TV-movie Slave of Dreams (dir. Robert M. Young, 1995) is told primarily from her perspective, and it begins with her experiencing erotic dreams about Joseph before she and her husband have even met him. She interprets these dreams as a sign that she is meant to be with Joseph, but by the end she is living contentedly with her husband and their newborn child. In contrast, the Rapper and Chahine films both generate sympathy for Potiphar’s wife by suggesting that her husband either cannot or does not fulfill her sexually. (In Chahine’s film, Potiphar is a eunuch; in Rapper’s film, Potiphar’s wife laments that her husband will not give her children.) In the Chahine film, Potiphar’s wife retracts her accusation against Joseph shortly after he is imprisoned, and Joseph’s ongoing loyalty to the couple ultimately prompts them to release him, not just from prison but from slavery itself. In the Rapper film, however, Potiphar is a pompous buffoon whose disgust with his wife turns lethal when he kills her in a sort of murder-suicide, setting fire to their bedroom while Joseph is still in prison. One other issue filmmakers have had to address is the relative moral culpability of Jacob and Joseph in creating a situation where Joseph’s brothers would want to do away with him in the first place. In the biblical story, Joseph snitches on his brothers (Gen. 37:2) and, when he describes a dream that seems to predict that his entire family will bow down to him one day, even his doting father Jacob “rebukes” him (Gen. 37:10). Silent filmmakers such as Andréani simply eliminated these details, thereby keeping both Joseph and Jacob above reproach, while portraying the brothers as unfailingly greedy and contentious (Shepherd 2013, 149 – 50). In Roger Young’s film, Jacob does not “rebuke” Joseph for sharing his dream; instead, he laughs, as if to indicate that he does not take it anywhere nearly as seriously as the brothers do. Other films play more strongly on the idea that Jacob went too far in making it known that Joseph was his favorite child. In Cacoyannis’s The Story of Jacob and Joseph, Joseph protests that his brothers hate him because his father makes him report on their activities, and at one point he explicitly compares the jealousy of his brothers to the sibling rivalry that Jacob endured: “I have ten Esaus,” Joseph complains. Similarly, in the animated Joseph, King of Dreams (dir. Rob LaDuca/Robert Ramirez, 2000), it is Jacob’s favoritism that drives a wedge between Joseph and the older brothers, who are initially eager to look after their little sibling until Jacob sets him apart. Joseph himself threatens to tattle on his brothers before they sell him into slavery, and when he is reconciled to them at the end, he asks them to forgive him for letting their father’s favoritism go to his head. The story of Joseph was also adapted for Iranian television. Yousuf-e-payambar (dir. Farajullah Salahshur, 2008), a 45-episode series also known as Joseph the Prophet, was controversial in its native country because it was thought by some to promote polygamy, though the director insisted he was just presenting history the way it was.

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The story of Joseph has also been cited in films that don’t explicitly dramatize it. When the Hebrews leave Egypt several generations later in The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956), some of them carry Joseph’s remains, so that his body can be buried in the Promised Land as Joseph requested (Gen. 50:25, Exod. 13:19). And in Slaves of Babylon (dir. William Castle, 1953), one of the Hebrew protagonists tells a pagan princess the stories of his ancestors, including the story of Joseph and his brothers. One non-biblical film that is often cited as a retelling of sorts of the Joseph story is House of Strangers (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1949), which concerns an ItalianAmerican banker who favors one of his sons above the others. The film was based on the Jerome Weidman novel I’ll Never Go There Any More (1941), which was adapted for the screen twice more as Broken Lance (dir. Edward Dmytryk, 1954) – a Western in which the favored son is resented by his half-brothers because he is part Native American – and The Big Show (dir. James B. Clark, 1961). More recently, Seasons of Gray (dir. Paul Stehlik Jr., 2013), which concerns the son of a Texas rancher whose brothers force him to leave and move to the big city where he is framed for a crime he didn’t commit, has been billed as “a modern day Joseph story.”

Conclusion The stories of Abraham and his descendants have been very popular with filmmakers and audiences alike, partly because they delve into family dynamics that everyone can relate to, and partly because they raise profound religious and moral questions. Filmmakers have built on these stories in a variety of ways. Sometimes writers and directors have followed traditional interpretations of these stories, and sometimes they have made the stories more palatable by eliminating some of the more problematic characteristics of figures like Joseph and Lot. But in recent years there has been a pronounced effort to look at these stories in ways that subvert their traditional interpretations. Sometimes this takes the form of outright satire, and sometimes it takes the form of humanizing the characters by allowing for – and even emphasizing – their flaws. At times filmmakers have even offered sympathetic portrayals of characters who were previously denounced as predators, from Potiphar’s wife to the prince of Shechem. Filmmakers working in a non-biblical vein have also referred to the destruction of Sodom and the binding of Isaac when contemplating the question of human evil and divinely sanctioned violence. Genesis is a book of beginnings, a collection of stories about people who were still figuring out the relationship between God and humanity before laws and kings set everything in stone. By returning to these beginnings, films allow us to wrestle with these issues alongside their protagonists. And by taking us back to the past, films like these can shed new light on the present.

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Works Cited Corliss, Richard. 2010. “Death of a Showman: Dino De Laurentiis (1919–2010).” Time (November 12): http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2032133,00.html, accessed February 18, 2015. Diamant, Anita. 1997. The Red Tent. New York: St. Martins Press. Documenta. 2012. “FILM: Egypt – Banned: Al-Mohager (The Emigrant).” (August 22): http://d13.doc umenta.de/#/programs/events-and-education/programs-details/?tx_calevents2_pi1%5Buid% 5D=601&tx_calevents2_pi1%5Brecurrent%5D=1&tx_calevents2_pi1%5Bedate%5D= 1345586400&cHash=57fb2ebf3983c467e5e79dd7832973f5, accessed February 18, 2015. Reinhartz, Adele. 2013. Bible and Cinema: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Shepherd, David. 2013. The Bible on Silent Film: Spectacle, Story and Scripture in the Early Cinema. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weidman, Jerome. 1941. I’ll Never Go There Any More. New York: Avon.

Films Cited Al-mohager [a.k.a. The Emigrant] (dir. Youssef Chahine, 1994, Films A2, EG/FR). Ba‘al ha-ḥalomot [a.k.a. Joseph the Dreamer] (dir. Alina and Yoram Gross, 1962, Yoram Gross Films, IL). The Believer (dir. Henry Bean, 2001, Fuller Films, US). The Bible (prod. Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, 2013, Lightworkers Media, US/UK). The Bible Collection [Abraham; TV miniseries] (dir. Joseph Sargent, 1993, Lux Vide, DE/IT/US/CZ/FR). —. [Jacob; TV miniseries] (dir. Peter Hall, 1994, Lux Vide, CZ/FR/UK/IT/DE/US/NL). —. [Joseph; TV miniseries] (dir. Roger Young, 1995, Lux Vide, IT/US/DE). The Bible: In the Beginning… (dir. John Huston, 1966, Dino de Laurentiis, US/IT). The Big Show (dir. James B. Clark, 1961, Associated Producers, US). Bigger Than Life (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1956, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Broken Lance (dir. Edward Dmytryk, 1954, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Crimes and Misdemeanors (dir. Woody Allen, 1989, Jack Rollins & Charles H. Joffe Productions, US). Days of Heaven (dir. Terrence Malick, 1978, Paramount, US). Frailty (dir. Bill Paxton, 2001, David Krischner Productions, US/DE). Giacobbe, l’uomo che lotto con Dio [a.k.a. Jacob: The Man Who Fought with God] (dir. Marcello Baldi, 1963, San Paolo Films, IT). Giuseppe ebreo [a.k.a. Joseph in Egypt] (dir. Unknown, 1911, Società Italiana Cines, IT). Giuseppe venduto dei fratelli [a.k.a. Joseph and His Brethren] (dir. Irving Rapper, 1960, Cosmopolis, YU/IT). Gomorra [a.k.a. Gomorrah] (dir. Matteo Garrone, 2008, Fandango, IT). The Greatest Heroes of the Bible [“Abraham’s Sacrifice”; Season 1, Episode 1] (dir. Jack Hively, 1979, Sunn Classic Pictures, US). The Greatest Heroes of the Bible [“Sodom and Gommorah”; Season 2, Episode 7] (dir. Jack Hively, 1979, Sunn Classic Pictures, US). The Greatest Heroes of the Bible [“Joseph in Egypt”; Season 1, Episode 10] (dir. James L. Conway, 1978, Sunn Classic Pictures, US). The Green Pastures (dir. Marc Connelly and William Keighley, 1936, Warner Brothers, US).

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Hannibal Rising (dir. Peter Webber, 2007, Young Hannibal Productions, UK/CZ/FR/IT). House of Strangers (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1949, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Ibraheem, the Friend of God [a.k.a. Abraham: The Friend of God] (dir. Mohammad Reza Varzi, 2008, IR). In the Beginning (dir. Kevin Connor, 2000, Hallmark Entertainment, US). Jacob’s Ladder (dir. Adrian Lyne, 1990, Carolco Pictures, US). Joseph, fils de Jacob [a.k.a. Joseph’s Trials in Egypt] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1913, Pathé Frères, FR). Joseph in the Land of Egypt (dir. Eugene Moore, 1914, Thanhouser Film Corporation, US). Joseph, King of Dreams (dir. Rob LaDuca and Robert Ramirez, 2000, DreamWorks, US). Joseph vendu par ses frères [a.k.a. Joseph Sold by His Brethren] (dir. Vincent Lorant-Heilbronn, 1904, Pathé Frères, FR). Joseph vendu par ses frères [a.k.a. Joseph and His Brethren] (dir. Georges Berr and Paul Gavault, 1909, Pathé Frères, FR). La genèse [“Genesis”] (dir. Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 1999, Kora Films, FR/ML). Le sacrifice d’Abraham [a.k.a. Abraham’s Sacrifice] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1911, Pathé Frères, FR). Le sacrifice d’Ismaël [“The Sacrifice of Ishmael”] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1912, Pathé Frères, FR). Lot in Sodom (dir. James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber, 1933, Watson, Wilder, Webber, Wood, and O’Brien; US). Maqom be-Gan ’Eden [a.k.a. A Place in Heaven] (dir. Joseph Madmony, 2013, Avi Chai Fund, IL). Mesih [a.k.a. The Messiah or Jesus, the Spirit of God] (dir. Nader Talebzedah, 2007, Abdollah Saeedi, IR). The New Media Bible: Book of Genesis (prod. John Heyman, 1979, The Genesis Project, US). Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2014, Paramount, US). Noah’s Ark (dir. John Irvin, 1999, Babelsberg International Film Produktion, DE/US). Rébecca (dir. Henri Andréani, Pathé Frères, 1913, FR). The Red Tent (dir. Roger Young, 2014, Kabash-Film Tanger, US). The Scorpion King (dir. Chuck Russell, 2002, Universal, US/DE/BE). Seasons of Gray (dir. Paul Stehlik Jr., 2013, Watermark Films, US). Slave of Dreams (dir. Robert M. Young, 1995, Dino de Laurentiis, US/IT). Slaves of Babylon (dir. William Castle, 1953, Columbia Pictures, US). Sodom and Gomorrah (dir. Robert Aldrich, 1962, Titanus, US/IT/FR). Sodom und Gomorrha [a.k.a. Queen of Sin] (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1922, Sascha-Film, DE/AT). The Story of Jacob and Joseph (dir. Michael Cacoyannis, 1974, Milberg Theatrical Productions, US). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956, Paramount, US). Testament: The Bible in Animation [“Abraham,” Season 1, Episode 6] (dir. Nataliya Dabizha, 1996, Sianel 4 Cymru, UK). Testament: The Bible in Animation [“Joseph,” Season 1, Episode 7] (dir. Aida Ziabliokva, 1996, Sianel 4 Cymru, UK). Wholly Moses! (dir. Gary Weis, 1980, Columbia Pictures, US). The Wrestler (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2008, Wild Bunch, US/FR). Year One (dir. Harold Ramis, 2009, Columbia Pictures, US). Young Avraham (dir. Todd Shafer, 2011, Big Bang Digital Studios, CA). Yousuf-e-payambar [a.k.a. Joseph the Prophet] (dir. Farajullah Salahshur, 2008, IR). Zohi Sdom [a.k.a. This Is Sodom] (dir. Muli Segev and Adam Sanderson, 2010, United King Films, IL/BG).

Jennifer L. Koosed

4 The Cinematic Moses

Despite the centrality of Moses to biblical literature and Jewish and Christian tradition, there have been remarkably few movies that focus on Moses’ life and legacy. Perhaps the dearth of Moses movies is a result of there being one such film next to which all others pale by comparison: the Technicolor spectacle The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956). DeMille’s 1956 version of Moses’ life is so well known that it even eclipses his first foray into the Exodus material—the 1923 silent film of the same name. Silent era filmmakers were, in fact, far more likely to choose Moses as their subject matter than filmmakers in the age of “talkies.” Not only were scenes from Moses’ life incorporated into Jesus films (The Höritz Passion Play, prod. William Freeman, 1897) but the dramatic story of the Exodus was also the subject of at least six silent films, including DeMille’s blockbuster (Shepherd 2013). There have been few attempts to equal or even surpass the 1956 epic, although Moses has been the subject of a couple of television productions: the miniseries Moses the Lawgiver (dir. Gianfranco De Bosio, 1974) and the made-for-television movie Moses (dir. Roger Young, 1995). Whereas both television dramas enjoyed good ratings and reviews, neither caught the popular imagination nor left a lasting impression. The only other Moses movie to become a popular success is the animated feature The Prince of Egypt (dir. Brenda Chapman et al., 1998). The latest Hollywood production of Moses’ life called Exodus: Gods and Kings (dir. Ridley Scott, 2014) has had a mixed reception from both audiences and critics. What is extraordinary about all of these movies is that they have managed to create a story, a really gripping narrative, out of a few verses of biblical text. In fact, most of the drama of characterization at least is not based on the written text at all but plunges into the chasm that separates the verses where a baby Moses is taken out of the water and then is seen again as an adult amidst the slaves (between Exod. 1:10 and 1:11). This gap proves irresistible to the imaginative work of filmmakers, for it is here that Moses’ character was forged. Questions abound. When and how did Moses learn of his true parentage? How was he treated in Pharaoh’s house? What was his relationship to his adoptive family? Was there a rivalry between Moses and any legitimate, biological grandsons of Pharaoh? Was there a rivalry between Moses and Pharaoh’s heir? What were his religious commitments as a youth? How did he feel toward the people who raised him? How did these early experiences shape his character? Moses becomes a cipher for exploring a multitude of issues surrounding identity, especially those related to biological versus adoptive parentage. Who are we: the product of our environment or our genes? To whom do we owe loyalty: to those who bore us or those who raised us? Even though only a small percentage of people are raised in adoptive families, all experience a certain dislocation as they grow and mature between the family environment of their childhood and the paths they choose

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as adults. And it is not uncommon for other aspects of identity highlighted in narratives of Moses’ life, like class status and religious affiliation, to change from childhood to adulthood. Moses’ particular situation may be highly unusual but his experiences have universal resonances that filmmakers capture and develop. In depicting Moses’ commission, his confrontation with Pharaoh, the Exodus, and the giving of the law, a filmmaker has significantly more biblical text with which to work (Exod. 3 – 40, Lev., Num., Deut.). Yet, the power of the drama lies more in how it captures the concerns and values of the audience and less in an accurate portrayal of biblical story. In the American context especially, these events become the vehicles of affirming the values of liberty and freedom. After all, the connection between the founding of the United States and the Exodus event has deep roots. The Liberty Bell, forged in 1751 to commemorate the fifieth anniversary of Pennsylvania’s original constitution, is famously inscribed with a verse from the law given to Moses on Mt. Sinai: “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Lev. 25:10). The Bell rang again on July 8, 1776 from the top of Independence Hall to call together the residents of Philadelphia to hear a reading of the Declaration of Independence. It became an important symbol in the abolitionists’ struggle against slavery, as the Moses narrative became important to the enslaved peoples themselves. It remains one of the central symbols of the ideals of the United States. The liberation of the Exodus is deeply enmeshed with the freedom fought for and found in this New World Promised Land. The interconnections between Moses’ story and the American story are made the most explicit in DeMille’s 1956 film. In fact, in some of the promotional materials for The Ten Commandments, Charlton Heston (who played Moses) is drawn holding the Liberty Bell high above his head (Pardes 1996, 19); and, in the film, he speaks its Levitical words. From the beginning, Americans from many different communities have connected the Exodus event to their own and their ancestors’ experiences of oppression and liberation. Outside of the American context, Moses motifs are also used to explore political events and personalities. For example, The Black Moses (dir. Travolta Cooper, 2013) is a documentary chronicling the life of the first black Prime Minister of the Bahamas, Lynden Oscar Pindling, who led his country to independence in 1973. Cooper’s film blends traditional documentary techniques with character acting (Pindling is played by Dennis Haysbert) to explore a historical figure almost as compelling and complicated as Moses himself. In another nod to Moses’ life, the documentary was released during the year celebrating forty years of Bahaman independence from Great Britain. The most prominent international film that addresses the themes of Exodus and law is not a Moses movie, per se, but instead a reflection on the Ten Commandments in contemporary Poland: Dekalog (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, The Decalogue), a series of ten short films first aired on Polish television 1989 – 1990. The project then circulated through several international film festivals and had a major theatrical run in Paris. Rather than any moral absolutes, each film explores ambiguous situations

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Fig. 8: Moses proclaims liberty in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956)

and, thus, raises the possibility that the Law of Moses is more open and equivocal than usually understood, certainly more oblique than DeMille’s Ten Commandments. Ilana Pardes writes that “the circulation of the Bible in the twentieth century poses an intriguing challenge to the demarcation between canonical and popular, holy and profane. Scripture is not only circulated in traditional sites of worship such as churches, synagogues, or domestic gatherings. It also proves a rich source for Hollywood plots and as such is viewed in theaters by millions all over the world” (Pardes 1996, 15). With its own set of rituals and rites, film is forging new traditions and forming new communities. Theater becomes theophany. On the big screen, Moses and his story provide a way for people, whether religiously affiliated or not, to explore the universal themes of identity, freedom, and morality.

The Ten Commandments (1923) DeMille’s first rendition of the Exodus narrative is an ambitious project that moves between a contemporary plot and the biblical story. The first part of the film—called a prelude—depicts the biblical story from the harsh reality of the Hebrews’ slavery, through the tenth plague and the escape across the Red Sea, to the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai. It ends with a wild orgy of Golden Calf worship, an infuriated Moses, and an angry God wreaking havoc on the idolatrous Israelites. Although reactions were mixed to the second half of the movie, which follows the life of a modern 1920s man determined to break all of the commandments, this prelude was widely lauded by critics and moviegoers alike. The special effects, especially the

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crossing of the Red Sea and the giving of the commandments, were particularly stunning to 1923 audiences. DeMille frames his movie by putting the Ten Commandments in the context of a failed modernity: Our modern world defined God as a “religious complex” and laughed at the Ten Commandments as OLD FASHIONED. Then, through the laughter, came the shattering thunder of the World War. And now a blood-drenched, bitter world—no longer laughing—cries for a way out. There is but one way out. It existed before it was engraven [sic] upon Tablets of Stone. It will exist when stone has crumbled. The Ten Commandments are not rules to obey as a personal favor to God. They are fundamental principles without which mankind cannot live together. They are not laws—they are the LAW.

DeMille depicts the Decalogue as pre-existent and eternal, and he roots the horrors of the First World War in humanity’s turn from their principles.

Fig. 9: An older Moses in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923)

Moses soon enters the movie by striding into Pharaoh’s court. Played by Theodore Roberts, Moses is an old man with long messy white hair and beard, flowing

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robes, and a large stick. He approaches Pharaoh and it soon becomes clear that we are standing with Moses after nine of the plagues. He is renewing his plea for Pharaoh to release the Hebrews before an even worse plague descends upon them. Here and throughout the film, Moses is frequently posed elevated next to companions who flank him, often in a classic triangle arrangement, meant to draw attention to Moses as a central and commanding figure. His beard and hair glow brightly as if a nimbus. But his holiness does not emerge from a serene demeanor. Rather, in every scene his powerful anger is evident, either simmering just under the surface or bursting forth explosively. He may be the oldest person on the screen but he is certainly not weak or infirm. Even though the movie cultivates an aura of literalism through its extensive quotation of biblical material as dialogue and exposition, any biblically literate viewer notices that DeMille is not always accurately quoting the Bible, even when he puts the words in quotes and follows with a citation. The bulk of the verses are from Exodus, but he also includes verses from Deuteronomy and Numbers, passages that in their context have nothing to do with the narrative of the Ten Commandments. He sometimes edits the quotation to better fit his own framing, like when he cites the Song of the Sea as a foreshadowing of what is about to happen rather than a celebration of what did (Exod. 15:16 with altered verb tense). He sometimes makes up a line altogether, as when Moses calls out “Save thy people, I beseech thee! For they have done an abomination—and Aaron hath made them naked unto their shame!” and then gives Exodus 32:25 as the reference. The Bible is brought into the service of DeMille’s vision where biblical authority is important but biblical accuracy is not. The crossing of the Red Sea with Pharaoh’s army close behind is dramatic but the climax of the prelude occurs when Moses is up on the stormy mountain receiving the commandments from God. The commandments appear as fiery letters thrown out of the clouds like a type of sophisticated pyrotechnics. Moses then chisels them into the rock. As movie critic Robert Sherwood lauds: No star of the stage or the films has ever enjoyed a more spectacular entrance than that which is arranged for the Ten Commandments. Great masses of clouds form, are rent by streaks of lightning, and then are dissolved into the flaming words of God. Each of the Commandments swirls out of the heavens and hits the spectator squarely between the eyes—and each, it must be recorded, earns an equal storm of applause. (Sherwood 2006, 27– 28)

Meanwhile, the people below commence their Golden Calf worship. DeMille creates dramatic tension as the scenes cut back and forth between Moses with the commandments and the orgiastic frenzy below. The biblical text does not imply sexual licentiousness here (although the connection between idolatry and sexually immoral behavior is certainly made in other parts of the Bible); however, DeMille is attuned to the desires of a Hollywood audience and interjects sex into the scene. No longer is the Calf the liberator who brought the Israelites out of Egypt (Exod. 32:4); instead, the Calf is a hedonistic deity: “Come worship ye the Golden God of pleasure! For

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the God of Israel heareth not—neither doth he see!” Miriam, painted and richly dressed, gyrates around and provocatively strokes the statue. The idol is called “her Golden God,” and Miriam is proclaimed Queen by a man who embraces her, groping her breasts from behind in full view of the voyeuristic camera. Besides an opening scene depicting Miriam among the other slaves, this is the only scene that features her. The gender implications are clear: masculine leadership is strong and principled; female leadership quickly descends into debauchery. As in the biblical story, God tells Moses to descend the mountain because the people have gone astray. Before Moses even arrives, the punishment has begun—Miriam has been afflicted with leprosy (cf. Num. 12:10). When Moses reaches the scene of idolatrous worship, a bolt of lightning destroys the idol and mayhem ensues. Moses stands above the fray while the violent storm rages and the people die. The scene of divine wrath fades into a sitting room in contemporary San Francisco where a mother reads from the Bible to her two sons, one obviously not impressed. Her words ring out (via intertitle): “—and there fell of the Children of Israel that day, about three thousand men” (Exod. 32:28) and thus the two disparate worlds are connected. The modern story is about the rivalry between two brothers, one good (John) and the other bad (Dan). Their mother Martha is the moral center of the movie, and she frequently carries and reads from the Bible, imploring her sons to follow God’s commandments. Dan marries a woman named Mary and the two excitedly proclaim that they are going to break all ten of the commandments. He embarks upon a career as a building contractor, a career that brings him both fame and fortune, but largely through corruption and fraud. Some three years after his marriage, he is engaged in the building of a church for which he has purchased cheap substandard concrete. A quick succession of events leads to his fall: the walls of the church collapse on his mother who had come to visit, killing her; his fraud is about to be publically exposed; because he lacks the ready cash needed to avert the scandal, he steals a string of pearls from a woman with whom he has been having an affair; she claims to have given him leprosy; he shoots and kills her. After telling Mary that she has been exposed to leprosy, he attempts escape to Mexico in a motorboat named “Defiance,” but the boat runs aground on rocks off the coast and Dan drowns. A distraught Mary tells John about the leprosy and he responds, “There is only one man who can help you – a man you’ve forgotten.” The movie ends with John reading from the gospels to Mary about Jesus curing a man with leprosy (Matt. 8:2– 3, Mark 1:40 – 41, and Luke 5:12– 15). The story of the two brothers illustrates the persistent power of the commandments, some 3000 years later. DeMille chose his subject matter after asking the public for recommendations through a contest in the Los Angeles Times. The winner was a man from Lansing, Michigan, named F. C. Nelson, who wrote: “You cannot break the Ten Commandments – they will break you” (Westphal 2012). The final scene where Dan’s boat breaks apart upon the rocks demonstrates this maxim vividly. The Commandments are central but they are not complete without the gospel. As G. Andrew Tooze points out, “What is revealed is a thoroughly Pauline theology.

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The law condemns and punishes, but offers no salvation” (Tooze 2003). In the final analysis, it is not the Decalogue alone which serves as the world’s moral compass but the Commandments completed by Christ.

The Ten Commandments (1956) In many ways, the first part of 1923’s The Ten Commandments was prelude not only to the modern story that followed, but also to the 1956 film of the same name. Fearing that his silent movie would become obsolete with the advent of the “talkie,” DeMille determined to recreate the story of Moses with the new 1950s cinematic technologies. He thereby transformed his original forty-five minutes into a nearly four-hour extravaganza that met critical and popular acclaim¹ and is the paradigmatic cinematic portrayal of the Exodus story to this day. In his second The Ten Commandments, DeMille explored more thoroughly the character of Moses, especially his time in the Egyptian court and his relationship to his Egyptian family. The movie is framed as if the audience were watching live theater instead of sitting in a movie theater: it begins with an orchestral overture, and then the lights come up on a stage with closed curtain. DeMille himself steps out from behind the curtain to discuss the themes and sources of his epic. He proclaims that the subject of his film is “the story of the birth of freedom, the story of Moses,” thus equating Moses with freedom. He notes, however, that the Bible omits some thirty years of Moses’ life. In order to tell the story, he uses various extra-biblical sources to fill in the gap, specifically Philo and Josephus. He presents these Jewish writers as ancient historians, who had access to materials lost to us today, thereby underscoring the authority and historicity of his film. In fact, he disavows his own creative input as well as the creativity of his team by declaring that their “intention was not to create a story but to be worthy of the divinely inspired story created 3000 years ago.” DeMille emphasizes this point throughout the credits, which stand between his address of the audience and the beginning of the film. The credits are peppered with the titles of written sources, novels by laity and clergy, lists of scholarand rabbi-consultants, and finally the declaration that “those who see this motion picture—produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille—will make a pilgrimage over the very ground that Moses trod more than 3000 years ago—in accordance with the ancient texts of Philo, Josephus, Eusebius, the Midrash and the Holy Scriptures.” A warm orange light then breaks through the letters that spell out “Holy Scriptures” and the words fade into a sky, light now breaking through the clouds. A voiceover – deep, masculine, authoritative–calls out: “In the beginning…” (Gen. 1:1). Thus, in a few short scenes, DeMille establishes the movie’s thesis and tone.

 The Ten Commandments was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. It grossed about $. million dollars in its initial release, the most lucrative movie of .

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The movie finally moves to the situation at hand: the enslavement of the Hebrews under Egyptian state control and the birth of Moses, one man to stand against tyranny. The Ten Commandments presents Moses as the Deliverer, prophesied by the Hebrews. Pharaoh’s astrologers worry that this long-awaited hero has been born because “a star proclaimed his birth.” The priest recommends that Pharaoh (Rameses I) kill all the Hebrew newborn boys in order to destroy this Deliverer and Rameses agrees. As the writer of the Gospel of Matthew used the story of Moses to structure his story of Jesus, DeMille circles back into Moses’ origins through Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth. Witnessing Pharaoh’s own Slaughter of the Innocents (cf. Matt. 2:13 – 23), Moses’ mother and sister send him down the Nile in a basket to be found by Rameses’ daughter Bithiah, recently widowed. She hides him from from her ladies-in-waiting, save for her closest servant, Memnet, and later passes Moses off as her own biological son. Moses was raised as an Egyptian prince, his adoption hidden from him and all of the Egyptian royal family. The movie next introduces the adult Moses as a general returning victorious from a campaign into the interior of Africa. We watch the princess Nefretiri (Anne Baxter) hanging out of her window waiting for the first glimpse of the man with whom she is obviously in love. The crowds roar his name. Then the scene cuts to the throne room where Pharaoh (now Sethi I, Cecil Harkwicke), sitting with his son Prince Rameses II (Yul Brynner) and Princess Nefretiri, awaits the grand entrance of the dashing prince with his tribute from Ethiopia. The priest introduces “Lord Moses” and proclaims his great deeds as he strides across the throne room, dancing women throwing flowers at his feet. Even here, Moses rejects the tyrant’s methods—he brings Ethiopia to Egypt not as conquest but as friend. The young and golden Charlton Heston certainly cuts a different figure than the aged and angry Theodore Roberts. DeMille was known for his exacting casting. For the part of Moses, DeMille already had an actor in mind: William Boyd. According to Grace Bradley, who was Boyd’s wife at the time, DeMille asked him personally to play Moses in 1952 and 1953. But Boyd had moved to television and was staring in the series Hopalong Cassidy. He had a particularly loyal following among children for his role as “Hoppy” and he did not want to confuse them by appearing as Moses on the big screen (Orrison 1999, 56 – 57). Henry Wilcoxon, the associate producer of the film, first suggested Heston to DeMille. Wilcoxon drew a picture of a beard on a photograph of Heston and showed it to DeMille alongside a picture of Michelangelo’s statue of Moses. The strong resemblance convinced DeMille that Heston would be perfect for the role (Orrison 1999, 48 – 49). Arnold Friberg (from the Art Department) further remarked upon the appropriateness of casting Heston: “And I believe that a tremendous religious leader like Moses or Jesus should be presented as commanding and strong, not a weakling or a victim. If Moses is an elderly, white-bearded old man, can he lead thousands of people out of Egypt or argue with God face-to-face on Mount Sinai?” (Orri-

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son 1999, 66). DeMille’s Moses embodies America’s twentieth-century masculine ideals. He is young, handsome, strong, powerful, sexy, wise, and courageous.² Moses was raised as a prince, alongside Rameses, and their rivalry forms a significant portion of the plot. Moses is preferred by both the Pharaoh and the princess, who will be married to Sethi’s chosen successor. Moses could have had all of Egypt at his feet as its ruler with the beautiful Nefretiri at his side. And yet, Moses is not swayed by power and luxury, admiration and desire; he is also a man of wisdom, truth, and righteousness. When he is put in charge of the Hebrew slaves and the building of the treasure cities, he institutes policies of mercy and justice – saving the lives of slaves, giving them additional food rations from the sacred granaries, and giving them one day off out of every seven (Moses invents Shabbat!). Finally, at the brink of being declared Sethi’s successor, he learns the truth of his origins (Memnet, aghast that the son of a slave was soon to be ruler of all Egypt, tells Nefretiri). Immediately, he leaves the temptations of the Egyptian court behind, voluntarily living as a slave for a period of time before he is expelled by prince Rameses for killing Baka, an Egyptian overseer, who had commandeered a beautiful Hebrew woman named Lilia. Well over two hours of this movie is spent exploring the character of Moses as well as the dynamics of his relationships with his Egyptian family, his newly discovered Hebrew family, and his Midianite family-in-exile (who live in the shadow of Mt. Sinai and already worship the God of the mountain, the God of the Hebrews). Finally, just before the intermission, Moses sees a burning bush on Mt. Sinai and climbs up the forbidden mountain to investigate. He hears God for the first time and accepts his commission to free the Hebrew slaves. He comes down off the mountain and speaks words to both Sephora and Joshua (who had escaped to find him) reminiscent of the opening poem in the Gospel of John (1:1– 5). DeMille lingered over the absent verses between Moses’ birth and his fleeing into the desert; after the movie’s intermission he moves quite quickly through the remainder of the Torah, from the plagues in Exodus to Moses’ death at the end of Deuteronomy. Like in his first The Ten Commandments he brings his movie to its climax with Moses on Mt. Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments. The special effects here are not identical but do echo those in the first movie – a pillar of fire shoots flaming letters that burn themselves into the rock. Meanwhile, the people below, urged on by Dathan the Egyptian collaborator, make a Golden Calf to worship. The idolatry unleashes all manner of violence, wickedness, and licentiousness. Although the sex is not played up as much here as in the first movie, Lilia (the woman threatened by Baka and raped earlier in the movie by Dathan) is nearly sacrificed to the Golden Calf, thus again playing into the Hollywood trope of the woman in distress saved by  DeMille draws on Philo and Josephus especially for many of these characteristics, including Moses’ good looks; however, the product of the pastiche is all-American. For further discussion of the construction of masculinity in The Ten Commandments and other biblical epic films, see Lindsay’s chapter in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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the strong masculine hero (here both Joshua, her romantic interest, and Moses come to her rescue). The wandering for forty years is portrayed as a punishment for the Golden Calf episode (in the Bible it is a punishment for the fear of the spies, Num. 14:20 – 35). The final scene is on Mt. Nebo. Moses stands with Sephora and Joshua. He gives Joshua his mantel and five books in a dusty brown satchel. Joshua is instructed to place these five books alongside the Ten Commandments. Moses then turns to the camera, raises his arms, and quotes Levitcus 25:10 and, more importantly, the Liberty Bell. The idea of freedom expressed in this movie is informed more by the Declaration of Independence than the biblical scriptures. DeMille’s own American political context (World War II and the Cold War) transforms Moses from God’s instrument used to free God’s people into the first Champion of Liberty, opposed to fascist and totalitarian regimes everywhere (Pardes 1996, 19). After Moses speaks these inspiring words, he turns and strides strongly to a solitary death, his stance echoing the silhouette of the Statue of Liberty (Reinhartz 2013, 37). Many of the Bible’s ambiguous elements are omitted from DeMille’s rendering of the story – Moses does not have a stutter; God does not seek to kill, nor does Sephora save, Moses; Miriam and Aaron’s leadership roles are all but absent; Jethro plays no role after he offers Moses hospitality and one of his daughters. All of these elements of the Bible would detract from the hero-story that DeMille is telling. God’s character is also less ambivalent, for God is not responsible for the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart nor is God responsible for creating the tenth plague. Rather, Rameses II declares his intention of killing the firstborn of the slaves and God only does to the Egyptians what Rameses would have done to the Hebrews. God certainly becomes angry during the Golden Calf episode but never threatens to destroy all of the Israelites as God does in the Bible. And through it all, Moses cuts a striking figure, a singular hero more in the mold of Hollywood than holy scripture, or at least the Hebrew scripture since DeMille continues to employ allusions to Jesus in his characterization of Moses throughout the movie.³ As Pardes notes in her essay on The Ten Commandments, “DeMille strives to present the original story, but – like any other interpreter – ends up creating his own story. Even more fascinating, he duplicates the very process by which the Bible itself is thought to have been created” (Pardes 1996, 22). DeMille employed multiple sources: Philo, Josephus, Midrash, Louis Ginzberg’s The Legends of the Jews, the New Testament, novels such as Prince of Egypt (1949) by Dorothy Clarke Wilson, archeological evidence, and other scholarly input. He engaged four writers to work on the script, under his direction. Together, they compiled and edited their source material to produce a single coherent story. The compilation of various sources even extends

 See Tooze () and Kozlovic (). Kozlovic enumerates eight ways in which DeMille constructs Moses as Christ-figure in the  version. In the  version, it is the brother John who takes on the role of Christ-figure in that film’s modern morality tale.

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to the visual representation as DeMille and his art directors drew on the history of artistic representation to design their sets and determine their casting. The movie, like the Bible, is a patchwork of different sources from different eras, layered upon each other to create a single story with depth and complexity. In striving to present the “original” story, DeMille actually reveals that both the story and character of Moses are processes that take place over time rather than discrete objects to be found only in the past.

The Decalogue (1989 – 90) In the late 1980s, Krzysztof Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz wrote ten short films, broadcast first on Polish television (as Dekalog), then circulated through a number of international film festivals. The films are simply numbered one through ten, specific commandments only linked to the titles when the press office of the Venice Film Festival published them in response to critics’ queries (Insdorf 1999, 70 – 71). With only the number and some lacking clear reference to a specific commandment (for example, V is about a murder but how does II represent the taking of the Lord’s name in vain?) the movie mirrors the biblical material itself which announces the “ten words” (Exod. 34:28) but does not clearly indicate to what the phrase refers or how the commandments should be divided and counted. In many ways, The Decalogue draws attention to the ways in which these commandments are anything but simple, straightforward, and universal. The films (all directed by Kieślowski) are set in the same Polish apartment building and take place in roughly the same time period. The characters from one movie sometimes appear in the backdrop of another. One man appears in nine of the ten films, saying nothing, just looking on sadly. Annette Insdorf suggests that the man is a watcher, comparable to the angels in Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire (1988): “they are pure ‘gaze,’ able—like a film camera (or a director?)—to record human folly and suffering but unable to alter the course of the lives they witness” (Insdorf 1999, 73). Kieślowski himself remarks, “He has no influence on the action, but he leads the characters to think about what they are doing. […] His intense stare engenders self-examination” (cited in Insdorf 1999, 73). Considering that the films take the Ten Commandments as their subject matter, another suggestion may be that the man is Moses.⁴ Moses is rarely depicted as a quiet and sad watcher, which is perhaps why the identification between this anonymous character and Moses has never been made. Moses rages more often than he sits quietly and cries, at least in popular imagination. But in the biblical text, Moses rarely speaks and acts on his own; rather he functions as a channel for divine words and actions. In the Torah, Moses is a watcher, a  For a different interpretation of this figure, see Kickasola’s chapter on Kieślowski in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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wanderer, a messenger (in Hebrew the same word as “angel”). He mediates meaning; he does not create it. The ten films each take one of the commandments as its subject (using the Catholic ordering), but none of the films are a straightforward rendition of the commandment. Instead, each film explores a fairly complex and shifting moral landscape where the right thing to do or the right sympathies to have are not always clear. To illustrate, the first film tackles the commandment prohibiting the worship of other deities. I opens on a snowy day, the Watcher sitting beside a pond, warming himself by a fire. It is this pond that is the setting of the tragedy that unfolds. The plot follows a single father (Krzysztof) who is raising a little boy (Pawel). Krzysztof is a university professor and an avowed atheist, who teaches his son to rely on reason and science. The boy, however, soon discovers that computers and math cannot answer all of his questions. When he sees a dead dog, his father explains death scientifically. Later, when he is with his Aunt Irene, a devout Catholic, she discusses the soul. Pawel is caught between his father’s skepticism and his aunt’s spirituality (and many of the films explore the tensions between these two orientations). Later, Pawel is anxious to go skating and his father calculates the exact temperature necessary for the pond to freeze, predicting that it will be frozen tomorrow. The next day, Pawel has disappeared and his father desperately searches the neighborhood for him. He hears sirens. Turning to the pond, his worst fears are confirmed: Pawel’s body is pulled from the black waters. How has the first commandment been broken? What is worshipped instead of God? Is the idol reason, science, math, computers? Certainly, a reliance on science contributes to the boy’s death, but the film is not some kind of facile recommendation of Catholicism: after all, who would want to worship a God who drowns a young, sweet, exuberant boy in a cold icy pond to punish a father for not going to church? Rather, what is so distressing about the situation is the role of chance, how a seemingly innocent series of events can lead to the most devastating of consequences. The Decalogue begins with a boy’s death; half of the films (I, II, V, VII, VIII) entail the actual or possible death of a child (Insdorf 1999, 72). Exodus also begins with the death of boys and continues with more threatened deaths and actual deaths of children. In both The Decalogue and the Exodus, the lives of children are precarious, their parentage uncertain, their futures unknown. Kieślowski explores what biblical scholars certainly know: the Law is not a simple formula to be applied without thinking. The Law, even the Ten Commandments, are far more ambiguous than they are usually presented, far more open to circumstance than most allow. One of the unique features of biblical law, compared to other ancient Near Eastern legal codes, is that biblical law is embedded in narrative and the narrative often shows situations where people act in contradiction to the law in ways that are clearly acceptable even laudable: the Hebrew midwives lie to Pharaoh, for example. Kieślowski’s films, like the Torah, show the tensions between an absolute moral law and the situational messy world in which we all live. Insdorf concludes her study of The Decalogue by remarking,

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Kieslowski’s ten short films about mor(t)ality don’t so much illustrate as interrogate the commandments. They ask of the viewer lucidity and compassion – both in the watching of The Decalogue and in our lives. “Everyone seems to accept the Ten Commandments as a kind of moral basis,” the director observed, “and everyone breaks them daily. Just the attempt to respect them is already a major achievement. If I had to formulate the message of my ‘Decalogue,’ I’d say, ‘Live carefully, with your eyes open, and try not to cause pain’.” (Insdorf 1999, 124)

We are all flung out into the world, living as precariously as children, caught between skepticism and spirituality, Egypt and the Promised Land.

The Prince of Egypt (1998) This award-winning DreamWorks production⁵ also draws most of its story from the ways in which Philo, Josephus, and later midrashic works constructed the life of Moses in the Egyptian court before he discovers his true identity. Unlike DeMille, who imagines a tense rivalry between Moses and the legitimate heir Rameses, The Prince of Egypt depicts the relationship between the erstwhile brothers as close and affectionate. Their obvious love for one another forms the emotional heart of the movie; its tragedy is that they find themselves on opposite sides of a fierce theological and political battle that only one can win. The movie opens with a harrowing montage of the life of the Hebrew slaves, which includes Egyptian soldiers breaking into Hebrew homes to kill male infants. Moses’ mother and sister carefully tuck him away in a basket, set him on the river with a lullaby and a prayer. Pharaoh’s wife (not his daughter, as in the biblical text) draws him up out of the water, introducing him to her own toddler son Rameses, and carries him away to meet his new father. Moses is a prince of Egypt, with a close brotherly relationship to the biological son. Everyone seems to know of Moses’ true parentage except Moses and Rameses who think that they are brothers. After the baby Moses is drawn up out of the water, the scene cuts to an adult Moses engaged in a wild chariot race through the streets with Rameses. Moses is young, adventurous, and reckless; he is a prankster who often gets his brother into trouble. Yet, he is also wise, just, and compassionate. After Rameses is sternly chastened by the Pharaoh for all of the property damage and injury caused by their stunt, Moses steps in and takes the blame. He also counsels the Pharaoh by assuring him that Rameses will be a strong leader – he only needs a chance to prove himself to his father. Late to a banquet that night (again because Moses instigated a prank), the young men rush in to discover that Pharaoh had taken Moses’ advice and made Rameses Regent. Rameses immediately turns to Moses and makes him Royal Chief Architect. A captured woman is brought in as a gift to Rameses, who gives her to Moses instead.  The Prince of Egypt was nominated for two Academy Awards and won the Oscar for Best Original Song for “When You Believe,” performed by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey.

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The captured woman turns out to be a very feisty Tzipporah. Later, when Moses retires to his bedchamber, he discovers that she is in the process of escaping from him. Instead of calling the guards and again taking her captive (presumably to rape her) he aids her escape by distracting the guards. Following her out at a distance, he encounters his biological siblings Miriam and Aaron. Miriam immediately recognizes him and assumes that he has come to find them. She begins to speak of him as “the Deliverer.” Confused and angry, Moses threatens her, pushes her to the ground and turns to leave. She then begins to sing the lullaby that their mother sang when she placed Moses in the basket. The song brings up some long forgotten memories for him and he stops, turns, and then runs away in a panic. Back in the palace, he learns the truth from his father and mother. Suddenly he sees himself and the slaves in a whole new light. The next day he witnesses an Egyptian beating an old slave, and he kills the overseer. He immediately flees into the desert, although Rameses tries desperately to offer him a pardon and stop him. Moses flees Egypt as a young adult in a crisis of identity; in the wilderness he discovers himself and grows into manhood. The movie is less about religious transformation and more about personal self-discovery, accompanied by the realization that all people have an inherent worth (Tooze 2003). God appears in the burning bush, and Moses returns to Egypt with Tzipporah by his side (again there is no leadership role for Aaron) to free his brethren. Unlike the biblical text, which portrays the plagues as a contest between God and Pharaoh with Moses as conduit, the movie focuses on the conflict between the two brothers. Now that they have grown and taken on their adult responsibilities – Rameses to the Empire and his people, Moses to the ideal of freedom and his people – their love for one another is no longer enough to bind them. Their struggle is poignant, culminating in the death of Rameses’ only son. The film climaxes not at the giving of the Law (as with both of DeMille’s movies) but with the Exodus from Egypt and the joyful crossing of the Red Sea as Miriam and Tzipporah lead the people in the film’s award-winning song “When You Believe.” “Belief” is not so much about religious faith as individual hope (Tooze 2003). Rameses does make one last effort to exert his authority and save his father’s imperial legacy but the Egyptians drown and a beaten Rameses calls out in agony across the waters: “Moses!” One Prince of Egypt triumphs; the other is bereft and broken.

Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) Ridley Scott, director of Exodus: Gods and Kings, follows DeMille into the gaps of biblical narrative, constructing his plot in much the same way. Scott’s Moses (Christian Bale) is also the subject of a prophecy predicting his role as Deliverer, one that compelled the Pharaoh to murder all Hebrew babies who could not yet walk. Moses was drawn out of the water by Pharaoh’s sister, rather than his daughter (as in the biblical text), who passes Moses off as her own son. Moses and the heir Ramses (Joel Edgerton) are then raised together. Rather than the fierce rivalry of DeMille’s pair,

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they have a closer fraternal bond albeit one that is strained because of competition for Pharaoh’s regard. Moses is acknowledged by the Pharaoh as the stronger leader, and Ramses has never felt loved or respected by his father. The structure of the plot is similar but the character of Moses deviates from previous portraits – it is darker, more ambivalent and complicated. The movie opens with the Pharaoh seeking guidance about an impending battle from a priestess reading animal entrails. Moses and Ramses are present and Moses is clearly disdainful of the ceremony. He asserts that he would rely on reason rather than faith; his first words establish him as a religious skeptic. The priestess has, in fact, no clear answer to Pharaoh’s question but she does proclaim one certainty: during the fight, the one who saves the leader will become the leader. Moses saves Ramses’ life during the attack, but Ramses lies to both his father and the official court recorder and Moses does not contradict him. The truth only emerges when Pharaoh questions Moses privately. As Ramses’ insecurities and jealousies emerge, Moses’ humility, honesty, and loyalty are all the more evident. When he goes to investigate the corrupt overseer of the Hebrew slaves, his wisdom and compassion also come to the fore. It is while he is among the slaves that he learns the truth of his parentage from the Hebrew elders, a truth he angrily rejects. Eventually, after Ramses has become Pharaoh, rumors of this truth reach him. Still struggling to prove himself over and against his cousin and now advisor, he arranges a confrontation with the relevant parties. All deny that Moses is a Hebrew, but Moses himself admits the truth (a truth he still does not quite believe) when Ramses threatens to cut off Miriam’s arm. Ramses exiles Moses but, before he goes, Miriam and his Egyptian mother confirm the truth of what he heard in the slave camps. This time, he believes. He leaves Egypt knowing that he is indeed a Hebrew. Moses’ religious skepticism continues to be a prominent feature of his personality as he meets, marries, and has children with Zipporah. They even argue about how to raise their son – she accuses him of believing in nothing and teaching the child to believe in nothing. Moses says that he is teaching him to believe in himself. But his skepticism soon transforms to religious faith (even fanaticism) when he has a neardeath experience and believes that God, in the form of a young boy, has appeared to him. In this theophany, God tells him to return to Egypt and free the Hebrew slaves. God informs him, “I need a general.” When Moses recovers from his illness and injuries, he leaves his family. Despite her own religious faith, Zipporah utterly rejects the reality of Moses’ vision. Instead she accuses him of breaking all of the promises that he has made to her. Without the support of his wife or son, Moses returns to Egypt alone. General Moses does not plead before Pharaoh turning staffs into snakes, but instead slips into the slave quarters to organize a military attack. Moses teaches them how to make weapons, how to fight, and how to strategize. Specifically, he trains a guerilla army to “strike at the side” of their Egyptian adversary. When one has inferior numbers, one must attack the civilian population, because only the people can

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convince their leaders to change. The Hebrews mount a nighttime assault, burning grain silos, barns, and orchards in order to compromise the people’s food supply. Pharaoh retaliates by burning the slave quarters down to the ground. As Moses watches Pithom burn from his hiding place in the hills, God returns to him. Moses asks where he has been. He responds: “Watching you fail.” Moses asks what he should do. God replies, “Nothing. For now you can watch.” God then begins his attack in the form of the plagues. Unlike the biblical account, however, these plagues are not unambiguous miracles. Rather, naturalistic interpretations of the events are possible (for example, vicious crocodiles attack fishermen turning the Nile’s water to blood). The plagues continue to escalate and Moses becomes increasingly more distraught because they are hurting everyone. Of course, God is simply resorting to the same kind of guerilla warfare that Moses had pursued earlier—it is just when God does it, it is far more violent and destructive. Ramses reacts to the plagues with defiance, threatening to drown all the Hebrew babies in the Nile, declaring himself God. He dares Moses, “So let’s see who is more effective at killing: you, this God, or me!” God takes the challenge but Moses argues that he is crossing the line into revenge. When God explains the last plague where he will kill the first born, Moses is emphatic: “No, you cannot do this! I want no part of this!” He even returns to Ramses to warn him but Ramses will not agree to the release of the slaves. The final plague wreaks its devastation. Ramses, the distraught father, carries the small body of his dead son to Moses. He confronts Moses: “Is this your god? Killer of children? What kind of fanatic worships such a God?” Although Ramses had threatened the same, although his father was guilty of the same, the question still hangs in the Egyptian air without response. The divine culpability and moral ambiguity of the last plague is highlighted to a far greater degree in Scott’s film than in any previous cinematic portrayal. And Moses himself is implicated: the warrior has become a terrorist; the skeptic is now a fanatic. Ultimately, Moses is a hero, but a hero who makes decisions after wrestling with uncertainty, who doubts himself, whose use of violence is morally suspect, and whose God is a capricious child. In a publicity event in Los Angeles, Christian Bale assessed the character of the man he portrayed: “I think the man was likely schizophrenic and was one of the most barbaric individuals that I ever read about in my life. He’s a very troubled and tumultuous man who fought greatly against God, against his calling” (Turney 2014). Are religious experiences nothing more than the products of disturbed minds? Is violence ever justified? How many children have been sacrificed for somebody else’s political and religious ends? The movie ends with an aged Moses being pulled in a wagon, still moving toward the Promised Land.

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Conclusion Full of dramatic events and compelling characters, the Exodus story was an early favorite of filmmakers in the silent era. Culminating in DeMille’s spectacular 1923 version and then his re-envisioning of the story in an even more spectacular 1956 version, Moses emerges as a hero of the American ideals of liberty and freedom, and God’s laws are enshrined as eternal and universal. The Ten Commandments (1956) is still the most widely viewed version of the biblical narrative. However, beginning with The Decalogue (1988 – 89) and reflected in both the animated The Prince of Egypt (1998), which portrays the Egyptian royalty with sympathy, and Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), with its moral ambiguities, the ambivalences of the biblical tale have increasingly come to the fore. In Exodus, Moses does lead the slaves to freedom with the aid of God’s miraculous providence, but this liberation is predicated on the deaths of children and violence continues to erupt throughout the wilderness wanderings. The road to the Promised Land is littered with the bodies of the dead, killed at the hands of both Moses and God. In a cultural moment more cynical and self-reflective perhaps than DeMille’s, Moses now reflects our own wrestling with law and ethics, our own uncertainties about faith and violence, and our own experience of wandering through the desert of our questions.

Works Cited Ginzburg, Louis. 1913. The Legends of the Jews. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. Insdorf, Annette. 1999. Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski. New York: Miramax Books. Kozlovic, Anton Karl. 2006. “The Construction of a Christ-figure within the 1956 and 1923 Versions of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments.” Journal of Religion and Film 10.1: http://www. unomaha.edu/jrf/vol10no1/KozlovicMoses.htm; accessed February 20, 2015. Orrison, Katherine. 1999. Written in Stone: Making Cecil B. DeMile’s Epic The Ten Commandments. Lanham, Md.: Vestal Press. Pardes, Ilana. 1996. “Moses Goes Down to Hollywood: Miracles and Special Effects.” In Biblical Glamour and Hollywood Glitz. Ed. Alice Bach. Semeia 74. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Pp. 15 – 31. Reinhartz, Adele. 2013. Bible and Cinema: An Introduction. New York: Routledge. Shepherd, David J. 2013. The Bible on Silent Film: Spectacle, Story and Scripture in Early Cinema. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sherwood, Robert E. 2006. “The Ten Commandments.” In American Movie Critics: An Anthology From the Silents Until Now. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: The Library of America. Pp. 27 – 29. Tooze, G. Andrew. 2003. “Moses and the Reel Exodus.” Journal of Religion and Film 7.1: http:// www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol7No1/MosesExodus.htm; accessed February 20, 2015. Turney, Drew. 2014. “Chasing the Christian Movie Audience.” Christianity Today (October 21): http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/october-web-only/chasing-christian-movie-audi ence.html; accessed February 19, 2015. Westphal, Kyle. 2012. “‘A Mental and Emotional Red Sea’: The Ten Commandments (1923).” Northwest Chicago Film Society Blog (April 7): http://www.northwestchicagofilmsociety.org/

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2012/04/07/a-mental-and-emotional-red-sea-the-ten-commandments-1923/; accessed February 20, 2015. Wilson, Dorothy Clarke. 1952. Prince of Egypt. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.

Films Cited The Bible Collection [Moses; TV miniseries] (dir. Roger Young, 1995, Lux Vide, US/CZ/UK/FR/IT/DE/ES). The Black Moses (dir. Travolta Cooper, 2013, Black Apple International, BS). Dekalog [a.k.a. The Decalogue] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1989 – 90, Sender Freies Berlin, PL/DE). Der Himmel über Berlin [a.k.a. Wings of Desire] (dir. Wim Wenders, 1988, Road Movies Filmproduktion, DE/FR). Die Sklavenkönigin [a.k.a. The Moon of Israel] (dir Michael Curtiz, 1924, Sascha-Film; AT/UK). Exodus: Gods and Kings (dir. Ridley Scott, 2014, Chernin Entertainment, UK/US/ES). The Höritz Passion Play (prod. William Freeman, 1897, Klaw and Erlanger, US). L’exode [“The Exodus”] (dir. Louis Feuillade, 1910, Gaumont, FR). La vie de Moïse [“Life of Moses”] (dir. Unknown, 1905, Pathé Frères, FR). The Life of Moses (dir. J. Stuart Blackton, 1909, Vitagraph, US). Moïse sauvé des eaux [“Finding of Moses”] (dir, Henri Andréani, 1911, Pathé Frères, FR). Moses in the Bullrushes (dir. Unknown, 1903, British Gaumont, UK). Moses the Lawgiver (dir. Gianfranco De Bosio, 1974, Associated Television, UK/IT). The Prince of Egypt (dir. Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, and Simon Wells, 1998, Dreamworks Animation, US). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1923, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, US). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956, Paramount, US).

J. Cheryl Exum

5 Samson and Delilah in Film

Filming the biblical story of Samson and Delilah poses numerous challenges. For one, there is very little to work with, which can, of course, also be an advantage since it allows for greater creativity. The biblical account is only four chapters long (Judg. 13 – 16, ninety-six verses). One of these chapters relates the announcement of Samson’s birth to his parents, which a filmmaker may choose to include, or simply allude to, or omit altogether. Only eighteen verses are devoted to Samson and Delilah (Judg. 14:4– 21). Moreover, the biblical story is episodic, with Samson bounding from one adventure to the next until he meets Delilah, introduced by a mere “after this he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek.” Director and screenwriter need to decide how faithful to be to the biblical account, which episodes to use, and how to weave them together to produce a respectable plot. Any film will need to do considerable gap filling. Turning the biblical account into something it is not, a love story, poses perhaps the biggest challenge. The Bible reports that Samson loved Delilah, but not that she loved him. The only interaction between them is Delilah’s threefold failed attempt to discover the secret of Samson’s strength, followed by her final victory. Clearly the characters need to be developed. Who was Delilah? She is generally assumed to be a Philistine and, often, a prostitute as well, but in the Bible she is identified as neither. Why does she betray Samson? The Philistines offer the biblical Delilah a bribe and she accepts, but readers want to know more and viewers expect more. What happens to Delilah afterwards? Does she die with thousands of Philistine spectators when Samson pulls down the temple? In the biblical story she simply disappears after the betrayal. Films need to develop her relationship with Samson and, in particular, explain her motives for betraying him if they are to succeed in making her a credible love interest. Samson, too, presents challenges, for he is an unlikely biblical hero who fights principally to settle personal scores, does not learn from his mistakes, and betrays little, if any, sense of his mission to begin Israel’s deliverance. The biblical story takes an essentially instrumental view of the hero as God’s tool in his vendetta against Israel’s Philistine oppressors (Judg. 14:4).¹ How meaningful is this understanding of Samson’s mission for a modern audience? The films discussed below acknowledge it by default, but without confronting the paradox of divine causality and human free will that makes the biblical story more than just a simple tale. To show Samson as Israel’s god-sent champion, filmmakers must decide how and to what extent to represent divine intervention (Judg. 14:4, 6, 19; 15:14– 15, 19; 16:28 – 30).

 On Samson as an instrument in God’s plan to begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines (Judg. :), a deliverer who appears to have little, if any, control over what happens to him, see Exum (a,  – ).

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Early Samson and Delilah Films² Among early, silent Samson and Delilah films, those of Ferdinand Zecca (Samson et Dalila, 1902) and Albert Capellani (Samson, 1908) follow the biblical storyline. Whereas Zecca’s short film begins with Samson’s destruction of the Philistine gates (Judg. 16:1– 3), Capellani’s somewhat longer one starts at the beginning, with the announcement of Samson’s birth to his mother and the birth of the child, who is shown off to visiting neighbors. Capellani’s film provides more spectacle, and his Delilah is a more developed character than Zecca’s. Both films end with Samson ascending into heaven, accompanied by angels. Alexander Korda’s Samson und Delila (1922) is a story within a story.³ Julia Sorel, an opera singer who is preparing to sing the role of Delilah, hears the story of Samson and Delilah from an old rabbi (Korda’s wife, María Corda, plays both Julia and Delilah). The narrative frame, which contains biblical sequences, involves a rather complicated plot in which a Russian nobleman proposes to hold Julia captive on his yacht until she agrees to be his wife. Earlier she had refused to sing with an unknown tenor in the role of Samson, Ettore Ricco (Paul Lukas), who slips on board and pretends to be an assassin who has planted a bomb on the yacht (there was already an attempt on the nobleman’s life at the premiere of the opera). Julia decides to discover the location of the bomb by using her seductive feminine charms, like Delilah, but Ricco, unlike Samson, resists her. When he reveals his identity, and the fact that the “bomb” is only a container for wigs, she realizes that he has risked his life to save her and falls in love with him. The two storylines are not particularly well integrated. The biblical sequences construct Delilah as the incarnation of evil and sexual depravity: “Wanton, and dead to all love except the sordid, she shut herself out from all that was good on earth,” according to the intertitle.⁴ In the modern story, however, Julia is not evil. Indeed, the biblical roles are somewhat reversed, for Julia/Delilah is conquered by Ricco/Samson: “The modern Delilah should beware of the modern Samson; his strength sometimes lies in a wig.” Moreover, Ricco turns out to be the deceiver and his motive, revenge: “You refused to appear with me on stage; now I have made you play Delilah to my Samson in real life.”⁵ Edwin J. Collins’s Samson and Delilah (1922), staring M. D. Waxman as Samson and Mdlle. DaValia as Delilah, seems somewhat influenced by Camille Saint-Saëns’s

 See also the discussion of early silent films in Shepherd’s chapter in Part I (Pp.  – ).  The same story-within-a-story technique appears in other films of the silent era; e. g. Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments () and Michael Curtiz’s “part-talkie” Noah’s Ark ().  The original intertitles of Korda’s film are in German, and the English translations provided in this essay are the author’s.  For a more detailed discussion of the biblical scenes, see Shepherd (,  – ). In a trenchant gender analysis of the film, Katrin Oltmann (,  – ) shows how the frame story subverts the biblical tale, with Ricco/Samson performing the feminine (Delilah) role.

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operatic version of the story.⁶ It gives a central role to the High Priest (Harry Newman), and the intertitle to the seduction scene has the instruction for playing the air “Softly awakes my heart” (Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix). Nevertheless, it follows the biblical text more closely than the opera, and uses biblical material in many of the intertitles. Unlike Saint-Saëns’s opera, it shows the betrayal scene, complete with Delilah cutting Samson’s hair while he sleeps and waving it before him victoriously when he awakes. Samson sends away the child who leads him to the two pillars of the temple (and who looks very much afraid of the entire proceedings) before destroying the temple, killing everyone, including the treacherous Delilah.⁷

Samson and Delilah (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1949) The Oscar-winning epic, Samson and Delilah, produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille,⁸ is the benchmark against which all other Samson and Delilah films are to be measured, and, as yet, remains unrivalled. The screenplay by Jesse Lasky, Jr. and Fredric Frank is based on an original treatment by Harold Lamb and, rather less so, on Vladimir Jabotinsky’s novel Samson. ⁹ It follows the biblical account closely and fills gaps ingeniously with material well suited to the story. It also boasts a fine musical score by Victor Young. DeMille cast Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr in the title roles of his film because, he claimed, “they embody in the public mind the essence of maleness and femininity” (Elley 1984, 36). As expected of them, Mature and Lamarr deliver splendid performances of gender roles tailored to fit the expectations of 1950s audiences (with the ancient “oriental” setting providing a pretext for some liberties). It may be camp, especially for modern audiences, but it is not just camp, for there is a subversive aspect to the stars’ self-conscious projection of masculinity and femininity as spectacle.¹⁰ Taking his cue from the sparse but suggestive biblical presentation, DeMille turned Delilah into one of cinema’s most compelling femmes fatales, a well-known figure of film noir, particularly popular in the 1940s and 50s. As activator of his desire she is a snare for the hero (“I’ll never be free of you, Delilah,” says Samson). She is also a reminder of the danger of desire (“More men have been trapped by smiles than by ropes”). The camera angles, the lighting, the close-ups of Hedy Lamarr’s face, her lavish wardrobe of provocative outfits with color-coordinated jewelry all serve to make Lamarr the object of the gaze for the spectators in the theater audience as  Cinematic versions of the opera are discussed below.  Collins’s film is available on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-jkjuxzUk). The same film, without Saint-Saëns’s music, is also available on YouTube, wrongly attributed to Korda (http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyQiNHXYjZ).  See also the discussion of this film in Kozlovic’s chapter on DeMille in Part II (Pp.  – ).  For a discussion of this novel in relation to DeMille’s film see Exum (b,  – ).  For detailed discussion of this film, see Exum (a,  – ,  –  et passim); see also Kozlovic ().

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well as for the characters in the film. Lamarr as Delilah was given top billing over Victor Mature, and her character is clearly more interesting and complex than his. Promoting his star gave DeMille the opportunity for developing and exploring Delilah’s character. He shows us a woman acting out of a complex, volatile mix of love, desire for revenge, hate, and jealousy. Not one to leave the audience guessing, however, he offers enough guidance throughout the film to establish that it all comes down to one thing. Delilah is motivated by love—but a love so obsessive it must destroy and be destroyed by the object of its desire in order to obtain it. As in Jabotinsky’s Samson, the screenplay makes Delilah the younger sister of Samson’s Timnite bride, Samadar (Angela Landsbury). She is thus identified with the “little sister” of the biblical account who is offered to Samson by his father-inlaw in place of his bride, who has been given to another (Judg. 15:2). What, in the biblical story, is a series of chance occurrences, reprisals, and counter-reprisals that Samson gets caught up in before he meets Delilah becomes, in the film, a plot driven by Delilah’s cunning, single-minded determination to possess Samson. Having Samson kill the lion is her idea. So is inviting thirty Philistine warriors as wedding guests, whom she advises how to find out the answer to Samson’s riddle. When Samson rushes off in a rage to get the thirty garments to pay his debt, Delilah gives her father the idea to marry off Semadar to the best man. Thus when Samson returns to pay his debt and claim his bride, Delilah is waiting to take her sister’s place. But Samson does not want a “wildcat” like her. When Samson repays the Philistines with “fire for fire and death for death” and her house goes up in flames along with the Philistine grain fields (Judg. 15:4– 5), Delilah watches the conflagration and vows revenge. When we next see her, she has conquered the heart of the Saran, chief ruler of the Philistines (George Sanders). Although Samson will later call her “the great courtesan of Gaza” and “the woman that rules the ruler of the five cities,” DeMille is subtle rather than explicit about her sexual relationship with the Saran. There are no sex scenes between Lamarr and Sanders in the film; they never even kiss. DeMille has Delilah volunteer to discover the secret source of Samson’s strength. Unlike the biblical account, the betrayal is her idea, and revenge her stated motive: “When my father and sister lay dead in the ashes of our home, because of Samson, he laughed at my tears” (something we never see in the film, so we might wonder if she is making it up). Only when we see Samson and Delilah together again can we begin to appreciate how complex a web of motivation DeMille has provided for his Delilah. The seduction scene is set in a splendid oriental tent by a pool, beside the ruins of a temple, where Delilah has camped with her caravan, anticipating that Samson, the renegade, will come to plunder her tent. Although he recognizes “the oldest trick in the world, a silk trap baited with a woman,” he falls for it anyway, even when she admits that she came to betray him. When, finally, Samson tells her that his strength comes from his hair, betrayal seems to be the furthest thing from her mind, and she proposes that they go away to Egypt, away from the conflict between their peoples. “For all eternity nothing can ever take you out of my arms,” she prom-

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ises. At that moment, Miriam (the safe but uninteresting alternative to Delilah, from Samson’s own tribe of Dan) arrives, with the young boy Saul (Israel’s future king) to bring Samson back to defend his people. “I cannot fight against his god,” Delilah tells Miriam, “but no woman will take him from me.” She invites Samson to drink with her a farewell cup of wine, which she has drugged. As a femme fatale whose desire is all-consuming, she would rather destroy Samson than risk losing him. Miriam will give her one more opportunity to express this jealousy later, in the temple scene, when she comes to beg for Samson’s life and Delilah refuses: “I’d rather see him dead than in your arms.” DeMille keeps the focus on Delilah’s excessive, obsessive jealousy as the betrayal scene reaches its conclusion. When Samson hears about the payment and curses the name “Delilah,” she pronounces the film’s definitive statement about her feelings and her motive: “I could have loved you with a fire to make all other loves seem like ice. I would have gone with you to Egypt, left everything behind, lived only for you. But one call from that milk-faced Danite lily and you run whining at her heels.” Ironically, although Samson has not rejected her—on the contrary, he has said that he will come to her in Egypt—she cannot see it as anything else. She continues with a finishing touch worthy of the femme fatale: “No man leaves Delilah.” DeMille uses every possible explanation to lend complexity to Delilah’s motivation. He takes her through the gamut of motives: love, revenge, hate, jealousy. The only motive he underplays is greed. Delilah volunteers to discover the secret source of Samson’s strength, but the idea to do it for payment appears to be an afterthought. The other motives are but manifestations of her obsessive love, as the Saran recognizes: “Men have been betrayed by love. Love and hate are but two sides of the same coin.” She may have orchestrated his capture by the Philistines, but Delilah does not know that Samson has been blinded. When she learns of it, she accuses the Saran of deceiving her by playing with words, for she had extracted a promise from him that “no drop of his blood shall be shed; no blade shall touch his skin.” “It was you who betrayed him, not I,” he retorts. Classical Hollywood cinema of the 1940s and 50s typically dealt with the “bad woman” in one of two ways: she was investigated and punished (usually she died in the end) or she was investigated and saved (she became a “good girl”; Mulvey 1989, 21– 26). DeMille does both for Delilah. He investigates Delilah in detail in order to show, in the end, that her conflicting emotions converge in obsessive love. Having investigated her, he both saves her for the man and punishes her: he redeems her by having her repent of the betrayal and by using her as the instrument of Samson’s deliverance. And he punishes her, something the biblical version neglected to do, by killing her off in the end. DeMille’s “redemption” of Delilah is a tour de force that makes the story of Samson and Delilah into a love story for all time. Delilah, in effect, converts. She prays to Samson’s god, and ends up being that god’s instrument in Samson’s final victory over the Philistines. The ending is typical of melodrama, with the woman sacrificing herself, so that Samson, and ultimately his god, can triumph over tyranny and evil.

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Are Samson and Delilah’s tempestuous love affair and, more importantly, Samson’s betrayal part of a larger, inscrutable divine plan (cf. Judg. 14:4)? The nature of Samson’s relationship to his god is spelled out most clearly in a theological discussion between Samson and Delilah at the critical moment just before he entrusts her with the secret of his strength. In this scene, Samson explains that his strength comes from his invisible god, whose power is everywhere, and that he will have this strength as long as he keeps faith with God. In an allusion to his Nazirite status in the Bible, Samson divulges that he has been dedicated to God and has broken many vows, but one he has kept: he has not cut his hair. As in the biblical account, it is not simply a case of his strength residing in his hair. His hair is the “mark of his power,” just as the mane of a lion and the mane of a stallion are symbols of their power. To Delilah’s question – “You believe that this great god of yours has given you your power through your hair? You do believe that, don’t you?” – he replies that this is what his mother taught him. So, subtly, the secret of Samson’s strength becomes a question both of his faithfulness to his vow and of what he believes. When Delilah deceives him, cuts his hair, and summons the Philistines to take him prisoner, she taunts, “Call on your god, Samson!” He replies, “I’ve betrayed him; he would not hear me.” DeMille deals with the Bible’s instances of divine intervention by naturalizing them. As Jabotinsky had done, the screenplay has Samson tear a lion apart with his bare hands, without indicating the role played by the spirit of the Lord in Judges 14:6, so that it becomes simply a sign of his superhuman strength. Similarly there is no direct divine involvement when Samson fulfills his wager to the wedding guests who had answered his riddle (14– 19). As in Jabotinsky’s Samson, Samson steals the thirty festal garments, but he does not kill anyone. DeMille even makes the event humorous by having the men run around without their tunics and cloaks and complain to the Philistine guards that they were overpowered by some giant or demon. DeMille presents Samson’s relationship to his god in a way that disposes audiences to accept the idea of Samson as an instrument of God’s will (if not in reality, then as an acceptable premise of his film). To set the proper religious mood, he introduces the story with a voiceover, in which the audience is treated to a rather muddled speech about human superstition, idolatry, tyranny, oppression and the will for freedom. It is the unquenchable will for freedom, a divine spark, we are told, that drives Samson, in whom strength and folly are fused, but this will to freedom is not very much in evidence in the film. At the film’s end, Miriam serves as DeMille’s mouthpiece to praise Samson: “His strength will never die,” she tells a young Saul, “men [sic] will tell his story for a thousand years.” Within this framework, DeMille adopts the biblical narrator’s use of answered prayer (Judg. 15:18 – 19; 16:28 – 30) to show the behind-the-scenes activity of Samson’s invisible god (see Exum 1983). Samson’s call to God when he is thirsty, having slain a thousand men with a donkey’s jawbone (Judg. 15:18 – 19), becomes, in DeMille’s version, a prayer to God before the slaughter. At Lehi, the captured Samson prays for strength to destroy Israel’s enemies and for God to show the Philistines his power.

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There is a clap of thunder, and a great dust storm arises, simultaneously serving as the sign of God’s presence (the spirit of God coming mightily upon Samson in Judg. 15:14) and of God’s response to Samson’s prayer (thus there is prayer in this scene, as in 15:18 – 19, but its content has been changed). Samson slays the Philistine troops with the jawbone in a spectacular deliverance, which is only somewhat naturalized by having Samson fend them off from a position in a narrow gorge. “Never did mortal man fight like this,” reports a messenger who escaped. “When he called upon his god, the thunder and the whirlwind and the lightning were in his blows.” Samson’s prayer for strength to pull down the temple in Judges 16:28 – 30 is echoed in the film when Samson (using the biblically sounding “thee” and “thou” of the King James Version) prays, “I pray thee, strengthen me, O God, strengthen me only this once” and “My eyes have seen thy glory, O God, now let me die with my enemies.” There follows a spectacular scene of destruction. To the two occasions in the biblical account when Samson appeals to God, DeMille adds four more: three prayers by Samson and one by none other than Delilah. Just before he is blinded, having said that God would not hear him if he called upon him, Samson prays not for deliverance but to praise God for teaching him a lesson: “O Lord, my eyes did turn away from you to look upon the fleshpots of my enemies. Now you take away my sight that I may see again more clearly. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” DeMille thus gives us a Samson who remains faithful to his god, in spite of having broken his vow. In a remarkable turn of events in the film, and an inspired instance of gap filling, Delilah, repentant and plagued with guilt for what she has done, prays to Samson’s – that is, the “real” – god: “O God of Samson, help me! He said you are everywhere, that you are almighty. Hear me! Give back the light of his eyes and take my sight for his. O God of Samson, help me!” She goes to the granary to seek Samson’s forgiveness and beg him to come away with her. Samson is praying for God to remember him and send him a sign, and as the scene proceeds we realize that Delilah is the answer to his prayer. In spite of everything, Samson still loves Delilah, and he prays again to God to show him the way. He rejects Delilah’s offer to go away with her and allows himself to be taken to the temple, where he will utter his final prayer. In the climactic temple scene, Delilah enters the arena where Samson is being mocked, and it is she who leads him to the two columns that support the temple. When he tells her to go, she only pretends to leave. He pulls down the temple and they die together in a brilliant cinematic resolution. Delilah enables Samson to achieve his destiny, and she and he are redeemed together: he, through his new-found faithfulness to his god, and she, through him.

Samson and Delilah (dir. Lee Philips, 1983) This made-for-television movie gives Max von Sydow top billing as the Philistine governor Sidka, and stars little-known Belinda Bauer and Antony Hamilton as Delilah

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and Samson. Victor Mature has a cameo role as Manoah, and a new character, Micah (Daniel Stern), is introduced as the leader of a band of Israelite soldiers and friend of Samson. In spite of being feisty and strong-willed, Philips’s Delilah lacks the complexity that makes DeMille’s Delilah so fascinating, his Sidka is no match for DeMille’s urbane and actually quite likeable Saran, with his well-timed aperçus, and his Samson is relatively bland. The screenplay by John Gay, loosely based on the 1962 novel Husband of Delilah by Eric Linklater, includes many of the incidents of the biblical story, though with unnecessary changes, and liberties are taken with the plot in an ineffective attempt to show Delilah in a more positive light. Philips uses the well-worn technique of a voiceover to provide both the requisite biblical beginning and closing evaluative commentary on the hero’s life. The film begins by informing the audience that Israel is oppressed by a “heathen people,” and that a son born to a previously barren farm-woman is bold, rebellious, and “lives with but one thought, one commandment from God, to deliver his people from the Philistines.” We are reminded of Samson’s sense of his calling several times throughout the film when he speaks of helping his people. And we are encouraged to see God intervening twice to help Samson, first when, aided by a thunderstorm and flashes of lightning, Samson slays Philistine troops with the jawbone of a donkey (an even more incredible feat than DeMille’s, since it takes place in an open field by a river), and later when, having prayed for strength, Samson pulls down the Philistine temple while lightning strikes repeatedly. Adopting biblical style, at the film’s end the voiceover reports, “And so it came to pass that in his death the man born to deliver his people from slavery and persecution was able to unite them and lead them against the Philistines.” This conclusion is strange, because Samson does neither of these things. With the next words, the film ends by affirming Delilah’s love for Samson: “A man who was betrayed and loved by a woman of Gaza, a woman who was known as Delilah.” Indeed, there is never any question about Delilah’s feelings for Samson in this film, nothing of the range of emotions that motivate DeMille’s leading character. Delilah is introduced at the beginning of the film, and is immediately attracted to Samson and excited by his strength when he appears on the scene to kill the lion (he is on his way to his wedding, having been—so he tells Micah—commanded by God to marry a Philistine). Philips’s Delilah, like Linklater’s, is a considerably wealthy Philistine courtesan. Not long after the Philistines burn the house of Samson’s wife, killing everyone within (because they think Samson is there), Samson and Delilah become lovers. She gives up her many admirers for him, including Sidka, and even gives Samson silver to help his people, but he cannot convince his fainthearted people to fight with him against their Philistine overlords. And so he leaves them to be with Delilah. She and he spend happy days together, many of them in her small ostentatious swimming pool (hints of DeMille here, though with steamy sex scenes), but she cannot make him forget his people and his god. Frustrated by his inability to kill Samson, who has ravaged his country and slain many Philistines, and by Delilah’s fascination with Samson, Sidka has Delilah

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brought to him and promises to turn half of his estates over to her and to make her his wife if she will discover the secret of Samson’s strength. She refuses. While she is away, Samson leaves her house and journeys to the desert of Sinai, “searching for something” and hoping that God will speak to him. The experience he has is less like Moses’ and more like Elijah’s: silence, fire (which he has made), and a deeper understanding of his mission. He comes back to Delilah to tell her that he is going back to his people and to say goodbye forever. Delilah betrays Samson to keep him from leaving her. She does not want Sidka’s lands, no payment, just for Samson to be released to her afterwards. Robbed of his superhuman strength, Samson will be no threat to the Philistines and “no use to his people.” Although Delilah is portrayed as loving Samson passionately, she behaves selfishly, considering only her happiness. And she is naïve for supposing she could betray Samson, and cause him to betray his people and his god, and then live with him happily ever after. On their last night together, Samson tells Delilah that, if he had been “born to live as others,” he would take her away where they could be together for the rest of their lives. She asks him to take her now and says she will give up everything for him. But Samson is not willing to give up everything for her: he will never, he says, forsake his god. He reveals that he was given strength for one purpose, to deliver Israel, and that the source of his strength is his hair. Like Delilah’s unrealistic expectation of a blissful future with Samson, this connection of Samson’s strength to his hair is an insufficiently developed plot element (compare DeMille’s more sophisticated and effective treatment of both themes). Delilah is not present when Samson is blinded, nor did she anticipate that her betrayal would lead to such a horrible outcome. In a strange departure from the biblical story, Samson is taken to the Philistine temple before his hair has grown back, and, in a surprising twist, following Linklater, Delilah does not die in Samson’s dramatic destruction of the temple. This cinematic Delilah may be irresistible to men, but she is not a femme fatale. She is not punished in the end for betraying Samson, apparently because she does not need to be, since her crime was to love not wisely but too well (a theme more fully developed, though not particularly convincingly, in Linklater’s novel). Having come to the temple to fetch Samson, she is cast into a conveniently located nearby dungeon, from which she watches as Samson prays to God to restore his strength. He pulls down the temple, killing many spectators, among them Sidka, who is crushed by the stereotypically hideous idol representing Dagon. Delilah returns to the scene of carnage, recovers Samson’s body and takes him to his people on a bier so that they will learn of his deed and remember him. “And they can remember me too,” she says, “I was the one who betrayed him.”

Samson and Delilah (dir. Nicolas Roeg, 1996) This television movie produced for Turner Pictures, starring Liz Hurley as Delilah and Eric Thal as Samson, is a disappointing venture from director Nicolas Roeg. The

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screenplay by Allan Scott lacks coherence, is sometimes confusing or just plain silly, and relies on a moralizing voiceover to carry the story. Dennis Hopper is miscast as the Philistine General Tariq, whose boredom with the company in ancient Gaza could easily be mistaken for boredom with the role, while Eric Thal is a rather insipid Samson, confused about the meaning of his life (Victor Mature was rather bland too, though not troubled by existential doubts). Liz Hurley’s Delilah, an over-sexed liberated woman retrojected into the ancient world, manages to be unsympathetic and boring at the same time (Exum 2012a, 266 – 75). After the voiceover sets the background of Israelite oppression by Philistines, during a scene of wanton slaughter of Hebrew gleaners by their militarily superior enemies, a mysterious man of God announces Samson’s birth to his hitherto sterile mother (Diana Rigg). We then see the birth and circumcision of the child and some scenes of Samson’s youth. Other events of the biblical story, such as Samson’s marriage to a woman from Timnah (Judg. 14– 15) and his visit to the harlot at Gaza (16:1– 4), are shown and embellished before the first, chance meeting between Samson and Delilah takes place (he happens to be nearby as she strolls along a river bank, and he rushes in to rescue her by killing a lion that just happens to pounce out of nowhere to threaten her). Hurley provides a 1990s compulsory sex interest, and she and Thal have a lengthy sex scene to convince audiences that they are no ordinary lovers in their passion. She has a number of other, brief appearances on screen, but mainly as decoration and as a reminder that she is a character in the story. Like the biblical Delilah, she is primarily a function, and, like the biblical Delilah, her motivation remains a subject of speculation (whether or not this is intentional is not clear). What little we learn about her character is entirely unflattering: “loose,” self-centered, unloving, shallow. Samson, meanwhile, frets about his destiny, and somewhat clumsily develops as a character who finally discovers his mission when it is thrust upon him. General Tariq (there is no such character in the biblical story) is the only source of interest in an otherwise uninspired royal court. He is the one, besides, eventually, Samson, who perceives the divine purpose behind Samson’s capture. In his tacit recognition of the power of Samson’s god, he resembles DeMille’s Delilah, who prays to that god for help. This is only one of Delilah’s functions in DeMille’s film that the general assumes in Roeg’s (others include proposing a plan for capturing Samson and visiting Samson in prison, which sets him on the path to self-discovery). Delilah is depicted as a Philistine, the cousin of the king of Gaza. Being part of the royal court explains how she becomes involved in a political plot to capture Samson before she meets him. Roeg’s Delilah is a postfeminist who has bought into the idea that her sexuality is the means to power and material gain. She takes pleasure in being a “loose woman,” as General Tariq calls her (“And if I weren’t, I’d find that remark offensive, General”), and her interest in Samson is aroused by reports of his exploits even before she has seen him. In considering whether any man could meet her sexual expectations, she muses, “Except perhaps this Israelite hero.”

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Making Delilah a Philistine, as Roeg, like DeMille and Philips, does, could provide her with other, even stronger reasons to betray Samson—patriotism or religious duty. It is thus somewhat surprising that patriotism and religion play such a small role in all these films. Using Delilah as “bait,” the Philistines plan to defeat Samson by exploiting his preference for Philistine women, “the allure of strange flesh,” as General Tariq puts it. Roeg struggles to supply Delilah with credible motivation for betraying Samson. On the one hand, she does it for the payment. Hurley is a thoroughly modern Delilah, who believes “a girl must look to her future.” The money will make her self-sufficient, which seems to be her overriding motive (again, a modern intervention: she wants to have the means to leave Gaza when the king dies and his inept son succeeds him). But it is not only the money that interests her; the challenge of sexual conquest whets her voracious carnal appetite. Unlike the biblical account, which tells us Samson loved Delilah and then that the Philistines approached her with a bribe (suggesting a temporal, causal connection), this cinematic Delilah agrees to betray Samson before we are told, by means of a voiceover, that he “truly loved her as a man loves a woman.” Unlike the biblical version, Samson is awake when Delilah cuts his hair, and, incredibly, she and he discuss whether or not she will cut it. (If this were a pantomime, the audience would be screaming, “Run!”) The film seeks to show that Delilah loves Samson, that it pains her to betray him. We see her delaying, apparently not wanting to make her move, and then cutting his hair because, she explains, “When power is given, how can it not be used?” Samson is suddenly painfully robbed of his strength, in contrast to the biblical account, which tells us that at first he did not know that his strength was gone (Judg. 16:20). A later scene between Delilah and Naomi (the wholesome girl-next-door of this film, who has loved Samson for as long as she can remember) addresses the issue of Delilah’s feelings for Samson, though it does not resolve it. Naomi has come to Gaza to see Delilah in order to beg to be allowed to see Samson. To Naomi’s repeated refrain, “You hated him so much,” Delilah responds with a flurry of explanations: “They paid me well,” “He’d become too dangerous,” “I loved him too well.” Like DeMille, Roeg has Delilah die with Samson in the temple, but under vastly different circumstances. Whereas DeMille goes to great lengths to show us how it is through Delilah that Samson is able to fulfill his destiny as his god’s instrument against the Philistines, Roeg simply tells us this in a voiceover at the film’s end. He does not show how she does it, apart from being responsible for his capture and his being brought to the temple for the Philistines’ amusement. Although Delilah dies along with everyone else when Samson pulls down the temple, there is no reconciliation, no love story here. Delilah agrees to allow Naomi to go to the temple to see Samson, but, in return, Naomi must do something for Delilah. Because he is going to destroy the temple, Samson tells Naomi to leave. She begs for a kiss first. Delilah then leans over and kisses Samson in Naomi’s place. Perhaps the audience is supposed to think that wanting one last kiss from Samson is a sign of Delilah’s

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love for him, but deceiving Samson yet again in her own self-interest is a cruel thing to do to a blind man who is about to die. At the film’s end, Roeg acknowledges Delilah’s important function by having his omniscient and irritating narrator explain in a voiceover that “it was through the Philistine woman, Delilah, that Samson finally came to the faith which began the liberation that the Lord God of Israel had promised.” But without redeeming the woman, Roeg’s presentation of the femme fatale does not go beyond the age-old cultural stereotype of woman as seductive, fickle, untrustworthy and deceptive to offer any insight into Delilah’s character. His film is, rather, part of a larger cultural pattern of backlash against the feminism of the 1970s and 80s (Faludi 1992); and, despite the attempt to make her a “modern” woman, Hurley’s Delilah is infantilized, especially in the scene where the men discuss using her as bait while she smiles coquettishly at the camera.

The Bible (prod. Mark Burnett/Roma Downey, 2013) “Homeland” (dir. Tony Mitchell) is the third installment in a ten-part TV mini-series, The Bible, produced by Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, who regard its promulgation as something of a mission. Boasting of attracting over 100 million TV viewers, this Christian-themed series advertizes itself on the Internet and via social media with religious fervor—coverage that DeMille would have envied (the producers say they were inspired by DeMille’s 1956 The Ten Commandments).¹¹ “Homeland” begins with Joshua’s conquest of Jericho and ends with the anointing of David as king over Israel. Obviously the approximately 24-minute segment on Samson does not have the scope to develop its characters that feature-length films have, but it does not even try. What it offers is wholly unremarkable, apart from the allusion to race relations in the United States in the casting of mainly white actors as Philistines and black actors as Samson and his mother, the principal figures among the oppressed Israelite people. The Philistines are racist; Samson is not. He explains to his mother, who is distressed when he marries a Philistine woman, “Does love not come from God? What would you have me do? Reject the woman I fell in love with just because she’s a Philistine?”¹² But their wedded bliss is not to be; the xenophobic Philistines kill Samson’s wife simply for marrying an Israelite. The film skips over the biblical material dealing with Samson’s killing of the lion, his riddle, his wife’s role in obtaining its answer for her people and its consequences, including the reason the text gives for the burning of the woman and her father’s house by the Philistines: to avenge the burning of their grain fields by Samson (Judg. 15:1– 6). Samson in “Homeland” is thus not so morally ambiguous as the

 See the official website, http://www.bibleseries.tv.  In the biblical account Samson’s parents are xenophobic, objecting to his choice of a bride “from the uncircumcised Philistines,” and Samson’s response is simply, “Get her for me, for she is the right one in my eyes” (Judg. :).

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biblical Samson.¹³ Other episodes from the biblical story are given tedious treatment in quick succession: Samson’s slaughter of Philistines in revenge for the deaths of his wife and her father (Judg. 15:7), his capture by his own people, who hand him over to the Philistines (Judg. 15:10 – 14), and his massacre of Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey (Judg. 15:15). These scenes provide opportunities for the massive, muscular Samson (Nonso Anozie) to display his superhuman strength and to demonstrate his ferocity with some impressive bellowing. When, having slain Philistine soldiers with the jawbone, Samson asks God to guide him, who should appear but Delilah? Samson is “distracted” by her, a voiceover tells us, and the viewer is shown a scene of Samson and Delilah together in her boudoir. They are never too intimate, however, lest some viewers be offended by overt sex in a biblical film or even by kissing on the mouth when one of the parties is black and the other white. Unlike the catand-mouse game they play in the biblical story, Samson freely divulges the secret of his strength to Delilah: if his hair were cut, God would take away his strength. By including Delilah, in tears, in the scene in which Samson destroys the temple, the film suggests that she feels remorseful about betraying Samson for payment. In the end, however, “Homeland” misses the opportunity to explore Samson’s relationship to either Delilah or his god. In spite of Samson’s profession that, though blind, he “can see [God] more clearly than ever,” both he and Delilah are essentially onedimensional characters—more functions, as in the biblical story, than full-fledged filmic creations. “Homeland” preaches the Bible unreflectively to its viewers by showing that Samson has a mission—to fight the Philistines—and he carries it out. “It’s why God created you,” his mother tells him.

Camille Saint-Saëns’s opera, Samson et Dalila There are numerous film versions of Saint-Saëns’s opera. As is typical in opera, where music takes precedence over plot, the characters in Samson et Dalila are not developed and the libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire has only the bare bones of a storyline. Samson is a hero who leads his people to an initial victory over the Philistines. His weakness is his love for Delilah, and, although he tries to resist her, he cannot, and so reveals his secret (the actual betrayal scene is not represented on stage). Delilah’s motive for betraying Samson is not well explained. She does not do it in return for payment, but, rather, she wants revenge on behalf of her god and her people, which suggests that religion and nationalism play a role: Dalila

 Samson is often referred to as a freedom fighter, but, as we know, one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist, a view of Samson suggested by the conclusion to the Flanders Opera Company’s production of Camille Saint-Saëns’s opera, Samson et Dalila, discussed below. In a judicious discussion of how to preach a sermon on the Samson story, Joseph Jeter comments simply, “Samson was a terrorist. At least he was if you were a Philistine” (Jeter, Jr. , ). On terrorist as one aspect of Samson’s complex characterization in the Bible, see Exum (,  – ).

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venge en ce jour/Son dieu, son peuple et sa haine [Delilah has today avenged her god, her people, and her hatred]. The music gives Delilah greater depth than the libretto; in particular, the musical score of the love duet she sings with Samson just before the betrayal conveys a genuine intensity of passion on her part. After the betrayal, Delilah is brought back on the scene in order to have her die in the temple. She and the chief priest ridicule Samson for falling into her trap, urging him to entertain them by repeating to her his tender avowals of love. They revile his god and give thanks and glory to Dagon. As they stand before the sacrificial altar, awaiting an epiphany, they get one vastly different from what they anticipate: Samson, empowered by his god, pulls down the temple upon them all. A classic film version of the San Francisco Opera in 1981 (dir. Nicolas Joel) boasts impressive performances by Placido Domingo and Shirley Verrett. Domingo reprises the role of Samson in the 1988 Metropolitan Opera version, with Olga Borodina as Delilah, and Domingo and Borodina also appear in a 2002 television movie from La Scala (dir. Pierre Cavassilas). Jon Vickers and Shirley Verrett sing the lead roles in the 1981 Royal Opera Covent Garden performance. All these distinguished performances take what one might describe as a traditional operatic approach. The set design, though it may vary from “oriental” (SFO) to minimalist abstract (the Met), is fairly conventional and does not get in the way of the music, and the action appears to take place in biblical times. Some performances modernize the story by relocating it to the contemporary Middle East, either explicitly or by suggestion. Israeli Omri Nitzan and Palestinian Amir Nizar Zuabi, the stage directors of the 2009 production by the Flanders Opera Company (dir. Willy Vanduren), intentionally evoke the modern Middle Eastern political climate to explore the tensions between different peoples and religions. The production elicited a good deal of controversy for identifying Samson and the Israelites with the Palestinians and the Philistines with modern-day Israelis. The Philistine High Priest wears a yarmulke. To demonstrate the Philistines’ depravity, he has rough sex with Delilah, who, for her part, is clearly a prostitute. Soldiers dance with their rifles in the Bacchanale, demonstrating the oppressors’ obsession with their military superiority, and Samson, who is not blind, is a suicide bomber who dons a belt of dynamite sticks to enact the final destruction, at which point the curtain falls. An abandoned oil camp with three oil rigs in the background serves as the scene of the Badisches Staatstheater 2010 production, directed by José Cura, who also designed the set and sings the lead role (with Julia Gertseva as Delilah). Cura invents a role for children from the rival groups, who play together peacefully, a sign of hope for a better future. The blinded Samson does not bring down the temple at the end but rather wrecks the drilling rigs, which begin to collapse as the curtain falls. Unlike the performances mentioned above, all of which are films of stage productions, Corina Van Eijk’s Samson and Delilah (2006) for Opera Spanga, which she founded in 1989, is a feature film whose locations call to mind the Middle East. The decadent Philistines ride around the barren countryside in automobiles

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(and have sex in them); Samson, however, rides a donkey to his fatal assignation with Delilah. The weapons are modern. From the opening scene of a brutal execution of Hebrew prisoners of war, the gratuitous sex and violence in this production—surely a challenge for the singers—are apparently included for shock value, to make complacent audiences look at the combat between the Israelites and Philistines in a different way. Although not the case with all the subtitles, liberties are taken with the English translation from the original French libretto to make it as offensive as possible. The sex is bizarre and comical by turns, and some scenes have to be seen to be believed, such as the dozen or so women giving birth in the Bacchanale (no dancing here). The blinded Samson is subjected to horrific abuse, but he and his god get their vengeance when Samson, wearing a flamboyant flamingo pink suit, electrocutes everyone by putting two live wires together.

Films Entitled “Samson and Delilah” A film might have the title Samson and Delilah, even though it is not about the biblical characters at all, raising the question, What kind of associations with the famous biblical figures does the filmmaker have in mind? Regardless of what one knows about Samson and Delilah, they are a pair, their names inextricably linked, ill-fated though they may be as lovers. Films that depart from the biblical story but, at the same time, rely on the characters’ names to convey something about them, have the freedom to explore their protagonists’ relationship in whatever way they choose. In Samson and Delilah (prod. Donald Mcwhinnie, 1959), a short television play adapted from a story by D. H. Lawrence, set in Cornwall against the background of the First World War, a man, having abandoned his wife and child some sixteen years earlier, simply returns one day. At first, though she senses the man may be her husband, his wife vehemently denies it, and has the man bound and thrown out of her inn by soldiers who are staying there. He breaks free (though not like Samson, since the men loosen the ropes so he can get away) and returns later. This time she accepts him without much ado, though he has little to say for himself, except that he has not come back in the expectation that she will support him, since he has more than a thousand pounds. Warwick Thornton’s Samson and Delilah (2009) is a bleak film, and searing social commentary on the wretchedness and tedium of Aboriginal life in central Australia.¹⁴ Two teenagers from an Australian Aboriginal community near Alice Springs seek to escape their miserable lives only to encounter more misery and misfortune before finally Samson is saved from himself by the indomitable Delilah. They live under a bridge, and Samson spends his time sniffing petrol, while Delilah is both  In a review of the film, Germaine Greer () speaks of the “pointlessness” the film seeks to convey: “Country is the glory and the dream that Aboriginal people have lost and can never find again.”

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abused by white hooligans and, some time later, hit by a car. When she returns from the hospital, she takes Samson back with her to the Aboriginal community and they settle on its outskirts. Nothing much has changed. There is little connection to the biblical story besides the protagonists’ names and symbolic haircuts: Delilah cuts her hair when her grandmother dies, and Samson cuts his when he thinks he has lost Delilah. The film won the Caméra d’Or for best first feature film at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.

Conclusion The possibilities for films with Samson and Delilah in their title, or films that play variations on the Samson-and-Delilah theme, are numerous. Whoever sets out to film the biblical story, on the other hand, is, to some extent, restrained by it, especially by the not very satisfying ending where the hero is betrayed and dies. The Bible leaves many questions about Samson and Delilah unanswered, questions that cinematic versions of the story must attempt to answer in some way. Who was Delilah? Did she love Samson? Why did she betray him? Why did Samson reveal to her the secret of his strength? Did he understand his god-given mission? Was he no more than a tool in a divine plan with no choice of his own? In attempting to answer such questions, the films discussed here give viewers various possibilities to consider, and the more complex their answers, the more likely viewers will be to raise critical questions when reading the text. Did Delilah love Samson? Just consider the gamut of emotions displayed by DeMille’s Delilah. Through their focus on Delilah, the films encourage viewers to see the story from a different perspective from that of the Bible, though one still biased in favor of Samson and Israel. None of the cinematic attempts at gap filling discussed here is as satisfying as DeMille’s, not only for its scope and meticulous attention to detail but also for the pleasure modern viewers can take in the subversiveness of the stars’ exaggerated gender performances, with Victor Mature impersonating a macho man, and Hedy Lamarr infusing the role of vamp with an “excess of femininity.”¹⁵ Whether or not anyone can present the story as effectively as DeMille remains to be seen.

 The term is Mary Ann Doane’s (, ); also see her discussion of femininity as masquerade ( – ). Mature and Lamarr’s overt performances of masculinity and femininity destabilize the distinctions between the natural and the artificial and open a space for a radical critique of traditional constructions of sex, gender, and desire within the heterosexual matrix (Butler ,  – ,  – ). On the flexibility of the spectator’s subject positioning and multiple cross-gender positions of identification, pleasure, desire, and fantasy; see Babington and Evans (,  – ) and Stacey (,  – ). On gender performance in DeMille’s Samson and Delilah in relation to Roeg’s Samson and Delilah, see Exum (a,  – ).

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Works Cited Babington, Bruce, and Peter William Evans. 1993. Biblical Epics: Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Doane, Mary Ann. 1987. The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s. Houndmills: Macmillan. Elley, Derek. 1984. The Epic Film: Myth and History. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Exum, J. Cheryl. 1983. “The Theological Dimension of the Samson Saga.” Vetus Testamentum 33: 30 – 45. —. 2012a. Plotted, Shot, and Painted: Cultural Representations of Biblical Women [1996]. 2nd rev. ed. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press. —. 2012b. “Samson and his God: Modern Culture Reads the Bible.” In Words, Ideas, Worlds: Biblical Essays in Honour of Yairah Amit. Ed. Athalya Brenner and Frank H. Polak. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press. Pp. 70 – 92. —. 2014. “The Many Faces of Samson.” In Samson: Hero or Fool? Ed. Erik Eynikel and Tobias Nicklas. Leiden: Brill. Pp. 13 – 31. Faludi, Susan. 1992. Backlash: The Undeclared War against Women. London: Vintage. Greer, Germaine. 2010. “What a Petrol-sniffing Aboriginal Boy Tells Us about Australia Today.” The Guardian (March 28): http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/mar/28/germaine-greersam son-and-delilah; accessed February 19, 2015. Jabotinsky Ze’ev. 1976. Samson [1927]. Johannesburg: Jewish Herald Pty. Jeter, Joseph R., Jr. 2014. Preaching Judges. St Louis, MO: Chalice Press. Kozlovic, Anton Karl. 2006. “Making a ‘Bad’ Woman Wicked: The Devilish Construction of Delilah within Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949).” McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry 7: 70 – 102. Linklater, Eric. 1966. Husband of Delilah [1962]. London: Pan Books. Mulvey, Laura. 1989. Visual and Other Pleasures. London: Macmillan. Oltmann, Katrin. 2003. “‘The final act is yet to be played …’: Gender Performance and Masquerade in Alexander Korda’s Samson and Delilah.” In Performance and Performativity in German Cultural Studies. Ed. Carolin Duttlinger, Lucia Ruprecht, and Andrew Webber. Bern: Peter Lang. Pp. 103 – 20. Shepherd, David J. 2013. The Bible on Silent Film: Spectacle, Story and Scripture in the Early Cinema. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stacey, Jackie. 1994. Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship. London: Routledge.

Films Cited The Bible (prod. Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, 2013, LightWorkers Media, US/UK). Biceps of Steel (dir. Julien Temple, 1980, GTO Films, UK). D. H. Lawrence’s Samson and Delilah (dir. Mark Peploe, 1985, Flamingo Pictures, UK). The Greatest Heroes of the Bible Series [“Samson and Delilah”; Season 1, Episode 2] (dir. James L. Conway, 1978, Sunn Classic Productions, US). ITV Play of the Week [“The Stories of D. H. Lawrence #4: Samson and Delilah,” Season 11, Episode 21] (dir. Peter Plummer, 1966, Granada Television, UK).

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Saint-Saëns, Camille. Samson et Dalila. Badisches Staatstheater, Karlsruhe. Conducted by Jochem Hochstenbach, with José Cura and Julia Gertseva. Recorded 2010. Dir. José Cura, 2011, DVD). — Samson et Dalila. Flanders Opera Company, Antwerp. Conducted by Tomá Netopil. With Torsten Kerl and Marinna Tarasova. Recorded 2009. Dir. Willy Vanduren, 2011, DVD. — Samson et Dalila. La Scala, Milan. Conducted by Gary Bertini, with Placido Domingo and Olga Borodina. Recorded 2002. Dir. Pierre Cavassilas, 2002, DVD. — Samson et Dalila. Metropolitan Opera, New York. Conducted by James Levine, with Placido Domingo and Olga Borodina. Recorded 1998. Dir. Unknown, 2004, DVD — Samson et Dalila. Opera Spanga, Amsterdam. Conducted by Unknown with Charles Alvez da Cruz and Klara Uleman. Recorded 2006. Dir. Corina Van Eijk, 2008, DVD. — Samson et Dalila. The Royal Opera Covent Garden, London. Conducted by Colin Davis, with Jon Vickers and Shirley Verrett. Recorded 1981. Dir. Unknown, 2011, DVD. — Samson et Dalila. San Francisco Opera, San Francisco. Conducted by Julius Rudel, with Placido Domingo and Shirley Verrett. Recorded 1981. Dir. Nicolas Joel, 2001, DVD. Samson (dir. Albert Capellani, 1908, Pathé Frères, FR). Samson and Delilah (dir. Edwin J. Collins, 1922, Master Film Company, UK). Samson and Delilah (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1949, Paramount, US). Samson and Delilah (prod. Donald Mcwhinnie, 1959, BBC Television, UK). Samson and Delilah (dir. Lee Philips, 1984 Cornworld Productions, US). Samson and Delilah (dir. Nicolas Roeg, 1996, Lux Vide, IT/DE/US). Samson and Delilah (dir. Warwick Thornton, 2009, CAAMA Productions, AU). Samson et Dalila (dir. Ferdinand Zecca, 1902, Pathé Frères, FR). Samson und Delila (dir. Alexander Korda, 1922, Corda Film Consortium, AU).

Matthew Page

6 There Might Be Giants: King David on the Big (and Small) Screen From the scribes and court historians who first preserved the tales of David son of Jesse, through to Michelangelo, Caravaggio and beyond, the narratives surrounding Israel’s most famous king have long appealed to storytellers and artists alike. Little wonder then that, as cinema was invented, grew, and matured, that David’s story would be one of those that filmmakers would be keen to bring to the silver screen. Episodes such as David’s slaying of Goliath and his affair with Bathsheba have been particularly popular, hardly surprising given the medium’s penchant for action and romance. From these however emerge two key themes, which arise, again and again, in films about David: heroism and human fallibility.

The Silent Era¹ It wasn’t until 1908 that Kalem released the first film about David, Sidney Olcott’s David and Goliath. Olcott is better known for directing the first version of Ben Hur (1907) and for his feature length film about the life of Christ, From the Manger to the Cross (1912). At only 800 feet David and Goliath was certainly simpler fare than those and “the film’s main emphasis was on the gaining strength through faith” (Campbell/Pitts 1981, 2). The following year J. Stuart Blackton filmed Saul and David (1909) for Vitagraph. Blackton’s film includes the famous duel with Goliath, but places it against the wider backdrop of the ensuing tension between Saul and his would-be successor. One of the key elements in this tension is David’s relationship with Saul’s two daughters Michal and Merab. Michal clearly loves David, even offering him a flower at the end of their first scene. Saul, however, is determined to pair David with Merab. Only once Saul has died, and David has become king, does he get to marry his beloved Michal. Many of Blackton’s ideas here derive from Arnold Reeves and Wright Lorimer’s 1903 stage play The Shepherd King (Shepherd 2013, 67). It would not be long before the most prolific creators of silent Bible films, Pathé Frères, brought out their own version of the story of David, filming it in several parts, all directed by Henri Andréani. The first, David et Goliath (1910), produced using some kind of early color process, starts, somewhat unusually, with a close up of the actors playing David, Goliath, and Saul, followed by each actor’s billing.² Samuel

 For further discussion of biblical reception in silent films, see Shepherd’s chapter in Part I (Pp.  – ).  Two slightly different versions of this film remain today. A truncated version can be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOtrFxzvk, accessed on February , .

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anoints David just as the Philistines declare war and his brothers are called up. But whilst David begs to join them, Jesse and Samuel refuse. However, David’s chance to prove himself is not long in coming. In the following scene David defends his sheep not from a wolf, bear, or lion, but from an eagle. Later, in an oddly comedic scene, David’s bread is stolen by some boys. David pulls out his sling, fells one of them and retrieves his bread. For the second half of the film, the same set represents the Israelite camp and the battlefield. Hearing Goliath’s challenge go unanswered, David hangs his head in shame and volunteers, pointing to the sky as he accepts the challenge. David and Goliath circle each other in this limited space, until Goliath is closest to the camera. Goliath falls, writhes and dies. An epilogue shows David with a crown on his head parading through the town on a horse, whilst a soldier follows grimly behind, carrying Goliath’s head on a stick.

Fig. 10: Goliath issues a challenge to Saul’s camp in David et Goliath (1910)

The second part of Pathé’s David series, David et Saül (1912), used a different color process, but picked up where the previous film left off ‒ the immediate aftermath of David’s victory over Goliath. Saul is far more central on this occasion, and he and his equally beefy son Jonathan dwarf David, who seems slender even in comparison to Saul’s daughter Michal. David’s victories and public acclaim drive Saul to madness and then to his pursuit of David, with the film coming to a head when Saul seeks temporary refuge in the cave which David and his men are using as their hideout. It is interesting to note how expectations surrounding these early

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films vary. For example, despite David et Saül sticking fairly rigorously to 1 Samuel, a reviewer in Motion Picture World still requested that future offerings provided “a closer following of the text” (“Saul and David” 1912, 118). A year later, Andréani’s third installment, La mort de Saül (1912, a.k.a. The Death of Saul), demonstrated a noticeable improvement in quality, particularly in an impressive scene in which a large crowd of Philistines rushes past the camera into the battle. In many ways these scenes compare favorably with those in D. W. Griffith’s famous Judith of Bethulia the following year. Again color is used effectively. Whilst it primarily uses the same process as David et Saül, one or two scenes, such as those with the Witch of Endor, use color filters to achieve a more expressive effect. The closing moments of the film are shown fulfilling the prophetic words of Samuel’s apparition (1 Sam. 28:19), as paraphrased in an intertitle: Thy armies shall be delivered into the hands of the Philistines Thy sons shall perish Thy sword shall avenge the God of Israel!

Whilst La mort de Saül is about the same length as David et Saül, it takes things much more slowly. There is greater emphasis on Saul’s character and internal state than on the events that are happening around him. When Saul visits the Witch of Endor, the film includes an interesting shot of Saul, “crawling anxiously forward in a narrow rock cleft – as if to emphasize his increasing sense of paranoia and entrapment” (Abel 1994, 319). That same year Andréani also released Absalon (1912), released in English speaking countries as A Prince of Israel, one of four films in two years featuring Absalom’s rebellion and his karmic comeuppance (Dumont 2009, 62). Amongst the others was David, King of Israel (dir. Unknown, 1912), which, like David et Goliath before it, featured Goliath’s severed head being paraded around.³ Production standards were markedly below that of its contemporaries, and it was marred by the fact that “unconvincing mattes of Jerusalem’s walls and Palestinian Palm trees stand behind overrobed actors with ringlet beards, and the scenarios are too quick and characterless” (Solomon 2001, 166). Another film released that year, titled simply David (dir. Unknown, 1912), now appears lost (Campbell/Pitts 1981, 4). After a period of seven pictures in five years only four more films about David would be made in the remainder of the silent era, two of which would be feature length films.⁴ The first of these features, William V. Mong’s The Chosen Prince (1917), was also known by the title Friendship of David and Jonathan, though the story ran from David’s victory over Goliath to the death of Saul (Dumont 2009,

 The other two films that included Absalom’s rebellion were the French film Le sacrifice d’Absalon (dir. Gérard Bourgeois, ) and the U.S. film David’s War with Absalom (dir. Unknown, ).  The other two are David (dir. Harry Southwell, , a.k.a. The Seventh Commandment) and Le berceau de dieu (dir. Fred Leroy-Granville, , a.k.a. The Cradle of God).

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62– 63). Better known however is The Shepherd King (1923), directed by J. Gordon Edwards, which featured several hand colored scenes. Like Blackton’s Saul and David, it based its plot on, and took its title from a play by Reeves and Lorimer. A far more significant trend was also apparent. Like La mort de Saül, The Shepherd King also provided a longer running time and far greater spectacle than the earlier David films including a scene featuring a “huge crowd of fifteen thousand extras hired from the army of Emir Abdullah of Transjordania” (Solomon 2001, 166). Nevertheless it fared poorly at the box office compared to Cecil B. DeMille’s first The Ten Commandments (1923), which provided spectacle on a far greater scale. The move from the earliest silents to the birth of talking pictures had seen substantial evolution in the genre from short, statically-filmed tableaux of the biblical narratives to longer, grander epics with far greater nuance in terms of character depth and plot.

David in the Golden Age of Biblical Epics It would be almost thirty years until the story of David reached the big screen again. Spurred on by the success of another, epic, DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949), Henry King directed David and Bathsheba (1951), starring Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward. Yet in contrast to DeMille’s film and the swathes of biblical epics that would follow in its wake, David and Bathsheba is distinctly low-key. It offers a very downbeat portrayal of David set long after his glory days. Peck is still attractive and heroic, yet he is emotionally guarded and seemingly bored. He lacks the passion of the famed psalmist and the unwavering confidence of the shepherd boy who slew a giant. The film begins outside the Ammonite city of Rabbah, where, in contrast to the biblical narrative, David is present with his soldiers rather than at home in Jerusalem. David spurns Joab’s advice and heads towards the city on a dangerous mission, seemingly so bored as to put himself in harm’s way. His early incursion into enemy territory betrays his internal crisis as he strives for the life of excitement he has left behind. Such heroics would also have enabled much of the original audience to identify with David. The film was released just six years after the end of World War II and doubtless many could relate to this man returning home from the army and having to re-adjust to civilian life and take his place in society again. The film also introduces other modern concerns such as suggesting the mature David’s estrangement from the faith of his childhood. His responsibilities, his loveless marriages, the death of his best friend, and no doubt his time fleeing Saul, have blunted his relationship with God and left him feeling ambivalent about religious faith. “David is split between his symbolic mandate as king and what he believes to be the ‘real’ David, David the man” (Kelso 2002, 172). Visually his old life in the open countryside is contrasted with his new life trapped in his new place of work, the palace. It is no surprise then that he first spies Bathsheba when taking in the

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fresh breeze afforded by the roof of his palace or that their relationship only really becomes emotionally intimate when they escape to the country.

Fig. 11: Bathsheba bathing on a rooftop in David and Bathsheba (1951)

That is not to say that their illicit relationship is bathed in glory.⁵ The film shows both David and Bathsheba as culpable for both their adultery and for the subsequent death of Bathsheba’s husband Uriah. In an era when often filmmakers attempted to redeem biblical characters and turn the story around, so that even Salome is shown dancing to save John the Baptist (Salome, dir. William Dieterle, 1953), this film is content to display the weakness of one of the Hebrew Bible’s favorite heroes. Nevertheless, it does soften the blow somewhat. Whilst David wastes no time in getting acquainted with Bathsheba, we learn it is she who had deliberately put herself in his view.⁶ Furthermore, Uriah is painted as an uninterested husband, spending only six nights with his wife in seven months; even refusing to visit her when he is strongly encouraged to by his hero the king. Moreover, David’s fatal instructions to Joab are predicated largely on Uriah’s own wishes and martyr complex. As David observes “His dreams of glory are his wife in tears.” As in the biblical account, David and Bathsheba’s adultery leads to God’s judgment, the death of their child, their exposure by the prophet Nathan, and (added by the film) the people’s recognition that the drought they have been suffering is a result of David and Bathsheba’s sin. The people want to punish David and Bathsheba according to the law. Meanwhile Bathsheba has forced David to glimpse into his past and re-enact his relationship with God. This is epitomized by David playing the lyre for Bathsheba. At first his performance is strangely emotionless and stoic, yet as he sings “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” something clicks inside him and

 Indeed the  s Production Code decreed that adultery “must not be […] justified, or presented attractively” (cited in Jacobs , ).  As Exum notes this is in contrast to the biblical account, which gives no indication that Bathsheba intended to be seen. Exum outlines the long history of blaming Bathsheba for seducing David even though the original author has no concern for Bathsheba’s motives. “By denying her subjectivity the narrator violates the character he created” (Exum ,  – ).

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he feels compelled to return to the tabernacle (which has remained outside the city) to face God (symbolized by the Ark of the Covenant). Therein, David confesses his weakness but also pleads with God for divine mercy, which has been in short supply so far. Earlier in the film David had been clearly deeply disturbed by the death of Uzzah as he reached out to prevent the ark from falling (2 Sam. 6:7), yet now his plea culminates in him repeating the action, forcing God to decide whether to strike him down, like Uzzah, or to become more merciful. What is remarkable about the film is that God responds to David’s almost suicidal attempt to obtain divine mercy. As David touches the ark, lightning strikes and David’s life flashes before his eyes; yet this is not David’s death by electrocution, but his resuscitation. “David has moved God by his superior perception of him to a phase of higher activity” (Babington/Evans 1993, 82). With the trip into his youth complete, David’s release from his spiritual drought is mirrored by Israel’s release from their physical drought, as the rain finally pours down demonstrating to David’s subjects that God has forgiven him. It is noticeable that whilst David and Bathsheba is primarily a biblical epic it also touches on a variety of other genres and other films in particular. Most notably it recalls another Peck film, the psychoanalytical thriller, Spellbound (1945) directed by Alfred Hitchcock. There as well Peck’s character is emotionally estranged, partly as a result of the death of his brother. That film also culminates in a revelation of the past, which provides drive and direction for the future as it restores the hero to wholeness. Babington and Evan also recognize the influence of other genres: “Film Noir, 1940s Melodrama (particularly the romantic ’Women’s Picture’), and the Western pastoral” (Babington/Evans 1993, 74). Ultimately, King’s David and Bathsheba seems to support David’s skepticism and unease with the current revelation of God, and subtly points to a future, greater revelation of God in the form of one of David’s descendants. Most notably this is highlighted in a scene where an adulteress (dressed appropriately in red) is stoned, with strong echoes of John 8:2– 11. Yet here there is no reprieve. As David is compromised, he cannot intervene as his descendant will, and to audiences familiar with the Johannine story, his inaction is almost unbearable. The tension created by this scene, occurring as it does so shortly after the equally troubling death of Uzzah, prompts the question that dominates the film: Is God forgiving and merciful or inflexible and cruel? At the opposite end of the spectrum from David and Bathsheba’s big budget and famous film stars, the Living Bible Series began filming episodes from the gospels around the same time. These first episodes were released in 1952, with an Acts series following in 1957, and episodes from the Hebrew Bible arriving in 1958. This low budget series stuck very rigidly to the text of Living Bible. David featured in three installments, all of which were directed by Edward Dew: David, A Young Hero; David, A King of Israel; and Solomon, A Man of Wisdom. The most notable aspect of these productions is the break between the first two episodes, which also marks the point at which the actor playing David changes. Most David films change actors shortly after

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his felling of Goliath, suggesting it is this action that turns him into a man. Here, however, it is fleeing Saul and living a life on the run that ages him. The success of King’s David and Bathsheba (which was 1951’s highest grossing film) led to three more David films being made in the following thirteen years. The first of these, the Italian David e Golia (dir. Ferdinando Baldi/Richard Pottier, 1959) also featured a major Hollywood star, Orson Welles. Nearly two decades after he burst onto the scene as both director and actor, Welles was now a hefty screen presence and his heavy, glistening body evokes memories of his role the previous year as the corrupt cop Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil (1958). The impression of corruption and decay is only heightened by the cheap and poorly lit throne room set and the generally amateurish feel of the production as a whole. One of the most interesting things about this film is that all three of the major players are developed as characters. The film’s early scenes keep the three in isolation, working hard to help the audience connect with them and build a back-story. It is particularly effective in the case of Goliath who is shown to be a loner, living outside normal society. His only “friend” is really seeking to sell his labor to the Philistine kings. This sense of isolation is heightened by the bold and unusual soundtrack that is heard when Goliath is on screen. The orchestral music that features for most of the film is replaced by more esoteric sounds such as the theremin and the saw, evoking sci-fi and monster B-movies and emphasizing the otherness of the monstrous Goliath. The film’s portrayal of David adds several key scenes including one where his girlfriend is killed, leaving him feeling some bitterness towards God, and another which is strongly reminiscent of Jesus’ clearing of the temple, emphasizing David as a prototype Christ. Other features are markedly different however, such as the hero’s muscle-bound physicality. Just six years later another Italian film would feature David. Saul e David (1964) was directed by Marcello Baldi, a stalwart of Italian “Peplum” films such as Goliath and the Dragon (1960) and I grandi condottieri (1965, a.k.a. Gideon and Samson). The magnificent scene from 1 Samuel 26 in which David spares Saul’s life for a second time, opens with one of the finest shots of any biblical film. The previous shot of Saul’s camp in the distance, its lights twinkling in the darkness of the night, fades into a slow panning shot of the hills. As the pan continues, Saul’s camp emerges in the foreground and the camera tracks past sleeping soldiers before pausing momentarily on Abner’s face and then on Saul who lies asleep with his water jug at his side. It pans again along Saul’s body until it encounters his javelin at the feet of someone standing over him. A slow pan upwards reveals the face of David (Gianni Garko). Outwardly Garko cuts a heroic figure, his blond good looks and confidence winning over audiences, as well as almost everyone who comes into contact with his character. Yet Garko manages to convey David’s inner pain with his eyes. The shot described above displays his love for Saul, but also his sorrow that his king still wishes him dead. What is interesting about David’s heroic stature is that this had been the role held by Saul before him. Few films really attempt to portray this connection between

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Saul and David, but Saul e David captures it brilliantly in the opening scene. As Saul arrives back at camp following his victory over the Amalekites the people swarm round him. He is clearly their hero though he is seemingly swept away by their euphoria. When Samuel arrives to chastise him for not following God’s commands to the letter, Saul expresses his doubts that the prophet even hears God. The scene ends with Samuel declaring “you will grow smaller and smaller” and with that the film cuts to a series of quick shots of huge tents being collapsed as the army prepares to return home. The heroic link between Saul and David is emphasized when Saul first encounters the young shepherd boy. “You’re the ghost of my boyhood come to mock me” mutters Saul to the child that stands before him. David’s puny stature casts a stark contrast with Goliath. This is one of the rare occasions that a David film portrays the giant at what would seem to be around nine and a half feet. It is also one of the bloodiest befellings of the man from Gath, with blood spurting in Tarantino-esque fashion from his forehead. From then on the story focuses on Saul’s obsession with David and his perceived threat and superiority. It is an intimate portrayal which really draws out the tension in Saul’s family (Michal, Jonathan) whose presence only serves to twist the knife. The other David biopic from this era was the British/Israeli production A Story of David (dir. Bob McNaught, 1960), which is the only modern-era David film to exclude David’s victory over Goliath. Bravely, the film starts its tale during the period when David is well established at court, prominent in Israel’s army and married to Saul’s daughter, Michal. Limiting the narrative to the story of David fleeing from Saul and surviving with his forces in the wild draws out the inherent tension in this part of the story. It also highlights some of the more minor characters in the stories such as Doeg the Edomite, Abiathar, and Abigail. Ultimately though, the plot begins to peter out. The final scene where David and Joab sneak past Doeg into Saul’s tent lacks both a sufficiently strong resolution and enough tension to provide a satisfactory ending.

Intermission: David-Figures, Echoes, and Allusions From this point forward David’s appearances on the silver screen, at least in a traditional Bible film, would be strictly limited. Instead, the figure of David began to be found more often on television and video and in films that touched on David’s story in a more allegorical fashion, by telling stories focused on a David-figure.⁷ While they have received less scholarly attention than Christ-figure films, Davidfigure films practically constitute their own sub-genre. A significant number of sport

 The categorization and classification as what constitutes a Christ-figure, Moses-figure, David-figure, etc. has been much debated including discussion as to what criteria should be used to determine the legitimacy of such a comparison and the filmmakers’ intentions. See Malone (); Walsh (); Burnette-Bletsch ().

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films are, at heart, a reworking of the story of David and Goliath. Perhaps the most well known example of these films is the Rocky franchise about a part-time boxer who, thanks to a last minute injury, gets a chance to fight the world champion. Having never taken his training that seriously he begins training in earnest, including the now iconic scene where he ascends the steps leading up to the Philadelphia Museum of Art symbolizing his rise to prominence in the City of Brotherly Love. There are clear echoes of David’s story in this tale of a small time boxer fighting against the world champion, Apollo Creed. Numerous other sports films also pit an underdog David-figure against a Goliath-figure who would, ordinarily, be expected to win easily. These can be the story of individual competitors (The Karate Kid, Cinderella Man, Seabiscuit) or entire teams (Any Given Sunday, Dodgeball, Lagaan, Cool Runnings, Moneyball). Hoosiers (dir. David Anspaugh, 1986) is particularly notable as it specifically references the story of David and Goliath. When a small rural town’s basketball team defies the odds to reach the state championship final, they face a school with a vast size advantage. In contrast to his usual practice, coach Norman Dale allows two pastors to have the final words before the start of the match. One of them speaks the words from 1 Sam. 17:49, “And David put his hand in the bag and took out a stone and slung it. It struck the Philistine on the head and he fell to the ground.” This tradition of David-figures is one that goes right back to the silent era. The most notable example occurs in one of the early films by the director of David and Bathsheba, Henry King. King’s 1921 film Tol’able David tells the story of a young man (David) desperate to prove himself a man, particularly in the eyes of his mother. The parallel between this David and the one who fought Goliath is highlighted by “David’s mother […] reading about David and Goliath to her son” (Babington/ Evans 1993, 70). Ultimately David gets his opportunity to prove his worth, though only after he loses a mailbag, which is then found by the film’s villain, Iscah Hatburn. When Hatburn refuses to give it back, a fight ensues in which David kills both Iscah and his older brother and rescues the mailbag. David’s heroics are enough to convince his mother and the other townspeople that, far from being just a boy, David is a hero. Whilst Tol’able David culminates with a literal battle, other films use the tale of David and Goliath more metaphorically. Numerous films evoke the story as they portray a battle against corruption or injustice, such as 1976’s All the President’s Men. The film frequently uses a dioptric lens to give an unusually large depth of field, frequently emphasizing the smallness of its heroes. One shot in particular epitomizes this approach. As Nixon wins the Republican Party nomination his face is shown in close up on a television in Redford’s office. Redford sits at his desk deep in the background and dwarfed by a Goliath-sized image of Nixon’s face. All the President’s Men would be a major influence on another film, which intentionally references David and Goliath, the Julia Roberts vehicle Erin Brockovich (dir.

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Steven Soderbergh, 2000).⁸ Brockovich is a single mum who manages to convince the boss of a small legal firm to let her work for them. When she finds some case papers that she cannot understand, she travels to Hinkley to meet the local people who are involved in a case with the local power plant. Stirred by their story, Brockovich persuades her boss to continue to pursue the case when lawyers for the power plant try to use their muscle to persuade the plaintiffs to accept a low offer. When Brockovich’s boss tries to explain how this has become a much bigger case, Brockovich suggests “Kinda like David and what’s-his-name?” Her boss offers the terse reply: “Kinda like David and what’s-his-name’s whole fucking family.” Arguably the most ambitious attempt to draw parallels with the David and Goliath story is Paul Haggis’s 2007 film In the Valley of Elah. ⁹ The plot concerns former soldier Hank (Tommy Lee Jones) and his lone investigation into the disappearance and subsequent death of his youngest son, Mike – a veteran of the Iraq war. The film’s title comes from the location of the Israelite camp prior to David’s duel with Goliath (1 Sam. 17:2, 19), but the biblical story is touched upon in other ways as well. In a pivotal scene, Hank tells the story of David and Goliath to his friend’s son, David. Hank tells David that he is named after Israel’s heroic king and proceeds to tell the story in his own words, emphasizing David’s bravery and how he had first defeated “his own fear.” From there on the David and Goliath story is explored via two different lines of narrative inquiry. On the one hand Hank’s quest for truth, in the face of the stoic and immovable megalith of the army increasingly resembles the quest of a David-figure. Whilst Hank does not emerge with a cast iron victory, he does manage to uncover and extract a certain amount of information. Yet, on the other hand, the information Hank uncovers undermines his confidence in the military and makes him question his reliance on myths glorifying violence such as that of David and Goliath. Having read David the story, Hank eventually “realizes that his instinctive patriotism was an inappropriate reaction to the war in Iraq and that the love of the military and its values which he passed on to Mike contributed to his death” (Horne 2010). The film goes further suggesting that “the story of David and Goliath as told to the young David Sanders by Hank Deerfield is part of the façade of war” (Horne 2010). At the end of the film, David’s mother retells the biblical story in her own  The year before Erin Brockovich, Michael Mann’s The Insider () also pitted the story of a crusading underdog against a powerful corporation. Russell Crowe starred as Jeffrey Wigand, a research scientist who is sacked by the tobacco company Brown & Williamson. When CBS producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) makes contact, Wigand agrees to speak out about how the tobacco industry knew and had exploited the fact that cigarettes are addictive. Eventually the battle turns into CBS against Brown & Williamson.  In the same year that In the Valley of Elah was released, the George Clooney legal thriller Michael Clayton () drew on a similar theme in its story of a legal fixer who begins to investigate one of his firm’s major clients after his colleague’s apparent mental breakdown and subsequent death. The following year Tim Disney’s American Violet () told the story of a young, single mother’s fight for justice against an unfair arrest at the hands of a corrupt justice system.

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words, further highlighting its thematic centrality, but more significantly demonstrating how different versions of the same story can coexist, with radically different ideological agendas. When David asks his mother “You think he was scared?” she replies, “Yeah, I think he would have been really scared.”

From Cinema to Television As the golden era of the biblical epic drew to a close at the end of the 1960s, portrayals of David on film had largely moved from the cinema to the television screen. The new format not only opened up the potential for larger audiences, but also offered the possibility of longer running times enabling filmmakers to cover more of the David story, or to more fully develop its characters. One of the earliest such television films, 1976’s The Story of David (dir. David Lowell Rich/Alex Segal), made full use of these opportunities, running to roughly three hours, covering almost all of the episodes in David’s life, and using the twopart format to deal with events in 1 Samuel in part one, whilst covering the events of 2 Samuel in episode two. It also featured a strong cast including the British trio Jane Seymour, Brian Blessed, and Anthony Quayle, with Quayle’s sympathetic portrayal of Saul being particularly impressive. Even David himself shares this sympathy, sharing a joke with Saul in the earlier scenes and being reluctant to claim Saul’s throne while he is alive. The series also strove for historical authenticity. David’s singing, for example, required “microtonal mordents” whilst the accompaniment was “limited for the most part to harp and tambourine” (Solomon 2001, 170). Yet, despite this, the filmmakers decided to cast blond actors Timothy Bottoms and Keith Mitchell as younger and older David respectively. This, combined with the overexposed photography, lent the film a distinctly Californian feel. Similarly afflicted was “David & Goliath” (1978), an episode of The Greatest Heroes of the Bible series, which was further hampered in this respect by a lengthy introductory voiceover in a strong American accent. Such an introduction lends the production an authoritative feel, but curiously the script conjures up numerous invented plot devices in its relatively short running time. The decision to limit the plot to the battle between David and Goliath allows the tension to build nicely and brings the story to a natural climax, but, if anything, the additions seem to detract from many of the original story’s key themes. The one film about David to make it into cinemas during this period was King David (dir. Bruce Beresford, 1985), which became infamous for Richard Gere’s Razzie-winning performance. The award was probably clinched by the scene where David strips off and dances as the ark makes its way into the city. Gere’s dance in a large pair of white underpants is certainly undignified and it is easy to sympathize with Michal’s objections. At 114 minutes, the film manages to include all the key events of David’s life as well as some of the more obscure aspects, including Abigail and his other wives. Indeed it even manages to reference other Bible stories such as

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Saul’s cry of “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps. 22 though more commonly associated with Mark 15:34 and parallels) and Absalom’s use of “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9). One of the film’s most notable re-appropriations of biblical texts is the story of Jacob wrestling with God (Gen. 32). Dreams of this story drive Saul into madness and represent David’s desire to see the deity face-to-face (cf. Exod. 33:18 – 23). This image seems to underlie the film’s key theme of pursuing a special relationship with God rather than being constricted by organized official religion. As a boy David fought Goliath when no one else would. As a king he danced semi-naked and showed mercy to Absalom in contrast to his advisors’ reading of the law. Nathan even accuses him, saying that David thinks he “knows his [God’s] will better than the prophets.” This finds ultimate expression in David’s final piece of advice to Solomon, his heir: “Be guided by the instincts of your own heart, no matter what the prophets tell you. For it is through the heart, the heart alone, that God speaks to man.” This is underlined by the prophets being depicted as “merciless religious fanatics” (Lang 2007, 241). Nathan, in particular, is portrayed as a dour, harsh, and inflexible character throughout. Indeed, even when Absalom is declared dead, Nathan admonishes the grief-stricken David, scowling “When will you learn to obey the Lord your God instead of your emotions?” Shortly after he hears God has rejected his plan to build a temple, David picks up Goliath’s sword and uses it to smash his model of the temple to pieces, an unsubtle criticism of organized religion. Yet the film seems in favor of one element of organized religion: “Must you record every word I utter?” David enquiries in one of the closing scenes. The scribe replies, “It’s for the Book of Samuel my Lord. You ordered it”. The closing years of the twentieth century witnessed a great number of films about the Bible being made, not least because of the sheer volume sired by two particular projects, Lux Vide’s The Bible Collection and Testament: The Bible in Animation. Whilst the Testament series dabbled in a wide range of styles of animation, from three-dimensional puppetry to two-dimensional paint-on-glass, the “David and Saul” entry (dir. Gary Hurst, 1996) opted for standard two-dimensional handdrawn animation. The story is told from Saul’s point of view, as is apparent from the opening scene. Instead of seeing David shepherding in the fields, we start with Saul raving in his throne room, his paranoia underlined by dim lighting and sinister music. Michal mentions the name of the equally shadowy Samuel and there is a flashback to the two men’s infamous meeting in the aftermath of the victory over the Amalekites. The meeting ends with the words that come back to haunt Saul throughout the film: “Today the Lord God has torn the kingdom of Israel from out of your hands. He will pass it to another man, a better man than you.” David, then, is firmly presented as the very thing that Saul fears, the fulfillment of Samuel’s prophecy. Far from being paranoid, Saul has correctly discerned the source of his downfall. At every stage of David’s progression we hear Samuel’s voice repeating the refrain “another man, a better man than you.” When Saul and Jonathan die on Mount Gilboa, the camera lingers on their upright and grayed-out

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dead bodies as if to suggest they are already yesterday’s men being commemorated as statues. In the final scene, David is crowned king in the bright sun. The film’s use of color and light and evocative backgrounds far exceeds normal expectations for an animated film, making it one of the more complex examinations of Saul’s descent into darkness. David (dir. Robert Markowitz, 1997) in The Bible Collection also portrayed the stories from the books of Samuel as tragedy. Part one of the film uses a flashback device in the first half, which not only gives it a stronger narrative arc, but also heightens the pathos of Saul’s demise. Actor Jonathan Pryce gives Saul a desperate intensity. He soars with confidence one minute only to be wracked with fear the next. Shorn of Pryce, part two descends into something, at times, akin to soap opera with the conflicts in David’s own household taking center stage. Nevertheless, the sense of tragedy remains, not least because the filmmakers have chosen the episodes from David’s life most suitable for emphasizing the tragic elements throughout the story. Jonathan, Saul, Uriah, Amnon, Ahithophel, and Absalom all die prematurely; and, as the film progresses, the Psalms which David utters grow darker and darker. One sequence in particular stands out in the second half in which scenes of David fleeing across the Jordan are intercut with those of his son Absalom frolicking foolishly with his concubines. Meanwhile, Absalom’s dejected and ignored advisor Ahithophel hangs himself in a manner that prefigures his master’s forthcoming demise. Indeed, even the final scene, which attempts to provide an upbeat ending, cannot mask the tragic appraisal of Saul and David’s lives that the film gives over all. Post 9/11, producers have been a little more reticent about investing in films that explore a small time freedom fighter striking significant blows against the dominant superpower. The first film depiction of David in the new century didn’t come until 2009 and even then it was only a loose allegory. Michael Green’s Kings (NBC) cast Ian McShane as Saul, the king in a fictional modern-day absolutist monarchy. References abound to biblical place names such as Gilboa, Shiloh, and Carmel and there are numerous parallels between the world of Kings and the books of 1 and 2 Samuel. At the same time the series attempted to comment on contemporary American society taking aim at such targets as the influence of the media and the presidency. Most significantly the series draws parallels between the war between Israel and the Philistines and the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ultimately, however, the series was a failure and having been moved around the broadcast schedule several times it was permanently cancelled. Easily the longest and most ambitious, television program about David is the Brazilian series Rei Davi (dir. Edson Spinello, 2012). The 30-episode format allows Rei Davi to devote a full episode to each of the major incidents within David’s life, allowing the natural narrative arc of each story to come to the fore whilst still relating to a broader, grander narrative. Leandro Léo’s performance as the young David is particularly impressive, managing to blend confidence with humility, whilst balancing opposing emotions at the same time. The production values are reasonably high with the few special effects generally serving the needs of the story and whilst the

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filters seem a little more basic than U.K. and U.S. audiences are used to, they don’t detract from some good lighting and camera placing. The following year a Malayalam film, David and Goliath (dir. Rajeev Nath, 2013) offered a modern interpretation of the story with David (played by Jayasurya) as an inventor struggling to find his way in the world. Whilst there is a brief scene where David uses a modern sling to save a friend from a drunk, the various existential discussions suggest that the film’s primary conflict is between David and his inner demons. A more traditional depiction of the David story occurred in the History Channel’s recent docu-drama series The Bible (prod. Mark Burnett/Roma Downey, 2013). The David episode polarized the main characters’ qualities, exaggerating Saul’s failings and thereby heightening David’s heroism. For example the scene after David has defeated Goliath is strongly reminiscent of Jesus’ triumphal entry to Jerusalem. David is even showered with petals from on high as Jesus was in Martin Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ (1988). This is not the film’s only allusion to some of the classic Bible films. In the scene where David spies Bathsheba from his rooftop, the shot of Bathsheba is very similar to the corresponding scene in David and Bathsheba. Bathsheba is more prominent in this film than in the biblical text, first meeting David when the ark is brought into Jerusalem.

Fig. 12: Bathsheba bathing on a rooftop in The Bible (2013). Compare with Fig. 11 above.

Conclusion The Bible presents David as a complex figure, exhibiting almost contradictory personality traits and with such a range of experiences in his life that a single film could never truly do him justice. Yet as film and its younger sibling television have matured there have been two significant developments of relevance to students of

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the Bible and film. Firstly, as early silent films have given way to feature length movies, which have in turn been somewhat usurped by television series of increasing length, filmmakers used such extended running times to fill in the gaps, get inside their characters’ minds and offer fresh possibilities for what motivated and drove them. Secondly, the ever increasing variety of productions about David have expanded the range and depth of perspectives on him, and the leading characters from his life, and produced far more complex and rounded personalities than those we find in the pages of the Hebrew Bible. Furthermore, popularizing such a range of different interpretive positions has the potential to expose outmoded pre-conceptions and should, in turn, lead to new light being shed on old texts. Perhaps, in time, even some of the older interpretative giants may themselves be slain.

Works Cited Abel, Richard. 1994. The Cine Goes to Town. Berkeley: University of California Press. Babington, Bruce, and Peter William Evans. 1993. Biblical Epics: Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda. 2014. “The Bible and Its Cinematic Adaptations: A Consideration of Filmic Exegesis.” Journal of the Bible and Its Reception 1.1: 129 – 60. Campbell, Richard H., and M.R. Pitts. 1981. The Bible on Film: A Checklist, 1897 – 1980. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press. Dumont, Hervé, 2009. L’antiquité au cinema: Vérités, légendes et manipulations. Paris: Nouveau Monde Editions. Elley, Derek. 1985. The Epic Film: Myth and History. Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk: St. Edmundsbury Press. Exum, Cheryl. 1996. Plotted, Shot, and Painted: Cultural Representations of Biblical Women. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Fraser, George MacDonald. 1996. The Hollywood History of the World [1988]. Rev. ed. London: The Harvill Press. Horne, Thomas A. 2010. “Goliath in the Valley of Elah.” War, Literature, and the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities 22: http://wlajournal.com/22_1 – 2/images/horne.pdf; accessed February 20, 2015. Jacobs, Lea. 1999. “Industry Self-Regulation and the Problem of Textual Determination.” In Controlling Hollywood: Censorship and Regulation in the Studio Era. Ed. Matthew Bernstein. Rutgers: The State University. Pp. 87 – 101. Kelso, Julie. 2002. “Gazing at Impotence in Henry King’s David and Bathsheba.” In Screening Scripture: Intertextual Connections Between Scripture and Film. Ed. George Aichele and Richard Walsh. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Pp. 155 – 87. Lang, J. Stephen. 2007. The Bible on the Big Screen: A Guide from Silent Films to Today’s Movies. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books. Malone, Peter. 1990. Movie Christs and Antichrists. New York: Crossroads Publishing. Shepherd, David J. 2013. The Bible on Silent Film: Spectacle, Story and Scripture in the Early Cinema. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Solomon, Jon. 2001. The Ancient World in the Cinema [1978]. Rev. and exp. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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Walsh, Richard. 2013. “A Modest Proposal for Christ-figure Interpretations: Explicated with Two Test Cases.” Relegere 3.1: 79 – 97. http://www.relegere.org/relegere/article/view/569; accessed February 20. 2015.

Films Cited Absalon [a.k.a. Absalom] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1912, Pathé Frères, FR). All the President’s Men (dir. Alan J. Pakula, 1976, Warner Brothers, US). American Violet (dir. Tim Disney, 2008, Uncommon Productions, US). Any Given Sunday (dir. Oliver Stone, 1999, Warner Brothers, US). Ben Hur (dir. Sidney Olcott, Harry T. Morey, and Frank Rose, 1907, Kalem, US). The Bible (prod. Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, 2013, Lightworkers Media, US/UK). The Bible Collection [David; TV miniseries] (dir. Robert Markowitz, 1997, Lux Vide, US/IT/DE). The Chosen Prince [a.k.a. The Friendship of David and Jonathan] (dir. William V. Mong, 1917, The Crest Picture Company, US). Cinderella Man (dir. Ron Howard, 2005, Universal, US). Cool Runnings (dir. Jon Turteltaub, 1993, Walt Disney, US). David (dir. Unknown, 1912, IT). David [a.k.a. The Seventh Commandment] (dir. Harry Southwell, 1924, Anglo-Australian Films, AU/UK/BE). David, A King of Israel (dir. Edward Dew, 1958, Concordia Films, US). David, A Young Hero (dir. Edward Dew, 1958, Concordia Films, US). David and Bathsheba (dir. Henry King, 1951, Twentieth Century Fox, US). David and Goliath (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1908, Kalem Company, US). David and Goliath (dir. Rajeev Nath, 2013, Sal Roza Motion Pictures, IN). David e Golia [a.k.a. David and Goliath] (dir. Richard Pottier and Ferdinando Baldi, 1959, Ansa, IT). David et Goliath [“David and Goliath”] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1910, Pathé Frères, FR). David et Saül [a.k.a. David and Saul] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1912, Pathé Frères, FR). David, King of Israel (dir. Unknown, 1912, US). David’s War with Absalom [a.k.a. The Siege of Hebron] (dir. Unknown, 1912, New York Picture Company, US). Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (dir. Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2004, Twentieth Century Fox, US/DE). Erin Brockovich (dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2000 Universal, US). From the Manger to the Cross [a.k.a. Jesus of Nazareth] (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1912, Kalem, US). The Greatest Heroes of the Bible [“David and Goliath”; Season 1, Episode 1] (dir. James L. Conway, 1978, Sunn Classic Pictures, US). Hoosiers (dir. David Anspaugh, 1986, De Haven Productions, UK/US). I grande condottieri [a.k.a. Gideon and Samson] (dir. Marcello Baldi and Francisco Pérez-Dolz, 1965, San Pablo Films, IT/ES). In the Valley of Elah (dir. Paul Haggis, 2007, Warner Independent Pictures, US). The Insider (dir. Michael Mann, 1999, Blue Lion Entertainment, US). Judith of Bethulia (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1914, Biograph, US). The Karate Kid (dir. John G. Avildsen, 1984, Columbia Pictures, US). King David (dir. Bruce Beresford, 1985, Paramount, UK/US). Kings (dir. Francis Lawrence, 2009, Universal Media Studios, US). La mort de Saül [“The Death of Saul”] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1912, Pathé Frères, FR).

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La vendetta di Ercole [“The Revenge of Hercules”; a.k.a. Goliath and the Dragon] (dir. Vittorio Cottafavi, 1960, Achille Piazza Produzioni Cinematografica, IT/FR). Lagaan [a.k.a. Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India] (dir. Ashutosh Gowariker, 2001, Aamir Khan Productions, IN). The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988, Universal, US/CA). Le berceau de dieu [a.k.a. The Cradle of God] (dir. Fred Leroy-Granville, 1926, Productions Markus, FR). Le sacrifice d’Absalon [“The Sacrifice of Absalom”] (dir. Gérard Bourgeois, 1911, Lux Compagnie Cinematographique de France, FR). Michael Clayton (dir. Tony Gilroy, 2007, Castle Rock Entertainment, US). Moneyball (dir. Bennett Miller, 2011, Columbia Pictures, US). Rei Davi [“King David”] (dir. Edson Spinello, 2012, Rede Record, BR). Rocky (dir. John G. Avildsen, 1976, United Artists, US). Salome (dir. William Dieterle, 1953, Columbia Pictures, US). Samson and Delilah (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1949, Paramount, US). Saul and David (dir. J. Stuart Blackton, 1909, Vitagraph, US). Saul e David [a.k.a. Saul and David] (dir. Marcello Baldi, 1964, San Pablo Films, IT/ES). Seabiscuit (dir. Gary Ross, 2003, Universal, US). The Shepherd King (dir. J. Gordon Edwards, 1923, Fox Film Corporation, US). Solomon, A Man of Wisdom (dir. Edward Dew, 1958, Concordia Films, US). Spellbound (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1945, Selznick International Pictures, US). A Story of David [a.k.a. A Story of David: The Hunted] (dir. Bob McNaught, 1961, Scoton, UK/IL). The Story of David (dir. David Lowell Rich and Alex Segal, 1976, Columbia Pictures Television, US). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1923, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, US). Testament: The Bible in Animation [“David and Saul”; Season 1, Episode 9] (dir. Gary Hurst, 1996, Sianel 4 Cymru, UK). Tol’able David (dir. Henry King, 1921, Inspiration Pictures, US). Touch of Evil (dir. Orson Welles, 1958, Universal, US).

Carl S. Ehrlich¹

7 Esther in Film Some biblical books cry out for cinematic treatment. Without a doubt, the book of Esther has it all: strongly delineated – yet stock – characters, good and evil, love and hate, loyalty and treachery, sex and violence, not to mention enough drinking and partying to warm the hearts of the free-spending young adult demographic so desperately sought after by Hollywood marketeers. And yet, the movies have not been kind to Esther, allowing her to lag far behind her cinematically more popular biblical brethren Moses, David, and Delilah (or for that matter Jesus, if we include the Christian canon). Indeed, not one Esther movie makes it into Adele Reinhartz’s recently edited collection on the Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films, not even into the index (2013a).² How can that be, given the engaging source material? Even though the movies based on Esther unfortunately are not to be reckoned among the classics of the silver screen, they are nonetheless fascinating and worthy of viewing from a number of perspectives. The following discussion will concentrate on Esther’s appearances in film over the course of the last half-century or so. The implicit aim is to elucidate the cinematic rewriting and visualization of the biblical text as a form of midrash, which reveals as much about the creators of the films as it does about the interpretative possibilities arising out of a close reading of the biblical source material. The book itself tells the tale of an orphaned Jewish woman, who rises to be queen of Persia, when she wins a beauty contest (actually, a sexual audition) following the deposition of the previous queen (Vashti).³ Hiding her Jewishness from everyone, including her husband King Ahasuerus/Xerxes,⁴ at the suggestion of her cousin/ guardian Mordecai,⁵ she becomes the instrument for the salvation of the Jews from a

 I thank my graduate assistant, Marielle Indar, for her help in tracking down secondary literature on the subject.  Albeit, Reinhartz does mention two Esther movies (Raoul Walsh’s  Esther and the King and Michael Sajbel’s  One Night with the King) in her book on the Bible and Cinema (b, ,  – ). However, only the latter is deemed worthy of brief discussion.  The majority of scholars, including the author of this article, view the story of Esther as a literary creation not rooted in actual historical events. See, e. g., Fox (,  – ). For a contrary position from the perspective of an evangelical scholar, see Yamauchi (,  – ).  The former is the biblical name; the latter is the most common identification of the name with a known Persian ruler. However, it is unclear which Xerxes is meant. Most scholars identify biblical Ahasuerus with Xerxes I ( –  B.C.E.). See Day ().  Although Esther is identified in the biblical text as “the daughter of his [Mordecai’s] uncle” (Esth. :), many if not most of the films discussed here make Mordecai her uncle in order to depict an appreciable age difference between the two of them. There is, however, an ancient midrashic tradition that interprets the Hebrew word bat “daughter” in this instance as “wife” (basing itself on a stretched homophony with bayit “house”) and views Esther as Mordecai’s wife, which adds a

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threatened massacre at the hands of the king’s evil counselor Haman the Agagite. Given permission to defend themselves, the Jews turn the tables and kill their enemies, including Haman and his sons. These events are then to be remembered through the establishment of the holiday of Purim, named for the “lots” that Haman cast in determining a date for his planned slaughter. Since it records the justification for the joyous holiday of Purim and provides hope to a small minority community for deliverance from destruction in its diaspora, the book of Esther has long been among the most beloved in the Jewish community (Berlin 2001, ix, xlv-xlix). Indeed, one could reduce its message to “diaspora Jew makes good against overwhelming odds,” in this manner similar to the stories of Joseph (Gen. 37– 50) and Daniel (Dan. 1– 6).⁶ This positive evaluation stands in contrast to the more ambivalent relationship that the Christian community has had to the book, which in its Hebrew version⁷ doesn’t mention God⁸ and appears at the end to provide a blueprint for the preemptive and vengeful killing of gentiles (Carruthers 2008, 7– 13). Nonetheless, the book of Esther has been the object of renewed interest in the Christian community in recent years (see Phillips 2014). In addition, both traditions have had issues with the blatant sexuality of the story, with modern commentators under the influence of feminist criticism split in their evaluation of Esther and Vashti’s behavior vis-à-vis men and sexuality (Crawford 1989; 2012, 203 – 04).

Esther and the King (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1960) Although there were a couple of treatments of the Esther story during the early silent era (Shepherd 2013, 15, 18, 101, 104– 05, 149, 181, 248),⁹ a heyday of biblical film, it was only with the renewed interest in biblical themes on an epic scale, as initiated by Cecil B. DeMille in his Samson and Delilah in 1949, that Hollywood turned its attention once again to the biblical text in its broadest sense as a source for cinematic treatment. In spite of the previous release of Queen Esther (dir. John T. Coyle, 1948), the movie that set the standard – admittedly not a very high one – for Esther movies

whole new layer of complexity to the relationships among Esther, Mordecai, and Ahasuerus. See Zucker ().  For a fuller discussion of Esther as diaspora literature, see Berlin (, xxxiv-xxxvi).  In its Greek (Septuagint) translation/version, the book of Esther is both longer and more overtly religious in tone. See Fox (,  – ).  Albeit, later Jewish tradition interpreted the reference to “relief and deliverance [coming] for the Jews from another quarter” (Esth. :) as a reference to divine intervention, which allowed this book to be accepted into the biblical canon. Indeed, the word māqôm, translated as “quarter” in the NRSV, became a circumlocution for the name of God in later Jewish tradition, presumably on the basis of this passage.  Still preserved are Esther (dir. Louis Feuillade, ) and Esther (dir. Henri Andréani, ). Page () and Burnette-Bletsch () list a number of additional Esther movies that are not mentioned in Shepherd’s book. I have not yet been able to track them down.

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is 1960’s Esther and the King (dir. Raoul Walsh). This movie was filmed in Italy and bears all the hallmarks of a B-list sword-and-sandals epic (Hughes 2011, 69): a cast of thousands, stilted acting, and cheesy dialogue (not to mention poor dubbing of some actors). When Esther and the King opens, King Ahasuerus (Richard Egan) is just returning to Susa from a major victory against the Egyptians. During his absence, Queen Vashti (Daniella [sic in the credits] Rocca) has been serially unfaithful to him. Indeed, we first encounter her in bed with Haman (Sergio Fantoni), who spends the entire movie plotting to become king in place of Ahasuerus. These are just the first of many details that serve to rewrite the biblical tale to make the antagonists even more despicable than they are according to the biblical narrative. When the king confronts his queen with accusations of adultery, she defies him and he rejects her. Later, Vashti crashes his victory party and performs a lascivious striptease, before being banished from the kingdom. In this manner, the modest, yet defiant Vashti of the biblical text, who is oftentimes held up as a feminist icon owing to her refusal to parade herself before the drunken king and his buddies, becomes the opposite in this movie: a lewd exhibitionist. Yet, there is method in this madness, in that it sets up a stark contrast between wanton Vashti and modest Esther. Esther, ironically perhaps played by movie and TV vixen Joan Collins, is introduced to us as a defiant and proud Jew, longing to leave her exile in Persia. She is engaged to her childhood friend Simon (Rick [sic in the credits] Battaglia), who is the king’s bravest soldier. Her uncle Mordecai (Denis O’Dea) – who, together with Haman, is one of the king’s closest advisors – approves of the match and gives Esther and Simon a mezuzah as an early wedding present, since he must return to Susa to counsel the king during the crisis occasioned by Vashti’s deposition. Just as Simon, wearing a kippa, and Esther stand under the huppa (standard anachronisms in biblical movies), troops interrupt the proceedings and snatch Esther away to participate in the beauty contest that will determine the next queen of Persia. Arriving at the palace, Esther wishes to leave, but Mordecai counsels her to accept her fate. In order to ensure the success of his handpicked contestant, Haman attempts to have the most beautiful of the maidens – including Esther – abducted, but his henchmen are foiled by a handsome stranger, who we – but not Esther – know is the king. Disappointed in love by Vashti, the king plans to reject all the maidens, but when he sees Esther, with whom he had shared a significant glance when he rescued her (a recurrent theme in Esther movies), he changes his mind and makes her queen. Even so, he does not force himself on her. This stands in stark contrast to the biblical text, in which it is not so much a beauty contest but a sexual audition that determines who will replace Vashti. Nevertheless, this is in keeping with the majority of Esther films, which attempt to elevate their heroine by emphasizing her purity, modesty, and virtue. It is only when Simon sneaks into the palace to rescue Esther that she realizes that she now loves the king. Consequently, she raises an alarm, Simon escapes, and Esther now gives herself body and soul to her royal husband.

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Meanwhile, Haman spins his web to ensnare his rival Mordecai and topple the king, essential elements of which are plundering the king’s treasury at Persepolis, entering into an alliance with Alexander of Macedonia (thus, counter to most interpreters of the biblical text, dating the action to the late fourth century B.C.E.¹⁰), and forging evidence of the Jews’ disloyalty. When Esther objects in the presence of the king, Haman attempts to silence her by quoting a law that those who interrupt the king are to be put to death. But, the king saves her by holding out his scepter to her as a sign of pardon. This confrontation before the king is all that remains in this film of biblical Esther’s unbidden appearance before the king and the two banquets to which she then invites the king and Haman. In a bind, Haman decides to have the king assassinated on his way to Persepolis. However, the king is saved by his erstwhile friend, Simon; and the two head back to Susa, where Haman has assumed the throne and attacked the Jews in their anachronistically Star-of-David festooned synagogue. Simon arrives first and leads the Jews to victory over their foes. However, just as he removes the noose that Haman had put around Mordecai’s throat, he is mortally wounded from behind and dies in Esther’s arms as he proclaims a day of rejoicing with his dying breath. When Haman attempts to escape the city, he encounters the king, who orders his immediate execution. In the final scene, the king returns from defeat at the hands of Alexander and is met by his now estranged wife Esther, who embraces him, mounts his chariot and rides off into the sunset with the king, joining him in defeat but with their love restored. In spite of its poor acting and dialogue, this is an interesting and complex reworking of the Esther story, which both simplifies and complicates the biblical tale, while painting the characters in even starker shades of black and white than does the Hebrew Bible. This painting in broad strokes fits well into a time that viewed the world in terms of binary opposites: black and white, cowboys and Indians, communism and freedom. Ultimately, however, this film is an attempt to cash in on the sword-and-sandals craze that was so popular from the late 1940s until the early 1960s.

Esther (dir. Amos Gitai, 1986) If Esther and the King attempts to be grand and epic in scope, Amos Gitai’s 1986 Israeli Esther is its antithesis. The first in a series of films that Gitai made dealing with the theme of exile, Esther is a deliberately ponderous and political creation, whose interpretation cannot be divorced from the biography of its creator. Gitai made this film following his self-imposed exile from Israel to France after 1982’s Lebanon War, an exile that was to last for about a decade, only to return to Israel after Yitzhak  Not to mention the fact that the king of Persia who faced Alexander was Darius III ( –  B.C.E.). See Briant (,  – ).

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Rabin’s election as Prime Minister and the Oslo Accords of 1993 (Zwick 2006, 56 – 58). The book of Esther thus serves Gitai as a vehicle for a leftist critique of Jewish Israeli policies and politics in the modern world. At the same time as the language of the film is mainly in Hebrew and includes many verbatim quotes from the book of Esther (but also changes some), Gitai employs Berthold Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt (“Alienation Effect”)¹¹ to dispel any notion that we are about to view a movie that takes place in the distant past. Choosing Wadi Salib, an abandoned Arab quarter on the outskirts of Haifa, as his set for most scenes (except for the walls of Susa, which are represented by the citadel walls of Akko), Gitai immediately forces the viewer into a linkage of past and present (Zwick 2006, 65 – 67). The pacing of the movie is slow, with the scenes consisting of a series of tableaux, in which amateur and professional actors in simple costumes recite their lines in a deliberate fashion. Oftentimes, the outside or contemporary world intrudes on the low-key spectacle. Thus, we hear cars, airplanes, jackhammers, crickets, birds, and a muezzin’s call. We see street signs, electrical wires, plastic baskets, furniture, encampments with rusting steel walls, barrels, and burning tires. Owing to the slow pace of the movie, only certain pivotal scenes are represented. The gaps in the narrative are filled in by a narrator (Shmuel Wolf), who appears in many different guises (by my reckoning: as beggar, goatherd, bathhouse attendant/eunuch, herald, vegetable seller, prophet/fortune teller, jailer/executioner) during the course of the film and frequently breaks down the fourth wall between the actors and the audience by addressing the camera directly. Gitai’s major aim in this movie is to comment on the infamous “cycle of violence” between Israel and the Palestinians. To do this, he has put together a cast reflective of the diversity of modern Israeli society, while emphasizing those on its fringes. This becomes particularly evident in the conclusion of the film, in which the camera follows the lead characters one after the other as they walk along a modern road and speak about themselves and their relationship to the subject matter of the film (Zwick 2006, 71– 72). The narrator (Shmuel Wolf) is a Holocaust refugee who expected Israel to be a paradise (implicit in his remarks is that reality does not meet his expectations). The eunuch Hatak (David Cohen) was born in Alexandria, Egypt, where he was known as a “dirty Jew” and subsequently moved to Israel, where he was rejected once again, but this time as a supposed non-Jew owing to his initial inability to speak Hebrew. The Haman (Juliano Merr a.k.a. Mer-Khamis) is of mixed Jewish and Palestinian parentage from Nazareth and had his arm broken by Jewish Israelis at the time of the Six Day War.¹² The Mordecai (Mohammed Bakri) is a Pal-

 The Verfremdungseffekt, central to the dramatic theory of German director Bertolt Brecht, uses techniques intended to distance the audience from emotional involvement in the play (or film) through jolting reminders of the artificiality of the performance. See Silberman, et al. (,  – ).  Later Mer-Khamis would found and direct a theater to serve the population of the Jenin refugee camp, outside of which he was murdered by Palestinian gunmen on April , . See Khoury, et al. ().

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estinian from Galilee, who hates the character of Mordecai. The King is an Armenian (Zare Vartinyan), who quotes Qoheleth’s (Ecclesiastes’) famous speech about there being “a season for everything,” concluding with “a time for war and a time for peace” (Eccl. 3:1– 8). And Esther (Simona Benyamini) is a Moroccan Jew, who grew up in a poor quarter of Tel Aviv. While Gitai himself does not come to word, it is evident that it is Mohammad Bakri, the actor playing Mordecai, who most clearly speaks for him in excoriating Mordecai for abandoning his just cause to protect the Jews and extending his violent actions well beyond anything justifiable in the slaughter that ends the book of Esther. In essence, Mordecai has become Haman, something that Gitai indicates by dressing Mordecai in Haman’s vestments following the latter’s excruciatingly long execution scene. The political message is so central to this film that the plot becomes secondary. Among the interesting interpretations of the narrative of the biblical book in Gitai’s Esther are interpolations of passages from Shir ha-Shirim (the Song of Songs) as background music and as Esther’s thoughts on her marriage; the setting of the preparation of the maidens for the king in a Turkish bath complete with copious female nudity; and the decision to end the narrative part of the movie with Esther’s request of the king to allow the Jews to slaughter their enemies, which Gitai implies is the source of the Jewish joy on Purim. The political message could not be starker and is only reinforced by the subsequent concluding thoughts of the main actors. In this manner, the film, which through its reinterpretation of its source material becomes a form of midrash on Esther, uses the story of Esther in turn as a midrash on and critique of the modern political situation in which Gitai and his actors find themselves.

Esther (dir. Raffaele Mertes, 1999) The 1999s made-for-TV movie Esther (dir. Raffaele Mertes), a broadly-based European coproduction, attempts to historicize the narrative and contextualize it within Persian history and the larger biblical context. Unlike Gitai’s Brechtian approach, the attempt is made in this version to be as visually accurate as possible in presenting the tale. The movie is framed by allusions to Jewish (or Judean) history starting with the Babylonian conquest and the rise of the diaspora communities (Ehrlich 2014) at the beginning of the movie and ending with the return from exile and the institution of the reading of the Torah under the leadership of Ezra, the scribe, at the very end. Indeed, Mertes integrates Ezra (Frank Baker) and Nehemiah (Darren Bransford), who are not mentioned in the biblical book of Esther but do appear in the geographically and temporally close canonical books bearing their names, into his retelling of the Esther story. It is Ezra, the strict interpreter of the law, who motivates Mordecai (F. Murray Abraham) not to bow down to Haman (Jürgen Prochnow); and it is he who urges Mordecai to ensure that Esther (Louise Lombard) does not marry a foreigner, which echoes a theme particularly prominent in Ezra 9 – 10. The filmmakers,

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however, take a more universalistic stance and have Esther retort that Mordecai has taught her that what is in the heart is more important than one’s birth. Nonetheless, when the king’s soldiers come looking for young virgins to participate in the contest for queen, Mordecai vainly tries to hide Esther in order to save her from that ordeal.

Fig. 13: A romantic sexual audition in Esther (1998)

In distinction to those movies told from an overtly Christian perspective that attempt to downplay the sexual grittiness of the biblical tale by presenting the contest for queen as a chaste affair (at least until the royal marriage), this version of the tale makes quite clear that the contest is sexual in nature. Before going in to King Ahasuerus (Thomas Kretschmann) for her “audition,” Esther solicits information about the birds and the bees from one of the servants ministering to her. Her deflowering is depicted in a very gentle, artistic, and impressionistic manner, but it is clear what is taking place, as is indicated by a red rose that Esther has plucked dropping in soft focus from the bed to the floor. While Mordecai, who has taken a job as a merchant’s assistant in order to gain access to the palace, is thrilled by his ward and cousin’s elevation to queen, Ezra is less than pleased with Esther’s marriage to an “uncircumcised heathen.” Haman is depicted as an amoral and harsh social creeper, determined to advance his standing at court through the elimination of all possible rivals. Mordecai’s defiance fills him with hatred for the Jews, and he secures permission from the king to kill them all. Mordecai’s histrionics at the gates of the palace come to Esther’s attention, and after fasting and praying she screws up her courage to go in to the king and invite him and Haman to dinner. After Esther’s revelation, the king, who has descended into madness, has Haman summarily executed. In spite of the latter’s anguished appeal to Esther to spare his life, she demurs.

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Nonetheless, the film makes an attempt at empathy for the victim, whoever the victim is, by showing Haman’s family mourning his hanging, and by superimposing images of the Jews’ defensive battle over Esther’s crying face. The king comes to her to report on the hundreds killed on both sides and to praise her for having saved her people. Restored to sanity, he declares his love for Esther, which she reciprocates. Enthroned once again as queen, it is Esther who declares the celebration of Purim, as she and Mordecai exchange gifts and the Jews celebrate. In a short coda, Ezra leads a group of Jews including Nehemiah back to Jerusalem, where he commences reading the Bible in Hebrew with a voiceover translation into English of the first day of creation. While Louise Lombard was probably a couple of years too old for the role of Esther, being close to thirty when the film first aired, this is an intriguing attempt to retell the story that attempts to situate it within a broader canonical context. The filming location in Morocco adds to a sense of authenticity, allowing the filmmakers to avoid intrusive computer-generated imagery as much as possible. The addition of Ezra and Nehemiah allows the filmmakers to remove Jewish particularism from Esther’s tale and transfer it to the former. The book of Esther, excoriated by many Christian interpreters¹³ as a particularistic Jewish tale, thus becomes in Mertes’s hands more universalistic in tone and message.

One Night with the King (dir. Michael O. Sajbel, 2006) In spite of its racy title, 2006’s lavish One Night with the King (dir. Michael O. Sajbel) takes a very chaste look at both Esther and the king. This is not surprising in light of its production by an avowedly Christian company (Gener8Xion Entertainment). In  For a rather extreme example, see Paton’s (, ) comments on the “Moral Teaching of the Book”: “There is not one noble character in this book. Xerxes is a sensual despot. Esther, for the chance of winning wealth and power, takes her place in the herd of maidens who become concubines of the King. She wins her victories not by skill or by character, but by her beauty. She conceals her origin, is relentless toward a fallen enemy ( – ), secures not merely that the Jews escape from danger, but that they fall upon their enemies, slay their wives and children, and plunder their property (  – ). Not satisfied with this slaughter, she asks that Hainan’s [sic] ten sons may be hanged, and that the Jews may be allowed another day for killing their enemies in Susa ( – ). The only redeeming traits in her character are her loyalty to her people and her bravery in attempting to save them (). Mordecai sacrifices his cousin to advance his interests (), advises her to conceal her religion (. ), displays wanton insolence in his refusal to bow to Haman ( – ), and helps Esther in carrying out her schemes of vengeance ( sq.). All this the author narrates with interest and approval. He gloats over the wealth and the triumph of his heroes and is oblivious to their moral shortcomings. Morally Est. falls far below the general level of the OT, and even of the Apocrypha. The verdict of Luther is not too severe: ‘I am so hostile to this book that I wish it did not exist, for it Judaizes too much, and has too much heathen naughtiness’ (Tischreden, W. A. xxii. ).”

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addition, this movie is not based solely on the biblical text, but on a Christian novelization of the biblical book, namely Hadassah: One Night with the King (2004) by Tommey Tenney and Mark Andrew Olsen, the former of whom is a Pentecostal preacher. It is not the life-story of Esther that is central to One Night with the King, but the love affair between Esther (Tiffany Dupont) and Xerxes (Luke Goss). This is framed, however, by the theological message of the movie that God watches over everything. Indeed, more in keeping with the apocryphal Additions to Esther in the Septuagint, God is oftentimes referred to in the course of this movie. Hence, it is evident that in One Night with the King great teleological forces are at work. Picking up on an implicit biblical linking of Haman the Agagite (Esth. 3:1, 10; 8:3, 5; 9:24) with King Agag of the Amalekites (1 Sam. 15: 8, 9, 20, 32, 33), the movie begins with a prologue half a millennium before the time of Esther, when King Saul (Tom Alter) neglects to kill the Amalekite king, Agag (Aditya Bal¹⁴), in battle, an event that later tradition teaches would have fatal consequences when Haman, the Agagite, would arise and threaten Jewish existence at the time of Mordecai, who like King Saul was a Benjaminite (Berlin 2001, xxxviii – xxxix). Although the prophet Samuel (Peter O’Toole) takes the law into his own hands and acts as Agag’s judge and executioner, the movie shows that this does not occur before Agag’s pregnant queen (Suvarchala Narayan) has managed to escape to give birth to the line that would lead directly to Haman (James Callis), in this manner implying that hatred is hereditary. After this brutal opening sequence, the focus of the movie quickly turns to Esther, a nice Jewish girl who lives with her elderly uncle Mordecai (John Rhys-Davies) and dreams of bigger and better things, like traveling to Jerusalem and becoming a princess. Be that as it may, her plans of flight from Susa with her beau Jesse ben Joseph (Jonah Lotan) are foiled when – following the deposition of Vashti (Jyoti Dogra) – the beautiful young virgins of Persia are rounded up to participate in a beauty contest to determine the next queen and the young men are rounded up to become eunuchs. In this way, both Esther and Jesse, who had nearly shared a chaste kiss, have their possible love affair nipped in the bud and land in the palace. For Esther this is a dream come true. She delights in the beautiful gardens and luxurious baths and schemes to become the next queen of Persia – but in a good way. King Xerxes, whom we first encounter bare-chested (seemingly an existential state for him in this movie), is the type of hunk most often found on the cover of Harlequin romances. He has already been captivated by the modest Esther and her storytelling abilities and, picking up on a story that Esther relates to him before their first official encounter, longs to play Rachel to her Jacob (but later fears that his role is Leah’s instead). Since establishing Esther’s virtue is extremely important to the filmmakers, there is no overtly sexual contact between Xerxes and Esther until after their

 The Indian names of most of the supporting cast are a function of the film’s being shot quite beautifully in Rajasthan, India.

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wedding. Indeed, not only does Xerxes not sleep with any of the previous candidates, but the actress chosen to play Esther in the film, Tiffany Dupont, had to meet very specific expectations of personal virtue and religiosity. As the Production Notes aver, “she possessed an intangible sense of innocence and wonder that personified what everyone was looking for in the character.”¹⁵

Fig. 14: Esther’s wedding and coronation in One Night with the King (2006)

The only thing throwing a damper on Esther’s carefree existence is Haman’s plot to kill the Jews, which is attributed to his inherited hatred of them going back to the time of his ancestor Agag. On the night before Xerxes goes off to fight the Greeks, Esther bravely and dramatically barges into the throne room and invites the king and Haman over for dinner, at which the truth is revealed, virtue rewarded, and iniquity punished, thanks to a pendant that has been passed down in Esther’s family and that – once again anachronistically – gives off Stars-of-David when held to the light like a crystal disco ball. The last we see of Esther and Xerxes is when they are in each other’s arms, although the final words of the film belong to its narrator Mordecai, who is now a prince of Persia and finally – and openly – a Jew, a state he has had to hide until now.

 Downloaded on December , . Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the Production Notes are no longer available on the production company’s website. They are, however, available online at http://www.writingstudio.co.za/page.html (accessed February , ). As for Tiffany Dupont, when googling her, one is liable to hit upon a parody music video called “Sometimes Love Needs a Hand” or “Masturbate for Life” – presumably made sometime after her role as Esther. Nonetheless, as her website (http://tiffany-dupont.com/Tiffany-about.shtml) claims, “Tiffany, a Christian, has dedicated herself to roles which do not conflict with her Christianity.”

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The character of Esther in this movie could – if you’ll pardon an expression that plays on an anti-female and anti-Jewish stereotype common a generation ago – be called a Jewish Persian Princess. She uses her situation to fulfill her girlish dreams of becoming not only a princess but a queen. While she is chaste until marriage, the love of her life is the non-Jewish Xerxes, about which she, unlike centuries of Jewish interpreters, does not feel at all conflicted. Indeed, she has no problem forgetting her youthful crush on Jesse once a better – read richer and more famous (as well as gorgeous, sensitive, upright, loving, loyal, and hunky) – match comes along. While she saves her people, the moviemaker’s implied subtext is that this occurs so that God’s plan to send redemption in the person of Jesus is not delayed. As for Esther, the moral of the story is that faith and purity are rewarded with riches and love – obviously, the moviemakers have never read the book of Job, or if they have, they have not comprehended its message. The characterization of Vashti in this film departs quite radically from her biblical antecedent. She is deposed not by her husband’s wish but by the hawkish war party of Persia that wants to go to war with Greece. Vashti, who is a dove, opposes war as a solution to problems and prefers that the state’s money be spent on fixing domestic issues, thus – ironically for a movie made by a conservative Christian production company – echoing liberal Democratic policy during the George W. Bush years, when One Night with the King was made. Nonetheless, in spite of this seeming political congruence, she is probably meant to be viewed as a Jesus-figure, in this case a woman of peace offering herself for her beliefs and for the redemption of her fellow humans. Thus, One Night with the King has it both ways, as does second-wave feminist interpretation: Esther is unremittingly good, but then so is Vashti the pacifist. The film’s Haman is a dark and brooding type, not quite as gorgeous as the king, but consumed with an inherited and ultimately destructively irrational hatred for the Jews and all things Jewish, who argues for their destruction on the basis of their supposed sympathies with the Greek cause and launches into an attack on them seemingly based on the conspiracy theories of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a czarist forgery from the late nineteenth century that purported to uncover a Jewish plot to rule the world.¹⁶ This is indicated in numerous ways during the course of the film, perhaps most chillingly in a scene in which Haman incites a mob with his hateful anti-Jewish rhetoric. Indeed, flashbacks reveal that Esther lost her parents in a pogrom led by Haman. Significantly, the symbol associated with him is a snake entwined around a stylized swastika, which has been passed down in his family since the time of Agag’s queen.¹⁷

 See Poliakov (). Over the course of the years, the Protocols have been employed in anti-Jewish and antisemitic contexts by agents as seemingly disparate as the Nazi party and Islamic radicals.  The film’s “Production Notes” make the Haman/Hitler connection clear (The Writing Studio ).

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In spite of the fact that Mordecai and especially Esther must hide their identities because of antisemitism,¹⁸ of the fact that Esther’s most precious possession is her grandmother’s pendant, which sparkles with Stars-of-David when held up to the light, and of the fact that when served pork, Esther doesn’t eat but feeds it instead to the monkeys, this movie at no point calls into question her intermarriage with the non-Jewish king. From the perspective of the film, Esther and Xerxes’ marriage represents the triumph of love over ethnic differences, a most politically correct message in these multi-ethnic and multi-cultural times. Ignored is the problematic aspect of such an intermarriage from a contemporary Jewish minority perspective (Reinhartz 2013b, 44– 45). Although the Production Notes indicate that the choice of subject matter for this film by a Christian production company was made in order to move faith-based movies into a more interreligious, interethnic, and ultimately mainstream setting after the divisiveness occasioned by Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) – and indeed the cast and the crew are reflective of that – in the end this is a Christian interpretation of the story of Esther.

Other Christian Productions As for Esther as depicted in the VeggieTales Heroes of the Bible animated children’s series (Esther, The Girl Who Became Queen, dir. Mike Nawrocki, 2000), the less said the better about a cartoon retelling of the tale in which Vashti is deposed because she refuses to make the king a sandwich in the middle of the night, Esther wins the beauty pageant to become queen by excelling in the talent competition with a song about trusting in God, Haman speaks with an exaggerated Spanish/Latino accent, and the worst threat to the Jews (who are never explicitly named but referred to obliquely as Esther’s and Mordecai’s family) is to be exiled to the “Island of Perpetual Tickling.” Be that as it may, what it has in common with Sajbel’s film is that they were both produced by Christian production companies for mainly Christian audiences. This is also the case with the most recent version of the Esther story, 2013’s The Book of Esther (dir. David A.R. White). If Gitai’s Esther was deliberately made to look unprofessional, White’s The Book of Esther is naturally amateurish. If we began our discussion with Esther and the King, a film that features a cast of thousands, this one features a cast of dozens, which is reflective of its low-budget nature, as is its continued use of one narrow shot of a slice of a modern stone city to represent Susa. Other outside shots, such as of Haman’s palatial house, are computer generated…badly. But, all this is secon-

 Technically, the use of the term “antisemitism” in this context is anachronistic, since it wasn’t coined until  to describe Jew-hatred based on spurious racial grounds, which at that time was considered legitimate in some European circles. However, since the film essentially retrojects this later phenomenon into the biblical past and since “antisemitism” has become a blanket term to describe all forms of Judeophobia, it is appropriate to use this term here.

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dary to the production company’s (Pure Flix Entertainment – the name says it all¹⁹) desire to produce an anodyne version of the tale for a Christian audience. While not obscuring the fact that this story is about the rescue of the Jews in ancient times, the film begins with Mordecai (Robert Miano), who always wears an anachronistic kippa in order to establish his Jewish ethnicity, awakening from an apocalyptic dream, which motivates his later use of Esther (Jen Lilley) as a pawn to counter the coming threat against the Jews. During the retelling of this dream to the child Esther, the director, David White, intersperses images of crosses to make sure the viewer is aware that this tale of ancient Jews is meant to prefigure Christian redemption. In spite of the fact that Mordecai is known as “the Jew” and that everyone knows that Esther lives with him, he tells her to hide her Jewishness, as a sign of which she is to refer to him as “teacher” and not as “uncle.”²⁰ (Of course, the movie never deals with the creepiness of having a fair not-so-young virgin live with her older male teacher instead of with a member of her own family). Esther is a typical young woman in the eyes of the filmmakers, dreaming of marriage and waiting for Prince Charming to come along. One day, when King Xerxes (Joel Smallbone) passes by her home in procession, even before his divorce from Queen Vashti (Jennifer Lyons), a significant glance passes between them. Nonetheless, following the ousting of the petulant and recalcitrant Vashti, Esther takes her side, since she was right to defend her modesty. As members of Xerxes’ inner circle, Haman (Thaao Penghlis) and Mordecai know and despise one another from the beginning of the film. Sensing an opportunity to further his own ambitions, Haman suggests that the king look closer to home for another wife and proposes his own daughter, Zara (Hadeel Sittu), for this purpose. Seeking to counter Haman, Mordecai suggests a contest and forces his ward to take part, both actions contrary to the biblical account. Seeking divine help, Esther falls to her knees and prays. And, lo and behold, God answers her directly and tells her that no evil shall befall her and that “there is a time to be silent and a time to speak” (Eccl. 3:7). It would appear that the book of Ecclesiastes with its pithy sayings is a favorite of Esther filmmakers! The maidens are paraded before the king, who recognizes Esther from beforehand. Ultimately, the choice comes down to Esther and Zara. The king observes them talking with each other and chooses Esther, who in turn rescues Zara from her horrible family by making Zara her lady-in-waiting. Naturally, Esther’s modesty and goodness impress the king who “desires virtue above all else,” and the two of them agree to wait until after the wedding before engaging in any hanky-panky as an expression of their great mutual respect; thereby, watering down the earthiness of the biblical text for the film’s intended audience.  According to their website (http://pureflix.com/about/), “Pure Flix is a Christian movie studio that produces, distributes, and acquires Christ centered movies for the sole purpose of changing our culture for Christ, one heart at a time.”  This film appears to vacillate between calling Mordecai her uncle and her cousin.

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Frustrated at every turn by Mordecai, Haman determines to kill the Jews and deliver himself of his opponent at the same time. He does this by implicating Mordecai in sedition. As Haman argues, since Jewish texts refer to God as king, aren’t Jews by definition treasonous? The denouement comes during a debate between Haman as prosecutor and Mordecai as defendant before the king and the people (all ten or so of them). In answer to the charge of religious sedition, Mordecai answers with an argument that probably resonates with the Christian viewer familiar with Jesus’ famous “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22:21, KJV). As Mordecai says in his defense, “to disobey the king is to disobey God … to your majesty I owe my living, to my God I owe my life!” Convinced by the justice of Mordecai’s arguments, the king condemns Haman to death for prevarication and rabble-rousing. Everyone, including Zara, rejoices as the king [!] proclaims a Jewish holiday. The movie ends as King Xerxes and his beloved Queen Esther depart the scene for some well-deserved time alone. This is a movie that was made by an avowedly Christian production company for an explicitly Christian audience. As such, it replaces the biblical book’s earthiness with ideals of Christian virtue, and turns its relatively profane narrative into a sacred story by reading religion into the tale at every opportunity. While most Esther movies may be located in a Christian matrix, in no movie is this as prominent as in this one, which intersperses overt Christian symbols into a story that takes place centuries before the birth of Jesus.

Esther’s Influence The story of Esther has influenced the plotlines of films that are either based on or tangentially related to the subject matter of the book. Among the earliest are La vergine de Babilonia (dir. Luigi Maggi, 1910, “The Virgin of Babylon”), in which elements from the biblical books of Esther and Daniel are drawn upon to present a mashup of the two that includes Esther in the lions’ den (cf. Dan. 6), and Esther of the People (dir. Frank Thorne, 1916, a.k.a. The Undertow), which updates the story and places it in a factory setting in the early twentieth century, in which Esther, the niece of John Morden (= Mordecai), ends up marrying the owner of the factory, James King (= King Ahasuerus), in spite of the machinations of evil Mr. Hammond (= Haman; see Burnette-Bletsch 2014: 50 – 51). Rama Burshtein’s 2012 movie Fill the Void employs the book of Esther as the referent for a contemporary story that takes place in an ultraorthodox Jewish community in Tel Aviv. Shira’s older sister, Esther, dies on the holiday of Purim while giving birth to a son, significantly named Mordecai. The main plot of the movie, however, revolves around Shira’s response to the pressure placed on her by her mother who wants her to marry Esther’s widower, in order to ensure that Mordecai stays close to his birthmother’s family.

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While not arguing that there is a direct link between the two, Guy Matalon (2001) compares the theology of the book of Esther with that of the film The Mexican (dir. Gore Verbinski, 2001). He concludes that the two disparate works share a similar “theology of divine fate.” In a similar manner, Gerrie Snyman (2013) compares the violent conclusion of the book of Esther (i. e. chapter 9) with that of the film Dogville (dir. Lars von Trier, 2004), in which the female protagonist exacts brutal vengeance on her oppressors, in order to discuss the morality and ethics of the protagonists’ violent role reversals within their own internal contexts and that of modern understandings of justice. We may thus see that the book of Esther serves both as a plot device and as an inspiration for films that are not direct attempts to retell the biblical tale. In addition, comparisons of various plot elements from Esther and unrelated movies allow interpreters to elucidate troubling or difficult aspects of the biblical narrative.

Conclusion In this brief survey we have looked at a number of versions of the Esther story, which are aimed at various audiences. The 1960 Esther and the King is aimed at fans of sword-and-sandal epics. Unfortunately, it is poorly written and acted, although it is interesting from the perspective of the rewriting of the Bible. Gitai’s 1986 Esther is a work of political theater with limited appeal, as its box office has made abundantly clear. This is a film that is of interest solely to cineastes and to those on the political left. Others may find the film slow-paced and ideologically monotone, in spite of its status as the only cinematic Jewish version of the tale and the only one to incorporate extensive quotes from the biblical book in Hebrew. The 1999 Esther aims for historical realism, in spite of its combining of various other biblical and non-biblical, even contemporary, traditions. Among the Esther movies, it has the most realistic aura, if that is what one is looking for, in spite of a heroine (deliberately?) chosen to depict Esther as older than the interpretive tradition usually imagines her. One Night with the King combines lavish production values with a Christian interpretation that sanitizes some aspects of the text. Esther, as envisioned here, is girlish and dreams of becoming a princess. Needless to say, this interpretation would probably not appeal much to feminists. The VeggieTales version of Esther both trivializes the story, which is understandable in light of its genre and intended audience, and de-Judaizes it, which is less felicitous. Finally, The Book of Esther (2013) is made by and for evangelical Christians. It is both low-budget and lowtech and receives one of the worst scores imaginable on the Internet Movie Database.²¹ None of the films considered here are simple retellings of the biblical book of Esther, if that were at all possible. Each of these movies advances an interpretation  A score of ./ on October ,  (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt/?ref_=nv_sr_).

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of the biblical story that is influenced by factors such as when the movie was made, who made it, and what its intended audience is. As such, these films may be considered heirs to the midrashic tradition, which interprets and expands on the biblical narrative, a major element of which is implicitly answering questions that arise out of a reading of the text. This is what all these movies do too. They rewrite and add to the biblical narrative when it suits their purpose, for example in giving Esther a boyfriend/fiancé before her abduction in order to heighten her sense of loss and dislocation (as in Esther and the King and One Night with the King). And they must answer questions that arise when reading and visualizing the text: What did ancient Susa look like? A modern stone city as in The Book of Esther or a fantastic CGI behemoth as in One Night with the King? What did the protagonists and antagonists look like? How old were they? What were their motivations? Was Vashti deposed because she was lascivious (Esther and the King), petulant (The Book of Esther), or a peacenik (One Night with the King)? What was the nature of the competition to choose the next queen of Persia? Was it a talent show (Esther, The Girl Who Became Queen), a series of chaste dates (One Night with the King), or a sexual audition (Mertes’s Esther)? How to deal with the violent end of the book of Esther? Ignore it (as in One Night with the King) or make it the central motif of the film (as in Gitai’s Esther)? More often than not, the answers to these questions are functions of the time, place, and religious and political leanings of the filmmakers. The constant interplay between the biblical text and its cinematic interpretations makes for fascinating viewing. Nonetheless, we return to our opening lament that the book of Esther and its eponymous heroine have not been treated kindly in the cinema. Unfortunately, we are still awaiting an Esther movie that would merit inclusion among Reinhartz’s top fifty biblical films.

Works Cited Berlin, Adele. 2001. The JPS Bible Commentary: Esther. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society. Briant, Pierre. 2002. From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire. Translated by Peter T. Daniels. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda. 2014. “Esther (Book and Person) VIII. Film.” In The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Vol. 8. Ed. Dale Allison, et al. Berlin: De Gruyter. Pp. 50 – 54. Carruthers, Jo. 2008. Esther through the Centuries. Blackwell Bible Commentaries. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing. Crawford, Sidnie White. 2012. “Esther.” In Women’s Bible Commentary: Revised and Updated. Ed. Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley. 3rd ed. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Pp. 201 – 7. Day, Linda. 2006. “Ahasuerus.” In The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Vol. 1. Ed. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld. Nashville: Abingdon. Pp. 82 – 83. Ehrlich, Carl S. 2014. “The Birth of the Judean/Jewish Diaspora(s).” In The Jewish Diaspora as a Paradigm: Politics, Religion and Belonging. Ed. Nergis Canefe. Istanbul: Libra Kitapçılık ve Yayıncılık. Pp. 133 – 70.

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Eisner, Jane. 2013. “An Unconventional Look at Orthodoxy: ‘Fill the Void,’ Directed by Rama Burshtein.” The New York Times (May 3): http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/movies/fill-the void-directed-by-rama-burshtein.html; accessed November 8, 2014. Fox, Michael V. 2001. Character and Ideology in the Book of Esther. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, Mich. and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans. Hughes, Howard. 2011. Cinema Italiano: The Complete Guide from Classics to Cult. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. Khoury, Jack, Avi Issacharoff, Anshel Pfeffer, and Haaretz Service. 2011. “Israeli actor Juliano Mer-Khamis shot dead in Jenin.” Haaretz (April 4): http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/is raeli-actor-juliano-mer-khamis-shot-dead-in-jenin-1.354044; accessed on January 16, 2015. Matalon, Guy. 2001. “Esther and The Mexican.” Journal of Religion and Film 5.1 (April): http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/esther.htm; accessed November 8, 2014. Page, Matthew. 2006. “Films about Esther.” Bible Films Blog (February 16): http://biblefilms.blog spot.ca/2006/02/films-about-esther.html; accessed November 8, 2014. Paton, Lewis Bayles. 2005. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Esther. International Critical Commentary. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1908. Reprint, Skokie, Ill.: Varda Books. Phillips, Rebecca. 2014. “Christians Have Fallen in Love with Queen Esther, Purim’s Jewish Heroine.” Tablet Magazine (March 12): http://tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/164916/ christians-love-queen-esther; accessed April 5, 2014. Poliakov, Leon. 2007. “Elders of Zion, Protocols of the Learned.” In Encyclopedia Judaica. Vol. 6. Ed. Frank Skolnik, 2nd ed. London: MacMillan. P. 297. Reinhartz, Adele (ed.). 2013a. Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films. London and New York: Routledge. —. 2013b. Bible and Cinema: An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge. Shepherd, David J. 2013. The Bible on Silent Film: Spectacle, Story and Scripture in the Early Cinema. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Silberman, Marc, Steve Giles, and Tom Kuhn, eds. 2015. “General Introduction.” In Brecht on Theater [1964]. 3rd ed. London and New York: Bloomsbury. Pp. 1 – 8. Snyman, Gerrie. 1972. “Sensed fittingness between act and consequence: The last acts of Esther in the book of Esther and Grace in the film Dogville.” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 69.1: http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v69i1.1972; accessed November 8, 2014. Tenney, Tommy, and Mark Andrew Olsen. 2004. Hadassah: One Night with the King. Bloomington, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers. White, Sidnie (see also Crawford, Sidnie White). 1989. “Esther: A Feminine Model for Jewish Diaspora.” In Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel. Ed. Peggy L. Day. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Pp. 161 – 77. The Writing Studio. 2015. “Production Notes [One Night with the King].” http://www.writingstudio. co.za/page1786.html; February 21, 2015. Yamauchi, Edwin M. 1996. Persia and the Bible [1990]. Reprint. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books. Zucker, David J. 2012. “Entertaining Esther: Vamp, Victim, and Virtuous Woman.” Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal 9.2: http://wjudaism.library.utoronto.ca/index. php/wjudaism/article/view/19255/1601; accessed January18, 2015. Zwick, Reinhold. 2006. “Mit Esther für Versöhnung streiten: Zu Amos Gitais filmischer Aktualisierung der biblischen Erzählung.” Biblical Interpretation 14: 54 – 75.

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Films Cited The Book of Esther (dir. David A. R. White, 2013, Pure Flix Entertainment, US). Dogville (dir. Lars von Trier, 2003, Zentropa Entertainments, DK/SE/UK/FR/DE/NL/NO/FI/IT). Esther (dir. Louis Feuillade, 1910, Gaumont, FR). Esther (dir. Henri Andréani, 1913, Pathé Frères, FR). Esther (dir. Amos Gitai, 1986, Agav Films, AT/IL/UK). Esther (dir. Raffaele Mertes, 1999, Five Mile River Films, IT/DE/US). Esther and the King (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1960, Galatea Film, IT/US). La vergine di Babylonia [a.k.a. The Virgin of Babylon] (dir. Luigi Maggi, 1910, Società Anonima Ambrosio, IT). Lemale et ha’halal [a.k.a. Fill the Void] (dir. Rama Burshtein, 2012, Avi Chai Fund, IL). The Mexican (dir. Gore Verbinski, 2001, DreamWorks, US). One Night with the King (dir. Michael O. Sajbel, 2006, Gener8Xion Entertainment, US). The Passion of the Christ (dir Mel Gibson, 2004, Icon Productions, US). Queen Esther (dir. John T. Coyle, 1948, Cathedral Films, US). The Undertow [a.k.a. Esther of the People] (dir. Frank Thorne, 1916, American Film Company, US,). VeggieTales: Esther, The Girl Who Became Queen (dir Mike Nawrocki, 2000, Big Idea Entertainment, US).

II Film Genres and Styles

David J. Shepherd

8 Scripture on Silent Film While the following essay cannot hope to offer a comprehensive discussion of the biblical film in the silent era, it does attempt to offer a critical and representative overview of the genre’s genesis and evolution between 1897 and 1928. In doing so, it asks a series of questions prompted by recent study of the silent cinema and the subsequent history of the biblical genre: what is the relationship between the biblical film and notions of spectacle during the silent era and how did this relationship evolve throughout the period? What is the relationship between the ‘showing’ of biblical spectacle and the ‘telling’ of biblical story in the genre within the silent cinema? Finally, how are earlier biblical films reflected, refracted, and responded to by later biblical films given the competitive, transnational nature of the silent cinema?¹

New Testament Passions and Hebrew Bible Cameos The history of the Bible on film in the silent era begins with the earliest cinematic representations of the Passion of the Christ,² a narrative whose familiarity and sanctity offered the ideal means of demonstrating and legitimating the revolutionary capacity of the nascent medium of moving pictures. While the precise production dates of the earliest Passion films cannot be fixed with absolute certainty, a review of the available evidence suggests that the summer of 1897 was a seminal season. Earlier in the spring of that year, La Bonne Presse, a Catholic organization devoted to stemming the tide of secularism in France in part through programs of magic lantern and film projection, commissioned Albert Kirchner (a.k.a. Léar) to film a Passion of the Christ (Sadoul 1947, 306). Shot in a vacant lot on the rue Félicien-David in Paris, the film included prefatory scenes of the birth and life of Christ (e. g. blessing the children, raising the son of the widow) followed by those of the Passion. Léar’s abridgment of the Passion itself is accomplished by passing over several biblical scenes typically included in later cinematic versions of the (Life and/or) Passion of Christ: the arrest of Jesus, his trial before Caiaphas, the denials of Peter, as well as Jesus’ first appearance before Pilate, and then subsequently before Herod (Musser 1992, 177– 78). Léar also omits a scene of Jesus’ burial, which would appear in almost all subsequent Passion films, including one shot later that same summer, nearly a thousand kilometres to the east, at Höritz, in the shadow of the Giant Mountains of Bohemia.

 The present chapter depends significantly on my longer treatment of the subject to which the reader is referred for far fuller discussion of the subject than may be offered here. See Shepherd () and, for a volume devoted to the depiction of Jesus and the gospels in the silent era see Shepherd (a).  For an in depth discussion of the Jesus film tradition see Tatum’s chapter in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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Having performed their passion play to live audiences over the prior three summer seasons (1894 – 1896), the Höritz players were able to offer the full fruits of their labors to the filmmakers commissioned by American theater impresarios Marc Klaw and Abraham Erlanger: the actors, props, costumes and the sets. As in the more famous play of Oberammergau, the Höritz passion play consisted of a combination of dramatic scenes (with scripted dialogue) and tableaux vivant (“living pictures”) – in which the silent acting was accompanied by the choirmaster’s narration. While the latter tableaux vivant might be shot with little adaptation for the silent screen, the impossibility of recording scripted dialogue required that various dramatic scenes essential to the narrative (including e. g. the Betrayal of Judas) be transformed into tableaux for the purposes of the film production. The extraordinary volume of footage at their disposal allowed the producers to commit to film not only a far greater proportion of the Passion than Léar had done, but also a series of prefatory Hebrew Bible scenes, including those of Adam and Eve, Joseph, and Moses which, according to the Philadelphia Enquirer, were intended to be “…emblematic of the life that went out on Calvary” (23 November 1897). This intention amongst others was reinforced by Prof. Ernest Lacy whose accompanying commentary also allowed the film to be marketed as an “illustrated lecture” as a means of pre-empting any controversy arising from this first filmic depiction of the Christ on American screens. Recognizing that the American viewing public were now ready for cinematic versions of the Passion in the guise of a European play, Richard Hollaman made use of the mothballed costumes and sets of Salmi Morse’s ill-fated 1880 New York stage production of the Passion to shoot his own “Oberammergau” Passion, premiering his film at the Eden Musee in New York on January 30, 1898. Subsequent revelations in the New York Herald (1 February 1898) that – unlike the Höritz film – Hollaman’s production had not been shot in Europe at all, but on the roof of the Eden Musee, did little to dampen audience enthusiasm for this film, or for the cinematic Passion Play (1898) and accompanying lecture produced by another pioneer of the American industry, Siegmund Lubin (Eckhardt 1997).

Miracles and Biblical Heroes The early success of Léar’s Passion in 1897 had not gone unnoticed in Paris – a city already well on its way to becoming the world’s leading center of film production, thanks to the initial industry of, amongst others, the brothers Lumière. In addition to a steady stream of actualitiés (such as Repas de bébé, 1895), the Lumières employed George Hatot, formerly of the Hippodrome theatre, to direct comic and ‘historical scenes’. Amongst the latter was a thirteen tableaux version of La vie et la pas-

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sion de Jésus-Christ (1898), shot the same year that the Passion films of the Eden Musee, Höritz, and Lubin were taking American screens by storm.³ While the firm of the Lumières’ great rival and friend, Leon Gaumont would not produce his own version of the Passion until Alice Guy’s La vie du Christ (1906),⁴ that other pioneer of French film, Charles Pathé quickly recognized and moved to exploit the creative and commercial prospects of the cinematic Passion. Pathé catalogues before the turn of the century suggest that it, like Gaumont, was distributing an edited and supplemented version of Hatot’s Passion, but with the arrival of Ferdinand Zecca at the turn of the century, Pathé was finally in a position to begin to produce its own scènes bibliques. ⁵ The first of these, Samson et Dalila (1902), was not only convenient to abridge and familiar to audiences, but also offered ample opportunities for the display of spectacle, including especially Samson’s displays of supernatural might, his subjugation at the hands of Delilah, and his destructive vengeance on the Philistines. The visual spectacle is further enhanced by means of the novelty of color, the inclusion of a troupe of female dancers in the Temple of Dagon, and a final scene (absent from the biblical narrative) in which Samson ascends heavenward accompanied by angels. More films from the firm were to follow in 1904 and 1905, including: Joseph vendu par ses frères, Le jugement de Salomon, Le festin de Balthazar and Daniel dans la fosse aux lions (both as part of Pathé’s trilogy Martyrs chrétiens)⁶ and La vie de Moїse – films which sought to emulate the illustrated Bibles of Doré and Tissot, by offering tableaux devoted not to the telling of the sacred story, but the illustration of its moments of spectacle by means of an increasing range of cinematic tricks. While biblical films began to feature prominently in Pathé’s exports to America from 1902, Zecca’s La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (1902 – 5; 1907) took American screens by storm both in rural centers and in large cities like Detroit, where it was claimed that the film had been viewed by no less than a quarter of a million customers, supporting the notion that Pathé’s biblical “blockbuster” was the most viewed picture in America in 1907 and 1908 and still being shown in 1910.⁷

Vitagraph, Blackton, and Elaboration Intent on winning over its own religious detractors, and perhaps prompted by Pathé’s remake of Samson (dir. Albert Capellani, 1908), the leading American studio,

 Rather than  as suggested by Sadoul (,  – ).  For more on this film see Shepherd (b) and Hebron’s chapter in Part II (Pp.  – ).  Bousquet ( – ). This catalogue is accessible online at http://www.foudation-jer omeseydoux-pathe.com/.  Le jugement de Salomon ran to only  meters, Samson et Dalila to  meters and La vie de Moïse totalled  meters. The print of the latter held by the NAFVTA in London has a running time of  m  s.  See Abel (,  – ) and “The Pathé Passion Play undimmed in popularity,” Moving Picture World  (October ), .

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Vitagraph, commissioned its top director, Stuart Blackton to follow his initial production of Salomé in the autumn of 1908, with three films based on the Hebrew Bible in 1909, beginning with Saul and David. ⁸ Blackton’s radical development of the DavidMichal love story demonstrates his uncredited dependence on the 1903 stage play, The Shepherd King (1903) by Arnold Reeves and Wright Lorimer. Yet, deprived of the dialogue intertitles, which would develop only later in the biblical film, Blackton’s Saul and David lacks entirely the ability to reproduce the dialogue that carries the play. Limited in this way, the film clearly requires a greater degree of audience familiarity with the story it attempts to tell, yet it is precisely this familiarity which is radically compromised by the departures from the biblical narrative as the audience would likely have known it. That such lessons had indeed been learned is suggested by the fact that in Vitagraph’s subsequent and much shorter The Judgment of Solomon, Blackton offers merely a fleshing out of the biblical narrative by means of the elaboration of the emotional reactions plausibly implied – or indeed perhaps even demanded – by the psychological realism of the story. Blackton’s Jephthah’s Daughter: A Biblical Tragedy (1909), the story of the Israelite judge whose foolish battle vow costs him his daughter, is only slightly longer than The Judgment of Solomon and shares much with it in terms of approach. Having established in the opening scene the emotional bond between the warrior and his women – united in their grief at his departure – Jephthah’s Daughter closely follows the narrative structure of the biblical text with the characters offering the depth and range of emotional responses only hinted at in the narrative itself, but increasingly expected by audiences steeped in the melodrama of the early twentieth-century cinema. As we will see, while the overt emotionalism of such melodrama will prove itself worthy of display alongside the traditional species of spectacle cultivated in Vitagraph’s first biblical films, it also contributes to the increasing capacity of the biblical film to tell the story of scripture in addition to making a spectacle of it. The sheer scale of Vitagraph’s fifth biblical film, The Life of Moses, suggests that Blackton’s aims of reproducing the success of Zecca’s La vie et passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ had yet to be realised. While both the latter and Alice Guy’s La vie du Christ had stretched over multiple reels, it is a measure of Vitagraph’s ambitions and their estimation of the market for the film, that it devoted no less than 5000 ft. (1500 meters) to its version of The Life of Moses. Indeed, the hope that Blackton’s Life of Moses might emulate Zecca’s blockbuster was made quite explicit in the promotional copy Vitagraph supplied to exhibitors, which trumpeted the film as “…the greatest event of its kind in motion pictures since the Passion play.”⁹

 For a full discussion of the cinematic tradition of King David see Page’s chapter in Part I (Pp.  – ) and for an exploration of the ‘melodramatic’ in the books of Samuel and its early cinematic depictions see Shepherd (c).  Moving Picture World, ( February ), .

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Vitagraph’s intention to produce and promote a faithful elaboration of the Life of Moses on film which would satisfy church-goers encouraged it to enlist the wellknown churchman, Rev. Madison C. Peters, to assist with and promote the production. Such “faithfulness” is also reflected in the film’s depiction of the “miraculous” by means of stop-motion photography, stock tinting, double exposure and frame scratching – particularly in reels three and four – to fulfill the expectation of the spectacle of the supernatural associated with the genre of the biblical film. Yet in the context of the evolution of the genre, the more significant contribution of Vitagraph’s Life of Moses lies in its commitment to tell the biblical story by means of unprecedented levels of cinematic sophistication (including advanced editing and camerawork) and narrative sensitivity (the inclusion of significant narrative detail which supplemented but did not contradict the biblical tradition).

Tragedy and Melodrama: Feuillade and Andréani While the French industry’s increasingly artistic and theatrical sensibilities did produce films such as Le baiser de Judas (dir. Armand Bour, 1908) and Capellani’s Samson, it fell to Gaumont’s Louis Feuillade to fully appreciate and embrace the trend toward ‘quality’ subjects in the French cinema, including those drawn from biblical narratives. Following L’aveugle de Jérusalem (1909) Feuillade directed a trio of films drawn from the Hebrew Bible: Judith et Holophernes (1909), Festin de Balthazar (1910) and Esther (1910),¹⁰ the last of which draws together themes explored in the previous two. While the mantle of empire has passed in the latter film from the Babylonians to the Persians and the setting is now that of Judean exile, Feuillade’s Esther displays the redemptive force of the Jewish female in juxtaposition with the oriental indulgence of the masculine which he had explored already in Judith et Holofernes. Esther’s first summary intertitle allows Feuillade to pass over the disobedience of Ahasuerus’ previous queen Vashti and focus at great length instead on the king’s recruiting of a new consort (Esth. 2:8). Filmed in color, the opening scene depicts the arrival of women in their finery against the backdrop of the Persian court for the inspection of both the viewer and the male court official. Only when all others have arrived, does Mordecai reluctantly part with Esther who is also carefully scrutinized before being taken away into the palace. In the second scene, Feuillade pans slowly across the bevy of maidens as they are prepared to be presented to the King before the camera comes to rest on Esther herself. Feuillade then cuts to a mid-closeup of Esther having her hair combed and further focuses the viewer’s attention on the display and production of feminine beauty through the use of a circle vignette, familiar from nineteenth century photography. A third scene, in which the women  For a full discussion of the cinematic tradition of Esther films see Ehrlich’s chapter in Part I (Pp.  – ).

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are presented to the King and then Esther chosen, is followed by the ‘Wedding Feast’ which allows Feuillade to display the opulence of the Persian court. While the film goes on to offer a relatively faithful elaboration of the biblical narrative, the first nine of its nineteen minutes thus offer confirmation of Feuillade’s positioning of female beauty as the principal catalyst of the narrative which culminates in the redemption of the Jewish people, including Esther’s uncle Mordecai who is both saved and elevated at Haman’s expense. Yet, as it does in Judith et Holophernes, the exploitation of this beauty in Esther leads to more than merely redeeming the righteous. The masculine malevolence of the foreign Haman is shown again to be helpless in the face of feminine Hebrew beauty, which dooms him to a demise, less gory but no less final, than that suffered by Holofernes and Belshazzar. Having concluded a subsequent series, Les sept pêchés capitaux, with an illustration from the life of Moses,¹¹ Feuillade shortly thereafter released L’exode a film whose radical conceptual dependence on Alma-Tadema’s celebrated painting The Death of the Firstborn (1872) and his daring exploration of the tragedy of the Egyptians confirmed both the depth of the director’s aesthetic convictions and his originality as a director of biblical films. Stirred from its slumber, Pathé responded by commissioning Henri Andréani to produce David et Goliath (1910) whose spectacle of lethal combat between shepherd boy and giant had been passed over by Blackton’s Saul and David (1909). The film was to presage Andréani’s later interest in the Samuel narratives but also his fascination with biblical violence and the threat of it, which was to resurface in his very next film, Moïse sauvé des eaux (1911). Evidently inspired by the admixture of violence (real and threatened), hyper-emotionalism, and moral polarization characteristic of French domestic melodrama of the time, Andréani offered in this and subsequent films a series of portraits of the biblical family, no less fraught with melodrama. Indeed, over the course of the next two years, Andréani depicted not only the spectacle of the female killer in Jaël et Sisera (1911) and the graphic stoning of Stephen (Le martyre de Saint Etienne, 1912), but also the familial traumas of fratricide (Caïn et Abel, 1911) attempted homicide (David et Saül, 1912), regicide (La mort de Saül, 1912) and real and threatened violence against children (Le sacrifice d’Abraham, Le sacrifice de Ismaël, and Le jugement de Salomon, 1912). Andréani’s preferred mode of the domestic melodrama may also be seen in the director’s final biblical films. The melodramatic potential of Judges 11 had already been explored by Vitagraph in Jephthah’s Daughter (1909) and by Gaumont in La fille de Jephté (1910), both of which begin by developing the intimacy of the relationship between father and daughter, which leads inevitably to the depiction of overwrought emotion as the implications of the father’s vow on the family become in-

 Pride – Nebuchadnezzar ( m); Greed – Delilah ( m); Lust – Susanna and the Elders ( m); Envy – Cain and Abel ( m); Gluttony – Esau ( m); Anger – King Saul ( m); Sloth – The Israelites at Paran ( m).

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Fig. 15: Jael prepares to kill the sleeping Sisera in Jaël et Sisera (1911)

creasingly clear. Yet whereas the Jephthahs of Gaumont and Vitagraph are merely sorrowful when they realize what they have done, Andréani’s La fille de Jephté (1913) brings his Jephthah much closer to the camera in order to display the depth of despair reflected in the father’s tearing of his clothes, a detail drawn from the ancient text itself (Judg. 11:35). Unlike the Gaumont version, which stops short of showing the sacrifice, Andréani furnishes the viewer with the spectacle of the offering of the daughter. Yet, the ritual nature of the act deprives it of much of its sensationalism, and the act of violence itself is subordinated to the narrative’s glorification of the willing and pious subordination of a daughter to the religious rituals of her family. If the daughter of Jephthah represents the young woman deprived of her marital future by the foolishness of a father, Andréani’s Rébecca (1913) offers the viewer a narrative of a young woman for whom divine providence will provide a husband in the shape of the patriarch, Isaac. While it is unclear whether the film itself has survived, the summary offered in Pathé’s catalogue clarifies that the film focuses on Eleazar, Abraham’s servant, who returns to Mesopotamia to find a wife for his master’s son and encounters Rebekah at the well. The limitations of footage and medium undoubtedly required that the verbose and repetitive dialogue of Genesis 24 be passed over, but the pious obedience on the part of a young woman already seen

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above in La fille de Jephté is evidently also at the heart of this picture, as it is in Andréani’s penultimate biblical film, Esther (1913). Despite Andréani’s appreciation for spectacle and his occasional use of the pan shot to display it to best advantage, it was undoubtedly his desire to ‘tell’ the biblical story on screen and develop its dramatic potential that encouraged him to bring the action closer to the camera and make use of an increasing (though still limited) range of cinematographic techniques including slow pans, primitive point-of-view shots, flashes forward, and especially cutting between adjacent spaces to sustain narrative energy and build suspense. Thus, if Pathé’s biblical films were comparatively progressive in relation to other historical films produced in France in moving beyond the tableau system of representation (Abel 1998, 321), this was due in large part to the biblical films of Andréani.

Griffith, Scale, and Analogy If, by 1913, the declining influence of French filmmakers like Pathé Frères and Gaumont on the American market was already well-advanced, the same could not be said of Italian firms such as Cines and films such as Quo Vadis (dir. Enrico Guazzoni, 1913).¹² Evidently inspired by the spectacle and scale of Guazzoni’s film when it arrived on American screens, D. W. Griffith set about adapting Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s fouract play Judith of Bethulia (1904).¹³ Whether or not Aldrich’s play was kept on set and consulted, the film’s debt to the play is acknowledged in the opening titles and evident at various points, including its inclusion and radical development of Naomi and Nathan as non-biblical lovers separated by the Assyrian siege of Israelite Bethulia. If Quo Vadis encouraged, at least in part, Judith of Bethulia’s combination of unprecedented biblical scale and spectacle with radical narrative elaboration, Giovanni Pastrone’s extraordinary Cabiria (1914) subsequently encouraged Griffith to new heights of scale and spectacle in Intolerance (1916), a film which combined a story of medieval persecution and a modern parable set in contemporary America with two biblical narratives: the Fall of Babylon and the Life and Passion of the Christ. While the scenes of the Judean story occupy no more than a dozen minutes of Intolerance’s three and a half hours and are radically subordinated to the three other stories,¹⁴ Griffith’s insistence on depicting Jesus as the victim of Pharisaic and wider Jewish intolerance prompted the protest of Jewish communities and apparently the cutting of numerous scenes. What has been less widely observed is the way in

 For a history of early Italian cinema see Bernardini ( – ).  For a discussion of biblical reception in the works of D. W. Griffith see Walsh’s chapter in Part II (Pp.  – ).  Thus Barnes Tatum (, ) characterizes the seven segments of the Judean story as no more than “thematic footnotes.”

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which Intolerance’s far more substantial Babylonian story also reflects this anti-Jewishness, though in a quite different form. Thus, in recounting the story of the Fall of Babylon and Belshazzar at the hands of the Persian Cyrus made famous by the biblical Daniel and other ancient sources, Griffith radically reverses the biblical understanding of both kings. Griffith’s Cyrus is an altogether vicious character, who exploits divisions in the Babylonian court and appears to delight in the city’s destruction. Thus, as his Persian forces assault the walls of Babylon, the narratorial voice of the intertitle articulates Cyrus’ appetite for destruction: “Cyrus repeats the world old prayer to kill, kill, kill—and to God be the glory, world without end, Amen.” Similarly, as Cyrus arrives to find Belshazzar dead on his throne, he growls and roars directly into the camera: “To God the glory! Long live Cyrus, King of Kings and Lord of Lords!” (intertitle). Cyrus’ invocation of the singular and capitalized “God” (as opposed to the plurality of named Babylonian gods such as Ishtar and Marduk) can only be interpreted as confirmation of his solidarity with and service of the “God” whose ancient Jewish worshipers joined their voices to the chorus of praise for Cyrus. Yet, if according to the Hebrew Bible, the God of the Jews inspires Cyrus to repatriate them and restore their temple, according to Griffith, this Jewish God also – and evidently more importantly – authorizes Cyrus’ destructive rampage and is given the glory for the death of the innocent Belshazzar. Whereas Judith of Bethulia’s depiction of the proud, pagan and decadent Holofernes and heroic Judith is entirely accommodated to the biblical account, Griffith’s radical remaking of Belshazzar into a martyred prophet of tolerance and Cyrus into the vindictive and violent enemy of tolerance appears to reflect Griffith’s own antiJewish predilections. Intolerance’s biblical segments were not the first to reflect such license and would certainly not be the last to indulge such an animus, but its influence on the biblical film extended far beyond such concerns. Especially in its pairing of biblical stories with modern narratives and in its appetite for mammoth scale and extraordinary spectacle (in terms of mise-en-scène, pageantry, male and female display, etc.) Griffith’s Intolerance would set the benchmark by which biblical films of the 1920s would be judged.

Vamps and Other Leading Ladies While the underwhelming box office performance of Intolerance helped to ensure the decline of the biblical film in the late teens, the fact that the genre did not disappear entirely in America in this period is due largely to the efforts of William Fox and others associated with the studio that bore his name. Crucial to Fox’s success in breathing new life into the biblical genre was Theda Bara, whose appeal as a ‘vamp’ in films like A Fool There Was (dir. Frank Powell, 1915) persuaded Fox to develop new vehicles for his diabolically irresistible leading lady. Given Fox’s established preference for films adapted from the stage, it is hardly surprising that the search of his leading director, Gordon Edwards, for a suitable subject for Bara’s particular talents led him

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to Salomé. Despite seeking to capitalize on the attraction of Salomé’s history on stage, the Fox film sought to differentiate itself from previous productions by foregrounding its dependence not on Wilde’s stage play or the gospel, but on the account offered by the ancient Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus. While the biblical emphasis on Salomé’s dance and the theatrical evolution of her agency in loving and then destroying John the Baptist offered ample opportunity for Bara to ‘vamp’, the film prefaces the Baptist’s entrance with a sequence which derives (but also dramatically departs) from Josephus’ account of Herod in Antiquities 15 – 18. Filling out its portrait of Herodias’ daughter Salomé with details supplied by Josephus’ account of Herod’s sister of the same name, Fox’s Salomé (1918) created a role which offered more space than any previous production had for Bara to play Salomé as the “[m]ost ruthless woman of the ages—the world’s wickedest vampire.”¹⁵ Thanks in large part to Bara’s miniscule costumes and the potency and predatory quality of Bara’s particular brand of sex appeal,¹⁶ Salomé may lay legitimate claim to being the first biblical film to be banned in some American jurisdictions. Nevertheless, the reviewer for the New York Times praised the Fox production for its “richness and extended pageantry, sumptuousness of setting and color details”; Theda Bara as Salomé was, “…every minute the vampire, in manner, movement and expression” (7 October 1918, 11). Having created a persona from which men could not escape, eventually neither could Bara herself, and her career rapidly declined. While Bara’s first appearance in a biblical film was thus also her last, Salomé was sufficiently successful that Fox and Edwards sought out Betty Blythe to play the Queen of Sheba (1921),¹⁷ a film whose most memorable feature turned out to be not the sex appeal of the female lead, but the unprecedented spectacle of the chariot race, whose success persuaded Edwards to include a similar scene in Fox’s third biblical film, The Shepherd King (1923). Having grudgingly allowed Edwards to shoot on location in Palestine, Fox sought to make up for the film’s logistical challenges and narrative failings by exploiting the Egyptomania inspired by the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter in 1922. Despite featuring both a pyramid and the sphinx on its promotional poster and even prefacing its story of David with a cameo by Moses, the film was largely forgotten in the wake of the altogether more spectacular Exodus depicted in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923) – a film which can however only be fully understood in light of the evolution of the biblical film in the meantime in Europe.

 So proclaimed the two-page spread advertising the film in Moving Picture World ( January ),  – .  For more on the censors’ response to Bara’s tendency to wear very little on screen, see Genini (, ).  This film is presumed lost apart from a clip viewable here: http://www.archive.org/details/Cleo patra.

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Fig. 16: Betty Blythe in Queen of Sheba (1921)

The Viennese Contribution: from Samson to Sodom Despite Intolerance’s perceived inadequacies in the West, the influence of Griffith’s film on the biblical genre as it evolved in central Europe should not be underestimated. Most obviously, Griffith’s penchant for the analogical pairing of biblical and modern narratives was reflected in the work of Alexander Korda and Michael

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Curtiz, two Hungarian émigrés drawn to Vienna by the burgeoning Austrian film industry of the late 1910s and early 1920s. Alexander Korda’s depiction of the biblical story of Samson und Dalila (1922) offers Griffith-like spectacle of scale and setting with displays of male violence, female beauty, and material destruction which unsurprisingly far outstrips earlier productions of the subject.¹⁸ More interesting is the narrative structure of the film, which departs from Griffith’s more purely analogical and parallel structure by narratively subordinating the biblical sequence to the modern story. This is accomplished first and foremost by having the initial segment of the biblical story not merely shown to the viewer, but ‘told’ to the main character of the modern narrative (Julia) by the Rabbi Eliezer, which establishes the religio-didactic context in which the ancient narrative is presented to the modern character and indeed the viewer. If Korda’s Samson und Dalila displays a development of Griffith’s analogical structure, the same might be said of Curtiz’s Sodom und Gomorrha (1922), which appeared the month before Korda’s film and had been much longer in the making. Like Griffith and Korda, Curtiz commences with his modern sequence, introducing the film’s leading characters beginning with Mary Conway (played by Curtiz’s own wife, Lucy Doraine), who is both muse and model for the sculptor who loves her, Harry Lighton. Encouraged by her mother to abandon Harry, Mary is instead soon engaged to Jackson Harber, a former lover of her mother, who is only too happy to write the latter a check in exchange for her daughter’s hand. Much like Griffith’s modern story, Curtiz’s sequence is furnished with the spectacle of high society entertainment as displayed in a long sequence of large-scale choreographed dance scenes at Harber’s palatial residence. Resisting the advances of the older Harber, Mary appears to enjoy torturing Harry, who in his desperation shoots himself in front of her. Momentarily chastened by what she has done, Mary’s subsequent yielding to her fate is then signalled by an intertitle: “And now all the best in me has died, and all the evil awakened! Sin take what course you will!” (auth. transl.). This intertitle serves to establish beyond doubt the immoral character of the female lead. Unlike Intolerance (though very much like Edwards’ last film for Fox) the intertitles in Curtiz’s film are, as this one is, overwhelmingly devoted to dialogue. But, like Griffith, Curtiz uses intertitles to make explicit the analogical points of contact between the discrete stories. Nevertheless, like Korda, Curtiz departs from Griffith’s more simple juxtaposition of parallel stories, by subordinating the following biblical sequence to the modern story. Curtiz’s transition to the biblical sequence from a close up of the priest and resumption of this image at the biblical sequence’s conclusion confirms that the biblical story is being recounted to the condemned woman by the priest – and is thus embedded within the modern narrative which encapsulates it. Even more explicitly

 See the description and helpful discussion of Korda’s Samson und Dalila () in Exum’s chapter in Part I (Pp.  – ) and Shepherd ().

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than the rabbi of Korda’s Samson und Dalila – who is not allowed to finish the biblical story – the priest’s “speaking” of the ancient sequence in Curtiz’s film not only serves to anchor it securely within the diegesis, it also encourages the construal of the sequence itself in homiletical terms. That the visual sermon will concern itself with the narrative found in Genesis 19 is made clear by the title of the film itself, and the selection of the Sodom and Gomorrah episode suggests that Curtiz understood, as Griffith and Edwards had, that the more laconic and brief the biblical narrative, the more scope there is for elaboration which would not offend.

The Exodus and Egypt Cecil B. DeMille arrived at the subject of his first biblical film, The Ten Commandments (1923)¹⁹ by means of an audience competition advertised in the pages of the Los Angeles Times which attracted submissions from across America and beyond.²⁰ However, The Ten Commandments’ pairing of an ancient and modern story suggests at least an awareness of Curtiz’s Sodom und Gomorrha, which had its American premiere as the much-reduced Queen of Sin on March 26, 1923, while Jeannie MacPherson was working on the scenario for DeMille’s film.²¹ While the initial intertitles of The Ten Commandments frame the analogy drawn between ancient Egypt and San Francisco of the 1920s, DeMille begins his film not with the modern story, but a depiction of the biblical Exodus lasting nearly one hour. DeMille’s filmmaking in his prologue reverts to that of an earlier era, depending more heavily on a primarily static camera, slower editing, and the more frequent use of the long shot in order to capture the sheer scale of the sets and the enormity of the cast (Higashi 1994, 182).²² Leaving Moses’ own origins, his escape to Midian, and his return to Egypt unreferenced, DeMille’s opening scenes linger on the spectacle of Israelite suffering in Egypt. The spectacle reaches its climax at Mt. Sinai where the Ten Commandments explode out of the sky before Moses, while the Israelites worship the Golden Calf at the foot of the mountain. DeMille interprets the latter scene in unabashedly orgiastic terms with a highly sexualized Miriam, who seduces both a hapless Dathan and the Israelites as a whole as she orchestrates the apostasy, which is finally punished with lightning from on high.²³ As in Sodom und Gomorrha,

 For an in depth discussion of the Moses film tradition in the silent era, see Shepherd () and for discussion focused largely on the sound era, see Koosed’s chapter in Part I (Pp.  – ).  Los Angeles Times, ( November, ), II, . For a discussion of biblical reception in the works of DeMille, see Kozlovic’s chapter in Part II (Pp.  – ).  Much reduced in length from  reels to  for its American release as The Queen of Sin, within two weeks of its premiere Variety had passed its verdict: ‘Queen of Sin Prize Flop’ Variety ( April ), .  For an analysis of the centrality of spectacle in Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings () see Shepherd (e).  For an analysis of this sequence see Shepherd (:  – ).

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DeMille’s depiction of violence and judgment not only capitalizes on incendiary special effects, it also exploits a violence and judgment that is divinely inflicted, even if, in this respect, it departs from the biblical tradition. It is at this point in the film that DeMille fades from the chaos of Sinai to the opening scene of the modern story, in which an elderly mother, Mrs. McTavish reads to her two grown sons, Dan and John, from Exodus 32:28 which is provided in an intertitle: “—And there fell of the Children of Israel that day, about three thousand men.” Like the rabbi in Samson und Dalila and the priest in Sodom und Gomorrha, the elderly Mrs. McTavish mediates the ancient biblical tradition to the modern world—embedding the ancient narrative within a modern story which tells of the dissolution and death of the rebellious Dan but also the redemption of Mary, the woman he threatens to drag down with him. In the closing sequences of the film, Mary’s pious brother-in-law John reads from Matthew 8:2– 3 (“‘And behold, there came to him a leper, and worshiped him.’”) before DeMille cuts to a shot of a stable in which Jesus sits with his back to the camera as a woman approaches. A mid-shot of the woman reaching out to Jesus is sandwiched between intertitles of her pleading request and his positive answer (Matt. 8:3) before a cinematic sleight of hand facilitates the disappearance of a stylized leprosy from the woman’s arms. Her collapse in adoration at Jesus’ feet facilitates the transition back to Mary resting at John’s feet where he continues to read, and, as the light comes up, it becomes clear first to Mary and then to John that “in the LIGHT, it’s gone” as her own skin appears clear and unblemished. If DeMille’s film, like Griffith’s Intolerance, explores notions of law and grace by pairing modern stories with Hebrew Bible and New Testament narratives, female morality is also to the fore. Indicted by the Law for her depravity and idolatry, DeMille’s Miriam on one hand suffers the punishment of leprosy borrowed from the book of Numbers (12), but without any suggestion of her forgiveness and cleansing. On the other hand, the final gospel sequence – in which a woman with leprosy has only to ask Jesus to cleanse her and it is done – suggests that if the law has the power to break people, only the gospel of Christ has the power to heal. Encouraged by the success of DeMille’s The Ten Commandments and undeterred by the failure of his own Sodom und Gomorrha/Queen of Sin in America, Curtiz persuaded Kolowrat’s Sascha Films to fund the filming of Die Sklavenkönigin (The Slave Queen), an adaptation of English author L. Rider Haggard’s novel, Moon of Israel (1918). Retaining the novel’s primary interest in the fictitious love story of an Israelite maiden, Merapi, and the Egyptian Pharaoh, Seti, Curtiz’s film also preserves the setting of the story in the Egypt of the Exodus. Indeed, the nearly simultaneous arrival of Curtiz’s and DeMille’s films on German screens led the reviewer of Berlin’s Filmwoche to conclude that: “…Some scenes are directly and confusingly similar, above all in the case of the crossing of the Red Sea, whose presentation and features are at

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least as impressive as [DeMille’s The Ten Commandments]”²⁴ Other obvious similarities include the depiction of the stream of Hebrews on their journey from Egypt to the Sea as well as the initial scenes of suffering with their foregrounding of a Jewish woman’s attempt to save a man from the whips of the Egyptian taskmasters. The review noting the biblical similarities between The Ten Commandments and Die Sklavenkönigin invites a closer consideration of the contrast drawn between the literalism of the former over against the ‘love story’ of the latter. If, as we have seen, DeMille’s interest in the biblical traditions of the Exodus lies almost exclusively in the spectacle that it allows him to mount in his biblical prologue, this is hardly less true of Curtiz’s Die Sklavenkönigin. As in The Ten Commandments, Curtiz passes over the story of Moses’ early years, his killing of the Hebrew, his sojourn in the wilderness, divine calling, and prolonged plaguing of Pharaoh, in favor of a focus on the archetypal spectacle of the Exodus. True to its sub-title, the tale told by Die Sklavenkönigin is that of Egypt; but, if this story is ancient in its mise-en-scène, it is hardly less modern in sentiment than DeMille’s own modern story. Despite their respective settings in ancient Egypt and modern San Francisco, the tales told by DeMille and Curtiz are both fundamentally love stories and cautionary tales. The terrible toll taken on Curtiz’s ancient Egypt dramatically illustrates the dangers of defying the Hebrew God, while the destruction of Dan and his corrupt cathedral construction disclose DeMille’s equally didactic insistence on the dire consequences of disregarding the Hebrew law. Yet, in both ancient Egypt and modern San Francisco, romance triumphs as both Merapi and Mary are saved yet again by Seti and John, the righteous men who love and are loved by them. Thus whatever the superficial differences between DeMille’s Ten Commandments and Curtiz’s Die Sklavenkönigin, their fundamental similarity may be seen in their shared commitment to “show” the ancient spectacle of the Bible and at the same time to “tell” a story which is distinctly modern in sentiment. If Curtiz’s subordinating of the biblical sequence to the modern story of Sodom und Gomorrha had anticipated – and in all likelihood influenced – DeMille’s own approach in The Ten Commandments, the Hungarian director’s adapting of Haggard’s novel the following year reflects his subsequent calculation that it was rather the integration of modern sentiment and story within the structure of ancient biblical spectacle which offered the more promising prospects for the development of the biblical film.

The Triumph of Spectacle and the End of the Biblical Silents When opportunity arose to shoot his second biblical film, DeMille eventually settled on the subject of the life of Christ. Like Griffith’s Judean story, DeMille’s The King of

 Review in Die Filmwoche, ( November ). (Transl. aut.).

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Kings (1927) commences not with the birth, but rather the ministry of Jesus. Moreover, if Griffith’s Judean story reflects his interest in depicting Christ as both a champion of tolerance and a victim of Jewish intolerance, this latter sentiment is also seen in DeMille’s demonization of Caiaphas as foil to Jesus – a device employed in part to extract every ounce of dramatic material from the gospel narrative in light of DeMille’s abandoning of subsidiary storylines and indeed a parallel modern story. Narrative development, such as there is within The King of Kings, may also be seen in DeMille’s depiction of Mark as a young boy and often as a spectator. This is exemplified at the end of the film, when, as Jesus bids farewell to his followers, DeMille includes a shot of Mark gazing at Jesus full of reverent love. Indeed, the film as a whole bears witness to the ways in which DeMille broke new ground in integrating innovative species of spectacle within the Jesus’ film. His opening technicolor sequence of the courtesan Mary Magdalene, replete with live animals, leering men, and Mary’s bejeweled brassiere; the pitched battle between Jesus’ followers and his would be captors in Gethsemane; and the extended depiction of darkness, howling wind, human destruction, lightning, and even the cleaving of rocks at the crucifixion all testify to DeMille’s disposition toward cinematic display. DeMille’s focus on the (especially healing) power of Jesus is further evidence of this interest in the spectacle of the supernatural often disclosed by means of cinematic light effects. For instance, at the conclusion of the Last Supper, when Peter returns to the Upper Room, the chalice from which they have all drunk is endowed by DeMille with a penumbra of light, rendered all the more captivating by the darkness in which the room is otherwise shrouded. Just as Jesus’ halo of light underlines his mystical and divine qualities, so too does that of the cup confirm the mystical and divine qualities of the wine which becomes the blood. Indeed, in its overt investment in the creation of spectacle, The King of Kings draws inspiration from and brings to a culmination the earliest traditions of the “Silent Jesus” in which the viewer’s experience of the miraculous Messiah is inextricably bound up with their experience of the miracle of moving pictures themselves.²⁵ While DeMille’s The King of Kings abandoned the analogical structure he had adopted in The Ten Commandments, it is ironic that the success of the latter, may well have persuaded Michael Curtiz to return to such a structure in Noah’s Ark (1928),²⁶ which paired the story of the ancient deluge with a tale of romance/adventure set in the First World War. Subordinating the biblical sequence to the modern story through a priestly reading of it, Curtiz follows DeMille in fully exploiting the conventions of romantic melodrama while injecting into his modern war story moments of spectacle (e. g. the train crash) much like DeMille does in the modern story of his Ten Commandments, (e. g. the collapse of the church wall, the crash of  For a volume devoted to cinematic representations of Jesus in the silent era see Shepherd (a).  For a analysis of the first substantial depiction of the Flood story in the cinema—Arthur Melbourne-Cooper’s Noah’s Ark ()—see Shepherd ().

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Fig. 17: The flood destroys Akkad in Noah’s Ark (1928)

the speed boat). In both of these films, it is the modern story that serves primarily to meet audience expectations of narrativity, thereby creating space within the biblical sequence for spectacle to reign supreme. Indeed while Curtiz’s scenes of the deluge of Akkad represent the culmination of the depiction of spectacular divine judgment inaugurated by his own Sodom und Gomorrha, he evidently felt the need to supplement this extraordinary flood sequence with a pastiche of the best-known spectacles of the biblical tradition, drawn from not only the depictions of Moses and Samson but even the Passion of the Christ, through the mention of the “Golgotha of Akkad.” This intertextuality of biblical traditions is visible already in, for instance, the cruciform pose adopted by Stephen as he is stoned in Le martyre de Saint Etienne; but in Noah’s Ark, it reaches its logical conclusion. Indeed, after thirty years of biblical films, Curtiz and Zanuck evidently decided that the variety and enormity of spectacle expected by viewers of biblical films could no longer be supplied by a single biblical narrative – not even one as spectacularly well furnished as the Genesis account of the flood. Mindful of the potential pitfalls of deviating too dramatically from a biblical story whose very attraction was premised on its familiarity, Curtiz and Zanuck follow DeMille’s The Ten Comandments in effectively relegating storytelling proper to the ‘modern story’ of love lost and rediscovered in the Great War. This leaves Curtiz free to elaborate the basic Noah narrative with spectacular scenes that, while not indigenous to Genesis, are nevertheless native to the sacred

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scripture which had been familiar to viewers of silent biblical films for more than three decades.

Conclusions Given the range of biblical subjects produced in the silent era, it is striking that the two final biblical films of this era, DeMille’s The King of Kings (1927) and Curtiz’s Noah’s Ark (1928), largely revert to depictions of the very subjects that appeared first on American and French screens around the turn of the century. Indeed, such an observation is fully compatible with the suggestion that the triumph of spectacle over story in the biblical film was very nearly as complete at the end of the silent era as it was at its inception. This conclusion may well also help to explain the seemingly curious fact, that while the epic – even in its historical guise – continued to flourish in the shape of films such as The Sign of the Cross and Last Days of Pompeii, and well into the 1930s, the end of the silent era seemed to signalled the effective end of the biblical film itself, until its resurrection in the 1950 – 60s.

Works Cited Abel, Richard. 1998. The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema, 1896 – 1914 [1994]. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Aldrich, Thomas Bailey. 1904. Judith of Bethulia, A Tragedy. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company. Bernardini, Aldo. 1980 – 82. Cinema muto italiano I – III. Rome and Bari: Laterza. Bousquet, Henri. 1994 – 2004. Catalogue Pathé des années 1896 à 1914. Bures-sur-Yvette: Editions Henri Bousquet. Cosandey, Roland, André Gaudreault, and Tom Gunning, eds. 1992. Une invention du diable? Cinéma des premiers temps et religion/An Invention of the Devil? Religion and Early Cinema. Lausanne and Québec: Payot Lausanne/Presses de l’Université Laval. Drew, William. 1986. D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance: Its Genesis and its Vision. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. Eckhardt, Joseph. 1997. King of the Movies: Film Pioneer Siegmund Lubin. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Genini, Ronald. 1994. Theda Bara: A Biography of the Silent Screen Vamp, with a Filmography. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company. Haggard, L. Rider. 2006. Moon of Israel [1918]. Fairfield, Iowa: First World Library. Higashi, Sumiko. 1994. Cecil B.DeMille and American Culture: The Silent Era. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jung, Uli, and Walter Schatzberg. 1999. Beyond Caligari: the Films of Robert Wiene. New York: Berghahn Books. Lacassin, F. 1995. Louis Feuillade: Maître des lions et des vampires. Paris: P. Bordas & fils. Loacker, Armin, and Ines Steiner, eds. 2002. Imaginierte Antike: Österreichische Monumental-Stummfilme. Vienna: Filmarchiv Austria.

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Musser, Charles. 1992. “Les Passions et les Mystères de la Passion aux États-Unis (1880 – 1900).” In Une Invention du Diable? Ed. R. Cosandey, André Gaudreault and Tom Gunning. Laval: Les Presses de L’Université Laval. Pp. 145 – 84. Neale, Steve, and Sheldon Hall. 2010. Epics Spectacles and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Sadoul, Georges. 1947. Histoire Générale du Cinéma, II, Les Pionniers du Cinéma (de Méliès à Pathé) 1897 – 1909. Paris: Les Éditions DeNoël. Schickel, Richard. 1984. D. W. Griffith: An American Life. New York: Simon and Schuster. Shepherd, David J. 2013. The Bible on Silent Film: Spectacle, Story and Scripture in the Early Cinema. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. — 2015. “Noah’s Beasts Were the Stars: Arthur Melbourne-Cooper’s Noah’s Ark (1909).” Journal of Religion and Film 20.1: http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article= 1372&context=jrf; accessed May 8, 2016. — ed. 2016a. The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927). New York: Routledge. — 2016b. “La naissance, vie et passion du Christ (Gaumont, 1906): The Gospel according to Alice Guy.” In The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927). Ed. D. J. Shepherd, 60 – 77. New York: Routledge. — 2016c. “David’s anger was greatly kindled: Melodrama, the Silent Cinema and the Books of Samuel.” In Now Showing: Film Analysis in Biblical Studies. Ed. C. Vander Stichele and L. Copier. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. — Forthcoming. “’See this great sight’: Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) and the Evolution of Biblical Spectacle in the Cinema.” Biblical Reception 4. Ed. D. Tollerton. New York and London: Bloomsbury. Slide, Anthony, ed. 1986. Memoirs of Alice Guy Blaché. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press. Tatum, W. Barnes. 2013. Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years and Beyond [1997, 2004]. 3rd ed. Salem, Oreg.: Polebridge Press. Uricchio William, and Roberta Pearson. 1993. Reframing Culture: The Case of the Vitagraph Quality Films. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wyke, Maria, and Pantelis Michelakis. 2013. The Ancient World in the Silent Cinema. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Films Cited (listed chronologically)²⁷ 1897 Le passion du Christ [a.k.a. La passion] (dir. Albert Kirchner/Léar, La Bonne Presse, FR; presumed lost). The Höritz Passion Play (prod. William Freeman, Klaw and Erlanger, US; presumed lost). 1898 The Passion Play of Oberammergau (dir. Henry Vincent, Eden Musee, US; presumed lost). The Passion Play (dir. Siegmund Lubin, Lubin Films, US; presumed lost). La vie et la passion de Jésus-Christ [“The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ”] (dir. George Hatot, Lumières, FR; LOC, AFF).

 For more information on all known archive holding of biblical and other silent films in major film archives, consult FIAF’s Treasures from the Film Archives database.

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1899 – 1900 La vie et passion du Christ [“The Life and Passion of Christ”] (dir. Gaston Breteau, Pathé Frères, FR; BFI). 1902 Samson et Dalila [“Samson and Delilah”] (dir. Ferdinand Zecca, Pathé Frères, FR; BFI). La vie et passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ [a.k.a. The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ] (dir. Ferdinand Zecca/Lucien Nonguet, Pathé Frères, FR; BFI, LOC). 1904 – 5 Joseph vendu par ses frères [“Joseph Sold by His Brothers”] (dir. Vincent Lorant-Heilbronn, Pathé Frères, FR; BFR). Le jugement de Salomon [“The Judgment of Solomon”] (dir. Unknown, 1904/5, Pathé Frères, FR; FRL). Le festin de Balthazar [“The Feast of Balthazzar”] (dir. Unknown, 1904/5, Pathé Frères, FR; BFI). Daniel dans la fosse aux lions [“Daniel in the Lions’ Den”] (dir. Lucient Nonguet (?), 1904/5, Pathé Frères, FR; BFI). La vie de Moїse [“The Life of Moses”] (dir. Unknown, 1905, Pathé Frères, FR; BFI). 1906 La vie du Christ [“The Life of Christ”; a.k.a La naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ; “The Birth, Life, and Death of Christ”] (dir. Alice Guy, Gaumont, FR; DVD: Gaumont Treasures 1897 – 1913). 1907 La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ [a.k.a. The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ] (dir. Ferdinand Zecca, Pathé Frères, FR; DVD: Image). 1908 Samson (dir. Albert Capellani, Pathé Frères, FR; BFI). Salomé [a.k.a. The Dance of the Seven Veils] (dir. Stuart Blackton, Vitagraph, US; BFI). Le baiser de Judas [“The Kiss of Judas”] (dir. Armand Bour, Film d’Art, FR; ESR). 1909 Noah’s Ark (dir. Arthur Melbourne-Cooper, Alpha, GB; BFI). The Life of Moses (dir. Stuart Blackton, Vitagraph, US; LOC, MoMA). Saul and David (dir. Stuart Blackton, Vitagraph, US; BFI, ITG). The Judgment of Solomon (dir. Stuart Blackton, Vitagraph, US; BFI). Jephthah’s Daughter: A Biblical Tragedy (dir. Stuart Blackton, Vitagraph, US; BFI). L’aveugle de Jérusalem [“The Blind in Jerusalem”] (dir. Louis Feuillade, Gaumont, FR; BFI). Judith et Holophernes [“Judith and Holofernes”] (dir. Louis Feuillade, Gaumont, FR; BFI). 1910 Esther (dir. Louis Feuillade, Gaumont, FR; BFI, GPA). Festin de Balthazar [“The Feast of Balthazzar”] (dir. Louis Feuillade, Gaumont, FR; BFI). Les sept pêchés capitaux. [“The Seven Deadly Sins”] (dir. Louis Feuillade, Gaumont, FR; BFI). L’exode [“The Exodus”] (dir. Louis Feuillade, Gaumont, FR; BFI). La fille de Jephté [“The Daughter of Jephthah”] (dir. Léonce Perret, Gaumont, FR, GPA). 1911 David et Goliath [“David and Goliath”] (dir. Henri Andréani, Pathé Frères, FR; BFI). Moïse sauvé des eaux [“The Finding of Moses”] (dir. Henri Andréani, Pathé Frères, FR; BFI). Caïn et Abel [“Cain and Abel”] (dir. Henri Andréani, Pathé Frères, FR; BFI). Jaël et Sisera [“Jael and Sisera”] (dir. Henri Andréani, Pathé Frères, FR; BFI). 1912 Le martyre de Saint Etienne [“The Martyrdom of St. Stephen”] (dir. Henri Andréani, Pathé Frères, FR; FRB). Le sacrifice d’Abraham [“The Sacrifice of Abraham”] (dir. Henri Andréani, Pathé Frères, FR; GPA).

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David et Saül [“David and Saul”] (dir. Henri Andréani, Pathé Frères, FR; presumed lost). La mort de Saül [“The Death of Saul”] (dir. Henri Andréani, Pathé Frères, FR; LOC). Le sacrifice de Ismaël [“The Sacrifice of Ishmael”] (dir. Henri Andréani, Pathé Frères, FR; presumed lost). Le jugement de Salomon [“The Judgment of Solomon”] (dir. Henri Andréani, Pathé Frères, FR; GPA). 1913 La fille de Jephté [“The Daughter of Jephthah”] (dir. Henri Andréani, Pathé Frères, FR; BFI, FRB). Rébecca (dir Henri Andréani, Pathé Frères, FR; presumed lost). Esther (dir. Henri Andréani, Pathé Frères, FR; CF). Quo Vadis? (dir. Enrico Guazzoni, Cines, IT, ITC). 1914 Judith of Bethulia (dir. D. W. Griffith, Biograph, US; DVD: Bach Films). 1916 Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (dir. D. W. Griffith, Triangle Film Corporation, US; DVD: Kino). 1918 Salomé (dir Gordon Edwards, Fox, US; presumed lost). The Queen of Sheba (dir. Gordon Edwards, Fox, US; presumed lost apart from clip viewable here: http://www.archive.org/details/Cleopatra1917). 1922 Samson und Dalila [“Samson and Delilah”] (dir. Alexander Korda, Corda Film, AT; BFI). Sodom und Gommorha [a.k.a. Queen of Sin] (dir. Michael Curtiz, Sascha Film, DE/AT; DVD: ATF). 1923 The Shepherd King (dir. Gordon Edwards, Fox, US; presumed lost). I.N.R.I. [a.k.a. Crown of Thorns] (dir. Robert Wiene, Neumann Productions, DE; BFI). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, Famous Players-Lasky, US; DVD: Famous Players-Lasky Corporation). 1924 Die Sklavenkönigin [a.k.a. Moon of Israel] (dir. Michael Curtiz, Sascha Film, AT/UK; BFI). 1927 The King of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, DeMille Pictures Corporation, US; DVD: Criterion). 1928 Noah’s Ark (dir. Michael Curtiz, Warner Brothers, US; DVD: Warner Classics).

Robert Ellis

9 Film Noir and the Bible Vince: What have you been doing all day? Debby: Shopping. Vince: Some career, huh? Six days a week she shops, on the seventh she rests, all tired out… (The Big Heat, dir. Fritz Lang, 1953)

An account of biblical reception in film noir could be brief. Though the classic film noir canon contains many of the key films produced in Hollywood in just over two decades, clear indications of the explicit use of or reference to biblical texts is minimal. This is unusual enough in itself to be worthy of some reflection and comment. Perhaps there are qualities intrinsic to the genre itself that militate against it. Given the peculiarities of film noir, and the more than usual controversies about its nature and canon, and whether it should be called a ‘genre’ at all, this should not surprise us. It also requires that we have an extended consideration of the nature of film noir, a discussion which will include consideration of whether the film noir genre has geographical or chronological delimitations.

The Genre The descriptive term film noir was first used by French film critics after the Second World War to describe some of the American films which were being shown in French cinemas.¹ They may well have had in mind a series of French black-bound novels (mainly American detective stories in translation) which first appeared in 1945, a série noir. During the war American films had not been shown in France and so subtle changes, which may not have registered on those who had been familiar with American movie output as it was released during the war years, struck the French critics with some impact. Gone, they thought, was the kind of optimistic American film in which the hero got the girl and justice was done, while simultaneously dramatizing and legitimizing the American dream. In their place came a series of movies that were altogether bleaker. The storylines were more tragic than romantic, moral absolutes were relativized, heroes and heroines flawed and often failing, and the murky narratives were rendered on the screen using techniques that accentuated these characteristics. The films looked different too, the frequently dark screen image resonating with darkness in plot, character, and theme. So it was that the French critics spoke of these movies as film noir, black films. The first sustained treatment of these films in 1955 was also French—Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton’s A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941 – 1953.  August  is typically given as the first appearance of such critical accounts. See Naremore (, ).

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Their analysis, while supplemented or contradicted in detail here and there, has proved remarkably durable. They spoke not of a new genre but of a “series” of films (Borde/Chaumeton 2002, 1). The initial critical references had identified a handful of films, the earliest being The Maltese Falcon (dir. John Huston, 1941). Borde and Chaumeton placed the same movie as the first in their series and described a sequence of American movies through to 1953. In fact, both the outer date limits of noir, and the provenance of the films (whether they have to be American) have remained continuously under discussion, with most commentators now closing the canon later.² Borde and Chaumeton’s description of the film noir “series” is characterized by key narrative elements and thematic similarities, highlighting the violence in the films and the central place of death within them. Pre-war crime movies had such features too; what distinguishes the noir style is that the crime is now more likely to be viewed “from within” – adopting the viewpoint of a criminal or an apparently innocent bystander caught up in and threatened by the crime, rather than that of the crime fighter (Borde/Chaumeton 2002, 6). Indeed, the crime fighters of noir are often shown to be corrupt and criminal, and the narrative destabilizes moral norms by manipulating the viewer into a position where they sympathize with those set over and against the law. As Borde and Chaumeton indicated, the plots create multiple ambiguities with the audience becoming uncertain about who will kill or be killed, and who can be believed and who cannot (Borde/Chaumeton 2002, 8). The lead often finds himself in trouble, frequently invites it, and often suffers violence himself as the story moves to its bittersweet or conflicted ending: The Maltese Falcon, in which Spade hands his lover over to the cops is typical here; The Third Man (dir. Carol Reed, 1949) – in this case, a British film – offers another remarkable, incomplete ending, as Anna walks past the camera and leaves Holly Martins adrift and alone. The ambiguity affecting the leading female characters in film noir is another thematic constant. “Frustrated and guilty, half man-eater, half man-eaten, blasé and cornered, she falls victim to her own wiles … The heroine is vicious, deadly, venomous, or alcoholic” (Borde/Chaumeton 2002, 9, 12). Frequently criminally minded, untrustworthy, and charged with an eroticism that beguiles the men around her, the femme fatale of film noir is as deeply ambiguous as the other characters, and often her agency is at the center of the complex and frequently baffling plot.³ The complexity of the plots (Borde and Chaumeton speak of the “strange unfolding of the action […] The action is confused, the motives uncertain”; 2002, 10 – 12), together with its looming sense of violence and lack of moral stability, creates a sense of anxiety and alienation in the films which viewers find unsettling.

 A helpful discussion of the issues sympathetic to a broader definition can be found in Bould (). For a more conservative approach see, e. g. Damico ().  See a number of the essays that show the possibilities and plausibility of feminist readings of these characters and film noir generally in Kaplan ().

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It is easy to come to a conclusion: the moral ambivalence, criminal violence, and contradictory complexity of the situations and motives all combine to give the public a shared feeling of anguish or insecurity, which is the identifying sign of film noir at this time. All the works in this series exhibit a consistency of an emotional sort: namely the state of tension created in the spectators by the disappearance of their psychological bearings. The vocation of film noir has been to create a specific sense of malaise (Borde/Chaumeton 2002, 12, italics in the original).

At this point we might consider film noir’s origins or precursors, thinking here not so much of those films which some might dub ‘proto-noir,’ but those literary, philosophical and artistic movements which fed into the development of film noir. In terms of the literary background to these films, affinities are sometimes found in existentialist philosophy in which themes of anxiety and alienation are strong (Porfirio 1996). The philosophy itself seems distant from the American noir movies, though it probably shaped the sensibilities of the French critics who first labeled the films. A clearer literary source is the “hard-boiled” fiction of Dashiell Hammett,⁴ James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, and others, who had given the detective novel a new direction with more violent stories, anti-heroes whose morality was “flexible and utilitarian [yet with] a fundamental integrity” (Hirsch 1981, 24) and a decidedly more urban setting – on the “mean streets.” Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene might be considered examples of a similar trend in more general fiction, and sometimes Albert Camus’ The Stranger (1942) is taken to be an example of noirish fiction (Hirsch 1981, 46). Camus admired the hard-boiled American writers,⁵ and connecting The Stranger to film noir in this way suggests that questions of the influence of existentialism upon it may be circular. The artistic influences on film noir include the surrealism that contributed to its dreamlike sequences. Borde and Chaumeton suggested that the various themes in noir often “converge in incoherence … this note of confusion is at the very heart of the oneiric quality specific to the series” (Borde/Chaumeton 2002, 11). But the major artistic influence is German Expressionism, at its height from 1910 – 1930. In German Expressionism the dreams become nightmarish, with “night, death, psychic disorder, social upheaval” among its major themes (Hirsch 1981, 54). The use of dramatic lighting – the chiaroscuro of dramatic contrasts and dark scenes with only shafts or splinters of light, and characters lurking in or obscured by shadow – is a noir visual trademark, as is the use of strange and unsettling camera angles which disorient the viewer. Film noir is a decidedly cinematic genre; it has a look. It is often noted that many of the early noir directors were of European origin and, though making their livings in the U.S., they brought with them some European concerns and perspectives. The same might be said of many of the film score composers in this period. Many noirs have high quality scores, but the narrative ambiguities are  Hammett’s short story “Fly Paper,” published in  is often regarded as the first “hard boiled” story. See Marling ().  Naremore (, ) reports that Camus decided to write The Stranger after reading James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice.

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present in the music as in the script, as the music hovers uncertainly between major and minor keys or juxtaposes harsh pictures with calm music (or vice-versa). The presence of so many European auteurs and other film contributors⁶ inevitably raises the question of whether the film noir genre ought to have geographical restriction. Alain Silver, in a series of important publications,⁷ insists that film noir is “an indigenous American form.”⁸ It is indisputable that the majority of the films considered to comprise the noir category come from the Hollywood studio system. The Maltese Falcon is still reckoned by most to be the first clear noir, though some critics find earlier examples or films that they label “proto-noir.”⁹ Baude and Chaumeton’s end date of 1953 is now generally considered too early. Often Touch of Evil (dir. Orson Welles, 1958) is considered to bookend the series (Hirsch 1981, 199), but this is also disputed. Film Noir: The Encyclopedia gives The Naked Kiss (dir. Samuel Fuller, 1964) as the end of the cycle though also begins it with Boris Ingster’s 1940 film, The Stranger on the Third Floor (Silver, et al. 2010, 343 – 44). The outer edges of film noir chronology are uncertain, but despite the difficulties in locating both the beginning and end of the sequence, “classic” film noir represents an era in filmmaking. Beyond, say, 1964, critics often speak of “neo-noir”¹⁰ – though there can be overlaps between classic and neo-noir in the lists of different critics deploying similar criteria in different ways. One obvious difference in the more recent films is the use of color rather than black and white, and many viewers will consider this a vital feature of classic noir adding special qualities to its lighting and contrasts. The existence of films that might be called neo-noir is a sign of the enduring appeal of the classic noir themes and effects. However, these films become increasingly difficult to categorize (Bould 2005, 92). In a postmodern context in which narrators are increasing unreliable, moral absolutes come under continuous pressure, and all kinds of stability are destabilized, we might say that film noir has “leaked” into so many films made in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century that its influ-

 Paul Schrader (, ) includes Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, John Alton, and Max Steiner in a long list.  Silver’s significant noir works include a number of jointly edited publications that have become key texts, including four Readers, an Encyclopedia, and other volumes including a collection of movie stills with commentary – especially appropriate for discussing the visual characteristics of noir Film Noir, edited with James Ursini and Paul Duncan. Full details of these publications can be found under Works Cited.  The encyclopedia, for example, lists only American movies and in the introduction to the most recent edition describes film noir as a “unique example of a wholly American film style” (Silver, et al. , ).  For example Shanghai Express (dir. Joseph von Sternberg, ), Scarface (dir. Howard Hawks/Richard Rosson, ), Little Caesar (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, ), and Fury (dir. Fritz Lang, ) may be described as proto-noir.  See Arnett (,  – ). Paul Duncan distinguishes between American films categorized as “Post Noir ( – )” and “Neo-Noir ( – ).” Duncan (,  – ).

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ence is pervasive. The labeling of some of these films as neo-noir may be analytically interesting but not definitive. There are good grounds for chronological criteria in defining film noir, but what about geography? Naremore notes the curiosity of a French name for an “indigenous American” genre, and observes that the first critics to use the term believed that they were identifying an international style (Naremore 1998, 10). The coining of the description may have come about because “local conditions [in France] predisposed them to view Hollywood in certain ways” (Naremore 1998, 14), but it is difficult to argue for an exclusively American experience in the construction of the genre. This must be partly because the term film noir was not frequently used in the U.S. until well into the 1950s, and it was probably not in popular use for twenty years after that, when the classic canon of film noir had closed. It is unlikely then that producers and directors set out deliberately to make film noir at all – the descriptor is primarily retrospective, used by critics rather than filmmakers.¹¹ While it is generally accepted that something in the American wartime and immediate post-war condition is reflected in film noir, the social and artistic factors shaping noir are at work elsewhere too and there is a very strong case for a parallel British film noir tradition (Keaney 2008, 1– 6), and perhaps within other cinematic traditions too.¹² While film noir may have its center of gravity and its defining exemplars in American movies it seems too restrictive to exclude movies from elsewhere. In this essay I am therefore defining film noir as a type of movie made mainly but not exclusively in the U.S. between 1940 and 1964.

Direct Use of the Bible in Film Noir, and the Lack of It We began by saying that an account of biblical reception in these films could be brief. Our extended consideration of sources and themes may go some way towards explaining why, given the number of films under consideration and their significance as artifacts of a culture shot through with religious and biblical influences, film noir has remarkably few direct biblical references. The American fiction upon which so much film noir is based is itself not replete with biblical content, and neither do the other shaping forces give prominence to biblical content. The bleak wartime

 Silver provides an interesting poser to this prevailing assumption, with a photograph of director Robert Aldrich posing on the set of Attack! in  with a copy of Borde and Chaumeton’s Panorama. Silver (, ).  Duncan (,  – ) lists , noir films in no fewer than twelve noir categories, each with defined geographical and chronological parameters. As well as British noirs he identifies French, Italian, Mexican and Japanese cycles. The majority of the ,, some , comprise ‘classic’ period noirs from the U.S. between  –  (though he also lists  U.S. noir westerns made between  – ).

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and post-war uncertainties reflected in these films, with its gender identity issues, for instance, and unstable moralities, is not straightforward biblical territory. Where it does appear it is often subverted or handled with genre-characteristic irony. In The Big Heat (dir. Fritz Lang, 1953) gangster Vince Stone remarks of his girlfriend, Debby Marsh, who has just returned from shopping, “Six days a week she shops and on the seventh day she rests.” This paraphrase of Exodus 20:9 – 10 or Deuteronomy 5:13 – 14 shows some biblical literacy on the part of the ruthless Stone. The film’s hero, cop Dave Bannion, is urged by his colleague to see a priest because he is entering “a hate binge” in the wake of the mob’s killing of his wife, and reference to clergy in the noir canon is not so uncommon.¹³ Likewise, Dead Reckoning (dir. John Cromwell, 1947) has a variation on the common device of a voiceover narrative, as the protagonist Rip Murdock tells the film’s story to an Army padre in the sanctuary of a Roman Catholic Church. But with typical noir bleakness, Murdock disappears before the story is finished and the priest is left looking around in confusion. We see an echo of the Hebrew Bible in Born to Kill (dir. Robert Wise, 1947). Seedy PI Albert Arnett, who dispenses plagiarized wisdom throughout the film, paraphrases Ecclesiastes 7:26. The words (“I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets.”), spoken to the film’s pathological femme fatale Helen Brent, aptly capture her scheming treachery.

Fig. 18: The Bible is featured extensively in The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Altogether more developed, sinister, and unsettling is the unusually extensive use of the Bible in The Night of the Hunter (dir. Charles Laughton, 1955), where it is central to the film’s plot and characterizations. In fact, it is sometimes said that this film’s themes and characters are not authentically noir because of the strict moral dualism  Elsewhere in The Big Heat there is reference to another character’s minister, “if he had a minister.” See McArthur (,  – ).

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set up by the narrative (Erickson 2010, 207). But there remain lingering ambiguities of character, and the sexuality of the film simmers throughout with conflicting messages (Callow 2000, 64, 67– 68). The nightmarish world created by the film’s villain, Harry Powell, is pure noir. When these thematic treatments are added to the stunning visuals (especially the expressionistic use of non-realistic space and dramatic chiaroscuro) its noir credentials are clear. The film opens with Sunday school teacher Mrs. Cooper telling her charges about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Several texts are explicitly mentioned. The first of these (Matt. 5:8) pronounces a blessing on the pure in heart. The film suggests that purity is found in the Harper children, John and Pearl (though they are concealing stolen cash!), and in the uncomplicated and sacrificial loving kindness of Rachel Cooper, the woman who endangers herself as she takes in the children after they flee from Powell. The second reference has Jesus urging his followers not to worry, but to be like the lilies of the field (6:28 – 29). This could be heard as a gloomy foreboding of the problems brought by trying to protect stolen money, or a reassurance of some providential hand in what will follow. While it is true that the children emerge safely, the fate of their mother Willa (who is murdered by Powell) casts some doubt on this interpretation. The final quotations warn us against judging lest we ourselves be judged (7:1) – a remarkably difficult thing given the plot about to unfold – and caution us to look out for false prophets and always to assess someone by the good fruit that they bear (7:15 – 16, 18, 20). The damaging fruit of Harry Powell’s “ministry” leaves chaos and destruction until finally repelled by Cooper. The movie is an acted testimony to the notion that the devil can quote scripture (Matt. 4:5 – 6), but the evil Powell is overcome by the one person who knows the Bible better and takes it more seriously than he.

Fig. 19: Powell’s tattoos explained with reference to Cain and Abel

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It is scripture that begins Powell’s search for the $10,000 stolen by Ben Harper, Willa’s first husband and father to John and Pearl. While awaiting execution for murder, Harper shares a cell with Powell and, despite repeated probing, remains tightlipped. However, in his sleep he mumbles the text of Isaiah 11:6, “And a little child shall lead them.” The money is hidden, the viewer knows, inside Pearl’s rag doll. We see Powell’s facility with the scriptures at this early stage. He quotes Matthew 10:34 (“I come not with peace but with a sword”) in showing off a knife sneaked past the prison guards, and explains “Love” and “Hate” tattooed on to the knuckles of his left and right hands by telling the story of Cain and Abel from Genesis 4. On release he wheedles his way into the Harper family. Then, in humiliating Willa on their wedding night as she looks forward to consummating their marriage, he refers to Eve in Genesis 2– 3 telling her that her body is meant for child rearing not satisfying the lusts of men; and she has enough to do looking after the children she already has. As far as we can tell the marriage is never consummated. When he has killed Willa, he spins a yarn about her running away and cites Proverbs 23:27b-28, likening the murdered Willa to an adulteress (“an estranged woman is a narrow pit. She lieth in wait as for prey and increaseth the transgressors among men”), thus suggesting that she trapped him into marriage and deflecting suspicion of the gullible Spoons away from him (Callow 2000, 70).

Fig. 20: Caught in the bulrushes in The Night of the Hunter (1955)

The film opens with the somewhat ominous and opaque references to the Sermon on the Mount and leads into this ironic and twisted sequence of biblical references from Powell. Towards the end of the film the use of the Bible becomes less problematic, and its use on the side of “good” repels Powell. When the children, having fled Powell on the river, reach the safety of Rachel Cooper’s home they encounter this different handling of scripture texts. We first hear her tell the story of Moses’ rescue in Exodus 2:1– 10, when Pharaoh’s daughter rescues him in the bulrushes. John and Pearl’s

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boat had nestled in the rushes, suggesting that they too have been rescued from a tyrant by a kind woman in a similar way. Later she offers a version of the slaughter of innocents from Matthew 2:1– 11 which echoes the Moses rescue story in Exodus 1, a story which chimes with Cooper’s own views regarding the innocence of childhood. Powell spits scripture back at his adversary, calling her one of the whores of Babylon (Rev. 17– 18). But in the end, Rachel Cooper’s constancy, bravery, and wholesome biblical simplicity prevail. No other film noir has such an extensive use of biblical material, and it is striking how in The Night of the Hunter this biblical material is again subject to the kind of “odd angles of view” and destabilizing interpretations that characterize film noir.

Biblical and Religious Themes We saw earlier the use of clergy to add to the disorienting effect of noir narrative, but in one of the major noir movies a priest is used without irony to explore biblical and religious themes of forgiveness. In The Postman Always Rings Twice (dir. Tay Garnett, 1946), when the murderous plotting of the lovers Frank and Cora comes perfidiously unstuck, we see Frank making a final confession to a priest. A brief discussion of guilt and forgiveness introduces religious themes, but neither condemned man nor priest quote biblical texts. Overtly religious themes are also rare in the amoral and relativized world of film noir. There are exceptions, and Brit-noir movies may be referred to here, specifically adaptations of Graham Greene’s novels. Earlier Hollywood movies based on Greene’s novels, such as This Gun for Hire (dir. Frank Tuttle, 1942) or The Ministry of Fear (dir. Fritz Lang, 1944), were freer adaptations that lessened some of Greene’s trademark symbolism. Much of this symbolism was heavily religious, with prominent themes reflecting his Catholic spirituality: guilt, forgiveness (or the lack of it), and betrayal. After the war, Greene was given more input into a series of British adaptations of his work. The Fallen Idol (dir. Carol Reed, 1948) subverts expectations by citing confusion over truth in a child’s response to a death, which he believes was caused by his idol, Baines. The young Phillipe keeps inventing new versions of events for the police in an effort to protect Baines so that even the viewer begins to lose track of what happened. The biblical doctrine of creation is touched upon in a conversation between Baines and Phillipe near the conclusion of the film, problematizing the formative nature of relationships: Baines: We ought to be very careful, Phil, because we make one another. Phillipe: I thought God made us. Baines: Trouble is, we take a hand in the game.

Another British noir adaptation, The Third Man, includes a brief exchange about belief in God and damnation as Martins and Lime look down from a Ferris wheel, Martins challenging Lime’s amorality – but the challenge is shrugged away. Like many a

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Greene villain, Lime goes knowingly to a hell of his own making. Brighton Rock (dir. John Boulting, 1947, released in the U.S. under the title Young Scarface) is more theologically complex and gives a more prominent place to such themes. Young sociopathic gangster Pinkie, a rather androgynous character, takes revenge on a journalist who has exposed one of his cronies but then finds it necessary to cover up this killing. He courts and marries Rose, a local waitress. His contempt for her hardly wavers, and he tries to lead her into a suicide pact as the forces of law and order close in on him. But we have already learned that this strange couple shares a Catholic faith.¹⁴ Pinkie affirms upon discovering Rose’s rosary, “Of course it’s true. Those atheists don’t know nothing. They’ll have flames, damnations, torments.” Rose laments her lack of confession before marriage (“I wanted to be in a state of grace”). The main obstacle to suicide is its eternal consequences. Pinkie dies in the struggle with the police but Rose survives, mourning her lost love and fearing his damnation. Greene and Terrance Rattigan (who collaborated on this screenplay) then make a significant change to the end of the film compared to the book upon which it is based. Rose had asked Pinkie to make a recording of his voice for her, with some dark presentiment of their ends. Pinkie makes a gramophone recording on Brighton pier in which he spits venom, beginning “you’d like me to say ‘I love you’…,” but going on to disabuse and abuse her. In the book Rose goes home at the end to play the recording and discover ultimate desolation and the hollowness of Pinkie’s love; however, in the movie the recording has been damaged and sticks with a repeated “I love you” as the camera zooms in on a crucifix near Rose, thus suggesting forgiveness and hope.¹⁵ A number of biblical scholars and theological commentators have seen thematic similarities between Ecclesiastes and film noir. Christopher Deacy is among those who see a parallel between Qoheleth’s world-weary disposition (“all is vanity and a chasing after wind,” Eccl. 1:14) and the futility which marks noir (Deacy 2001, 60). Qoheleth’s answer is to affirm living life to the full despite its many contradictions and anxieties (e. g. Eccl. 11:8), leading Deacy to suggest that film noir, with its recognition of the fundamentally intractable human condition (rather than Hollywood’s frequently unrealistic depiction of human goodness) offers some sort of possible locus for redemption. This is likely to be in the viewer rather than on the screen

 In an interview with Quentin Falk, Greene (a, ) revealed that the film censors had been very uncomfortable with a murderer expressing clear religious sentiments, and that he had had to tone down Pinkie’s faith for the film. The point is underlined by a letter from Greene (b) to the Daily Mirror in which he laments that “Apparently one is allowed a certain latitude in using the name of God as an expletive, but any serious quotation from the Bible is not permissible on the English screen.”  Greene (a,  – ) explains that he was content to re-write the ending so that “those who wanted a happy ending would have had it,” while others would guess that on another occasion the record would not stick. However, he was less happy with the way that the scene came to be shot – he had planned no crucifix, for instance.

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however, thus articulating a key distinction between redemption wrought in the film and redemption wrought through the film. Eric Christianson suggests something similar with the book of Judges. Just as film noir “threatens the stability of the American dream, Judges threatens the stability of Israel’s covenantal relationship and exposits the contingency of access to the promised land” (Christianson 2008, 43). Consequently Christianson traces fundamental ambiguities in Judges – narrative gaps, conflicting testimony, uncertainty over gender roles, the linking of sex and violence, and a pervading sense of existential entrapment – all preventing the reader forming a proper verdict about the period of the Judges. In a way similar to Philip Marlowe’s attitude in The Big Sleep (dir. Howard Hawks, 1946), there is also a sense that despite some individual triumphs, there is a larger malaise that cannot be eradicated.¹⁶ Christianson works at these issues by grounding his discussion predominantly in the Jael passages of Judges 4– 5. The particular question of gender identity and film noir has also been creatively pursued by Bruce Babinton and Peter Evans in relation to Samson and Delilah (Babington/Evans 1993, 74– 76).

Concluding Remarks Biblical references in film noirs of the classical U.S. period are rare, and when the Bible does appear it is usually used ironically or otherwise subverted. Overtly theological themes can sometimes be found in noirs from Britain, for instance, and this may be because the writers upon whose work these films are based are more selfconsciously exploring religious themes. For the core U.S. canon of noir the literary, philosophical and cinematic sources, together with the social milieu within which the films arise, probably explains why scripture is largely absent, though intriguingly, in the later so-called “neo-noir” there may be evidence of greater biblical awareness. If neo-noir films had been in our field of view in this essay we might have found rather more biblical material. A particularly interesting exercise here is a comparison of the late classic noir, Cape Fear (dir. J. Lee Thompson, 1962), with the neo-noir Scorsese remake of the same title (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1991). The villain, Max Cady, is thoroughly unpleasant in both releases; but, whereas the 1962 film has no biblical references, the 1991 has several.¹⁷ The hero’s lawyer quotes Matthew 5:5 in

 Christianson (, ); Christianson quotes Spicer (, ).  Scorsese’s Catholic upbringing is well documented, and may explain in part his interest in (quasi‐) religious themes. See Dougan (,  – ). As a young man he began training for the priesthood but was alienated by the “hypocrisy, intolerance, dogma and moral ambiguity” which he encountered (Myers , ). Scorsese still describes himself as a Christian but regards himself as “on a quest for ‘non-institutionalized religious experience’.” Myers interprets Scorsese’s work from a Girardian perspective; for contrasting views see the collection of essays edited by Conrad (). For a more popular treatment, with special reference to Taxi Driver (dir. Martin Scorsese, ), see Ebert ().

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suggesting that the meek Sam Bowden will be avenged by divine judgment and compliments the judge (referring to 1 Kgs. 3) who restrains Cady on his Solomon-like wisdom. But the 1991 Cady reminds us of Harry Powell from The Night of the Hunter. His body carries biblical tattoos such as Romans 12:19 (“vengeance is mine”), and he compares his prison time to that of Paul in Galatians 3. He inveigles his way into the trust of Sam’s daughter, Danielle, by suggesting that her parents “know not what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Cady instructs Bowden to read the book of Job – the story of the righteous man who lost everything, including his family, as an indication that they are about to endure a terrible ordeal. As in the original, the Bowden family survives, but not before they have been – in some respects at least – reduced to the inhumanity of their adversary. The later neo-noirs are, as indicated earlier, more difficult to categorize with confidence than even the classic canon. That there are some indications of more biblical references in them is perhaps not what we might expect—the later twentieth century is commonly assumed to be more secularized than the middle of the century. Similarly, it is unusual that British noirs might have more clear religious references than their American prototypes – for in general British films have fewer obvious religious references than American ones. These are, of course, massive generalizations, but these interesting features merit further investigation. It remains yet another example of how film noir does not fulfill our normal expectations but surprises and unsettles us at every turn.

Works Cited Arnett, Robert. 2006. “Eighties Noir: The Dissenting Voice in Reagan’s America.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 34.3: 123 – 29 Borde, Raymond, and Etienne Chaumeton. 2002. A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941 – 1953 [1955]. 2nd ed. San Francisco: City Lights Books. Bould, Mark. 2005. Film Noir: From Berlin to Sin City. London: Wallflower. Britannica Academic 2014. “Hard boiled fiction.” (October 23): http://www.britannica.com/EB checked/topic/254914/hard-boiled-fiction; accessed February 23, 2015. Callow, Simon. 2000. The Night of the Hunter. London: British Film Institute. Christianson, Eric S. 2008. “The Big Sleep: Strategic Ambiguity in Judges 4 – 5 and in Classic Film Noir.” In Images of the Word: Hollywood’s Bible and Beyond. Ed. David Shepherd. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Pp. 39 – 60. Christianson, Eric S. 2005. “Why Film Noir is Good for the Mind.” In Cinéma Divinité: Religion, Theology and the Bible in Film. Eds. Eric S. Christianson, Peter Francis, and William R. Telford. London: SCM. Pp. 151 – 66 Conrad, Mark, ed. 2007. The Philosophy of Martin Scorsese. Lexington: University of Kentucky. Damico, James. 1996. “Film Noir: A Modest Proposal.” In Film Noir Reader. Eds. Alain Silver and James Ursini. New York: Limelight. Pp. 77 – 93. Deacy, Christopher. 2001. Screen Christologies. Cardiff: University of Wales. Dougan, Andy. 1997. Martin Scorsese. London: Orion Media. Duncan, Paul. 2003. Film Noir. Harpenden: Pocket Essentials.

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Ebert, Roger. 1976. “Interview with Martin Scorsese.” Roger Ebert Interviews (March 7): http:// www.rogerebert.com/interviews/interview-with-martin-scorsese; accessed February 23, 2015. Erickson, Glenn. 2010. “The Night of the Hunter.” In Film Noir: The Encyclopedia. Eds. Alain Silver, Elizabeth Ward, James Ursini, and Robert Porfirio. New York: Overlook Duckworth. P. 207. Greene, Graham. 2007a. “Guardian Film Lecture [Sept. 3, 1984 interview with Quentin Falk].” In Mornings in the Dark: The Graham Greene Film Reader [1993]. Ed. David Parkinson. Manchester: Carcanet, Pp. 539 – 61. Greene, Graham. 2007b. “Letter to the Daily Mirror [Jan. 9, 1948].” In Mornings in the Dark: The Graham Greene Film Reader. Ed. David Parkinson. Manchester: Carcanet. Pp. 567 – 68. Hirsch, Foster. 1981. The Dark Side of the Screen. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo. Kaplan, E. Ann, ed. 1998. Women in Film Noir [1978/80]. London: British Film Institute. Keaney, Michael F. 2008. British Film Noir Guide. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. Marling, William. 2009. “The Black Mask School.” detnovel.com. http://web.archive.org/web/ 20110709015311/http://www.detnovel.com/Black%20Mask.html; accessed February 24, 2015. McArthur, Colin. 1992. The Big Heat. London: British Film Institute. Myers, Cari. 2012. “Scapegoats and Redemption in Shutter Island.” Journal of Religion and Film 16.1: http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=jrf; accessed February 23, 2015. Naremore, James. 1998. More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. Berkeley: University of California. Porfirio, Robert. 1996. “No Way Out: Existentialist Motifs in the Film Noir.” In Film Noir Reader. Eds. Alain Silver, and James Ursini. New York: Limelight. Pp. 77 – 93. Porfirio, Robert, Alain Silver, and James Ursini. 2001. Film Noir Reader 3: Interviews with Filmmakers of the Classic Noir Period. New York: Limelight. Schrader, Paul. 1996. “Notes on Film Noir.” In Film Noir Reader. Eds. Alain Silver and James Ursini. New York: Limelight. Pp. 53 – 64. Silver, Alain, and James Ursini, eds. 1996. Film Noir Reader. New York: Limelight. — eds. 1999. Film Noir Reader 2. New York: Limelight. — eds. 2004. Film Noir Reader 4: The Crucial Films and Themes. New York: Limelight. Silver, Alain, James Ursini, and Paul Duncan, eds. 2013. Film Noir. Koln: Taschen GmbH. Silver, Alain, Elizabeth Ward, James Ursini, and Robert Porfirio, eds. 2010. Film Noir: The Encyclopedia. New York: Overlook Duckworth. Spicer, Andrew. 2002. Film Noir. Harlow: Longman.

Films Cited The Big Heat (dir. Fritz Lang, 1953, Columbia Pictures, US). The Big Sleep (dir. Howard Hawks, 1946, Warner Brothers, US). Born to Kill (dir. Robert Wise, 1947, RKO Radio Pictures, US). Brighton Rock [a.k.a. Young Scarface] (dir. John Boulting, 1947, Charter Film Productions, UK). Cape Fear (dir. J. Lee Thompson, 1962, Melvin-Talbot Productions, US). Cape Fear (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1991, Amblin Entertainment, US). Dead Reckoning (dir. John Cromwell, 1947, Columbia Pictures, US). The Fallen Idol (dir. Carol Reed, 1948, London Film Productions, UK). Fury (dir. Fritz Lang, 1936, MGM, US). Little Caesar (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1931, First National Pictures, US). The Maltese Falcon (dir. John Huston, 1941, Warner Brothers, US). The Ministry of Fear (dir. Fritz Lang, 1944, Paramount, US).

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The Naked Kiss (dir. Samuel Fuller, 1964, Leon Fromkess-Sam Firks Productions, US). The Night of the Hunter (dir. Charles Laughton, 1955, Paul Gregory Productions, US). The Postman Always Rings Twice (dir. Tay Garnett, 1946 MGM, US). Scarface (dir. Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson, 1932, Caddo Company, US). Shanghai Express (dir. Joseph von Sternberg, 1932, Paramount, US). The Stranger on the Third Floor (dir. Boris Ingster, 1940, RKO Radio Pictures, US). The Third Man (dir. Carol Reed, 1949, London Film Productions, UK). This Gun for Hire (dir. Frank Tuttle, 1942, Paramount, US). Touch of Evil (dir. Orson Welles, 1958, Universal, US).

Adele Reinhartz

10 The Bible Epic

The Bible stars in almost every movie genre, from the psychological thriller (The Last Temptation of Christ, dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988) to animation (The Prince of Egypt, dir. Brenda Chapman, et al., 1998). But the genre that comes to mind most readily when it comes to Bible movies is the epic. Bible epics from The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956) to Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959) and King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961) are epic in every respect. They tell grand tales, set against big scenery, scored with majestic music and dramatized by a cast of thousands. Bible epics are historical films, in that they claim to recreate the historical eras of their source narratives. They are also extremely expensive to produce, a point that has had an impact on the history of the genre. Biblical stories – with their broad sweep and dramatic content – are eminently suited to the epic genre. It is possible to distinguish among three categories of biblical epics according to their general subject matter. (1) Old Testament epics take their narratives and characters from the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, principally the Pentateuch and the historical books. Because these films almost always retell these stories from a Christian perspective, the term “Old Testament” epics is more accurate than, for example, “Hebrew Bible” epics.¹ (2) Jesus epics use the gospels as their primary sources. In most cases all four canonical gospels are harmonized; much of the narrative, as well as some of Jesus’ parables, are taken from the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) but inserted into the three-year Johannine chronology rather than the single-year Synoptic time span. Vivid episodes from the Gospel of John, such as the Wedding at Cana (John 2:1– 12) and the Raising of Lazarus (John 11) are also included. (3) Sword-and-Sandal epics, sometimes also called “peplum” films, focus on the early decades of the Christian church, and integrate scenes from the gospel accounts into a fictional frame narrative often based on a popular novel.² The term “sword-and-sandal” situates the genre historically in the Roman period, when soldiers and other heroes carried swords and wore sandals. The term “peplum” refers to fact that the male characters typically wear pepla (tunics, togas or stately robes).³

 For a discussion of antisemitism in biblical films, see Reinhartz’s chapter in Part II (Pp.  – ).  Also see Walsh’s discussion of films depicting the early church in Part II (Pp.  – ).  The term “sword-and-sandal” or “peplum” film is most often used to describe a genre of primarily Italian films from  – , based in part on biblical stories and imitating the style of the American epic film. It is also used, however, for Hollywood films that embed biblical stories – primarily Jesus’ ministry and passion – in a broader fictional frame narrative. See Cornelius (,  – ).

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Scholarly Evaluations of the Bible Epic Film scholars have often expressed disdain for the epic genre, including Bible epics. This view may be due to the genre’s overblown emotions and grandiose aesthetics, which compare unfavorably with the understated forms of art cinema that are often the subject of scholarly film analysis. The screenwriter and director Paul Schrader may express the view of many when he refers to biblical epic as “ersatz religious cinema” (Schrader 1972, 16). The critic Rudolf Arnheim describes the epic as a static genre that “neither deals with a problem nor offers a solution” (Arnheim 1997, 79). There are, however, some appreciative voices. Vivian Sobchack urges film scholars not to dismiss the genre but rather to study it as a product of mid-century American, middle-class white society (Sobchack 1990, 29). Bruce Babington and Peter Evans encourage scholarly interest in the epic genre, which, in their view, has a “sub-textual richness” and constitutes an expression of “secular concerns in the context of religious ideology” (Babington/Evans 1993, 15 – 16).

Overview The epic genre enjoyed two periods of prominence: in the first three decades of the twentieth century, during the silent era, and in the two decades following the end of World War II. The early Old Testament epics included such silent films as The Chosen Prince, also known as The Friendship of David and Jonathan (dir. William Mong, 1917); Samson and Delilah (dir. Edwin J. Collins, 1922); and Noah’s Ark (dir. Michael Curitz, 1928). Early “talkies” based on the Old Testament included Lot in Sodom (dir. James Sibley Watson, 1933) and The Green Pastures (dir. Marc Connelly/William Keighley, 1936). This latter film was unusual in that it had an entirely African-American cast (though the director was white) and ostensibly illustrated a uniquely African-American perspective on the Old Testament.⁴

Fig. 21: Moses before Pharaoh in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923)

 For analysis and critique, see Weisenfeld (,  – ).

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The best-known Old Testament film of the first half of the twentieth century, however, was Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923). This film opens with a lengthy and slow-moving Prologue that retells the Exodus event, beginning with Moses and Aaron’s first approach to the Pharaoh and concluding with the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai and the Israelites’ construction and worship of the Golden Calf. As the Prologue fades out, a moralistic and entertaining “modern” story fades in. The lives of the McTavish family – elderly mother and her adult sons Dan and John – illustrate two important points: the need to keep the Ten Commandments and the need to temper law with mercy. Jesus and peplum movies also flourished during cinema’s silent and early talkie years. Passion Play films, such as The Höritz Passion Play (prod. Klaw/Erlanger, 1897) and The Passion Play of Oberammergau (dir. Henry C. Vincent, 1898) were among the earliest movies produced. Epics such as I.N.R.I. (dir. Robert Wiene, 1923, Crown of Thorns) and Christus (dir. Guilio Antamoro, 1916) also appeared. Early peplum films included Ben Hur (dir. Sidney Olcott, et al., 1907), Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (dir. Fred Niblo, 1925), Quo Vadis? (dir. Enrico Guazzoni, 1913; Italy, dir. Gabriellino D’Annunzio/Georg Jacoby, 1925), The Sign of the Cross (dir. DeMille, 1932), and The Last Days of Pompeii (dir. Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1935), which fancifully connects Jesus to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. (Hirsch 1978, 21). Among the silent Jesus movies too it was DeMille who produced the most popular and influential film: The King of Kings (US, 1927). Whereas many of the early Jesus and peplum films presented slow-moving and disconnected tableaux, DeMille’s film created a fulsome story that fills in many of the gaps in the gospels while fulfilling audience desires for drama, romance, humor, and spectacle. In contrast to many of the early Jesus and peplum films, DeMille’s film did not consist of slow-moving and lengthy tableaux. Rather, it presented a full-scale dramatic narrative in which events are carefully linked via cause and effect, back-stories (such as the romance between Judas and Mary Magdalene) provided to explain specific responses or situations, and characters developed as well as invented. The first scene of this film, set in Mary Magdalene’s boudoir, is one of the most entertaining scenes of the entire genre. The epic genre declined during the 1930s and 40s; economic depression and war precluded the production of such large-scale, and therefore extremely expensive, movies. The post-war economic boom, however, permitted its resurgence. Among the well-known films of the “Golden Era” of the epics were Samson and Delilah (dir. DeMille, 1949), The Story of Ruth (dir. Henry Koster, 1960), David and Bathsheba (dir. Henry King, 1951), Solomon and Sheba (dir. King Vidor, 1959), and The Bible: In the Beginning… (dir. John Huston, 1966). This period, however, saw fewer Jesus movies than Old Testament movies, perhaps due to the overwhelming and ongoing popularity of DeMille’s silent film, but also to the strictures of the Production (censorship) Code, which placed severe restrictions on the portrayal of religion and religious figures. Major Jesus epics returned

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to the screen only in the 1960s, with King of Kings, directed by Nicholas Ray (1961), and The Greatest Story Ever Told, directed by George Stevens (1965). More prominent during the Golden Era were peplum films, including yet another remake of Quo Vadis (dir. Mervyn LeRoy 1951). The 1953 film The Robe (dir. Henry Koster) was the first movie of any genre to use Cinemascope, the first widescreen technology. Other peplum films included Demetrius and the Gladiators (dir. Delmer Daves, 1954), The Silver Chalice (US, dir. Victor Saville, 1954), The Big Fisherman (dir. Frank Borzage, 1959), Barabbas (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1961), and, most famously, Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959). Most of these films adapted nineteenth and twentieth century novels by the same name. The two most important epics of the Golden Era were DeMille’s 1956 rendition of The Ten Commandments, which is still broadcast on television especially around Passover and Easter time, and William Wyler’s BenHur. Starring in both of these films, Charlton Heston cemented his reputation as the best-known Bible celebrity of all time. The revival of the epic genre in the post-war era was due in great measure to the revival of the economy. But political and social developments were also major contributors to their renewed popularity. As we shall see below, Bible epics (like other movies from the same era) reflected important changes in American society such as gender roles. In addition, epic films were a vehicle for reflecting on global political realities such as the Cold War, during which tensions between America and the Soviet Union ran high. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, films expressed the greater social acceptance of Jews and Judaism; Bible epics often implied sympathy for Jews especially as victims of antisemitism, and obliquely celebrated the creation of the State of Israel as a Jewish homeland, while overlooking the conflicts between Jews and Arabs that were already a feature of life in the “holy land” (Babington/ Evans 1993, 36 – 43). The epics also provided an outlet for less exalted sentiments. Historical epics were vehicles for spectacle and near-nudity (inevitably associated with “foreign” pagan rituals) that were not permissible in other films due to the restrictions of the censorship codes that were in place from the 1930s to the 1960s. And while television certainly drew some viewers away from movie theaters, the small black-and-white screen proved inadequate to the task of conveying the grandeur and thrills of Technicolor movies. The epic genre declined once more in the mid-60s, again for primarily economic reasons as television became a major cultural and financial competitor for audiovisual entertainment. The lifting of the censorship codes meant that all genres could now include violence and sexuality; in this less restricted social environment, such thrills did not have to be limited to ancient war scenes or idolatrous orgies. Another factor may have been the decline of biblical literacy, due at least in part to the restrictions on Bible instruction in the public schools. ⁵ Further, the blatant Christian

 See DelFattore () and Chancey.

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evangelism of the peplum films may no longer have appeared appropriate in an increasingly diverse and multi-religious society. Yet in the years since the end of the epics’ Golden Era, audience appetites for large-scale, epic movies have by no means disappeared. The development of digital technologies that can create epic effects without incurring epic expenses has reopened possibilities in the epic more generally, with films such as Gladiator (dir. Ridley Scott, 2000) and Avatar (dir. James Cameron, 2009). Bible movies are sure to follow. Indeed, three major films appeared in 2014: Son of God (dir. Christopher Spencer); Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky) with Russell Crowe in the lead role, and Exodus: Gods and Kings (dir. Ridley Scott) starring Christian Bale as Moses and Sigourney Weaver as the Pharaoh’s wife.

Main Features of the Bible Epic Scope and Scale Old Testament, Jesus, and peplum epics are characterized by their extravagant scope and scale, and they employ many of the same cinematic conventions as non-biblical epics (Reinhartz 2013, 22– 27) – such as Spartacus (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1960), Lawrence of Arabia (dir. David Lean, 1962), and Gone with the Wind (dir. Victor Fleming, 1939). The settings are grandiose: vast mountain ranges, endless plains, big skies. The music is symphonic, featuring large orchestras and angelic choirs. Frequent battle scenes between huge armies provide roles for thousands of extras, while romances, marriages or thwarted marriages set the stage for the overwrought emotions of love, passion, and jealousy that are de rigueur in the epic genre. The society depicted in these films is starkly divided between the upper classes – royalty, the military – and the lower classes of slaves and peasants, with few in between. Costuming was elaborate for both groups, but spectacularly opulent and bejewelled for the former. Both groups engage in orgiastic spectacles replete with exoticism, sexuality and near-nudity. Though these spectacles were inevitably and disapprovingly associated with idolatry (see especially Solomon and Sheba and both of DeMille’s Exodus movies), the camera satisfies the desires of the moviegoing audience, if not necessarily of the righteous hero, by lingering on every detail. In order to attract the big audiences necessary to justify their big budgets, epic filmmakers looked to big stars. Biblical heroes were played by all-American celebrities and heartthrobs such as Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward (David and Bathsheba in the 1951 film), and Charlton Heston (Moses in The Ten Commandments [1956] and Judah Ben-Hur in Ben-Hur [1959]). Enemies and less familiar heroes were sometimes played by exotic foreigners such as Yul Brynner (Pharaoh in The Ten Commandments and Solomon in Solomon and Sheba) and Gina Lollabrigida (the Queen of Sheba opposite Yul Brynner in Solomon and Sheba). In addition to helping the “bottom line,” the screen presence of celebrities also helped to bridge the distance between the his-

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Fig. 22: Celebrities Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward in David and Bathsheba (1951)

torical period of the film and the era of the viewer, thereby reinforcing the important if sometimes unstated claim that these age-old stories continue to have relevance for twentieth-century social and political realities.

Allusionism Another major convention of the epic genre was “allusionism.” This feature is not unique to the epics. In fact, many, perhaps most, films, across all genres, contain visual, verbal and other types of allusions to other sources including art forms such as paintings, plays, and music, as well as to historical and political events and figures, theological precepts, and liturgies. Biblical epics draw frequently on famous art works such as Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, Michelangelo’s Pieta, and Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, as well as the well-known and loved Bibles illustrated by Gustave Doré (1832– 1883) and James Tissot (1836 – 1902).⁶ Most of all, films allude to other films, borrowing plot lines, visual images, narrative sequences, and mise-en-scène (composition of the shot). In this way, films, including biblical epics, tap into a shared cultural history, and therefore can feel familiar to viewers. The 1959 film Solomon and Sheba, for example, includes a line that appears several times in DeMille’s 1956 The Ten Commandments: “So it shall be written, so it shall be done.”

 On the popularity of James Tissot, and his influence on DeMille’s movies, see Prothero (,  – ). On the popularity of Gustave Doré and his influence on DeMille, see Higashi (,  – ).

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Romance The grand romance is a fixed feature of the epic genre, exemplified most famously by Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. The Jesus movies have difficulty in satisfying this epic feature; the popular view of Jesus as a celibate messiah precludes his involvement in a torrid romance. Some filmmakers, such as DeMille, tried to create romantic interest between Mary Magdalene and Judas, but even this pair could not heat the story up as well as, say, Samson and Delilah, David and Bathsheba, or Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. As if romance did not generate enough dramatic tension in and of itself, these films almost always include not only “boy meets girl” but “boy vies with boy over girl” or at times “girl vies with girl over boy.” Love triangles are largely absent from Jesus movies but abound in Old Testament and peplum movies. The triangle in David and Bathsheba originates with the biblical story itself, in which Bathsheba is married to the good soldier Uriah when she sleeps with David. The (self-interested) admonitions that David delivers to Uriah in the film, however, reflect quite accurately the accepted wisdom on husband-wife relationships in the post-World War II era (Finch/Summerfield 1991). The epics, however, create love triangles even where completely absent from the biblical accounts. Even the great Moses of DeMille’s 1956 The Ten Commandments is caught up in a triangle: both he and his nemesis, Ramses, are in love with the same woman, the lovely (and fictional) Nefretiri. In sword-and-sandal films, the love most often involves a Christian man or woman, the pagan man or woman that is the object of his/her love, and a pagan rival. Needless to say, the Christian wins out, the pagan love interest converts to Christianity, and the rival slinks away in anger and disappointment. The Robe, for example, presents a love triangle that initially involves three pagans: the future emperor Caligula, the beautiful Diana, and the handsome Roman soldier Marcellus. By the end of the film, Marcellus and Diana become Christians, and the now-mad Caligula condemns them both to death.

Markers of Biblical Authenticity In addition to the conventions shared with other epic films, Bible epics include a number of unique conventions that are designed to signal biblical content and, in many cases, also historical authenticity. Even before films were released, their trailers – then, as now, screened before the feature presentation – often proclaimed their biblical subject matter. The trailer for DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), for example, is a historical treatise introducing viewers to the biblical, historical and artistic sources that DeMille used to craft his version of the Exodus narrative. Many others, however, sensationalize their storylines, piquing the viewers’ interest and, in some cases, obscuring the biblical subject matter completely. These include biblical film titles, which often contain the names of major characters (David, Solomon,

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Ruth), biblical content (Ten Commandments) or biblically related phrases (“The Greatest Story Ever Told,” “The King of Kings”). Biblical content and themes could also be signaled through the fonts used for the title and credits, as well as for the opening scrolling texts with which Bible epics often begin. Gothic typeface or, alternatively, the use of fonts that vaguely resemble Hebrew letters, evoke the antiquity and sanctity of old Bibles. Opening scrolling texts often provide some “historical” facts. The opening of David and Bathsheba, for example, states the time period (“three thousand years ago”), the political context (David’s monarchy), the biblical source (2 Samuel), the political situation (war between ancient Israel and Ammon), the role of Joab (the commander of the Israelite army), and the location (Rabbah, the Ammonite stronghold). At the same time, the visual scene depicts the gathering of the Israelite army in preparation for war. The same functions are sometimes served by voice-over narrations, most often articulated slowly and solemnly by a deep male “voice of God.” Not surprisingly, epics based on biblical stories also make use of biblical quotations. These include famous lines such as Ruth’s declaration to her mother-in-law Naomi (Ruth 1:16): “Where you go I will go, where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.” In most cases the language is that of the King James Version – complete with the requisite “thees,” “thys,” and “thous.” The authoritative air, as well as the familiarity, of this version contributes to the aura of historical authenticity and biblical sanctity that the epics were hoping to achieve. Testimony to the widespread familiarity of these conventions can be found in cinematic spoofs that have appeared from time to time since the end of the Golden Era. Monty Python’s Life of Brian (dir. Terry Jones, 1979) sends up all of the cinematic and narrative conventions of the epic genre, at the same time as it preserves the halo around Jesus himself. Mel Brooks’ History of the World Part I (1981) parodies The Ten Commandments (1956) by presenting a Moses who is the clumsy antidote to the suave Charlton Heston. This Moses receives not two but three tablets from God but accidentally drops and breaks one of them, shrugs his shoulders, and hands his people only ten commandments instead of the fifteen that God had intended. The Roman Empire segment of the same film parodies the Jesus and the peplum films, by presenting a pompous and effete emperor, a chariot race, and a Last Supper in which Jesus’ last meal is immortalized by a portrait artist who arranges the guests just so. An Israeli spoof, This is Sodom (dir. Muli Segev/Adam Sanderson, 2010, originally titled Zohi Sdom), is a full-blown, or perhaps overblown slapstick comedy that uses the biblical story of Lot and Sodom, and the conventions of the epic genre to send up all aspects of Israeli society.

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Adapting the Bible to film Use of Sources At the same time as Bible epics attempt to create an air of scriptural and historical authenticity; they apply a rather large dose of imagination and fabrication, which, to some degree, subverts or undermines those claims to authenticity. The rendition of a biblical story on film requires major manipulation of the biblical sources: shortening, lengthening, filling in the narrative gaps, and, above all, adding narration, setting, costuming, soundtrack and numerous other cinematic elements. The required gap-filling is accomplished in great measure by the epic conventions discussed above, such as the “allusionism,” romance, setting, musical soundtrack, casting, and costuming. Gaps are filled not only by fictional plot lines but also by fictional characters, such as the aforementioned Nefretiri in DeMille’s 1956 the The Ten Commandments, which also serve not only to provide narrative continuity but also to enhance drama, suspense, humor, and sheer entertainment value. Even films about Jesus, which can draw not only on one biblical text but on four canonical gospels, will fill in narrative gaps and provide new characters. Most Jesus movies draw on all four gospels, often inserting events from the Gospel of John, such as the Cana wedding and the raising of Lazarus, alongside Synoptic events into the three-year Johannine chronology.

God Bible epics have an additional challenge that other epics do not: how is it possible cinematically to portray an all-knowing but invisible and incorporeal deity?⁷ Two main conventions have arisen to address this problem. One is the use of an invisible but majestic male voice; this technique is consistent with the Hebrew Bible itself, in which God speaks frequently to the patriarchs and to Moses. This technique is used to excellent effect in DeMille’s 1956 film, in which the majestic voice of God addresses Moses out of the Burning Bush (cf. Exodus 3).⁸ The second consists of a range of visual conventions. In contrast to Renaissance art, few epic films portray God as an old bearded man – the exception being The Green Pastures, in which God is a man though without a long white beard. In film, the divine presence is often signaled by big blue skies with fluffy white clouds. Epics also make use of “big,” often liturgical, choral music, including famous compositions such as the Halleluiah Chorus from

 See also Burnette-Bletsch’s discussion of the depiction of God in cinema in Part I (Pp.  – ).  Heston claimed to provide the voice of God, in the  DVD release, but DeMille’s publicist and biographer, Donald Hayne, claims that Hayne himself provided the voice of God in the scene of the giving of the Decalogue at Mount Sinai. For details of the controversy, see http://www.imdb.com/title/ tt/trivia; accessed April , 

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Handel’s oratorio The Messiah, which is often heard during scenes depicting resurrection. This type of soundtrack not only sets a majestic mood but also reminds audiences of the film’s connections with church, cathedrals, and, by extension, the divine.

Jesus It might seem that Jesus and peplum epics have an easier task than Old Testament films, as they are able to convey divinity through the figure of Jesus himself. The cinematic Jesus⁹ is familiar to all with even a cursory acquaintance with Renaissance art: he dresses in a white robe and has shoulder-length brown hair, blue eyes, and a thin physique. In some films, however, most famously Ben-Hur, the face of Jesus is not portrayed at all; viewers are allowed to see only a part of him, usually his back or his arm. This restraint may have reflected a hesitation to represent divinity in a direct way, in accordance with certain interpretations of the second commandment of the Decalogue.¹⁰ But another, and perhaps more important reason had to do with satisfying the censorship requirements of different countries in which the film was distributed, which, as in the case of Britain, forbade the direct representation of Jesus (Robertson 1989, 32– 33). Yet the figure of Jesus poses a particular problem for filmmakers. The problem is not so much the biblical figure as such, but the images of Jesus that arose in the following centuries, and the apparently unalterable image that he retains today as an unchanging, and perfectly sinless divine individual. Because Old Testament figures such as Moses, David, and Solomon are “rounded” characters who make mistakes and commit grievous sins even as they exhibit tremendous heroism, patriotism and loyalty to God, they are easy to cast and satisfying to watch. Jesus, on the other hand, is a “flat” character who cannot be portrayed as flawed or sinful in any respect. Such perfection does not play well in the movie theatre, for it does not permit the individual struggle and growth that contribute to the interest, and, even more important, the emotional impact of cinema.

Then as Now One important feature of the epic genre can be referred to as “then as now,” that is, the use of the past to reflect on the present (Sobchack 1990, 29). This feature comes to the fore in some of the major themes of the bible epics: gender, American identity, and religion.

 See also Tatum’s chapter on the Jesus film tradition in Part II (Pp.  – ).  For a discussion of the second commandment and Christian art, see Jensen (,  – ).

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Gender The epics made in the Golden Era of the post-World War II decades reflect the ambivalence with regard to gender roles that affected American society and the American family in the aftermath of World War II. During the war, women entered the workforce in large numbers to fill in for the men who were sent off to the front. After the war, men returned to the factory and women returned to the home, but neither American society nor the American family could return to their pre-war states. This ambivalence is reflected particularly in Old Testament and peplum epics. On the whole, these epics depict hierarchical gender relationships in which men are dominant and women subordinate. Yet the women are by no means weak and powerless. They speak their minds to their husbands, fathers, and enemies; they display moral strength and common sense, often when their menfolk do not. Despite her failings, for example, Bathsheba is the moral core of the film David and Bathsheba. And she is the one who strengthens, or perhaps even restores, David’s faith in God. In The Robe, the pagan woman Diana becomes a Christian for the sake of her beloved Marcus, but she is far from passive. At the climax of the film, it is Diana who talks back to crazed Roman emperor Caligula and exposes the corruption and evil at the heart of his regime. Because the Jesus movies do not successfully present romantic relationships, they also provide few opportunities for women to shine; Mary, Jesus’ mother, remains quiet and passive; Mary Magdalene begins as a prostitute but is domesticated into submissiveness through her contact with Jesus.¹¹ Some Bible epics depict women in leadership roles, and not only as wives and mothers. Yet these roles are always circumscribed or even criticized. For example, Moses’ sister Miriam, who became an important Israelite leader alongside her brothers in Jewish tradition, plays only a very minor role in The Ten Commandments. Even more puzzling is the domestication of Sheba in Solomon and Sheba. At the outset she is the queen of a pagan matriarchy, full of vigor and ready to make alliances and engage in high-level intrigue for the sake of her kingdom. By the end she has given up her idolatry to become a believer in the one God of Israel, but she has also relinquished her matriarchy. The film suggests that we should rejoice that the son that she carries – a product of her illicit liaison with Solomon – will be the first king of Sheba. Feminist viewers, however, may mourn the loss of Sheba’s matriarchy and the taming of her queen’s feisty personality.

Science and Medicine Bible epics also reflect an ambivalence towards science and medicine, particularly with regard to the challenge they might pose to a Christian faith in which only

 On the depiction of women, most especially Mary and Magdalene, in gospel films, see O’Brien’s chapter in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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faith in God can heal. In general, these films reflect the mid-twentieth-century awareness that emotional or mental illnesses may have physical manifestations. In The Robe, the hero Marcellus experiences a serious breakdown when he touches Jesus’ robe immediately after the crucifixion. His servant Demetrius, who became Christian even before the crucifixion, believes that Marcellus will return to health only when he confronts the guilt he feels over his role in Jesus’ crucifixion and, even more so, when he becomes a believer. When Demetrius himself is tortured by the emperor Caligula’s men, the film emphasizes the inability of the doctor to heal his wounds. The doctor himself admits that “There are limits to what science will achieve.” Demetrius is later healed, not by medicine but by Marcellus’s prayer (paraphrasing Ps. 22:1 – and thereby also Jesus, who quotes this verse in his final words according to Matt. 27:46): “Why hast thou abandoned him?”

Civil Rights In American society, the Exodus has a profound resonance in the pursuit of freedom and civil rights for African-Americans. This theme is hinted at in The Ten Commandments, in which Moses responds to Jethro’s offer of shelter with the reminder that “It is death to give sanctuary to a runaway slave.” Moses is not a runaway slave but an escaped murder. To American ears, however, this exchange is reminiscent of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, according to which it was illegal to shelter or otherwise aid runaway slaves. The only epic that addresses the African American experience is The Green Pastures (1936), directed by Marc Connelly.¹² The film portrays the Bible stories told by a Depression-era pastor to his Sunday School students. In these stories, “Da Lawd” – God in human form – socializes with a choir of angels and interacts with his human creations. While the film is humorous and engaging, it presents a romanticized and patronizing view of African-American religion and society (Weisenfeld 2007, 72).

Cold War America In the Bible epics, however, the Exodus imagery is exploited primarily not for its civil rights resonance but for the ideological battle against Communism, the “red menace.” Bible epics often proclaimed – explicitly in the case of DeMille’s 1956 The Ten Commandments – the need for America (represented by ancient Israel) to protect liberty and democracy in the face of a dangerous and imperialistic enemy (Egypt, for the Old Testament epics, and Rome for the Jesus and peplum films). In the prologue,

 The film is based on a stage adaptation of Roark Bradford’s Ol’ Man Adam An’ His Chillun Being The Tales They Tell About The Time When The Lord Walked The Earth Like A Natural Man (Lightning Source Inc, ). Originally published .

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the director explains that the theme of the movie is as follows: “whether men ought to be ruled by God’s law or whether they ought to be ruled by the whims of a dictator like Ramses. Are men the property of the State or are they free souls under God?” “This same battle,” DeMille notes, “continues throughout the world today.”¹³ At the end of the film, the now-elderly Moses stands on a high mountain to look out beyond the Jordan River to the promised land of Canaan that his flock, but not he, will soon enter. His posture is precisely that of the Statue of Liberty, who, like Moses, gazes onto a promised land – America. The allusion to Lady Liberty and America’s self-image as the land of the free and the home of the brave evokes an American identity that is ultimately rooted in Puritan thought, for which the Exodus symbolized the journey from oppression in England to freedom in the New World (Bercovitch 1983, 219 – 229).

Communism, Atheism, and Idolatry A rather peculiar feature of Bible epics in all three categories is the obvious polemic against paganism. The battle against idolatry as such was not very high on the social and political agenda of twentieth-century America in which the Bible epic flourished. A closer look at the cluster of ideas that these movies associate with idolatry, however, reveals the reasons for this focus. For these films, idolatry stands together with atheism and extreme rationalism, both of which in turn are seen as features of Communism. The critique of idolatry is therefore part of the Cold War, anti-Communist agenda that looms large in the epic genre. Peplum films in particular pit Christianity, Christian beliefs, and Christian values over against those associated with the pagan Roman Empire, which exemplifies the folly of both idolatry and atheism. The polytheism of the Roman state is stressed in the gladiator scenes in Quo Vadis, which open with a prayer intoned by the priestess: “Gods of Rome, mighty, eternal, beneath whose auspices Rome rules the world. Hear us, we worship you. […] Venus, Goddess of Love, Mars, God of War, Juno, goddess of heaven; Jupiter father of the gods, and Nero, his divine son.” The idea that Nero was the divine son of Jupiter is ridiculed throughout the film. His portrayal as a ridiculous, self-centered madman and fop, despised and pitied by his entire entourage makes the point effectively enough: this man surely can be no god.¹⁴ Nero and Caligula are portrayed as buffoons who, though villainous, also provide comic relief as well as foil against which the spiritual and physical beauty of the Christian characters is all the more evident. And not all pagans are “bad guys.” Sympathetic, if misguided, pagans, include the old Pharaoh in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956) and the father of Marcellus in The Robe. As Marcellus leaves Rome to take up his post in Jerusalem, his father advises him: “Take nothing  See Schroeder () and Nadel ().  See also Lindsey’s chapter on biblical epic films’ use of gay male villains in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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on faith. Bind yourself to no man; above all, be a Roman, my son, and be a man of honor.” These “Roman” values sound quite American, and Marcellus follows them; even his acceptance of Jesus as messiah does not violate them, for Jesus is not an ordinary man. Other pagan figures more directly express an opposition to faith as such, not only in the God of Israel but any gods whatsoever. After the ship on which he is serving as a slave is shipwrecked in battle, Ben-Hur – now known only by his slave number, 41 – believes that he “will be saved by the God of my fathers.” The commander’s response mocks all the gods: “Your god has forsaken you, he has no more power than the images I pray to. My gods will not help me, your god will not help you. But I might… Does that interest you, 41?” This expresses succinctly the contrast between the secular Roman viewpoint and the faithful “Jewish” response to disaster. In The Robe Marcellus’s beloved Diana is gentler but just as skeptical as BenHur’s commander: “Marcellus, what you’ve told me is a beautiful story, but it isn’t true. Justice and charity, men will never accept such a philosophy. The world isn’t like that, it never has been and it never will be.” But because she loves Marcellus she is ready to overlook his irrational beliefs if not (yet) share them: “I want to be your wife whatever you believe. I’d marry you if I had to share you with a thousand gods.” In Quo Vadis, the pagan Marcus has the same difficulty in taking seriously the Christian faith of his beloved Lygia. He calls Peter “a childish old man speaking in riddles” but declares to Lygia: “I’m willing to accept your God if it makes you happier. […] There is such an army of gods these days we can always find room for another.” The statements of these pagan characters may seem compatible with the values and perspectives of mainstream twentieth-century America. On the face of it, the epic championing of faith against reason seems rather out of place. But in the Cold War context, the elevation of faith over reason expresses opposition not to science and common sense but against the modern day Communist “pagans” who threatened not only the American way of life but Christianity itself (Herzog 2011, 171). The battle against idolatry is fought not only in dialogue but also in the plot or story lines of Old Testament and peplum films. Virtually all of these films revolve around the battles between Israelites/Christians against the Pharaoh/the Roman governor/the Roman emperor and their representatives. The inevitable military and/or spiritual victory of the Israelites or Christians represents the victory of God against paganism, or, in the allegorical terms invited by the genre, of America against her Communist enemies.

Epic Religion In the epics, the victory of faith is assured by prayer. The lives of the female protagonists of The Story of Ruth, David and Bathsheba, and Solomon and Sheba, for example, are all threatened because they are sentenced to death by stoning for idolatry

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(Ruth, Sheba) or adultery (Bathsheba). Ruth is saved by Naomi’s prayer, Sheba by Solomon’s, and Bathsheba by David’s, which also saves all of Israel when God responds by ending the drought. With regard to the triumph of God, the Jesus movies present a more difficult case. The Jesus epics, such as King of Kings and The Greatest Story Ever Told, present Jesus as the messiah whom God has sent to save God’s people from Roman oppression. Were these simple (as opposed to complicated) fictions, the outcome would indeed be the liberation of the Jews (God’s people) from under Rome’s thumb. But the Jesus movies claim at least some level of both historical and scriptural fidelity (Reinhartz 2007, 21– 29), and neither the gospel sources nor the historical record as such permit such an ending. The Jesus epics are required to shift the meaning of Jesus’ salvific role from the political and material to the spiritual, a shift that few if any succeed in doing in any convincing way. While the peplum films face a similar challenge, they are more successful because they can focus on the courage and faith of Christian martyrs (and the folly of the Roman emperors) as evidence of their spiritual victory. Furthermore, these films forecast Christianity’s eventual global spread. In Quo Vadis, the nobleman Petronius urges the Emperor Nero to avoid blaming the Christians for the blaze that destroyed Rome: “Condemn these Christians and you make martyrs of them and ensure their immortality.” Nero scoffs that “when I have finished with these Christians, Petronius, history will not be sure that they ever existed.” Movie audiences will know that history stood with Petronius, and not his ridiculous master. While scholars debate the meaning, definition, and history of “religion,” (Smith 2004), it is clear that biblical literature is preoccupied with the covenantal relationship between humankind – or a subset thereof such as the Israelites (for the Hebrew Bible) or believers in Christ (for the New Testament). Although it is the God of Israel who triumphs in all Bible epics, it is Christianity and not Judaism that is implicitly proclaimed and preached by these films. While many Jews consider The Ten Commandments and other Old Testament epics to be “theirs,” all of the epics, even those that retell stories from the Hebrew Bible, in one way or another point not to Judaism but to Christianity as the true belief in God. The Ten Commandments, for example, draws on the book of Exodus but recreates Moses as a Jesus-figure whose similarities to the Christian messiah become more obvious as the film proceeds (Reinhartz 2013, 43).

Conclusion Viewers’ reactions to the aesthetics of the epic genre vary; not all appreciate their grandiose scope and scale, the slow moving pace of their action or the deliberate speech, and elaborate grooming of their main characters. Yet even a cursory second glance will lead us to appreciate the ways in which the epic genre uses the Bible to express and work through twentieth-century anxieties. For this reason the epic genre

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is important not only as a mode of biblical reception, but also as a witness to the ethos and concerns of America in the post-World War II era.

Works Cited Arnheim, Rudolf. 1997. Film Essays and Criticism. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press. Babington, Bruce, and Peter William Evans. 1993. Biblical Epics: Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bach, Alice. 1996. Biblical Glamour and Hollywood Glitz. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Bercovitch, Sacvan. 1983. “The Biblical Basis of the American Myth.” In The Bible and American Arts and Letters. Ed. Giles B. Gunn. Philadelphia and Chico, Calif.: Fortress Press; Scholars Press, Pp. 219 – 29. Chancey, Mark. “The Bible and Public Schools: Resources for Understanding the Issues.” http:// faculty.smu.edu/mchancey/public_schools.htm; accessed January 25, 2012. Cornelius, Michael G. 2011. Of Muscles and Men: Essays on the Sword and Sandal Film. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. DelFattore, Joan. 2004. The Fourth R: Conflicts over Religion in America’s Public Schools. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Finch, Janet, and Penny Summerfield. 1991. “Social Reconstruction and the Emergence of Companionate Marriage, 1944 – 59.” In Marriage, Domestic Life, and Social Change: Writings for Jacqueline Burgoyne, 1944 – 88. Ed. David Clark. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 7 – 32. Grace, Pamela. 2004. “Gospel Truth? From Cecil B. DeMille to Nicholas Ray.” In A Companion to Literature and Film. Ed. Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers. Pp. 46 – 57. Herzog, Jonathan P. 2011. The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America’s Religious Battle Against Communism in the Early Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press. Higashi, Sumiko. 1994. Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture: The Silent Era. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hirsch, Foster. 1978. The Hollywood Epic. South Brunswick, N.J.: Barnes. Jensen, Robin Margaret. 2000. Understanding Early Christian Art. London and New York: Routledge. Nadel, Alan. 1993. “God’s Law and the Wide Screen: The Ten Commandments as Cold War ‘Epic,’” Publications of the Modern Language Association 108.3 (May 1): 415 – 430. Prothero, Stephen R. 2003. American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Reinhartz, Adele. 2013. Bible and Cinema: An Introduction. London: Routledge. —. 2007. Jesus of Hollywood. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Robertson, James C. 1989. The Hidden Cinema: British Film Censorship in Action, 1913 – 1972. London and New York: Routledge. Schrader, Paul. 1972. Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schroeder, Caroline T. 2003. “Ancient Egyptian Religion on the Silver Screen: Modern Anxieties about Race, Ethnicity, and Religion.” Journal of Religion and Film 7.2: http://www.unomaha. edu/jrf/Vol7No2/ancienteqypt.htm; accessed March 31, 2014. Smith, Gary. 2004. Epic Films: Casts, Credits and Commentary on over 350 Historical Spectacle Movies [2003]. 2nd ed. Jefferson: McFarland.

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Smith, Jonathan Z. 2004. Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sobchack, Vivian. 1990. “‘Surge and Splendor’: A Phenomenology of the Hollywood Historical Epic.” Representations 29: 24 – 49. Solomon, Jon. 2001. The Ancient World in the Cinema. New Haven: Yale University Press. Staley, Jeffrey Lloyd and Richard G Walsh. 2007. Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: A Handbook to Jesus on DVD. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press. Stern, Richard C., Clayton N. Jefford, and Guerric DeBona. 1999. Savior on the Silver Screen. New York: Paulist Press. Tatum, W. Barnes. 2013. Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years and Beyond [1997, 2004]. 3rd ed. Salem, Oreg.: Polebridge Press. Weisenfeld, Judith. 2007. Hollywood Be Thy Name: African American Religion in American Film, 1929 – 1949. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wright, Melanie Jane. 2003. Moses in America: The Cultural Uses of Biblical Narrative. American Academy of Religion Cultural Criticism Series. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Wyke, Maria. 1997. Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema, and History, The New Ancient World. New York: Routledge.

Films Cited Avatar (dir. James Cameron, 2009, Twentieth Century Fox, US/UK). Barabbas (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1961, Columbia Pictures, IT/US). Ben Hur (dir. Sidney Olcott, Harry T. Morey, and Frank Rose, 1907, Kalem, US). Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (dir. Fred Niblo, 1925, MGM, US). Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959, MGM, US). The Bible: In the Beginning… (dir. John Huston, 1966, Dino de Laurentiis, US/IT). The Big Fisherman (dir. Frank Borzage, 1959, Walt Disney, US). The Chosen Prince [a.k.a. The Friendship of David and Jonathan] (dir. William Mong, 1917, The Crest Picture Company, US) Christus (dir. Guilio Antamoro, 1916, Cines, IT). David and Bathsheba (dir. Henry King, 1951, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Demetrius and the Gladiators (dir. Delmer Daves, 1954 Twentieth Century Fox, US). Exodus: Gods and Kings (dir. Ridley Scott, 2014, Chernin Entertainment, US/UK/ES). Gladiator (dir. Ridley Scott, 2000, DreamWorks, UK/US). Gone with the Wind (dir. Victor Fleming, 1939, Selznick International Pictures, US). The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1965, United Artists, US). The Green Pastures (dir. Marc Connelly and William Keighley, 1936, Warner Brothers, US). History of the World Part I (dir. Mel Brooks, 1981, Brooksfilms, US). The Höritz Passion Play (prod. William Freeman, 1897, Klaw & Erlanger, US). I.N.R.I. [a.k.a. Crown of Thorns] (dir. Robert Wiene, 1923, Neumann Productions, DE). The King of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1927, DeMille Pictures, US). King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961, MGM, US). The Last Days of Pompeii (dir. Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1935, RKO Radio Pictures, US). The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988, Universal, US/CA). Lawrence of Arabia (dir. David Lean, 1962, Horizon Pictures, UK). Life of Brian [a.k.a. Monty Python’s Life of Brian] (dir. Terry Jones, 1979, Handmade Films, UK). Lot in Sodom (dir. James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber, 1933, Watson, Wilder, Webber, Wood, and O’Brien; US).

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Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2014, Paramount, US). Noah’s Ark (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1928, Warner Brothers, US). The Passion Play of Oberammergau (dir. Henry C. Vincent, 1898, Eden Musee, US). The Prince of Egypt (dir. Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, and Simon Wells, 1998, DreamWorks, US). Quo Vadis? (dir. Enrico Guazzoni, 1913, Cines, IT). Quo Vadis? (dir. Gabriellino D’Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, 1925, Unione Cinematografic Italiana, IT). Quo Vadis (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1951, MGM, US). The Robe (dir. Henry Koster, 1953, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Samson and Delilah (dir. Edwin J. Collins, 1922, Master Films, UK). Samson and Delilah (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1949 Paramount, US). The Sign of the Cross (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1932, Paramount, US). The Silver Chalice (dir. Victor Saville, 1954, Warner Bros, US). Solomon and Sheba (dir. King Vidor, 1959, Edward Small Productions, US). Spartacus (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1960, Bryna Productions, US). The Story of Ruth (dir. Henry Koster, 1960, Twentieth Century Fox, US). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1923, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, US). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956, Paramount, US). Zohi Sdom [a.k.a. This is Sodom] (dir. Muli Segev and Adam Sanderson, 2010, United King Films, IL/BG).

Robert Paul Seesengood

11 Western Text(s): The Bible and the Movies of the Wild, Wild West You must pay for everything in this world, one way or another. There is nothing free except the grace of God. (Mattie Ross in True Grit, dir. Coen Brothers, 2010)

In a critical scene in Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider (1985), a young Mormon girl, Megan Wheeler (Sydney Penny), sits alone by the window of a remote pioneer cabin. Her family has moved West to seek their fortunes in the 1849 California gold rush. The cabin is bleary and drab, muted hues of blue and gray matching the surrounding landscape, as if it grew from the rock and wood. In a way, it did. It was built rough-hewn by her family, their only comfort a small, stalwart group of fellow settlers. Together, they work at grueling, blistering labor, scrounging more than prospecting, driven by the hope of a “big hit,” dreaming of prosperity, religious freedom, and opportunity, all intertwined with hopes for self-governance and ruddy self-reliance. Were simple survival not painful enough, the small band of settlers finds themselves in a war over resources; their small mining operation is competing with local cattle barons for access to water. The land is abundant, but the cattle herdsmen are greedy and brutal. Settler after settler has been beaten. Property has been destroyed. The family is being persecuted for its persistence. Baffled by the absence of justice, Megan turns to her Bible. Repeating the 23rd Psalm in prayer, she intersperses her own commentary. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. But I do want.” She continues, repeating a litany of the sins committed against her community. She breaks off in the middle of verse 4, lamenting “they killed my dog,” and begins a prayer, begging God to act on their behalf. In a later scene, reading from Revelation 6:1– 8, she describes the last and most terrible of the infamous four horsemen who precede the end of time. At 6:8, she reads that the rider arrives upon “a pale horse. And his name was death; and Hell followed after him.” This time the film provides commentary on the passage not through Megan’s monologue but visually. The scene alternates cuts between Megan reading and a weather-beaten, armed rider (Clint Eastwood, whose character is nameless in the film, known only as “the Preacher”) atop a dappled bay mare. If her recitation of the Psalm was imprecation, the reading of Revelation is incantation; Megan has summoned divine Justice, riding down from the surrounding hills (Ps. 121:1– 2) to bring God’s deliverance. Pale Rider is an adaptation of an earlier film, Shane (dir. George Stevens, 1953), itself a screen translation of a 1949 novella by Jack Schaefer. In the opening pages of the novella, told in first person through the voice of a young boy, Bob Starrett, Shane simply appears at the home of the Starrett family who are attempting to make a living

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as subsistence farmers on the prairie. Asking for and receiving a drink for himself and his horse, Shane is about to ride away when Bob’s father, suddenly and uncharacteristically drawn to the man, invites him to stay for dinner. Shane concedes. He refuses an offer to stay overnight, however, and leaves the family to discuss their first impressions. “Everything about him is peculiar.” Mother sounded as if she was stirred up and interested. “I never saw a man quite like him before.” “You wouldn’t have. Not where you come from. He’s a special brand we sometimes get out here in the grass country. I’ve come across a few. A bad one’s poison. A good one’s straight grain clear through.” “How can you be so sure about him? Why, he wouldn’t even tell where he was raised.” “Born back east a ways would be my guess. And pretty far south. Tennessee maybe. But he’s been around plenty.” “I like him.” Mother’s voice was serious. “He’s so nice and polite and sort of gentle. Not like most men I’ve met out here. But there’s something about him. Something underneath the gentleness…Something…” Her voice trailed away. “Mysterious?” suggested father. “Yes, of course. Mysterious. But more than that. Dangerous.” “He’s dangerous all right.” Father said it in a musing way. Then he chuckled. “But not to us, my dear.” And then he said what seemed to me a curious thing. “In fact, I don’t think you ever had a safer man in your house.” (Schaefer 1949, 14– 15)

In both film and novel, the justice-bringing gun fighter, Shane, is widely argued by many critics to be christological (if not a flagrant Christ-type). He arrives mysteriously. He seems to have special powers of perception, and he has an ennobling effect upon those around him. He suffers vicariously for the redemption of the community. He brings Justice and (divine?) retributive punishment. He vanishes at the end of his redemptive task. He unites love and security with justice and discipline. With the addition of at least two moments of direct biblical engagement/recitation, Eastwood’s Pale Rider makes these themes more overt, even as the character becomes less of a gospels driven Christ-type and more of an eschatological figure of judgment from Revelation. Eastwood’s gunslinger is summoned where Justice is lacking, but also where the Bible is “talked back” to and challenged by Megan. How is a biblical scholar to engage these moments? How is biblical text being used in these films? How does Bible add to the structure of the Western? How is the Bible used within the ideological systems of Westerns? How does the Bible fare after these connections have been drawn? Criticism of Bible and Westerns engage these and other issues. Certainly, one critical approach (as I have just done) involves review and analysis of the appearance of the Bible or biblical tropes in Westerns. The genre of Westerns, however, is exceptionally broad, including thousands of films, and the precise definition of what is or is not use of Bible or biblical trope (indeed, what is or is not “Bible” itself) requires interrogation. Any meaningful review would exceed the frontiers of a brief, introductory essay, and, more important, would occlude what might be biblical scholarship’s most valuable contribution. Westerns as

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we will see, can be seen as a quintessentially American expression of film and art, a form of American national mythology. Biblical scholars are particularly equipped to comment upon “national mythologies.” Biblical scholars can contribute to the vast-and-growing body of scholarship on Westerns, tracing how Westerns function mythically, noting along the way how their themes and characters intersect – often intertextually – with Bible, and exploring how Bible, even when not explicitly invoked in a Western, provides some elements of the Western’s basic “logic,” structure and purpose. In what follows, I want to first trace out the history and development of the Western (noting some of its critical components) with attention to how Westerns both reflect and create American national identity. Next, I will explore the primary modes of critical engagement with Westerns: genre and auteur criticism, modes of critical inquiry parallel to biblical criticism. Finally, I will survey the scholarship on Westerns by biblical critics, which has appeared to date, before offering some reflection(s) on potential new paths.

The Western and the Development of American Identity Despite limited international connections (films shot abroad, a few directors and actors born abroad, etc.), Westerns are an American art form. Critical to the genre – perhaps the sine qua non – is the location of action in the American West and history. Westerns idealize the American experience and nation-building, and the development of the genre parallels changes in American culture and ideology. If film is modern mythology, Westerns are American etiology.¹

The Western in American Film History² The first western movie was the short 1903 American silent The Great Train Robbery, directed by Edwin S. Porter and circulated as an exhibition piece by Edison. The film is landmark in its use of plot, storyline and character development. In this short film, the new technology of “moving pictures” became a vehicle for storytelling. Early silent-era Westerns after Porter are getting increasing attention by film historians and

 On the American West and Western as American mythology, see the seminal Smith ().  The following survey is a review of received scholarship on the film history of Westerns. For more detailed review and assessment, see the sources discussed in the next section along with French () and the excellent orienting collection of essays in O’Connor/Rollins (). Their introductory essay “The West, Westerns and American Character” (Pp.  – ) is particularly helpful and has clearly shaped my own treatment. The volume also contains a highly useful (though not exhaustive) filmography of Westerns.

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critics³ who note that early twentieth-century interest in Westerns was a natural outgrowth of the popularity of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Western fiction.⁴ Westerns enjoyed increasing popularity in the early sound era, particularly 1931– 1939. These films established the predictable formula of the Western genre. Laden with issues of race, (latent) sexuality, and gender relations, these films also established the Western in popular American culture reflecting emerging “modern” American values and the tension between these changing expectations and traditional American self-image and sensibility.⁵ Westerns experienced their heyday during the post-war years and the Cold War. Despite perennial popularity of the genre from the earliest days of cinema, more Westerns were produced between 1940 and 1965 than in all other years in the history of cinema combined. During this period, nearly every leading male actor in Hollywood appeared in a Western. Giants of the genre – such as Jimmy Stewart, Roy Rogers, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, Randolph Scott, and, of course, John Wayne – were active in this era, as were landmark Western directors John Ford, Raoul Walsh, Sam Peckinpah, John Huston, Fritz Lang, and Fred Zinnemann. As we will see, scholars of Westerns see this era as a critical moment in the development of the genre and its articulation (or construction?) of American identity.⁶ In the 1960s and 70s, as the Cold War got hot, American values at home were increasingly under scrutiny, and the United States was experiencing unprecedented social changes in gender norms and expectations, sexual expression, civil rights, political activism, and reassessment of traditional values. Westerns of the era 1965 to 1976 reflect this upheaval. Many resist the formalism and idealization of earlier films with more historically “accurate” (i. e. less stylized, frequently inspired by surviving period photos) settings and costumes, significantly more violence and may-

 Porter directed a second western, The Life of a Cowboy (). Other directors of note from this period are D. W. Griffith (The Battle at Elderbush Gulch, ), Roscoe Arbuckle (Out West, ), and James Cruze (The Covered Wagon, ).  At times these combined, such as George Seitz’s  film version of Zane Grey’s The Vanishing American.  Westerns from this era had a variety of directors and studio houses. Among the more notable were Raoul Walsh (The Big Trail, ) and Cecil B. DeMille (Union Pacific, ). Ford’s Stagecoach () is the most significant Western film from this era, though he also had five other Westerns in this decade (Dr. Bull, ; Judge Priest, ; Steamboat Round the Bend, ; Young Mr. Lincoln, ; and Drums Along the Mohawk, ). This era also saw the earliest Westerns of John Ford: Bucking Broadway () and The Iron Horse ().  Note, especially, Corkin () and Slotkin (), both of which are treated in more detail below. Listing important films from this period becomes exhausting long before it is exhaustive (for example: Go West (dir. Edward Buzzell, ); King of the Cowboys (dir. Joseph Kane, ); Fort Apache (dir. Ford, ); Red River (dir. Howard Hawks/Arthur Rosen, ); She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (dir. Ford, ); The Gunfighter (dir. Henry King, ); Rio Grande (dir. Ford, ); High Noon (dir. Fred Zinnemann, ); Hondo (dir. John Farrow, ); Shane; Apache! (dir. Robert Aldrich, ); Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (dir. Stanley Donen, ); Rio Bravo (dir. Hawks, ); The Unforgiven (dir. Huston, ); How the West Was Won (dir. Ford, ); and many, many more.

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hem, and more graphic interest in sex. These films also tend to violate genre expectations in camera work, editing, sound and music.⁷ A feature of films from this era is the central role of the “anti-hero,” where protagonists are of dubious character and often highly violent (e. g. The Outlaw Jose Wales). Some films are open parodies of the genre (Blazing Saddles, dir. Mel Brooks, 1974), while others are nostalgic attempts to return to the central themes, values and characteristics of the genre (True Grit, dir. Henry Hathaway, 1969) and still others are hybrid (The Shootist, dir. Don Siegel, 1976). Westerns became a battleground for the articulation of “genuine” American values and character, particularly a late-Cold War response to American Positivism. The genre, either to maintain popular interest or to subvert earlier ideology, began to dismantle its own conventions as each new film and director attempted to challenge established stereotypes and characteristics. The years between 1977 and 1992 saw few Westerns for either television or film; fewer Westerns were made in the 1980s than any other decade of film history. Those that appeared are often explicitly genre-bending, and many are modernizations; some are intentionally “retro,” others modernizing (e. g., Broncho Billy, dir. Eastwood, 1980; Dances with Wolves, dir. Kevin Costner, 1990; Lonesome Dove, dir. Simon Wincer, 1989). Two very significant films directed by Clint Eastwood (Pale Rider and Unforgiven, 1992) were notable for their gritty, dirty and historically informed sets, costumes and props. These films, grotesquely violent, arguably exhaust the conventions of the genre. From 1990 to the present, there has been a modest but growing increase in the production of Westerns. Modernized Westerns returned to American television (Walker, Texas Ranger, prod. Aaron Norris, 1993 – 2001), and this genre has become increasingly popular since the U.S. involvement in armed conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving open the possibility that Westerns are the way the U.S. “thinks” about its colonialism and role in the world and American use of violence. Many contemporary Westerns are part of a current popular interest in film re-makes,⁸ and many are extraordinarily violent.⁹ A few are somewhat parodic,¹⁰ and some are relentlessly realist.¹¹ In other words, the transformed genre, as exemplified in Unforgiven or The Shootist is now the norm; adherence to pre-70s conven-

 Classic exemplars of this era are the films of Sergio Leone (Per un pugno di dollari, , “A Fistful of Dollars;” Per qualche dollaro in più, , “For a Few Dollars More;” Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, , “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly;” C’era una volta il West,  “Once Upon a Time in the West”), those directed or acted by Eastwood (Hang ’em High, dir. Ted Post, ; High Plains Drifter, dir. Eastwood, ; Outlaw Jose Wales, dir. Eastwood, ) and George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ().  E.g., : to Yuma (dir. James Mangold, ); True Grit (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, ).  E.g., Tombstone (dir. George P. Cosmatos/Kevin Jarre, ); Dead Man (dir. Jim Jarmusch, ); The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (dir. Andrew Dominik, ); Django Unchained (dir. Quentin Tarantino, ).  E.g., Cowboys and Aliens (dir. Jon Favreau, ); The Lone Ranger (dir. Gore Verbinski, ).  E.g., There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, ); No Country for Old Men (dir. Joel and Coen, ).

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tions of the genre is almost entirely comedic or intentionally nostalgic. Far from idealizing and cartoonishly optimistic, Westerns now revel in despair. Many Westerns incorporate biblical text, imagery, and trope (and stock portrayal of the “Christian settler” or mission) into their portrayal of American society, and these encounters are often incorporated into a larger ideological agenda. For example, Westerns often struggle with questions about the intersection between violence and law, freedom and civility. Jane Tompkins has argued that Westerns, particularly films of the post-war era, present a “muscular” masculine (and pragmatic) response to a feminized, “eastern,” passive Christian ethic.¹² This transition occurs in a period of American international domination and domestic political debates about the proper use of economic and military power.

Westerns and National Mythology Americans have long articulated their national identity via images and romanticized stories of “the West.” Henry Nash Smith, cataloged and chronicled the use of narrative, fiction, and images knit together to form a “mythic” sense of American subjectivity (Smith 1950, 25 – 37). He used “myth” as a collectively authored, popular “meaning making” story, rich in symbols that works to establish etiology, cosmogony, anthropology, soteriology, and historical and ethnic identity. John G. Cawelti’s SixGun Mystique supplemented Nash Smith with a review of modern popular culture (Cawelti 1971). Cawelti’s findings reinforce Smith’s notion of the West as American mythic space, but he argues that the dynamic appears most prominently in pop media of pulp fiction, television, and movies. Cawelti argued Westerns, as pop culture, simultaneously reflect and articulate national norms, particularly those surrounding violence and the construction of masculinity and femininity. Patricia Nelson Limerick’s The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West sees clear affinity between the construction of racial “Other” and the characterization of stereotypical masculinity and femininity in Westerns and as justification for the violence inherent in the spread of American civilization.¹³ Linking feminist concerns for the suppression of women to broader cultural concerns for systemic, national language of conquest, Limerick problematizes the way Westerns depict not only women, but racial minorities (particularly Latinos, Native Americans, Blacks, and Asians) and the conquest of the very landscape. Westerns as a genre over-write or erase complex notions of race and identity to produce a simplified narrative of American development.¹⁴

 Tompkins (,  – ), in particular, argues that twentieth century Westerns are a rebuttal of the spirituality inherent in Charles Sheldon’s  In His Steps.  Limerick (). See also Limerick ().  Though not dealing with Westerns, per se, issues of race, idealization of the west, and the use of Bible is treated in Warrior ().

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Westerns reflect the American identity crisis following World War II. Discovering itself a nuclear “superpower” engaging the “Third World,” Americans wrestled with their international prominence, power, and opportunity. According to Stanley Corkin, Westerns articulated American self-perceptions, again rooted in a mythologized past and space (Corkin 2004). Both John H. Lenihan and Richard Slotkin have argued Westerns explore American infatuation with violence, a manifestation of the disorientation and socio-economic frustration of the 1950s and 1960s.¹⁵

Westerns in Film Criticism Westerns have been analyzed by a host of critical film theory approaches, most of which are viewer-centric (i. e. analyzing viewer gaze, location, and Affect). Two prominent approaches to film criticism in general, and to the Western in particular, are genre criticism and auteur criticism.

Genre Criticism According to Barry Keith Grant, “genre movies are those commercial feature films that, through repetition and variation, tell familiar stories with familiar characters in familiar situations. They also encourage expectations and experiences similar to those of similar films we have seen” (Grant 2012, xvii). Genre movies discover complexity in their invocation of genre expectations and produce interest (and commentary) by strategic alteration of the same. For Westerns, we know immediately how to understand the inner process, motivation, and expectation for characters and assess plot via stock settings, scenery, costumes, and dramatic elements.¹⁶ Genre critique explores how the various aspects of a formula function and how a given film complies with or challenges those forms (with occasional commentary on how the compliance or violation shapes an experience for the viewer).¹⁷ The Western is among the more extensive and important genres explored in genre critique. Tag Gallagher has observed that the Western, “without question […] has been the richest and most enduring genre for genre critics.”¹⁸ Grant explains

 See Lenihan (); Slotkin (); and French ().  For review of the genre elements, often treated in great detail, see O’Connor/Rollins ().  On genre criticism, see Grant ().  Gallagher (, ). Gallagher surveys proponents of the evolutionary view of Westerns. See, also, O’Collins/Rollins (), and sources cited below. The principle debate for genre critique of Westerns surrounds the development and evolution of the genre. The conventional, and majority, view is that the Western first develops its types and formulas (silent and early sound eras), then celebrates to the point of exaggeration those types and formulas (particularly war and early Cold War years). As the genre is further refined and explored, these types are then manipulated to articulate an

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“the first significant essays of film genre criticism, Robert Warshow’s articles on the gangster film and the western (originally published in the Partisan Review in 1948 and 1954, respectively) and Bazin’s two pieces on the western from the early fifties, were all written within a few years of each other.”¹⁹ Warshow identifies the central characteristics and elements which make up a Western including: isolated settings with broad vistas, particular racial characters, rudimentary-but-conventional presentation of gender, male-to-male conflict in a semi-lawless state, stock characters, violence as response to and corrective of violence, tensions between the encroaching civilization and the rugged outdoors, racial simplicity (for example, the absence of round characters who are minority and the reduction – often animalization – of native Americans).²⁰ For biblical critics exploring Westerns, the genre approach provides a natural point of potential entry. Biblical scholarship frequently engages the development of genres or tropes in ancient literature. Biblical critics observe how these genre changes reflect various ideologies and interests of the ancient communities. Biblical critics may also explore the way biblical passages or characters appearing in Westerns evolve to reflect various interests of the genre. Note, for example, how the manly, judiciously violent, redemptive Shane from the 1950s evolves into the grim, violent, justice-wielding figure of Eastwood’s post-Vietnam Unforgiven.

Western Auteurs Westerns, of course, need not be approached exclusively via genre criticism. Bazin’s review of Westerns was already beginning to explore auteurism in the 1950s. Auteur

array of themes, including ideological norms and values, often being drawn to the point caricature (the Cold War, “Golden Age” of Westerns in the s and s). This exaggeration and alteration (again, often ideologically driven) resulted in the dissolution of the genre (the mid-s and s); as frustration over genre collapse builds, the films themselves become more violent and gritty ( – ). The genre finally collapses into decadence, a ruin fostered by its own deconstruction (in a Derridian sense) and is, effectively, abandoned during the s and s, yet it has begun to enjoy a modest resurgence as new models of affect, gender norms, and psychological influences – and a wave of general cultural nostalgia – work to breathe new life into its conventions. This narrative of genre development, despite its inherent compelling logic, has been seriously critiqued by Gallagher who argues, instead, that much of this narrative of evolutionary development is critically imposed. Genre critics tend to ignore contradictory evidence, downplay subtlety and nuance in older films, and focus more on the critical narrative and discourse than upon the films themselves.  Grant (, xvii). See also Bazin (a and b).  Warshow (,  – ). Current film theory attends largely to the experience of the viewer and a film’s “meaning” or effect; though genre criticism fell out of favor as psychological, semiotic, and structuralist approaches rose in popularity, it should be recognized that genre criticism, like these other approaches, initially was viewer-oriented (Warshow and, to perhaps a greater degree, Bazin fore-grounded the viewer’s experience and location) and has been enjoying something of a comeback as formalist and Affect approaches to film theory have emerged.

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criticism explores a film’s “meaning” via “authorship.” As James Naremore has observed, “motion pictures and television are often described as collaborative media, but their modes of production are hierarchical, involving a mixture of industrialized, theatrical and artisanal practices.” (Naremore 2004, 9). While, as Naremore also notes, several arguments by various critics have been offered to locate the “apex” of that hierarchical production (suggesting authors, actors, cinematographers, and even studio producers), the general consensus has been “for the most part […] associated with directors, who are said to play the most important role in the production process.” (Naremore 2004, 9). Even here, he observes that “[a]s its suffix implies, auteurism is less a scientific approach to the problem of the author than a kind of aesthetic ideology or movement.” (Naremore 2004, 9 – 10). Auteur criticism of Westerns would, as example, pursue themes or motifs across the work of major Western “auteurs,” such as John Ford, Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone, John Huston, Fred Zinemann and Clint Eastwood. Peter Stowell’s work on John Ford serves as a ready example (Stowell 1986). Stowell has argued that Ford’s body of work, particularly his Westerns, were an exploration by Ford of significant American leitmotifs or archetypes, what Stowell (following Smith) calls American “myths.” Stowell sees Ford as constructing, while also articulating, American subjectivity via the construction of certain mythic archetypes, all rooted in the American imagination and American West. Like Tompkins, Stowell sees many of these archetypes engaging an anti-Christian (yet still biblical) masculinity; he sees several major themes in Ford’s work: the myth of the American Adam, the myth of the American Frontier, the myths of American agrarianism, the myth of American individualism, and the myth of American civilization. Ford also constructs a unique American narrative structure, articulating an “American Dream” rooted in Jeffersonian values (Stowell 1986, 150). This (re)construction, built as it is via the images, legends, and romance of America’s past and woven through with biblical allusion and reference, is made a sort of “retroactive” vision. In the mind of the American audience, it is superimposed upon the past like a false-memory embedded in a national values and ideals. Ford’s West is populated with godless savages and white Christians. The white women (and “urban” men) embrace Christianity as a basis for values; the white (ruggedly self-reliant) men grudgingly acknowledge Christianity’s merits, but also perform its limitations (particularly in terms of violence to construct peace, and the limits of forgiveness and love of enemies). A parallel is the collected work of Clint Eastwood. Eastwood’s connection to the Western begins, and perhaps most endures, in his role as actor, particularly in the films of Sergio Leone. Yet Eastwood also directed a number of films. Two – Pale Rider, Unforgiven – sit at a critical juncture of the development of the Western, and both films invoke landmarks of the genre’s past. As we have noted, Pale Rider is a rough remake of Shane, which even more explicitly than the earlier film presents its titular character as a Christ-type (although the avenging kind born of Revelation rather than the gospels). Unforgiven, in its title, returns to John Huston’s 1960 The

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Unforgiven. Huston’s film focuses upon a gunfighter struggling to find redemption for his past by using the violent skills it imparted for good. In many ways, this is the same vehicle behind the plot of Eastwood’s film. Eastwood’s Westerns are an intentional reconsideration and recreation of the genre and an inquiry into whether its brutality and ideology can be redeemed. Drucilla Cornell has recently argued that, in all of Eastwood’s work, there is an attendant interest in the construction and expression of the gender of the lead male character (Cornell 2009). Eastwood’s characters, particularly his Westerns, also focus on biblical typology and text. Eastwood uses biblical texts in his creation of these gender norms; as we have briefly noted, Eastwood’s films also often invoke biblical texts and themes in this process. Like Ford, Eastwood’s recreations inject this particular masculine trope into the mythic American past and present, into its frontier landscapes and its urban centers, into its wildness and its civility, but Eastwood clearly does so with ambivalence about whether such norms are sustainable or valuable. The trope becomes thus somewhat essentialized, even as Eastwood’s films seek, via analysis and interrogation of the genre norms’ relative successes or failures, to problematize essentialism. Auteur criticism, again, has a natural logic to any biblical critic who has ever engaged biblical “authorship,” and may provide a particularly rich inroad into the analysis of Westerns (or, frankly, a useful analogy for traditional biblical critique on “authorship”). Reception-critical approaches deeply problematize the question of “author,” indeed, even of “text,” persistently foregrounding how the use and reception of Bible actually changes what constitutes “Bible” from the outset. Reception critics are also attuned to the hierarchies inherent in this exchange and production. There would seem a natural potential blend of these questions as biblical critics examine the way Bible occurs in the Western auteur.

The Biblical Critic and Westerns: A Review (and Manifesto) A burgeoning interest in Bible and film has arisen among biblical critics, particularly in work of the last thirty years. Changing interests among film critics and theorists over the last decades have also brought renewed attention to Westerns. As one might expect, there has been some merging of these energies. One of the first scholarly treatments of the Bible in Westerns was Jeffrey Mahan’s critique of Leone’s 1968 film, Once Upon a Time in the West (Mahan 1984). For the next twenty years, only a few scattered articles on Bible and Westerns had appeared; these were largely interested in critique of Shane and the work of Clint Eastwood.²¹ The most cited of this early work would be Eric Christianson’s “A Fistful of Shekels” (2003). These essays,

 McIntosh (); Hurst (); Fitch (); Jewett ( and ); Koosed/Linafelt (). To these, one might also add Muck ().

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along with Koosed and Linafelt, have established the book of Judges as a central text. Another focus, emerging from the work of Jewett, is the Pauline corpus. In the past ten years, biblical criticism on Westerns has moved to web-based publications,²² and the intersection between Bible and the American West in fiction and film has only very recently appeared in a sustained monograph (Seesengood/Koosed 2013). Most biblical criticism has pursued Westerns via genre criticism, tending to explore the development of the genre, and most studies are influenced, directly or indirectly, by Slotkin, Corkin, and Tomkins. To date, the majority has been written by American males. When biblical scholars engage movies, they tend to focus upon how the Bible or a biblical text becomes a cipher or symbol intersecting the film’s themes and ideals. Biblical critics interrogate how this intersection functions and what the biblical text adds, with focus upon how the film is interpreting the biblical text in its inclusion (and, occasionally, how the film’s use of Bible exposes or highlights ideas latent in the Bible, itself). Certainly, the Bible is a central book in the construction of American identity, and Westerns are a central place for the articulation of American national mythology, yet biblical critics may also inquire what is altered in a biblical text as a result of its use or appropriation. Few biblical scholars have taken a truly intertextual approach to the Western. Biblical critics can engage Westerns looking for how those movies portray tropes, values, archetypes, and more from American cultural experience, which generally arises from or intersects a biblical text or the history of its interpretation. In other words, they may look for the Bible in film, but they may also explore questions of the Bible and film (or, indeed, take this intertextual approach even further and examine film and Bible). Two excellent examples (each dealing with the book of Judges and films staring Clint Eastwood) are Koosed and Linafelt and Christianson (these two essays are also, to date, among the most frequently cited essays on Bible and Westerns). Koosed and Linafelt take a genre-critical approach to Eastwood’s Unforgiven to argue that Eastwood is intentionally engaging and subverting convention to present a view of the West as American icon, which simultaneously critiques both the conventions of the genre and American cultural expectations of women and gender difference. They argue that, in a similar way, Judges is challenging-while-conforming-to women’s roles in the character of Delilah. The typical infatuation for the nexus between law and chaos, civilization and violence, which is found in Western films serves as an interesting parallel conversation to similar tensions within Judges. Christianson’s essay, in a similar move, examines the way that Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars uses-but-alters genre conventions about the character of the gunfighter, celebrating his control of violence but also foregrounding trickster elements in his characterization. Christianson then explores the character of Ehud in Judges (3:12–

 Walsh (); Mitchell (); Paganopoulos (); Seesengood ().

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30), noting the way that the biblical book also finds humor in violence and uses-butsubverts existing character tropes to produce its own trickster theme. Both essays critique (implicitly or explicitly) the role of Bible in the celebration of violence, the role and limit of nationalism and national mythology in literature, and in the construction of femininity (Koosed and Linafelt) and masculinity (Christianson). These themes are, likewise, central to much film criticism on Westerns. In many ways, biblical scholars, by inclination and by training, are attuned to genre criticism. Trained in source critical approaches and often also schooled to read the biblical text against broader ancient “contexts” of comparable literature (genres?), biblical scholars readily find the questions of genre criticism intelligible. Two other key foci for critique of the Western, however, are also central to the general conversation of biblical scholars and have ample room for expansion. Auteur criticism is an approach to film that recognizes the limitations on “agency” behind the final product. One cannot really look for anything like “intent” in meaning, since the multitude of creative contributors belies any hope of there being a unique “meaning” or “intention.” In a similar way, taking seriously the circumstances of biblical composition and redaction (if nothing else, the anonymous process of assembling discrete texts into the anthology of canon) likewise renders the location of an “author” as a fictional convention. Biblical scholars trained in the last fifty years have also been heavily schooled in the implications of ideology and biblical text. The Bible reflects particular ideological moments in its composition and collection. It has also, very certainly, played a role – as cipher if nothing else – in the construction of particular types of American identity. These questions readily arise in the critique of Westerns. Biblical scholars have, without question, found some of these parallel conversations fruitful. While ideological and auteur approaches have begun to appear²³ and been utilized by a few scholars, there remains more that could be explored.

Works Cited Bazin, André. 2005a. “The Evolution of the Western.” In What is Cinema? [1971]. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. Transl. Hugh Gray. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 149 – 57. —. 2005b. “The Western, or the American Film par excellence.” In What is Cinema? [1971]. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. Transl. Hugh Gray. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 140 – 48. Cawelti, John G. 1971. Six-Gun Mystique. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green Popular Press. Christianson, Eric S. 2003. “A Fistful of Shekels: Scrutinizing Ehud’s Entertaining Violence (Judges 3.12 – 30).” Biblical Interpretation 11.1: 53 – 78. Corkin, Stanley. 2004. Cowboys as Cold Warriors: The Western and U.S. History. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

 Seesengood (); Seesengood/Koosed (); Walsh (); Mitchell (); and Muck ().

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Cornell, Drucilla. 2009. Clint Eastwood and Issues of American Masculinity. New York: Fordham University Press. Fitch, III, John. 2004. “Archetypes on the American Screen: Heroes and Anti-Heroes.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 7: http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/ ln2 h01 m142242530/; accessed March 1, 2015. French, Peter A. 1997. Cowboy Metaphysics: Ethics and Death in Westerns. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. French, Philip. 1973. Westerns: Aspects of a Movie Genre. New York: Viking Press. Gallagher, Tag. 2012. “Shoot Out at the Genre Corral: Problems in the ’Evolution’ of the Western.” In Film Genre Reader IV. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin, Tex.: University of Texas. Pp. 298 – 312. Grant, Barry Keith, ed. 2012. Film Genre Reader IV. Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press. Hausladen, Gary J. 2003. Western Places, American Myths: How We Think About the West. Reno, Nev.: University of Nevada Press. Hurst, Lincoln D. 2004. “Six-gun Savior; George Stevens’ ‘Shane’ and Paul’s Letter to the Romans.” In Celebrating Romans; Template for Theology: Essays in Honor of Robert Jewett. Ed. Shelia Elizabeth McGuinn. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Pp. 240 – 52. Jewett, Robert. 1998. “The Gospel of Violent Zeal in Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven.” Christianity & Literature 47.4: 427 – 42. —. 1993. “The Disguise of Vengeance in Pale Rider.” In Saint Paul at the Movies: The Apostle’s Dialogue with American Culture. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox. Pp. 118 – 33. Koosed, Jennifer L., and Tod Linafelt. 1996. “How the West Was Not One: Delilah Deconstructs the Western.” Semeia 74: 167 – 81. Lenihan, John H. 1980. Showdown: Confronting Modern America in the Western Films. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press. Limerick, Patricia Nelson. 1987. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. Vols. 1 – 2. New York: Norton. —. 2000. Something in the Soil: Legacies and Reckonings in the New West. New York: Norton. Mahan, Jeffrey H. 1984. “Once Upon a Time in the West.” Explor: A Journal of Theology 7: 81 – 93. McIntosh, William A. 1995. “Just Plain Shane.” Parabola 20: 42 – 47. Mitchell, Matthew W. 2003. “Some More Light on the Text: Watching HBO’s Deadwood with and without the Apostle Paul.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 25.1: http://utpjournals. metapress.com/content/t6um7761j8q6518q/?p=8cae2953a2324735b5161e0dcec0eede&pi=6; March 1, 2015. Muck, Terry C. 2000. “From American Dream to American Horizon: The Religious Dimension in Louis L’Amour and Cormac McCarthy.” In Religion and Popular Culture in America. Ed. B. Forbes and J. Mahan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 56 – 76. Naremore, James. 2004. “Authorship.” In A Companion to Film Theory. Ed. Toby Miller and Robert Stamm. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. Pp. 9 – 24. O’Connor, John E., and Peter C. Rollins, eds. 2005. “The West, Westerns and American Character.” In Hollywood’s West: The American Frontier in Film, Television and History. Ed. J. E. O’Connor and P. C. Rollins. Lexington, Ky.: University of Kentucky. Pp. 1 – 36. Paganopoulos, Michaelangelo. 2010. “Jesus Christ and Billy the Kid as Archetypes of the Self in American Cinema.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 22.1: https://itunes.apple.com/ de/book/jesus-christ-billy-kid-as/id480447449?l=en&mt=11; accessed March 1, 2015. Pye, Douglas. 2012. “The Western (Genre and Movies).” In Film Genre Reader IV. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin, Tex.: University of Texas. Pp. 239 – 54. Schaefer, Jack. 1949. Shane. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Seesengood, Robert Paul. 2010. “‘Do not Forsake Me’: Biblical Motifs in Zinnemann’s High Noon.” SBL Forum. //www.sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?ArticleId=825; March 1, 2015.

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Seesengood, Robert Paul, and Jennifer L. Koosed. 2013. Jesse’s Lineage: The Legendary Lives of David, Jesus and Jesse James. Library of New Testament Studies, 479. Playing the Texts, 13. New York: Bloomsbury. Slotkin, Richard. 1992. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Atheneum. Smith, Andrew Brodie. 2003. Shooting Cowboys and Indians. Silent Western Films, American Culture, and the Birth of Hollywood. Boulder, Colo.: University Press of Colorado. Smith, Henry Nash. 1950. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Stowell, Peter. 1986. John Ford. Boston: Twayne Publishers. Tompkins, Jane. 1992. West of Everything. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tuska, Jon. 1985. The American West in Film: Cultural Approaches to the Western. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Walsh, Richard. 2012. “(Carrying the Fire on) No Road for Old Horses: Cormac McCarthy’s Untold Biblical Stories.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 24.3: https://muse.jhu.edu/login? auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/journal_of_religion_and_popular_culture/v024/24.3. walsh.html; accessed March 1, 2015. Warrior, Robert Allen. 1989. “Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians: Deliverance, Conquest, and Liberation Theology Today.” Christianity and Crisis 29: 261 – 65. Warshow, Robert. 1979. “Movie Chronicle: The Westerner.” In The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theater, and Other Aspects of Popular Culture. New York: Atheneum. Pp. 135 – 254. Wood, Robin. 2012. “Ideology, Genre, Auteur.” In Film Genre Reader IV. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin, Tex.: University of Texas. Pp. 78 – 92.

Films Cited 3:10 to Yuma (dir. James Mangold, 2007, Lionsgate, US). Apache! (dir. Robert Aldrich, 1954, Hecht-Lancaster Productions, US). The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (dir. Andrew Dominik, 2007, Warner Brothers, US/CA/UK). The Battle at Elderbush Gulch (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1914, Biograph, US). The Big Trail (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1930, Fox Film Corporation, US). Blazing Saddles (dir. Mel Brooks, US, 1974, Crossbow Productions, US). Broncho Billy (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1980, Warner Brothers, US). Bucking Broadway (dir. John Ford, 1917, Universal Film Manufacturing Company, US). Butch Cassidy and the Sunday Kid (dir. George Roy Hill, 1969, Twentieth Century Fox, US). C’era una volta il West [a.k.a. Once Upon a Time in the West] (dir. Sergio Leone, 1968, Finanzia San Marco, IT/ES/US). The Covered Wagon (dir. James Cruze, 1923, Paramount, US). Cowboys & Aliens (dir. Jon Favreau, 2011, Universal, US). Dances with Wolves (dir. Kevin Costner, 1990, Tig Productions, US/UK). Dead Man (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 1995, Pandora Film Produktion, US/DE/JP). Django Unchained (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2012, Weinstein Company, US). Dr. Bull (dir. John Ford, 1933, Fox Film Corporation, US). Drums Along the Mohawk (dir. John Ford, 1939, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Fort Apache (dir. John Ford, 1948, Argosy Pictures, US). Go West (dir. Edward Buzzell, 1940, MGM, US). The Great Train Robbery (dir. Edwin S. Porter, 1903, Edison, US).

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The Gunfighter (dir. Henry King, 1950, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Hang ’em High (dir. Ted Post, 1968, Leonard Freeman Productions, US). High Noon (dir. Fred Zinnemann, 1952, Stanley Kramer Productions, US). High Plains Drifter (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1973, Universal, US). Hondo (dir. John Farrow, 1953, Warner Brothers, US). How the West Was Won (dir. John Ford, 1962, MGM, US). Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo [a.k.a. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly] (dir. Sergio Leone, 1966, Produzioni Europee Associati, IT/ES/DE/US). The Iron Horse (dir. John Ford, 1924, Fox Film Corporation, US). Judge Priest (dir. John Ford, 1934, Fox Film Corporation, US). King of the Cowboys (dir. Joseph Kane, 1943, Republic Pictures, US). The Life of a Cowboy (dir. Edwin S. Porter, Edison, 1906, US). The Lone Ranger (dir. Gore Verbinski, 2013, Walt Disney, US). Lonesome Dove (dir. Simon Wincer, 1989, Motown Productions, US). No Country for Old Men (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007, Paramount Vantage, US). Once Upon a Time in the West (dir. Sergio Leone, 1968, Finanzia San Marco, IT/US/ES). Out West (dir. Roscoe Arbuckle, 1918, Comique Film Company, US). The Outlaw Jose Wales (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1976, Warner Brothers, US). Pale Rider (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1985, The Malpaso Company, US). Per qualche dollaro in più [a.k.a. A Few Dollars More] (dir. Sergio Leone, 1965, Produzioni Europee Associati, IT/ES/DE). Per un pugno di dollari [a.k.a. A Fistful of Dollars] (dir. Sergio Leone, 1964, Constantin Film Produktion, IT/ES/DE). Red River (dir. Howard Hawks and Arthur Rosen, 1948, Charles K. Feldman Group, US). Rio Bravo (dir. Howard Hawks, 1959, Warner Brothers, US). Rio Grande (dir. John Ford, 1950, Argosy Pictures, US). Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (dir. Stanley Donen, 1954, MGM, US). Shane (dir. George Stevens, 1953, Paramount, US). She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (dir. John Ford, 1949, Argosy Pictures, US). The Shootist (dir. Don Siegel, 1976, Paramount, US). Stagecoach (dir. John Ford, 1939, Walter Wanger Productions, US). Steamboat Round the Bend (dir. John Ford, 1935, Fox Film Corporation, US). There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007, Paramount Vantage, US). Tombstone (dir. George P. Cosmatos and Kevin Jarre, 1993, Cinergi Entertainment, US). True Grit (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1969, Paramount, US). True Grit (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2010, Paramount, US). The Unforgiven (dir. John Huston, 1960, Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions, US). Unforgiven (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1992, Warner Brothers, US). Union Pacific (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1939, Paramount, US). The Vanishing American (dir. George Seitz, 1925, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, US). Walker, Texas Ranger (prod. Aaron Norris, 1993 – 2001, CBS, US). Young Mr. Lincoln (dir. John Ford, 1939, Twentieth Century Fox, US).

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12 Mysteries of the Bible (Documentary) Revealed: The Bible in Popular Non‐Fiction and Documentary Film As many now do, I incorporate documentary film into my general introductory Bible courses for undergraduates. Despite expanding use and increasing critical interest in Bible in/and film, until fairly recently, many biblical scholars were a-critical in their approach to or use of film and film theory.¹ How one “reads” a film is analogous to (but nevertheless different from) how one reads a text. Film criticism and theory address the function of basic elements of filmmaking – camera work (including, but not limited to, point of view, shot framing, and traditional camera transitions), film editing, lighting, music, sound, props, costuming, “authorship,” and other factors. Film critique should attend to basic questions of the gestalt of the entire film. Use and critical review of documentary film require even greater attention given the genre’s implicit and overt claims about truth, representation and reality. The analysis or use of documentary film should attend to not only the film’s content, but the way the film structures and presents its argument, as well. It is important to attend to both the structure and the content of a documentary when considering its accuracy and “truth” or articulating its meaning.² Several often-unexamined factors influence the effect of a documentary film. The context of consumption of documentary film, for example, affects a viewer’s experience(s). Few documentaries – and significantly fewer Bible documentaries – are broadly marketed in popular cinemas. Most viewers consume documentary film either via television or in various instructional and institutional settings. In other words, we often view documentaries either in private or in pre-constructed communities; focus is on instruction and this focus often imposes an institutional framework or bias. When viewed in an institutional context (a church, synagogue, campus theater, or a classroom), the general assumptions of that organization affect our expectations and conclusions and most certainly color our perception of the “reality” presented in the film. The content of the film is often processed by pre or post viewing conversation that always has both ideological and didactic interest with implicit institutional endorsement or critique. This viewing context masks the creative and entertainment focus of documentary, fostering the illusion that such films are produced  An earlier version of this essay was presented at the Bible and Film section of the Society of Biblical Literature  annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois. My thanks to many – particularly to Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch, Jeffrey Staley, Matthew Rindge, and Laura Copier – for suggestions and clarifications.  For general, introductory overview on documentary criticism and “documentary theory,” see Aufderheide (); McLane (); and Nichols (). These works are quickly becoming seminal recommendations for general, beginner introduction.

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and consumed for didactic – as opposed to persuasive, dogmatic, propagandistic, or entertainment – purposes. Documentary film is always already prone to awaken questions about truth, representation and reality; these questions make the genre itself difficult to define. The complexity of issues surrounding truth in documentary can be illustrated in William Rothman’s survey of Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922), the first, and in many ways paradigm setting, commercially released documentary film (Rothman 1998, 23 – 29). In the film, Flaherty says he intended to fully and accurately document the life of a particular Inuit family whose existence persists, largely unaffected by the encroachment of modernity. Nanook’s story, he insists, is real. Flaherty, however, produced a film that would not meet modern standards of ethnography. What Nanook does document is a “real” Inuit in the act of performing “real” traditional native activities and practices. Yet nearly every scene was staged by the director. Flaherty obscured or omitted various marital and home customs that he estimated unpalatable to the norms and morals of his audience. Nanook’s life outside the documentary, as Rothman points out well, certainly had been highly influenced by modernity. Alas, even the name “Nanook” is an imposition; our protagonist had what Rothman calls the “marquee-busting name” of Allakariallak (Rothman 1998, 25). Reflecting on how the documentary both is and is not “real,” Rothman notes writes: Insofar as he participated in the making of Nanook, the “real” Nanook has a relationship to the camera that is part of his reality, part of the camera’s reality, part of the reality being filmed, part of the reality on film, part of the reality of the film. Nanook is a real expression of real relationships that in turn are expressions of […] both the camera and its subjects. Yet Nanook emerges as a fictional character with no reality apart from the film that creates him. Being filmed has no more reality to Nanook-in-his-fictional-aspect than to a character in a fictional film. But this means that the fictional Nanook has no reality to the camera. (Rothman 1998, 25)

Rothman goes on to observe: In a fiction film, the camera’s revelations about characters are also revelations about the real people who incarnate them, revelations that express and thus reveal the real relationships between camera and human subjects. The prevailing fiction is that the character, not the actor, is real. What is fictional about a fiction film resides in its fiction that it is only fiction. What is fictional about Nanook resides in its fiction that it is not fiction at all. (Rothman 1998, 26)

This tension has been readily explored in film criticism beginning with the nowsomewhat-seminal work by Bill Nichols and Michael Renov.³ As biblical critics, we of course recognize the dilemma of representation and reality, of finding the “reality” beneath or behind a text, particularly one surrounded by a host of institutional and scholarly agendas and needs. This tension is the same tension that lies behind var-

 See Nichols (); Renov (). See, as well, Nichols ( –  and ).

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ious scholarly quests for the Historical Jesus or the recovery of Ancient Israel. One of the venerable definitions of documentary, and perhaps still one of the most concise and effective, comes from the 1920s and ‘30s Scottish film critic, John Grierson. Grierson defines “documentary film” as “creative treatment of actuality.”⁴ As such, both aspects of documentary film – the creative treatment as well as the “actuality” of content – are integral to intelligent consumption of documentary.

Modes and Methods of Documentary A few biblical critics have begun to attend to documentary film with these critical questions in mind, yet the bibliography of such work remains frustratingly short.⁵ Of particular interest to biblical scholars engaging documentary theory are questions of the effect of editing and structure to reflect point-of-view and documentary “mode.”⁶ In a highly accessible and commendably brief primer on documentary theory, Henrik Juel has outlined a fairly comprehensive list of “points to consider” when viewing documentary (Juel 2006). He suggests we must begin by analysis of function for the documentary (what is its goal?). We must attend to the “Mode” of narrative strategy present in the documentary. Juel lists six possibilities. Documentaries may be: Expository: lecturing, overtly didactic, e. g. with a personal presenter or an explanatory voiceover. Observational: like a “fly on the wall,” the camera, microphone and film crew seem not to be disturbing the scene or even to be noticed by the participants. Participatory or interactive: the film crew takes part in the action or chain of events. Reflexive: the film exposes and discusses its own role as a film (e. g. the ethics or conditions of filmmaking) alongside the treatment of the case or subject. Performative: the film crew creates many of the events and situations to be filmed by their own intervention or through events carried out for the sake of the film. Poetic: the aesthetic aspects, the qualities of the form and the sensual appeals are predominant. (Juel 2006)

 This definition is widely attributed to Grierson, yet is notoriously elusive for exact citation in his voluminous writings. Grierson is also often credited with coining the term “documentary.” As to this latter claim, it is, indeed, true that Grierson seems to be the first printed use of “documentary” in his review of Flaherty’s Moana () for the New York Sun (February , ), yet he does not use the word in any way that suggests he regards it as a neologism. On Grierson’s actual and apocryphal role in the foundation of documentary theory (and assessment of both), see Morris (,  – ) and Corner (,  – ).  In a brief review of works examining the Bible in documentary film, one might mention: Moreland (); Löwisch (); and Burnette-Bletsch ().  Others have raised similar concerns about deeper investment in documentary theory. Note, for a small review: Newberry (); Wall (); Mendel ().

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Adding to Juel, I would suggest that these categories of “mode” are, of course, neither exclusive nor comprehensive. Individual films may use a variety of modes. Documentary mode could be compared to narrative “voice” and perspective in literature. The mode of documentary establishes the viewer’s experience and expectation even as it generates viewer expectations regarding content. The seeming omniscient “voice of God” narrative voice present in expository documentary certainly establishes “truth” for the viewer in ways that participatory modes, which tend much more to providing an experience to viewers which the viewer herself “interprets,” do not. Narrative voice or mode is often reinforced by film editing and assembly and often also by selection of sets, camera angle, music and more. Biblical scholars are well aware of the influence of editorial choice and voice (rhetoric) in the construction of meaning. Engaging documentary theory could readily offer both tools for biblical criticism (particularly in terms of redaction, source and ideological criticism) and a role for biblical critics, in turn, to contribute to film theory.

A (Very Brief) Introduction and Review of Bible Documentary Bible documentaries are legion. Alongside documentaries produced directly for academic classrooms are documentaries produced and distributed by various confessional groups, many marketed via the engine of the burgeoning evangelical media industry and aimed at the ecclesiastical Religious Education curriculum market. An increasing number of documentaries are being produced for the direct-to-consumer market and distributed or displayed via the web. There are several “channels” for these documentaries on outlets such as Youtube and Facebook. Bible documentaries have also been produced for the direct-to-television market, notably for public broadcasting and cable networks such as Discovery, A&E, the History Channel and more. In what follows, I would like to engage a few, select documentaries on the Bible and biblical interpretation. I have chosen three, which represent a generic survey of the marketplace – classroom, television and religious community – and the expectations of the documentary’s “viewer.” Two of these documentaries reflect standard professional scholarship, though aimed at slightly different markets; one is aimed at the general pop market, the other at the legendary “informed consumer” or “soft-academic” market. The third film is also marketed to the non-specialist, but in many ways, violates conventions of “standard” scholarship. Among these three films, the generic array of viewing contexts (academic/classroom pedagogy, home entertainment, ecclesiastical/confessional instruction) is covered, as well. In other words, I have chosen these three documentaries because in them they aggregately cover the general array of didactic concern, “mission,” and audience found in documentaries about the Bible. By a survey of all three, I hope to demonstrate how these Bible documentaries engage viewers and attempt not only to inform but also to per-

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suade and construct the viewer’s sense of what is “real” and “plausible” in biblical interpretation.⁷ Bible documentaries use a variety of modes, but overwhelmingly they tend to be didactic and expository. Many documentaries use images indicative of antiquity – archaeological sites, manuscripts, location; some use images of the Bible in art or in church/synagogue architecture. These choices are not incidental. To focus on only period-specific images or location places the Bible in space-time. The effect of such rooting may be either distancing the Bible from our contemporary moment or the construction of a sense of academic verisimilitude. Nearly all feature extensive narrative voiceover and frequent shots of scholars explicating the film’s themes or questions. Occasionally, Bible documentaries use brief dramatic recreation or dramatic reading of biblical (or other) texts. A very few documentaries (chiefly those produced on biblical themes by the PBS series “Nova”) use participatory and observational modes, with filmmakers directly shooting and interacting with scholars or archaeologists. I have found only one documentary (Jesus Camp, dir. Heidi Ewing/ Rachel Grady, 2006) that makes thorough use of observational mode. It seems as if Bible documentary creators have a preference for clear spoken-language exposition with clear credentials of “experts.” The Word is best expounded by words.

Mysteries of the Bible From 1994 to 1998, the cable channel A&E produced a series of Bible documentaries titled Mysteries of the Bible (dir. Roberta Grossman). This series was exceptionally popular (for a Bible documentary, at any rate), running for five seasons with fortysix episodes. The episodes in the series range rather widely. Topics include fairly popular or enticing subjects such as the Apocalypse of John, non-canonical (“lost?”) Christian texts and the execution of Jesus, but also fairly specific and tangential passages (for general audience, at any rate) such as the murder of Abel by Cain. The formula for each episode is fairly stable. Each program begins with a reading from a biblical text followed by voiceover that poses questions surrounding the reading and its interpretation. Following the opening credits, each program is divided into normally four or five acts. Each documentary is largely expository and didactic. Rare images of dramatic recreation of biblical narratives do occasionally appear

 The above paragraph, indeed this entire essay, could easily have scare quotes surrounding each use of “Bible” (or, perhaps even “bible”). One point, which also emerges from the survey that follows (a point which, in my opinion, is present in or arises from the best work in biblical “reception history”) is that what constitutes a “Bible” is never altogether clear. The traditional view that the Bible is a collection of writings deemed sacred by Judeo-Christianity runs into the real discovery that what “Bible” means changes completely when one presses hard upon the words “deemed sacred” and their implications. What constitutes a Bible (its meaning, its significance, its function, even its contents) turns out to be highly variable based upon who is reading and how and why they read.

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among (much more common) images of medieval and renaissance artwork depicting the biblical scene. Above the images, runs rather ominous narration outlining the present exegetical quandary or bizarre image from the biblical text. Transitions between shots or images proceed at an often frenetic pace, in some cases presenting over fifteen different shots/images a minute. The narration and artwork are accompanied by orchestral soundtracks which often include staccato string attacks at high, slightly sharped, sixteenth notes, rapid changes in tonality, modality and meter, including syncopation. In other words, they visually and audibly cite the sound track techniques of dramatic, even horror, film genres heightening tension. Once these mysterious questions are raised, however, the documentary cuts to (eventually music free) footage of certified, published, well-established biblical scholars. Transitions are often abrupt camera jumps or swipes, accompanied by orchestral soundtrack that shifts to adagio, resolved, major keys. Full title and institutional affiliation are provided in text displays for each scholar, each time they appear. The scholars usually sit in libraries or in quiet suburban homes. These visual footnotes suggest scholarship and knowledge. Location shots (e. g., museums, archaeological sites) in Mysteries of the Bible tend to suggest modernity and comfort, stark contrast to the alien, harsh, and often violent images associated with biblical texts themselves. The scholars narrate reasoned, mainstream scholarly views on the passage and its questions, resolving the tensions. For example, “Cain and Abel: A Murder Mystery” (season 4, episode 6) treats Genesis 4:1– 16; it explores the tensions of the “Bible and, perhaps history’s, first murder mystery” and, of course, the infamous “mark of Cain.” After dramatically depicting the murder of Abel by Cain in both recreation and powerfully moving artwork, both dripping in blood and cringing violence (again, with appropriate soundtrack alongside voiceover describing scholars engaged in deep forensic and detective work to unravel the murder) the documentary transitions to Carole Fontaine, then Professor of Hebrew Bible at Andover Newton Theological Seminary, calmly suggesting that the story seems like an allegory reflecting ancient tensions between horticultural and sheep-rearing communities. Even more exemplary might be “Apocalypse: The Puzzle of Revelation” (season 2, episode 3). Over and over again, the documentary juxtaposes lurid images from medieval dooms, frightening and ominous music, shots of roiling clouds, and a narration that asks disturbing questions (e. g., Who are the horsemen and when will their reign of horror begin?). Interspersed with images from Christian art are modern images of warfare and chaos such as atomic mushroom clouds and the burning Branch Davidian compound. Once again, these scenes of horror are followed by shots of mainstream, well-published (and well-identified) scholars all, again, in quiet settings calmly explicating the text by offering mainstream commentary.⁸

 Including James D. Tabor, identified as “Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina,” shot fore-lit in front of a bookcase; Donald Senior, identified as “Professor of New Testament

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The repeated effect of these transitions moves the viewer from scandal and mystery into quiet conversation. Lurid, dark images give way to scholars bathed in light in quiet, highly “reasoned” – indeed, almost visually boring – settings, dressed in modern clothing. As narration proceeds and shots transition through these expository documentaries, viewers are taken from the fearful, uncertain and salacious into the reasoned, explicated, controlled. The mystery of the Bible has been solved.

From Jesus to Christ The Frontline documentary (PBS) titled From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians (dir. William Cran, 1998) focuses on questions of how an ancient movement following Jesus became a world religion. The documentary, in five episodes, marshals the forces of a veritable “who’s who” of historically oriented biblical scholars who, in tandem with the narrative voiceover, present fairly standard academic reconstructions of the historical Jesus and Christian origins. In many elements of its filmmaking narrative, it seems to be aware of, if not borrowing from Mysteries of the Bible. Each episode follows the pattern of the first, titled the “Quest for the Historical Jesus.” “Quest” opens with interior shots of a Christian cathedral. With a soundtrack of a distantly heard lector’s voice giving way to a more dominant alleluia hymn by a choir, the voiceover poses the initial question: How does a rural, Jewish, messianic movement in the early Roman Empire become a world religion? The camera pans across stained glass windows, pews, and baptismal fonts and comes to rest eventually behind an impressive hardwood pulpit. The point of view is that of the lector gazing out at the pews, an impressive lectionary Bible lies open to the Gospel of Mark. This sequence is a frenetic series of sixteen shots over the first minute and forty-two seconds of the episode, none of them static. The camera zooms downward from the roof to pause at floor level facing toward the nave then tours down the narthex in a sequence of nine shots, panning the pews, panning the narthex, pausing and zooming to admire stained glass before centering upon the pulpit, zooming, looking up toward it, zooming, mounting it and panning 180 degrees toward the nave again, before zooming down upon the open lectionary Bible. The room is dark with Caravaggio-like color and shadow. The eye of the camera has just entered the church and toured its way toward the pulpit and found the text. As viewers look across and over an ancient-looking copy of the biblical text, sharply lit from behind camera, out toward a sea of (empty) pews and into a cathedral hall, the documentary proper begins. Mist (of history?) slowly shrouds the open Bible. As the mist fades and the

Studies, Catholic Theological Union at Chicago,” again fore-lit but with a PC and array of computer equipment in the background; and Adela Yarbro Collins (“Professor of New Testament Studies, University of Chicago”) in a brightly lit room, on a couch, with a sun-filled window and bookcases behind, and John J. Collins (“Professor of Hebrew Bible, University of Chicago”), shot with similar light, tightly framed, and with the ever-present bookcase again in the background.

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alleluias crescendo, viewers see a Roman period pavement where text and pews once lay. The music shifts abruptly to a Hebrew cantor. The documentary has transported viewers into the world of the Bible. The rest of the episode alternates between location shots/archaeological items and major scholars offering academic commentary. The documentary actively performs the transition espoused by critical scholarship – to interrogate biblical text via historical and literary inquiry without appeal to faith. Visual footnotes that cue “scholarship” and “reason” populate the mise-en-scène of academic exposition. Scholars are set in front of libraries of books whose shelf-boundaries extend off camera, suggesting, visually, an infinite array of resources. Scholars appear in museums or ancient looking buildings and sets, suggesting an intimate, direct experience with the relevant tools of the trade. Scholars are lit, often sharply and from above – the “divine light” radiating downward; they address a figure off camera, making the viewer privy to “overhearing” a conversation in process. Often, the mise-en-scène is an open window or atrium, suggesting that the scholarly gatekeepers are bringing viewers “into the light.” In at least two cases, the scholarly expert stands or sits before a stairway or an open window set above and behind. The Freudian overtones of this image are overt – in/by their scholarly narration, these experts are leading the viewer up, through the dark labyrinth of time, toward the radiant light of insight, giving birth to knowledge.

Testimony of the Ark Yet another example of a biblical documentary is Testimony of the Ark (dir. Rebecca Truraiaire, 2006). This documentary deploys an array of sophisticated film techniques. Largely didactic, it also incorporates observational footage of its central figure, Ron Wyatt, at work on location or touring with camera crews. It incorporates participatory, interactional and reflectional modes, as well, documenting moments of interaction between the filmmaker and Wyatt. The film uses dozens of different shot transitions. Much of it is clearly shot on location. A number of figures are brought to the fore in expository/didactic “talking head” roles to evaluate Wyatt’s work and its impact; these scholars (as with Wyatt, the film provides no indication of academic affiliation or specific professional credentials) are clearly men (and they are, indeed, all male) of faith. The exposition on the documentary averages a fairly vigorous pace, including around eight to eleven shot transitions per minute prior to the opening credits. Once the main thesis of the film begins to unfold, however, this pace reduces dramatically to an almost boring pace of 1.7 transitions per minute, with long stretches of single, stable, fixed camera, in one case for seven minutes. Generally, the camera focuses upon Wyatt expounding his ideas or leading a tour group or college/seminary class (it is unclear which) on location. Wyatt, in these scenes, does not interact with the filmmakers (though, in other scenes, he is occasionally shown as a filmmaker, himself). The film includes interviews with Wyatt’s

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peers who do interact with filmmakers. Some scenes also depict Wyatt addressing questions from someone (though not clearly the filmmaker) sitting off-camera. In part, the film is documenting Wyatt’s life, produced and edited after his death. The film’s audio soundtrack is predominantly contemporary Christian music (or music based upon the same). It rarely builds tension, using long sustained adagio in major keys. Nearly every shot is bathed in radiant “divine” light (mimicking, as much as possible, natural sunlight). The narration has no inflammatory or mysterious initial exposition of the type found in Mysteries of the Bible. All images are location shots, biblical re-enactors, modern scholars, or ancient artifacts. The narration and voiceover address a popular audience directly, arguing that “mainstream scholarship” has turned its back on Wyatt’s findings under pressure and resistance from scholars “who don’t want to believe in or relate to the living God.” Wyatt himself speaks mostly to students or tourists or collaborators who are most often standing partly off-shot. The viewer is, by this technique, immersed in the presentation itself, as if she is “there” with Wyatt, on location, learning in a contemporary and personal way. Mr. Wyatt, long obsessed with finding Noah’s ark, also claims to have discovered the “grotto of Jeremiah” in Jerusalem. This grotto, a series of chambers beneath construction in Jerusalem’s old city, was the final resting place, according to Wyatt, of the Ark of the Covenant. In deep synergy, it is also directly below the supposed location of Jesus’ crucifixion, which Wyatt asserts was magically revealed to him by the Holy Spirit (he is never quite explicit as the means for this revelation). Frustrated at his inability to get skeptics (and unbelieving Jews) to allow him permission to dig, Wyatt, working illegally and alone, claimed to have uncovered a shaft leading to a hidden chamber in which he found the lost ark. Returning later with professional archaeologists, the area had collapsed and the chamber was gone. Frustrated but not daunted, Wyatt continued his investigations, discovering a stone with three shafts which, he asserts, were post-holes for crosses during the early Roman period. Remarkably, the film argues dramatically this turns out to be the very spot of Jesus’ crucifixion. The central slot had blood stains (blood would have run through the slot into the chamber below, to drip upon the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant), and the blood, when tested, had only mitochondrial DNA suggesting, to Wyatt, that it originated from a person with a mother but no biological father. The film narration expresses surprise that many of Wyatt’s claims have not yet made much headway with mainstream media, biblical scholarship, or Israeli antiquity/archaeology experts. The documentary clearly is attempting to circumvent this resistance (there is a soft push for financial donations to further the work at the film’s end, most likely to facilitate the advertising of the documentary and for both more films and research).⁹ “Experts” are presented, but institutional affiliation

 Though limited in general release, the film is readily available on-line. Copies on DVD can be ordered, the film notes, for personal or “organizational” viewing with appropriate releases and permis-

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is avoided and titles are rarely used. The sets, props, lighting and location all are relentlessly “real” and period/location appropriate.

On the Filming of Documentaries, There is No End In Mysteries of the Bible the sensational is de-sensationalized. As these documentaries explicate and normalize the sensational, they also diminish the raw edge of biblical literature. Mysteries of the Bible corrects puerile and sensational interest in Revelation via what many scholars would consider a highly accurate historical-critical reading of Revelation. The progress of the documentary draws in the audience by satisfying these expectations, but then inverts them by a return to rationality and “accurate” reading of the text. Yet, this “accurate,” text-based interpretation still betrays the essence of the text itself. On some level, how is apocalyptic ever not sensational, vulgar or esoteric? Popular readings of Revelation, steeped in mystery, radiating fear, and pulsing with raw anger are, in many ways, tuned-in to a deep sense of what apocalyptic actually “means.” Taking these elements out of Revelation betrays a fundamental quality of Revelation, itself. From Jesus to Christ invites its viewers to leave behind ideas of the Bible as religious icon, to stop looking over the text, and, instead, to enter into the world hidden beneath the text. In some cases, Bible documentaries reveal that biblical text still functions in a somewhat irrational or pre-rational manner in general culture. From Jesus to Christ is asking the viewer to leave a context of constructed meaning to view the Bible as it “really was” and to hear what it “really says.” Yet, this world, as biblical scholars well know, is in many ways a reconstructed, hypothetical world. The Bible itself – the contents of canon, its social significance, even its very wording – is in more than a few ways a reconstructed and contested document. Within the documentary, the scholarly experts disagree about a host of assumptions concerning Jesus and the history of nascent Christianity. Inviting viewers to leave behind the Bible of the pulpit as a manufactured document detached from “what really happened” pulls readers into a world of the Bible that is equally manufactured, though presented otherwise. This transition is both performed and masked by the contrast of images in the documentary itself. The scholarly reconstruction, the documentary suggests, even if it is fragmented and far away from well-oiled pews, is our only real chance at climbing toward the light of biblical “meaning.”¹⁰ sion, for a small donation. One would assume the push here is to sell copies of the DVD to show at Bible study groups or churches.  One might add, as well, that the scholarly view that emerges from this documentary is, in the end, as singular as the faith-driven readings it attempts to dislocate. The documentary presents a view that the Bible has been “misread” (or, at least, incompletely read) by the church. The “truth” (perhaps even the real “Bible”?) is exclusively the history behind/beneath the actual biblical accounts. In many ways this documentary accepts an argument that there is an origin (event), which has been received (biblical text and faith tradition); scholarship is, properly, the return to the origins of history.

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While Testimony of the Ark lacks a level of scholarly rigor that most professional biblical scholars would endorse and revels in an aesthetic that most film critics would find bland, in terms of filmmaking technique, it is rather sophisticated. Again, seeing the film as a whole, it becomes rather clear that the thesis of the documentary is, largely, to construct a world where the film’s arguments are seen in the most reasonable light. Indeed, it seems that, from a variety of possible motivations, much of the interest of the Bible documentary is to produce a film whose ideas about the Bible will be seen as “rational” and reasoned. This perhaps betrays a fear that biblical texts or biblical claims are not, inherently, “rational.” Testimony of the Ark is most likely correct in its assertions that professional biblical criticism will not take its arguments seriously, even if many would debate the reasons the film ascribes. For exactly this reason, it provides an interesting opportunity to reflect upon how we bifurcate high and low culture, professional and amateur criticism with an eye toward what is at stake – who wins and why – in that distinction. All Bible documentaries are a form of biblical interpretation. As such, they construct an entire immersed viewing experience where both their arguments and their subject – the Bible – are rational. In many ways, they reveal our own sociological bifurcations between high and low culture, between popular and professional critique, divisions rooted in hierarchical notions and disproportionate power. This hierarchy is one that we would do well to consider. There is also a fertile insight in the combination of a documentary film – a genre of film that presents thorny questions about representation, truth, reality, ideology and the artistic/editorial hand – with biblical scholarship. Biblical scholarship, particularly the biblical scholarship exhibited in From Jesus to Christ and Mysteries of the Bible, foregrounds questions about biblical authors, editors, redactors, canonizers and critics and the multiple ways these groups in turn problematize biblical representation of history, textual integrity, and the construction of biblical “meaning.” The issues surrounding documentary film theory and criticism and those surrounding modern biblical criticism reflect in a continuous loop. The “meaning” of a documentary is more than the sum of its narration and footage and is often deeply intertwined with expectations of authority, hierarchy and the very functionality of religious symbolism – much like the Bible itself. Focusing our own lens on the issues of documentary production and “truth,” particularly for “Bible films,” not only creates a context of informed viewing, but also offers moments for serious reflection on parallel issues and effects of biblical criticism and biblical text.

From Jesus to Christ intentionally raises questions about what the Bible means and about how the Bible relates to history, yet it also indirectly, one senses very unintentionally, raises questions about what a Bible even is, what it should contain, or how (indeed, if) it functions as an authority.

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Works Cited Aufderheide, Patricia. 2007. Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Barsam, Richard Meran. 1976. Nonfiction Film: A Critical History. New York: Dutton. —. 1979. “Nonfiction Film: The Realist Impulse.” In Film Theory and Criticism. 2d. ed. Ed. Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 580 – 93. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda. 2014. “Documentaries.” In The Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception. Vol. 6. Ed. Dale C. Allison et al, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Pp. 1019 – 23. Corner, John. 1996. The Art of Record: A Critical Introduction to Documentary. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ellis, Jack C., and Betsy A. McLane. 2005. A New History of Documentary Film. New York: Continuum. Grant, Barry Keith, and Jeannette Sloniowski, eds. 1998. Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Hammond, Charles. 1981. The Image Decade: Television Documentary. New York: Hastings House. Jacobs, Lewis, ed. 1979. The Documentary Tradition. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton. Juel, Henrik. 2006. “Defining Documentary Film.” P.O.V. 22 (December): http: www.pov.imv.au.dk/ Issue_22/section_1/artc1 A.html; accessed February 23, 2015. Kuhn, Annette. “The Camera I: Observations on Documentary.” Screen 19.2 (1978): 71 – 83. Löwisch, Ingeborg. 2009. “Genealologies, Gender and the Politics of Memory: 1 Chronicles 1 – 9 and the Documentary Film Mein Leben Teil 2.” In Performing Memory in Biblical Narrative and Beyond. Ed. Athalya Brenner and Frank H. Polak. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press. Pp. 228 – 56. McLane, Betsy A. 2012. A New History of Documentary Film. 2nd ed. New York: Bloomsbury. Mendel, Tommi. 2011. “Multilayer Reality in Documentary Film: An Approach to a Critical Reading of Documentary Films on the Basis of Arukihenro (T. Mendel, CH 2006).” In Approaches to the Visual in Religion. Ed. Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati and Christopher Rowland. Göttengin: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Pp. 11 – 99. Moreland, Milton C. 2009. “Christian Artifacts in Documentary Film: The Case of the James Ossuary.” In Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus: The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for Religious Relics. Ed. Ryan Byrne and Bernadette McNary-Zak. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press. Pp. 77 – 135. Morris, Peter. 1987. “Re-Thinking Grierson: The Ideology of John Grierson.” In History on/and/in Film. Ed. T. O’Reagan and B. Shoesmith. Perth, Australia: History and Film Association of Australia. Pp. 20 – 30. Newberry, Elizabeth. 2009. “Attention or Exploitation? What is the Proper Role of the Filmmaker?” Sojourners 29.3: 56 – 58. Nichols, Bill. 1994. Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. —. 1976 – 77. “Documentary Theory and Practice.” Screen 17.4: 34 – 48. —. 1987. “History, Myth and Narrative in Documentary.” Film Quarterly 41.1: 9 – 20. —. 2010. Introduction to Documentary. 2nd ed. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Renov, Michael, ed. 1993. Theorizing Documentary. New York: Routledge. Rosenthal, Alan, ed. 1980. The Documentary Conscience: A Casebook in Film Making. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rothman, William. 1998. “The Filmmaker as Hunter: Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North.” In Documenting the Documentary. Eds. B. K. Grant and J. Solinowski. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Pp. 23 – 39.

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Wall, James M. 1994. “Documentary Power: Filmmakers as Historians.” Christian Century 111.8 (March 9): 243 – 44.

Films Cited From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians (dir. William Cran, 1998, Frontline Video, US). Mysteries of the Bible [“Apocalypse: The Puzzle of Revelation,” season 2, episode 3] (dir. Roberta Grossman, 1994 – 98, A&E Television Network, US). —. [“Cain and Abel: A Murder Mystery,” season 4, episode 6] (dir. Roberta Grossman, 1994 – 98, A&E Television Network, US). Testimony of the Ark (dir. Rebecca Truaiaire, 2006, Carl Eric Tengesdal, US).

Mary Ann Beavis

13 From Skepticism to Piety: The Bible and Horror Films It’s like a dark mirror of the Bible. (Constantine, dir. Francis Lawrence, 2005)

In an article published in 2003, I wrote: “As one of the great repositories of supernatural lore in Western culture, it is not surprising that the Bible is often featured in horror films. Without the biblical repertoire of Satan, demons, exorcisms, plagues, curses, prophecies, apocalyptic signs, false messiahs, pagan sorcerers, evil empires, etc., horror movies would be impoverished” (Beavis 2003). The impetus for writing the article was that at that time, the role of the Bible in cinematic horror had largely gone unnoticed in the growing academic literature on the Bible and film, although at least a third of twentieth-century horror movies belong to the category of supernatural horror (Tudor 1989, 49 – 54), many of which explicitly or implicitly cite the “biblical repertoire” mentioned above.¹ My analysis of sixteen horror movies produced between 1970 and 2003 revealed five ways in which the Bible functioned in the plotting of these films, four of which turned out to be surprisingly subversive in a culture where the Bible still functions significantly as scripture, the divine word—the “Good Book.” In this chapter, I will summarize the findings of my 2003 research, and chart a “new” tendency in horror films of the last decade; in fact, a return to a more traditional, reassuring view of the Bible as a shield against evil and horror. Finally, I shall suggest that this turn to the pietistic in recent horror cinema is a reaction against the anxiety and conspiracy theories of the decade post 9/11. Here, my discussion relates primarily to American horror films, where the Bible figures most prominently in the surrounding culture, and where the terror of 9/11 continues to resonate the most strongly.

From Piety to Skepticism In view of the status of the Bible as sacred scripture, it is not surprising that movies have often portrayed it as a remedy for evil, both supernatural and human. For example, in a horrific scene in the (non-horror) movie The Apostle (dir. Robert Duvall, 1997), the preacher responds to a car accident by approaching the wrecked vehicle, placing his Bible on top of it, and quoting Ezekiel 16:6 to the gravely wounded driver and his unconscious, possibly dead, girlfriend. The Bible as a sacred object, and the comforting word of scripture with its exhortation to “live, and grow up like the plant

 For an online list of  bible-related horror movies, see the “Horror and Science Fiction Movie Database” (http://www.horrormovies.org/database/keywords/Bible/; accessed April , ).

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of the field” symbolizes divine protection and hope to the frightened young man behind the wheel. In horror movies, the trope of the Bible as ultimate good, powerful against evil and fear, has often been invoked. An example from a classic horror film is a scene in Alias Nick Beal (dir. John Farrow, 1949), where the Satanic title character, whose name invokes the “Old Nick,” Beelzebub, cannot read the words of a Psalm aloud.² In the end, a Bible dropped in front of him prevents him from claiming the soul of a corrupt, but repentant, politician. As I noted in my 2003 article, more recent horror films continued to portray the Bible as salvific, although with less conviction. For example, in The Omen (dir. Richard Donner, 1976), Father Spiletto papers his room with pages from the Bible to ward off the evil brought into the world by the boy Damien, the antichrist. Echoing The Omen, a scene in The Body (dir. Jonas McCord, 2001), shows the archaeologist Father Lavelle pasting Catholic devotionals and scripture pages on the wall of his room to block out the evidence that the resurrection never happened from his disordered mind. Children of the Corn (dir. Fritz Kiersch, 1984) contrasts the true interpretation of the Bible with the perverted gospel offered by the child-preacher Isaac, who has incited the children of a farming community in Nebraska to sacrifice their parents as an offering to a demon “as it is written” in the Bible. The young doctor who exposes the cult accuses the instigators of perverting scripture, and foils the demon of the cornfields through the correct interpretation of Revelation 10:10,³ consigning the evil to a fiery, ethanol-fuelled downfall. In all these films, scripture is portrayed quite conventionally as a source of goodness, truth, and supernatural aid, although its power may be portrayed as manipulated, diminished or illusory. However, as online skeptics are fond of pointing out, the Bible is replete with horrific stories.⁴ The most ostensibly horrifying biblical traditions are the apocalyptic writings: in the Bible, Daniel 7– 12 and Revelation; in the movies, the “Book of Revelations” [sic], creatively interpreted and supplemented by (often non-existent) apocrypha. There are three distinct subgenres of apocalyptic films.⁵ First, Christian-produced horror movies such as the Left Behind series of novels and films are made in order to spread the doctrines of premillennial dispensa-

 For a discussion of cinematic depictions of Satan see the chapter by Malone in Part I (Pp.  – ).  “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever” (NRSV).  E.g., Cramer ( – ); Muehlhauser (). There is also an extensive academic literature on biblical violence, e. g., Hamerton-Kelly (); Williams (); Niditch (); Rowlett (); Desjardins (); Collins (); Matthews/Gibson (); Nelson-Pallmeyer (); Jenkins (); Römer (); Siebert (); Runions ().  This chapter briefly considers apocalyptic films as an example of biblical horror. See also Pippin’s chapter on apocalyptic film in Part I (Pp.  – ) and Beddingfield’s chapter on Revelation films in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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tionalism,⁶ and particularly to scare viewers to repentance by presenting the Rapture and Last Judgement as real and imminent threats to unbelievers, and to encourage believers to remain steadfast.⁷ Second is the “secular” doomsday movie, where the world is threatened by “apocalyptic-like scenarios of human, natural or extraterrestrial origin (nuclear holocaust, ecological devastation, giant asteroids, alien invasion, killer viruses),”⁸ e. g., Independence Day (dir. Roland Emmerich, 1996), Deep Impact (dir. Mimi Leder, 1998), The Day the Earth Stood Still (dir. Scott Derrickson, 2008), I Am Legend (dir. Francis Lawrence, 2007). These non-supernatural apocalypses may nonetheless evoke biblical eschatological motifs, as evidenced by the apocalyptic title of the otherwise non-supernatural Armageddon (dir. Michael Bay, 1998), featuring a giant asteroid. The third, and least studied, subgenre of apocalyptic horror films are movies that use the Bible, loosely interpreted and sometimes supplemented by non-existent scriptures, that portray the book of “Revelations” [sic] as a treasury of frightening storylines (Beavis 2010) – e. g., The Omen and its sequels; Holocaust 2000 (dir. Albert De Martino, 1977); The Seventh Sign (dir. Carl Schulz, 1988), Lost Souls (dir. Januzs Kaminski, 2000), End of Days (dir. Peter Hyams, 1999). Unlike the Christian apocalyptic movies, where the Last Judgement is inevitable, and similarly to the secular apocalypses, these films often portray the end presaged by cosmic signs and catastrophes, the birth of the antichrist, etc., as avertable through the intervention of a heroic, often flawed, Christ-figure – Arnold Schwartzenegger’s Jericho Cane (End of Days); Keanu Reeves’s John Constantine (Constantine). All three subgenres are simultaneously unsettling and reassuring. The message that changing our ways, in the form of accepting the Christian savior, amending human negligence towards the earth, or heroic intervention to turn back eschatological catastrophe, offers a hope of salvation, supernatural or secular, to the viewer. Another, predominantly secular, use of the Bible in horror films is to portray it as the source of the murderous delusions of psychologically unbalanced characters. In The Rapture (dir. Michael Tolkin, 1991), the mentally unstable Sharon despairingly murders her child when her deluded apocalyptic hopes fail to materialize. In Stephen King’s Carrie (dir. Brian De Palma, 1976, dir. Kimbery Peirce, 2013), the bullied title character suffers from her deranged mother’s accusations that she is a “Jezebel”, like Eve, who unleashed sin upon the world, and the curse of blood upon women. In the two films inspired by the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon (1981), Manhunter (dir. Michael Mann, 1986) and Red Dragon (dir. Brett Ratner, 2002), the serial killer “Tooth Fairy” is obsessed with the William Blake painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun (1805 – 1810), an illustration of Revelation

 Left Behind: The Movie (dir. Vic Sarin, ); Left Behind II: Tribulation Force (dir. Bill Corcoran, ); Left Behind: World at War (dir. Craig R Baxley, ). These films are based on the first three of sixteen novels belonging to the Left Behind series by Tim LeHaye/Jerry B. Jenkins (Colorado Springs: Tyndale,  – ).  See Forbes/Kilde (); Frykholm (); Shuck ().  Beavis (, ). For further analysis, see Wojcik (); Pippin (); Copier ().

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12:13 – 17 that he has tattooed on his back. His mentor is the imprisoned psychopath Hannibal Lecter, who communicates with his protégé through a newspaper ad made up of seemingly disconnected biblical references (Gal. 6:11; 15:23; Acts 3:3; Rev. 18:7; Jonah 6:8; John 6:22; Luke 1:7). The FBI is able to connect the Bible verses to lines and words on page 100 of The Joy of Cooking, which spell out the name and address of the lead investigator, Will Graham, for the Tooth Fairy to track down. Similarly, in Resurrection (dir. Russell Mulcahy, 1999), a serial killer named Demus believes that he is a descendant of Judas who must atone for the sins of his ancestor by using the severed parts of his victims to reconstruct the body of Christ. The murderer leaves behind a series of Bible verses alluding to the names of his victims, a clue that leads the police detective on the case to the murderer before he sacrifices his last victim, a baby girl whose eviscerated heart he dementedly believes will bring Christ back to life on Easter Sunday. Despite the non-supernatural nature of these films, the Bible is portrayed as a powerful force not for good, but for obsession, crime and violence, at least when in falls into the wrong hands. The negative view of the Bible in these films is intensified in another group of movies in which the scriptures are portrayed as wrong or ineffectual. In Stigmata (dir. Rupert Wainwright, 1999), a young woman is possessed by a spirit that wants her to reveal a new gospel, containing the true words of Jesus, to the world. Her spiritual power is evidenced by the appearance of stigmata – the five wounds of Christ – on her body. When she is attacked by a demon, who wants to thwart her holy mission, a priest from Rome sent to investigate her case reveals to her the existence of ancient gospels censored from the canon by the church. The film ends with the onscreen notice that it is actually the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas that contains the true words of Jesus, but that the Vatican refuses to recognize this gospel and has branded it as heretical. Here, the biblical gospels are revealed to be inaccurate, whereas the true scripture has been suppressed and libelled by the church. The Prophecy (dir. Gregory Widen, 1995) develops the theme of biblical unreliability by not only negating the popular belief in the goodness of angels (Cowan 2012, 64), but also by asserting that the Bible does not contain the whole truth about the end times. A seminary-educated police detective discovers a twenty-third chapter of Revelation, which reveals that the war between God and Satan has resumed, this time led by the archangel Gabriel, embittered by the divine preference for “talking monkeys.” The new Apocryphon helps the cop to solve a series of bizarre murders, and thwart the angelic onslaught – at least until the sequels. The haunted-house movie The Others (dir. Alejandro Amenábar, 2001) goes so far as to question the accuracy of the biblical view of the afterlife. The pious mother of two children, both severely allergic to sunlight, teaches them about the four biblical hells: “the hell where the damned go, then there’s Purgatory, … and the Bosom of Abraham, where the Just go, … and Limbo where the children go.” The children, however, admit to a servant that they do not accept everything the Bible says. Their skepticism is justified when it is revealed that the mother, her children and their servants are not

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living human beings, but ghosts who are doomed to haunt the house forever: the “biblical” account of heaven and hell is proven wrong. A device that buttresses the plots of many of these horror movies, especially those with apocalyptic themes, is the use of non-existent scriptures, or “pseudapocrypha,” as I have nicknamed them (Beavis 2010). An early example is “The Book of the Sins of Women,” cited by Carrie’s demented mother in the 1976 film. Lost Souls fabricates a verse from “Deuteronomy, Book 17” prophesying the incestuous birth of one who will “become Satan” that bears no resemblance to anything in the biblical book – or in the canon. The Omen III: The Final Conflict (dir. Graham Baker, 1981) invents “The Book of Hebron” – learnedly described by the antichrist as “one of the more obscure backwaters of the Septuagint Bible” – as the source of a prophecy that will supposedly allow him to foil the Second Coming of Christ. The Prophecy actually misidentifies a paraphrase of the pseudepigraphal 2 Enoch 10:3 (“Even now in heaven there were angels carrying savage weapons”) as a quotation from “St. Paul” and, as noted above, invents a twenty-third chapter of Revelation. Similarly, Constantine posits the existence of a “Bible of Hell” that contains seven additional chapters of 2 Corinthians that “paint a different view of Revelations [sic].” The Prophecy V: Forsaken (dir. Joel Soisson, 2005) adds a pseudapocryphon called “The Lexicon,” which supernaturally writes itself, keeping the identity of the antichrist to be revealed in the sequel (which, fortunately, has never been made). The increasingly skeptical attitude to the Bible as evidenced by these films is explicable by several factors. The rising influence of Christian fundamentalism in the United States, arguably, has perpetuated “a pervasive millennial anxiety fuelled by post-9/11 angst” (Beavis 2010, 88). At the same time, public suspicion of conventional Christianity in the wake of highly publicized cases of clerical sexual abuse of children, the inquisitions and excommunications that characterized the reigns of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and the many scandals associated with popular evangelists, is reflected in horror films: the unreliability of religious leaders is correlated with the questionability of scripture and orthodox doctrines based on it. The inordinate popularity of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003) and its many spinoffs – including the eponymous 2006 film (dir. Ron Howard) – has cemented the commonplace perception that the church is untrustworthy and that ecclesial authorities have manipulated the Bible in order to conceal the facts about Jesus and Christian origins from the masses. Books with titles like Lost Christianities (Ehrman 2003) and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (Pagels 2004), written by distinguished scholars for the mass market, give academic credibility to this notion. Television documentaries with titles like Banned from the Bible (I, prod. Bram Roos, 2003; II, dir. Geoffrey Madeja, 2006), The Lost Gospels (dir. Annie Azzariti, 2008) and The Lost Tomb of Jesus (dir. Simcha Jacobovici, 2007) disseminate information that questions the credibility of the scriptures to an even wider audience. The discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library are widely known (although little understood), and most of these ancient writings are easily available in translation in print and on the Internet, complete with copious, and often sensational, commenta-

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ry. All of these factors compound the popular skepticism about Christian authorities and their Bible, and makers of horror films, especially of the apocalyptic variety, both reflect and exploit this: “as purveyors of fiction they are free to create new scriptures much as the ancient sages forged the pseudepigrapha (some of which made it into the bible) to advance their own agendas” (Beavis 2010, 89). Even the Left Behind movies, which are ostensibly Christian and Bible-based, modify their millennial doctrine to include a post-Rapture period during which unbelievers may repent and achieve salvation in time for the Last Judgment.

A Return to Piety While it is impossible to make sweeping generalizations about horror films at a time when Hollywood has a voracious need for sensational screenplays, many of which are released direct to DVD or the Internet, the skeptical attitude toward the Bible, and the dominant religion that it popularly represents, have, as indicated at the beginning of this chapter, taken a turn towards the pietistic in some more recent films. As Guardian film critic Anne Bilson notes, despite the millennial anxiety sparked by Y2K and the spate of apocalyptic horror films made to exploit the event (followed by the “Mayan Apocalypse” of 2012, dir. Roland Emmerich, 2009) the world did not end (Bilson 2010), but the illusion that the West, especially the United States, was invulnerable to terrorism disintegrated. In fact, for Americans, especially, the aftermath of September 11, 2001 has amounted to a post-millennial, post-apocalyptic wound in the collective psyche that sought healing in familiar Christian themes. This tone is reflected in films like I Am Legend (dir. Francis Lawrence, 2007), which, unlike the 1954 novel and its other movie spinoffs, presents the character of Robert as a suffering Christ-figure who saves civilization by formulating an antidote to the virus that has transformed most humans into ferocious vampires (Moreman 2012). In the version of the ending played in theaters, Robert gives the antidote to a young woman and her son before hiding them in a safe place and detonating a grenade that kills a horde of vampiric attackers and himself. Thanks to Robert’s self-sacrifice, the mother, Anna, and her son Ethan are able to escape to a colony of uninfected survivors, bearing the vial of serum that will save the world.⁹ An even more explicit valorization of biblical themes is The Book of Eli (dir. The Hughes Brothers, 2010), another post-apocalyptic offering in which the mysterious and much sought-after book guarded by the scripturally-named hero turns out to be the only surviving copy of the King James Version: “It’s about love, and forgiveness, and life and death, and mercy, and revenge, and the beginning and the end

 In the original ending, rather than sacrificing his own life, Robert survives and joins Anna and Ethan on their journey to the safe zone. See, “I Am Legend [] Alternate Versions,” http:// www.imdb.com/title/tt/alternateversions, accessed April , .

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Fig. 23: Title character reading the KJV in The Book of Eli (2010)

of the world. I guess it’s about a little bit of everything.”¹⁰ The villain Carnegie wants to find a copy of the book because he believes that it has the power to transform the world and to give him control over its inhabitants: “When we find this book—and believe me, we will find it—we are going to build a new world. A world far greater, far more righteous than this one. And you and I are going to be perched right on top of it, looking down upon it, masters of all creation!” The self-sacrificing Eli, who has devoted his painful and violent life to protecting the book, dies at the end of the movie having fulfilled his mission by reaching a library of salvaged books housed at Alcatraz. Here, familiar biblical tropes, and the Bible itself, are invoked as redemptive in a parched and devastated America. Although the final shot in The Book of Eli shows the Bible placed on a bookshelf alongside a Tanach and a Qur’an, the KJV is clearly the master text among the scriptures, in the translation most favored by fundamentalist English-speaking churches. Although films like I Am Legend and The Book of Eli ostensibly portray a postapocalyptic world, they are, like other end-of-the-world films before them (e. g., Independence Day, Deep Impact, The Day the Earth Stood Still), Americacentric: saving America amounts to saving the world, and vice versa. Predictably, the horror film take on the ultimate American hero, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter (dir. Timur

 Quotations are taken from the film script. Gary Whitta, The Book of Eli. http://www.imsdb.com/ scripts/Book-of-Eli,-The.html; accessed April , .

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Bekmambetov, 2012), portrays him as a Moses-figure who frees the country not just from the shame of slavery, but from Confederate vampires who prey on their slaves for blood. The vampire-slaying Lincoln also resonates with other biblical figures, notably Abraham (Gen. 17:5, “thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations I have made thee” is quoted at the beginning of the film), and Jesus Christ, when Lincoln resists the ancient vampire Adam’s temping offer of immortality (cf. Matt. 4:1– 11), and, at the end of the movie, when he refuses a similar offer from his vampiric mentor, Henry Sturgess, just before departing for the theater on the last night of his storied life. The power of the Bible is also on display in the recent exorcism movie, The Possession (dir. Ole Bornedal, 2012), in which a young girl is possessed by the demon Abyzu, “The Taker of Children.” The girl, who releases a dybbuk (demon) from a mysterious box inscribed with Hebrew letters, finds relief from the spirit when her father reads the words of Psalm 91 aloud to her. In the climactic exorcism scene, the dybbuk is first transferred from daughter to father and, finally, expelled and driven back into the box by the presiding Rabbi Tzadok, who ensures that it will stay put by placing a Torah on top. The divorced parents reconcile, and the movie ends on a note of family reunion, although, in good horror movie style, the last scene shows the rabbi in a highway accident where the box is thrown from the car – setting up a possible sequel. In another recent film featuring haunted children and a self-sacrificing father-figure, Mama (dir. Andrés Muschietti, 2013), two feral orphan girls are rescued by their devoted uncle from a cabin in the woods where they were abandoned after their deranged father committed suicide. The cabin is haunted by the ghost of a nineteenthcentury escapee from a Catholic asylum whose baby drowned during the escape, and she has become ferociously attached to the children, who call her Mama. Although for most of the movie, Uncle Lucas is comatose in the hospital after being attacked by the angry spirit, who has followed the girls to their new home, in the end he rises again to rescue the children, who have been kidnapped by the ghost and returned to their woodland home. In a final showdown with the demon, the loving, compassionate uncle – who, with his gentle smile, long brown hair and well-kept beard, images a conventional Christ – manages to rescue his elder niece Victoria, although little Lilly, who still loves her ghostly Mama, is spirited away. The movie ends with a scene of Lucas and his girlfriend Annabel, who has become a mother figure to Victoria, huddled together with the girl in a family group. The contrast between the holy family of Lucas, Annabel and Victoria and the unholy family of the tragic Mama and Lilly is implicit. Although the Bible does not figure explicitly, the Christ-figure motif is unmistakeable. The more recent films, Possession and Mama, lack the metataxic quality of movies like Stigmata, The Prophecy, and The Others (Cowan 2012, 68). Rather than disrupting the accepted view of the Bible as benign and powerful against evil, they exploit it in a return to the representation of the Bible and its associated concepts and motifs as effectively resistant to horror.

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The spiritual thriller The 23rd Psalm (dir. Christopher C. Odom, 2007) and its sequel The 23rd Psalm: Redemption (dir. Odom/Cornelius Booker III, 2011), produced for the Christian market, provide an intriguing contrast to secular films like Carrie, Red Dragon/Manhunter and The Rapture that implicate the Bible in psychopathology. They also deviate from the apocalyptic preoccupations of many Christian-produced horror movies, mostly produced around the turn of the millennium (e. g., the Left Behind series; The Omega Code, dir. Robert Marcarelli, 1999; Megiddo: The Omega Code 2, dir. Brian Trenchard-Smith, 2001; Revelation, dir. André van Heerden, 1999; Tribulation, dir. van Heerden, 2000; Apocalypse, dir. Peter Garretsen, 1998). The hero of the two 23rd Psalm films, the theologically-trained Detective John Smith, has visionary experiences that enable him to solve the murder of a redeemed, miracle-working, prostitute, the beautiful, Bible-quoting “Angel of the Streets” (2007); in the second film, Smith, now a married pastor and father, relies on his Bible-based faith to deliver the family from a terrifying home invasion. In addition to the biblical titles of the two films, Bible verses are flashed upon the screen at key intervals, and both feature the hero and other characters reading from prominently displayed Bibles. In the 2007 film, Smith’s supernatural visions and biblical revelation renew his faith and help him to overcome his alcoholism; in the second, the escaped prisoner intent on exacting revenge on Smith and his family for his arrest, finds redemption in the face of the Reverend’s steadfast devotion. In these films, the Bible is not portrayed as a source of criminal obsession, but quite conventionally as the key to the redemption of the main characters, and to the solution of crimes.

Fig. 24: Detective John Smith before a cruciform window in The 23rd Psalm (2007)

Two very different summer blockbusters, both apocalyptically themed, have strong biblical resonances. World War Z (dir. Marc Forster, 2013) does not explicitly quote the Bible, but, according to an evangelical website devoted to movie-based Bible studies, purchasing their study guide for Foster’s film will make watching it a worthwhile spiritual experience: “World War Z will help your study group examine the sudden nature of judgment, the power of hospitality, how we are to value each other, how we are the walking dead, and the only true way out.”¹¹ Brad Pitt’s hand-

 “MoveBibleStudy.com, World War Z,” http://www.moviebiblestudy.com/-p-.html?osCsid= igqffangpfgnscphsk; accessed April , .

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some, long-haired, bearded hero is a family-friendly, self-sacrificing Christ-figure who spends three days in a coma, after which he rises with the medical key to salvation from the zombie plague, enabling the film to end on a hopeful note – much like the hero of I Am Legend. ¹² The crude and raucous rapture-movie spoof This Is the End (dir. Evan Goldberg/Seth Rogen, 2013), complete with Bible scenes and altered quotations from the “Book of Revelations [sic],” ends rather sentimentally with the salvation of the main characters through acts of deliberate (but sincere) self-sacrifice. The post-millennial, post 9/11 trend in moviemaking towards the reverential and comforting is epitomized in the ten-hour, five-part History Channel miniseries The Bible (prod. Mark Burnett/Roma Downey, 2013), a “docudrama” billed as “an ambitious adaptation of the Bible, from Genesis through Revelation” (MSN 2014) shown in prime time during the Easter season. The History Channel homepage for the series features a benignly smiling Jesus, a Bible trivia game, a “free Bible verses” link, a Bible study guide, daily Bible quotes, and a “test your [biblical] knowledge” link (History 2015). The online store offers a variety of devotional items, including copies of the series in DVD and Blu-ray. Obviously, The Bible is not meant to be a horror movie, although like many other biblical epics, it highlights horrific incidents – the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Ten Plagues, the Crucifixion, and the Second Coming. However, like its cinematic spinoff Son of God (dir. Christopher Spencer, 2014) and the biblical blockbuster Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2014), it evidences a trend toward contexutalizing the violent and horrific aspects of the Bible within the framework of a sweeping, religiously and culturally relevant narrative.

Works Cited Beal, Timothy. 2002. Religion and Its Monsters. New York: Routledge. Beavis, Mary Ann. 2003. “‘Angels Carrying Savage Weapons’: Uses of the Bible in Contemporary Horror Films.” Journal of Religion and Film 7.2: http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol7No2/angels. htm; accessed April 7, 2014. Beavis, Mary Ann. 2010. “Pseudapocrypha: Invented Scripture in Apocalyptic Horror Films.” In Reel Revelations: Apocalypse and Film. Ed. John Walliss and Lee Quinby. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Pp. 75 – 90. Bilson, Anne. 2010. “The Return of Religious Films.” The Guardian (March 11): http://www.guard ian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/11/return-of-religious-films-legion; accessed April 23, 2014. Brooks, Max. 2006. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. New York: Crown Publishing Group. Brown, Dan. 2003. The Da Vinci Code. New York: Doubleday. Collins, John J. 2004. Does the Bible Justify Violence? Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress.

 The novel upon which the film is based ends with the near-devastation of the human and animal populations of the planet (Brooks ).

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Copier, Laura. 2012. Preposterous Revelations: Visions of Apocalypse and Martyrdom in Hollywood Cinema 1980 – 2000. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Cowan, Douglas E. 2012. “Understanding Religion and Cinema Horror.” In Understanding Religion and Popular Culture. Ed. Terry Ray Clark and Dan W. Clanton, Jr. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 56 – 71. Cowan, Douglas E. 2008. Sacred Terror: Religion and Horror on the Silver Screen. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press. Cramer, Matt. 2007 – 13. “8 Gratuitously Violent Horror Movie Scenes (From the Bible).” Cracked://www.cracked.com/article_19597_8-gratuitously-violent-horror-movie-scenes-frombible.html; accessed April 23, 2014. Desjardins, Michel. 1997. Peace, Violence, and the New Testament. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Ehrman, Bart D. 2003. Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Forbes, Bruce David, and Jeanne Halgren Kilde, eds. 2004. Rapture, Revelation and End Times: Exploring the Left Behind Series. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Frykholm, Amy Johnson. 2004. Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hamerton-Kelly, Robert G. 1991. Sacred Violence: Paul’s Hermeneutic of the Cross. Philadelphia: Fortress. Harris, Thomas. 1981. Red Dragon. New York: Dell. History. 2015. “The Bible.” http://www.history.com/shows/the-bible; accessed February 25, 2015. Jenkins, Philip. 2012. Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can’t Ignore the Bible’s Violent Verses. San Francisco: HarperOne. Leggett, Paul. 2002. Terence Fisher: Horror, Myth and Religion. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. Matthews, Shelley, and E. Leigh Gibson. 2005. Violence in the New Testament London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Moreman, Christopher. 2012. “Let this Hell be Our Heaven: Richard Matheson’s Spirituality and Its Hollywood Distortions.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 24.1: 130 – 47. MSN Entertainment. 2014. “The Bible: Overview.” http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie/the-bible. 2/; accessed April 23, 2015. Muehlhauser, Luke. 2008. “Top 20 Evil Bible Stories.” Common Sense Atheism. http://commonsen seatheism.com/?p=21, accessed April 23, 2014. Nelson-Pallmeyer, Jack. 2005. Is Religion Killing Us? Violence in the Bible and the Quran. New York: Continuum. Niditch, Susan. 1995. War in the Hebrew Bible. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Pagels, Elaine. 2004. Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. New York: Vintage. Pippin, Tina. 1999. Apocalyptic Bodies: The Biblical End of the World in Text and Image. London and New York: Routledge. Römer, Thomas. 2013. Dark God: Cruelty, Sex and Violence in the Old Testament. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press. Rowlett, Lori L. 1996. Joshua and the Rhetoric of Violence: A New Historicist Analysis. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Runions, Erin. 2014. The Babylon Complex: Theopolitical Fantasies of War, Sex and Sovereignty. New York: Fordham University Press. Shuck, Glenn. 2005. Marks of the Beast: The Left Behind Novels and the Struggle for Evangelical Identity. New York: New York University Press. Siebert, Eric A. 2012. Overcoming the Old Testament’s Troubling Legacy. Minneapolis: Fortress. Tudor, Andrew. 1989. Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie. Oxford: Blackwell.

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Williams, James G. 1991. Bible, Violence, and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of Sanctioned Violence. San Francisco: HarperCollins. Wojcik, Daniel. 1997. The End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalyptic in America. New York: New York University Press.

Films Cited The 23rd Psalm (dir. Christopher C. Odom, 2007, Odom-Booker Entertainment, US). The 23rd Psalm: Redemption (dir. Christopher C. Odom and Cornelius Booker III, 2011, Odom-Booker Entertainment, US). 2012 (dir. Roland Emmerich, 2009, Columbia Pictures, US). Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter (dir. Timur Bekmambetov, 2012, Abraham Productions, US). Alias Nick Beal (dir. John Farrow, 1949, Paramount, US). Apocalypse (dir. Peter Garretsen, 1998, Cloud Ten Pictures, CA). The Apostle (dir. Robert Duvall, 1997, Butcher’s Run Films, US). Armageddon (dir. Michael Bay, 1998, Touchstone Pictures, US). Banned from the Bible I [a.k.a. Time Machine: Banned from the Bible] (prod. Bram Roos, 2003, US). Banned from the Bible II (dir. Geoffrey Madeja, 2006, History Channel, US). The Bible (prod. Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, 2013, Lightworkers Media, UK/US). The Body (dir. Jonas McCord, 2001, Avalanche Films, US/IL/DE). The Book of Eli (dir. The Hughes Brothers, 2010, Alcon Entertainment, US). Carrie (dir. Brian De Palma, 1976, United Artists, US). Carrie (dir. Kimbery Peirce, 2013, MGM, US). Children of the Corn (dir. Fritz Kiersch, 1984, Angeles Entertainment Group, US). Constantine (dir. Francis Lawrence, 2005, Warner Brothers, US/DE). The Da Vinci Code (dir. Ron Howard, 2006, Columbia Pictures, US/MT/FR/UK). The Day the Earth Stood Still (dir. Scott Derrickson, 2008, Twentieth Century Fox, US/CA). Deep Impact (dir. Mimi Leder, 1998, Paramount, US). End of Days (dir. Peter Hyams, 1999, Beacon Communications, US). Holocaust 2000 (dir. Albert De Martino, 1977, Aston Film, UK/IT). I Am Legend (dir. Francis Lawrence, 2007, Warner Brothers, US). Independence Day (dir. Roland Emmerich, 1996, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Left Behind [a.k.a. Left Behind: The Movie] (dir. Vic Sarin, 2000, Cloud Ten Pictures, CA). Left Behind II: Tribulation Force (dir. Bill Corcoran, 2002, Cloud Ten Pictures, US/CA). Left Behind: World at War (dir. Craig R. Baxley, 2005, Cloud Ten Pictures, US/CA). The Lost Gospels (dir. Annie Azzariti, 2008, Discovery Channel, US). Lost Souls (dir. Januzs Kaminski, 2000, Avery Pix, US). The Lost Tomb of Jesus (dir. Simcha Jacobovici, 2007, Discovery Channel, US). Mama (dir. Andrés Muschietti, 2013, Universal, CA/ES). Manhunter (dir. Michael Mann, 1986, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, US). Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 (dir. Brian Trenchard-Smith, 2001, Code Productions, US). Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2014, Paramount, US). The Omega Code (dir. Robert Marcarelli, 1999, Code Productions, US). The Omen (dir. Richard Donner, 1976, Twentieth Century Fox, US/UK). The Omen III: The Final Conflict (dir. Graham Baker, 1981, Twentieth Century Fox, US/UK). The Others (dir. Alejandro Amenábar, 2001, Cruise/Wagner Productions, US/ES/FR/IT). The Possession (dir. Ole Bornedal, 2012, Ghost House Pictures, US/CA). The Prophecy (dir. Gregory Widen, 1995, First Look International, US).

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The Prophecy V: Forsaken (dir. Joel Soisson, 2005, Castel Film Romania, US). The Rapture (dir. Michael Tolkin, 1991, New Line Cinema, US). Red Dragon (dir. Brett Ratner, 2002, Universal, US/DE). Resurrection (dir. Russell Mulcahy, 1999, Baldwin/Cohen Productions, US/CA). Revelation (dir. André van Heerden, 1999, Jack Van Impe Ministries, US/CA). The Seventh Sign (dir. Carl Schulz, 1988, Tristar Pictures, US). Son of God (dir. Christopher Spencer, 2014, Lightworkers Media, US). Stigmata (dir. Rupert Wainwright, 1999, MGM, US). This Is the End (dir. Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, 2013, Columbia Pictures, US). Time Machine: Banned from the Bible (dir. Unknown, 2003, Bram Roos, US). Tribulation (dir. André van Heerden, 2000, Cloud Ten Pictures, CA). World War Z (dir. Marc Forster, 2013, Paramount, US/MT).

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14 “Moses’ DVD Collection”: The Bible and Science Fiction Film [T]his is like finding Moses’ DVD collection. (Graeme Miller in Alien vs. Predator, dir. Paul W. S. Anderson, 2004) Dr. Ian Malcolm: God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs. Dr. Ellie Sattler: Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth. (Jurassic Park, dir. Steven Spielberg, 1993)

There are multiple ways in which the Bible can enter into an intertextual relationship with science fiction (SF) film. Often it is not the Bible itself or biblical passages that appear but rather notions of “religion,” “faith,” or “God,” somewhat removed from the Bible. The topic “Religion and Science Fiction” rather than “The Bible and Science Fiction” has been discussed increasingly systematically.¹ “Bible and Science Fiction” is an underlying theme in these works but rarely has it been explored specifically.² The defining features of SF and its relationship to the related genres of fantasy and horror are subject to lively debate by scholars discussing SF literature as well as film. Vivian Sobchack defines SF film as “a genre which emphasizes actual, extrapolative, or speculative science and the empirical method, interacting in a social context with the lesser emphasized, but still present, transcendentalism of magic and religion, in an attempt to reconcile man with the unknown” (cited in Fritzsche 2014, 2). In order to portray worlds in which such speculative or extrapolative science is present, SF engages with mythological, foundational questions, but “[w]here the myth claims to explain once and for all the essence of phenomena, SF posits them first as problems and then explores where they lead to; it sees the mythical static identity as an illusion, usually as fraud, in the best case only as a temporary realization of potentially limitless contingencies” (Suvin 1972, 375). It is no surprise then that some mythological themes addressed in SF may seem reminiscent of biblical stories to a viewer who is familiar with the Bible. However, the themes are made open-ended and are reconsidered for contemporary times (cf. Atwood 2011, 38 – 65). Such mythological themes might be connected to the Bible directly, e. g., exhibiting resemblances to the exodus, a savior-figure, or the hiddenness or knowability of God, or indirectly via postbiblical ideas and exegesis (mysticism, Gnosticism, etc.). SF is concerned with similar issues as the Bible; at its very best it is a genre that responds to mythological (or even theological) needs of a newly built universe extrapolated from contemporary culture.  See, e. g., Cowan (); Nahin (); McGrath (); McKee ().  See, e. g., Uhlenbruch (; forthcoming).

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Theological discourse is an expected theme in SF film and appears in topics such as creation (genetic engineering, Artificial Intelligence [A.I.]), the beyond (beyondspace, beyond-sensory perception), consciousness, saviors (of the planet, of the human race), or in a straightforward debate between one character who is an atheist and another character who represents a position of faith. Questions often addressed in SF are: Is there a higher intelligence beyond the known universe? Where do humans come from? Should humans be wary of granting god-like powers to human dictators and scientists? How do we deal respectfully with creation (earth) and how do we deal respectfully with the prospect of becoming creators ourselves? Fictional new religions exist in SF. Sometimes they are extrapolations from or spoofs of mainstream denominations. The Fifth Element (dir. Luc Besson, 2007) for example, features a priest and a novice. They are not representatives of a known denomination but rather priests of a fictional ancient cult that is the underlying premise enabling the conflict of the film. Canonical works of SF, such as the Star Wars series (dir. George Lucas, 1977– 2005) can create quasi-religious beliefs in contemporary society (cf. Possamai 1990). L. Ron Hubbard was a writer of SF before founding the Church of Scientology with some ideas based on his SF literature (cf. Chryssides). Fictional religions in SF film and beliefs based on SF film are not the focus of the present article. Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch proposes a categorization of ways in which the Bible can be received or perceived in film rooted in recent theories of adaptation (Burnette-Bletsch 2014, 148 – 53). Drawing from her typology, most SF films that contain some reference or perceived reference to the Bible fall more or less neatly into the following of the proposed categories: 1. “Bible as book”: The Bible appears as a topic of conversation or as an artifact (book, tablet, scroll). Some SF films contain references to clergy of non-fictional denominations or visual symbols of non-fictional denominations, such as the cross, which might be considered in this category. 2. “Citations, quotations, paraphrases”: A SF film may feature a direct biblical citation, paraphrase, or play on a well-known biblical phrase. 3. “Paradigms”: Paradigms or character tropes may appear without recognizable citation. Savior-figures fall into this category. One could also include allusions to postbiblical reception in this category, e. g., when discussions of the nature of supreme beings, ethics of creation, anthropomorphism and knowability of supreme beings, etc. appear. 4. “Allusions/Echoes”: In SF film there appear many tenuous allusions to cultural tropes (paradise, heaven, hell) that may not have been intentional references to the Bible by the film’s creators. Allusions are intended by the author, echoes are unintentional. 5. “Analogues”: This category is strongly linked with the previous one. Analogues are open to interpretation and depend on the meaning a viewer imposes on a SF film.

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This essay does not give an exhaustive overview of all examples of biblical reception in SF film. It aims to offer an overview of recurring themes that will allow readers to expand the list of examples on their own.³

Explicit References to the Bible Clearly attributed references to the Bible appear in some SF films. In the film adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (dir. Volker Schlöndorff, 1990), the Bible contributes directly to the establishment of the dystopian republic, called Gilead, whose “sole and only constitution” (as one of the characters points out in the film’s exposition) is the Old Testament. The references found in this film appear as a scathing critique of biblical literalism and abuse of the Bible to impinge upon civil liberties. During the rape ritual in which a “Handmaid” is forced to have sex with a man whose wife is infertile, the man reads a slightly abbreviated version of Genesis 30:1– 4. During the execution of a political prisoner falsely accused of rape Deuteronomy 25 is recited. Contact (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1997), adapted from Carl Sagan’s novel by the same title, is a film that demonstrates how rare direct references to the Bible are even in SF whose central topic is the debate of faith versus science. It only features two explicit biblical references, one visual, one in dialogue. On a picket sign behind a religious extremist is partially visible the verse Deuteronomy 13:13 (“… that scoundrels from among you have gone out and led the inhabitants of the town astray, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods,’ whom you have not known…”). A second direct reference is to Exodus 3, when protagonist Ellie (Jodie Foster) gives an enraged speech in front of a committee saying, “The message is written in the language of science. If it were religious in nature it should have taken the form of a burning bush or a big booming voice from the sky.” In Pi (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 1998) the Masoretic Text of Genesis 1 is seen on mathematician Max Cohen’s (Sean Gullette) computer screen before he transforms it into numbers. In this film, the Torah and Hebrew numerology appear often as Max attempts to resolve an underlying omnipresent numerical pattern in nature – finding God in numbers, so to say. The film’s first-person view allows a reading of its unresolved, mysterious elements as due to the main character’s illness and paranoia. The early SF film Metropolis (dir. Fritz Lang, 1927) is rich in biblical allusion: workers who keep the machine-city Metropolis running are sacrificed into a fiery pit guarded by two guards in priest-like attire. The title card introducing this scene reads “Moloch!” Those workers who are “dismissed” by “Father” – character Freder’s (Gustav Fröhlich) father (Alfred Abel) but also the holder of supreme power who runs  A list of films produced between  and  that reference “Religion, Theology, and the Bible,” featuring many SF films is found in Christianson, et al. (,  – ).

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operations from the “New Tower of Babel” (cf. Gen. 11) – are banished into the hellish “depths.” In the “2000 year old catacombs” of the city there is a space with cross symbols in which protagonist Maria (Brigitte Helm) organizes a revolutionary workers’ movement.⁴

Biblical Paradigms and Allusions Often in SF film the Bible in particular is not referenced but rather topics such as God, savior, heaven, hell, or paradise. Representations of such concepts in SF film often seem to be indebted not only to the Bible but also to postbiblical streams of thought such as mysticism or Gnosticism. Assessing such references requires an interpretive effort and reflection on whether a SF savior-figure really harkens back to the Bible and deserves adjectives such as “Christ-like” or “Moses-like,” or whether such figures are a hero- or leader-trope without which no story could function.

Savior-Figures Savior figures appear in too many SF films to be able to include a complete list here.⁵ One may be able to read such figures as Jesus-like, Christ-like, Moses-like, or Joshualike. When I am not following a previous interpreter in their choice of terminology, the discussion below employs the term “savior-figure,” rather than choosing a more specific designation such as “Jesus-like.” Savior-figures can appear in the guise of a benevolent alien or an extraordinary human. Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still (dir. Robert Wise, 1951), who goes by the name Mr. Carpenter, is recognized as an early example of an alien Jesus-like figure. The creator of the film confirmed the explicit biblical reference (Kozlovic 2001). Similar savior-figures in the guise of the alien Other have been located in the Terminator films (dir. James Cameron, 1984, 1991), Blade Runner (dir. Ridley Scott, 1982), E.T. (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1982), and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1977), among many others.⁶ Ruppersberg mentions a “‘negative’ messiah, an irresistible force intent not on goodness to the human race but on its destruction” (e. g., Invasion of the Body Snatchers, dir. Don Siegel, 1956; Alien, dir. Ridley Scott, 1979) (Ruppersberg 1990, 36). The positive savior-figure in SF film is “an overtly or covertly religious personage, whose numinous, supra-human qualities offer solace and inspi-

 Detailed discussion of biblical reception in Metropolis can be found in Copier ().  For a list of films featuring “Christ-figures,” which includes many SF examples, see Christianson, et al. (,  – ). It has been pointed out rightly that there are so many examples and so many eager interpreters of Christ-figures in film that the category threatens to lose “any heuristic value.” See, for example, Burnette-Bletsch (, ).  See Ruppersberg () and Kozlovic ().

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ration to a humanity threatened by technology and the banality of modern life” (Ruppersberg 1990, 32– 33). Maria and Freder from Metropolis as well as Neo (Keanu Reeves) from the Matrix trilogy (dir. Wachowski Siblings, 1999 – 2003) are examples of human savior-figures in SF. In Shin seiki evangerion (dir. Hideaki Anno, 1995 – 1996, a.k.a. Neon Genesis Evangelion), savior-qualities are transferred onto the supremely talented “Third Child” and onto other children who pilot robots called EVAs to combat attacks by monsters referred to as angels. This Japanese series engages with the saviors’ struggle with motivations and responsibility (reminiscent of Matt. 26:39 par.). The psychological depth of the exploration of what it means to be chosen or a savior comes much more to the front here than it does in the Matrix. Neon Genesis Evangelion features abundant references to the Bible, Christianity, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Second Temple literature, and Jewish mysticism. However, its creators are famously cited as claiming that some visual symbols were chosen only because they “looked cool” and mysterious (speaking specifically of the recurring cross symbol) and that the show was not intended to convey Judeo-Christian messages (Evageeks.org 2013).

Exiting Simulated Paradises Choosing to leave a simulation is a familiar theme from the Matrix trilogy, in which humans’ bodies are farmed as energy sources for A.I., and humans live in a simulation, unaware. The famous scene in which Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) offers Neo a choice between knowledge (Red Pill) versus continued unenlightened existence in a simulation (Blue Pill) is a potential allusion to the Tree of Knowledge (Gen. 2). Before the Matrix trilogy, themes of life as a simulation were explored in SF film, for example in Welt am Draht (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973, a.k.a. World on a Wire). Similar themes that explore life as an illusion and, thence, the possibility of enlightenment and making a conscious and rebellious decision in favor of exiting “paradise” to claim agency and responsibility in a harsher reality appear, for example, in Cargo (dir. Ivan Engler/Ralph Etter, 2009) and Dark City (dir. Alex Proyas, 1998).

God or Not-God in Deep Space In many films that deal with space exploration, an implicit question is: are humans alone in the universe? This question is discussed alongside theological issues explicitly in films such as Contact or Prometheus (dir. Ridley Scott, 2012), and also occurs in e. g., 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968); Solyaris (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972, a.k.a. Solaris; remake dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2002); Interstellar (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2014); Event Horizon (dir. Paul W. S. Anderson, 1997); Moon (dir. Duncan Jones, 2009); and Sunshine (dir. Danny Boyle, 2007).

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Whether humans are alone in the universe or not, some films raise the question of how religiosity and faith are impacted by an encounter – or a non-encounter (Contact). Appealing to the scientific mind-set of the cognitive age, some SF characters set out to find proof of a materialized god-alien (Prometheus, 2001, Alien). Different films answer similar questions differently. Sometimes, something other-than-human is encountered in space – a divine spark, a non-human Other, something beyond laws of nature – but quite often space holds only ever more of the same: human nature, human conflicts, human greed. Sunshine establishes an atmosphere in which one might expect an encounter with a super-natural Other, but it turns out that the antagonist in space is also just human. Event Horizon, on the other hand, while its premise is similar to that of Sunshine (rescue ship sent after another ship which has ceased transmissions), avails itself of the visual language of the horror genre seemingly to imply that super-natural personal hells will be found beyond the known universe and that there is no escape from the human condition even in transcendental realms. Moon unites the themes of manipulated memories and a god-like corporation with the question, “what (or maybe, whom) will humans encounter in space and solitude?” It answers: only ever just greedy attempts at perpetuating ourselves. In Solaris an extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI) is encountered, which materializes the protagonists’ dreams – closely linked to their deepest regrets, fears, and loves. While possibly benevolent in its intentions, the ETI’s generation of the dream beings turns into a torturous reel of relived individual trauma: humans and a supreme being cannot communicate in this film. Contact seems cautiously optimistic that human contact with the not-us will bring about positive consequences for humanity, before, however, hinting that the supposedly alien message received may have been the fabrication of a human genius. Similarly, in Interstellar mysterious signals are not received from an ETI but from humans.

A.I., God-like Scientists, and Creators Science Fiction films often explore the possibility of humans becoming creators of new life-forms, frequently Artificial Intelligences (A.I.). (The idea of using technological means to create living beings probably goes back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.) Matrix is set in a world changed and governed by powerful, self-replicating machines. Human meddling with creative powers has gone wrong in the Matrix world’s foundational past. All SF creation tropes contain potential family resemblances with Genesis creation stories, and some take explorations of the ambiguous relationship between the created being and its creator further. Such SF portrayals can potentially help to explore the often ambiguous character of biblical YHWH from a safe heuristic distance: when discussing SF characters we do not actually enter the precarious territory of discussing God, we are “only” discussing a character in a film, after all.

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Enthiran (dir. S. Shankar, 2010, a.k.a. Robot) is a well-developed story about a creator-created relationship. It employs explicit theological language and could be used to explore the conflicted relationships between God, humans, sin, sacrifice, and forgiveness in both Testaments through this SF mirror-version. Scientist Dr. Vaseegaran creates robot Chitti in his likeness (both roles are played by Rajinikanth). At the official launch-event for the robot, Chitti’s knowledge is challenged by audience questions. One audience member asks, “Does God exist?” Chitti poses the counter question, “What is God?” and receives the response, “The one who created us.” Chitti does not hesitate: “My creator exists. Dr. Vaseegaran. So God exists.” Soon enough the creator-god turns into a jealous god when robot Chitti declares his love for Dr. Vaseegaran’s fiancée (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan). The creator regrets his decision to create and destroys his creation. Chitti is resurrected by an evil rival scientist as a fighting-machine. Dr. Vaseegaran is tried in court after evil-Chitti wreaks havoc, but the robot comes to Dr. Vaseegaran’s defense at trial and announces, while dismantling himself as ruled by the court: “Doctor, you’re my God. I betrayed you. My mistake was to break the rules. Forgive me,” to which the creator does respond forgivingly and hugs the dying robot. Jurassic Park’s (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1993) John Hammond (David Attenborough) embodies the trope of god-like scientist. His eagerness to create because he is able to is juxtaposed with chaos-theorist Dr. Malcolm’s (Jeff Goldblum) critical attitude towards creating just because it has become possible. S.R. Hadden (John Hurt) in Contact nudges Ellie into the right direction when she gets stuck – in a way he “creates” her as a researcher by granting her the funding to continue work on her SETI research. It is expressed at the very end of the film that Hadden actually designed the machine that takes Ellie on a trip to a different dimension, attributing him with super-human genius and resources.

Allusions: Mythological Pastiche in 2001, Stalker, and Prometheus The themes addressed above are not neatly separable from other themes. It is preferable to call them biblical resemblances, rather than references. One famous SF film that can serve as a caveat of over-interpretation is Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. 2001 is a collage of allusions to several myths (Gilbert 2006, 31), in whose network of intertextualities the Bible appears but does not necessarily take pride of place. Kubrick refused to clear up this pastiche. “Why a story that competes with one of the most fundamental accounts of our civilization, the Bible, in presenting the beginnings and the endings of human existence but that is yet not a truly religious depiction?” (Gilbert 2006, 32). Potential answers to this question might be: the “pride of the autodidact eager to display his omnivorous reading” (Gilbert 2006, 33) or the differences between Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke during the film’s long development period. The open-endedness of this film is intentional. Ku-

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brick wanted to promote multiple interpretations of the work and drew, among other sources, on biblical allusions to reach this goal. One intertextual reference in 2001 drawn from the Bible is the notion that “the [human] race was truly descended from Cain and Abel” (Gilbert 2006, 33): the first sequence of 2001 implies that tools were developed mainly for warfare. A similar potential for multiple interpretations is found in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979) – another piece of SF that is already intertextual because it, too, was developed in collaboration with authors of SF literature. (Stalker is based on Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s novel Roadside Picnic.) A shift in medium (here: novel to film, but also by extension biblical reception to film) creates additional levels of meaning (Moore 1999, 122). This film features direct citations from the book of Revelation and references theological themes such as hope and redemption (Moore 1999, 134), but it, too, is an artful web of meaning-multiplying citations typical of Tarkovsky’s work (Salvestroni 1987, 298), whose biblical references and their meanings should be analyzed with caution. 2001 and Stalker are examples of SF that insert biblical references within larger networks of cultural references. Both films are products of collaborations between SF writers and filmmakers who have worked together on transforming well-crafted stories across media. Crossing media-boundaries (cf. Kuhn 1990, 6; Lefèvre 2007), the SF genre’s close (almost definitive) relationship with intertextuality (Kuhn 1990, 177; Neale 1990), and its feature of exploring the unknown in relation to mythology and religion makes exploring biblical reception and such masterpieces of SF film a worthwhile topic for serious critical exploration. 2001 and Stalker’s use of mythological/biblical references between medium, artist, intention, and interpretation does the SF genre justice by inviting continued reflection and speculation. Prometheus, on the other hand, does not offer as sophisticated a play with allusions and intra-genre intertextuality as Stalker and 2001, but it can be read as an example of biblical reception in SF film. Ridley Scott’s SF masterpieces are undoubtedly Blade Runner (1982) and Alien. Much has been written about religious/biblical allusions found in these works.⁷ Prometheus employs expected tropes such as “soul-searching A.I.,” “god-like, shadowy corporation,” and “alien creator.” The film features arguments about competing belief systems and a sustained, but ultimately subverted, biblical reference when it is revealed that protagonist Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) is distressed because she is not able to bear children. The potential biblical reference to the barren matriarchs (Gen. 17; 25; 30) or Hannah (1 Sam. 1) is continued when Elizabeth does get pregnant after an encounter with the alien creature, which she refers to as her “maker” and which seems to have taken the place of a personal god in her belief sys-

 See, for example, Burnette-Bletsch (); Kozlovic (); Ruppersberg (); Byers (); Telotte (); Aichele ().

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tem. The reference is discontinued when she uses a medical robot to extract a malevolent alien parasite from her uterus. An explicit reference to cultural tropes of the afterlife appears when A.I. David (Michael Fassbender) “watches” the dreams of protagonist Elizabeth while she is in cryo-sleep. David is watching over the human crewmembers on a trip to the supposed home-planet of the aliens, who – according to the film’s premise – purposely created human life on earth. Elizabeth has found a clue as to their home-planet in a cave painting and has been invited by the shadowy Weyland Corporation to journey to the planet with a team of (utterly useless, caricatured) scientists. Elizabeth is a non-traditional “believer” in the ancient creator aliens (she repeats at every ever so vaguely appropriate opportunity: “I want to meet my maker”). Her hypothesis or belief regarding the creator aliens is proven correct when the crew comes across the corpse of a maker creature on the planet. After this encounter, she is found “infected” and is asked to surrender everything she carried with her onto the planet’s surface, which includes a cross necklace. She hands this symbol of traditional institutional religion to David, who discards it: David’s creators are humans, Elizabeth’s creators are aliens – there does not seem to be any more need for traditional beliefs in this setting where everything seems explained. During many Freudian alien creature attacks (so many phallus and vagina dentata images that this film should be disqualified from all psychoanalytic readings) and the death of everyone but Elizabeth and David, it is revealed that the ancient aliens were preparing to destroy humanity. The film ends by posing the implicit question known to exegetes of the flood story (Gen. 6 – 9): why does a creator destroy their creation? The film intersects a new storyline at this point: the formerly barren “matriarch” has, for now, prevented the planned destruction and is now venturing out with the A.I. to find the reason for the creators’ destructive fervor (in cinemas 2017). The reference to “heroes that were of old, warriors of renown” or Nephilim, impregnating a human woman (Gen. 6:4) is made visually available because the creator-creatures are of giant stature when compared to humans (Galbraith 2015). While Prometheus ties in with the flood story in some ways, it is not a sophisticated play with theological speculation and allusions. It seems simply to want to force the viewer to believe its premise: the “creator” has been made non-transcendent and literal, as opposed to Stalker or 2001 in which possible creator-beings are alluded to but do not appear, leaving both the films and their mythological or biblical references openended. “Ancient Aliens,” to which Prometheus alludes, is an interesting development in pseudo-scholarly biblical reception. The Ancient Aliens documentaries (dir. Kevin Burns, et al., 2009-present) are pieces of biblical reception history when they discuss Ezekiel’s temple vision (Ezek. 40 – 48) as “evidence” of alien visitation of earth in the past. The “Ancient Aliens” notion is also present in a much more playful way in Alien vs. Predator (dir. Paul W.S. Anderson, 2004), The Fifth Element, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (dir. Steven Spielberg, 2008), and Stargate (dir. Roland Emmerich, 1994), in which earth or another planet has been and is then again visited

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by alien species. Here, the accounts of the Bible and other ancient foundational texts which speak of creators, saviors, heroes of old, and messengers from other realms, are simply made literal, leaving not much space for sustained philosophical engagement beyond an entertaining film-viewing experience: in the worlds of these films “the gods” have been found and explained.

Echoes and Analogues: Tenuous Connections Since so much SF material can be linked to theological or religious discourse in an associative way, one should beware of over-interpretation: not every drop of water is a reference to the flood, not every spaceship that evacuates refugees is Noah’s ark. If one looks for them, associative references can appear everywhere, which says a lot about the Bible and about the genre of SF film as well. The SF genre can unfold its potential better when such references remain subtle and unresolved, consider, for example, the vast amount of commentary 2001 or Stalker have attracted. Tenuous allusions might sooner provoke discussion and a continued engagement with the themes they address, which can range from responsibility for the natural environment to seeking a “beyond,” making sense of existence, or understanding human nature in juxtaposition with a non-human entity. One might explore what even a potentially unintentional family resemblance means for the Bible and the Bible’s place in contemporary culture and also for the film in which the viewer may justifiably perceive it.⁸

Exodus-like Themes The creators of a film may or may not have thought about the actual biblical exodus, but the theme of escaping a dire situation appears often in SF film. In Cargo, for example, earth is not inhabitable after an environmental collapse; survivors live on crowded space stations in earth’s orbit. Laura (Anna Katharina Schwabroh) accepts a job on a cargo spaceship in order to fund her trip to a paradisiacal planet to which the wealthy have escaped. The film’s message is dire: it is revealed that the paradisiacal planet is an illusion (similar to Matrix). The only way out of the deteriorating situation is to stop dreaming of a promised land and to take responsibility for the fate of earth even if it means considerable personal sacrifice and discomfort. Small budget independent films like Cargo might sooner explore a theme up to its pessimistic conclusion, because its market does not necessarily require a win – in Matrix it is possible to wake up, to fight the machine overlords. Not so in Cargo: the protagonist broadcasts a message in unemotional language to suffering humanity that what had

 An example of such a “mutual” reading is Aichele ().

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been their only hope – a paradisiacal place, a promised land – is a corporate illusion.

Fig. 25: Advertisement for a virtual paradise in Cargo (2009)

Memory and Forgetting A covert but intriguing aspect often explored in SF is memory, which is a tenuous connection to the Bible: the Bible tries hard to remember and record but often fails. It attempts to remember the creation of the earth and generations of founders. But the material is often contradictory, as seen, for example, in the two creation accounts, in differences between Chronicles and Kings, or even in the seemingly contradictory record of wiping out (forgetting?) Amalek (Exod. 17:14). The seams in these competing attempts at remembering, which biblical scholars can demonstrate quite clearly, show that the fear of forgetting is pervasive and remembering (correctly) is a political act. Dark City imagines beyond-human creatures that toy with memory and identity. Dark City not only touches upon issues of being controlled and exploited by a superior being, but also on issues of targeted forgetting, and on the impact of memory upon identity. One might go as far as to cite Total Recall (dir. Paul Verhoeven, 1990) as a film that can be read as a warning against historical positivism in biblical studies. In the film (based on Philip K. Dick’s short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”), main character Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger), and with him the viewer, loses track of what is simulation and what is reality – an experience that might strike one as familiar from debates in biblical studies: which of the many narrated settings of the Bible reflect historical reality, which are fiction, and who is right about which are which?

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Creation and Flood One example of a piece of SF cinema that is not directly concerned with biblical reception is the short film Pumzi (dir. Wanuri Kahiu, 2009). It is, however, in some way an inverse flood and creation account. The film is set after “World War III” (water wars). The toxic desert planet is virtually uninhabitable and water is precious. Scientist Asha (Kudzani Moswela) works in an underground lab and receives a mysterious soil sample with unusually high water content, which enables a seed to grow. She applies for an exit permit to leave the underground facility in order to find more of the mysterious soil. She is denied the permit but escapes through a vent, trying to keep the little plant alive. Using an archaic looking compass she explores the desert surroundings, sharing her water with her plant. Eventually, she loses her compass, but sees a lush green tree in the distance. As she approaches, she realizes it is a dead tree, not the green one of her hallucination. Asha falls to her knees, digs into ground, and plants the seedling, nurturing it with the last of her water and also with her sweat. She lies down next to the seedling, and, as the camera pulls back, a giant green tree begins growing rapidly from her decaying body. The sound of a rainstorm is heard over the closing credits.

Fig. 26: Asha receives a mysterious soil sample in Pumzi (2009)

In this film, which is at the same time SF and creation myth, the absence of water rather than a deluge has caused death and a new social order. Asha is the creator of an implied new world, who dies to enable its creation. She is not so much the creative word of John’s gospel but a creative body; not a creative God-Father, but a mother (Calvin 2014, 24; passim); and not unlike Moses, she does not live to see the new, fertile land. The director of this film stated in an interview that it was not intended as a SF film, but that the story she intended to tell simply happened to resemble SF (Calvin 2014, 23 – 24). She also mentions that this story that happened to be SF is indebted to oral storytelling traditions which feature the use of nature – animals and botany – and draw on things that are outside of this world to make sense of the things in this world – “that’s all science fiction” (Gueye 2013). This is quite clearly reminiscent of most mythology, including biblical mythology – snakes and trees, and pairs of animals, before a devastating event involving water.

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“Alien ex machina” Science Fiction is a prime location for biblical interpretation both in explicit ways and in ways that depend on the creativity and critical mind of an interpreter reading between multiple cultural artifacts – the Bible, SF film, and sometimes also SF literature. If it is true that in this cognitive, scientific age theological discussion has gone to space, and alien Others and supreme beings have taken the place that used to be occupied by God in a heuristic game, then the ancient plot-twist “deus ex machina” unsurprisingly becomes “alien ex machina.” This happens quite literally in Monty Python’s Life of Brian (dir. Terry Jones, 1979), when Brian (Graham Chapman) is rescued miraculously and conveniently by alien abduction, not divine intervention.

Works Cited Aichele, George. 2005. “Artificial Bodies: Blade Runner and the Death of Man.” In Cinéma Divinité: Religion, Theology and the Bible in Film. Ed. E. S. Christianson, et al. London: SCM Press. Pp. 137 – 48. —. 2006. “The Possibility of Error: Minority Report and the Gospel of Mark.” Biblical Interpretation 14.1 – 2: 143 – 57. Atwood, Margaret. 2011. In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination. London: Virago. —. 1985. The Handmaid’s Tale. Toronto: McClellan & Stewart. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda. 2014. “The Bible and Its Cinematic Adaptions: A Consideration of Filmic Exegesis.” Journal of the Bible and Its Reception 1.1: 129 – 60. —. 2013. “Blade Runner.” In The Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films. Ed. Adele Reinhartz. London: Routledge. Pp. 40 – 45. Byers, Thomas B. 1990. “Commodity Futures.” In Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema. Ed. A. Kuhn. London: Verso. Pp. 39 – 50. Calvin, Ritch. 2014. “The Environmental Dominant in Wanuri Kahiu’s Pumzi.” In The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film. Ed. S. Fritzsche. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Pp. 21 – 35. Christianson, Eric S., Peter Francis, and William R. Telford, eds. 2005. Cinéma Divinité: Religion, Theology and the Bible in Film. London: SCM Press. Chryssides, George D. Forthcoming. “Hubbard, L. Ron.” In The Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception. Vol. 12. Ed. Dale C. Allison et al, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Copier, Laura. 2015. “German Expressionist Film.” In The Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception. Vol. 10. Ed. Dale C. Allison et al, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Pp. 123 – 25. Cowan, Douglas E. 2010. Sacred Space: The Quest for Transcendence in Science Fiction Film and Television. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press. Evageeks.org. 2013. “Cross.” (May 31): http://wiki.evageeks.org/Cross; accessed February 22, 2015. Fritzsche, Sonja. 2014. “Introduction.” In The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film. Ed. S. Fritzsche. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Pp. 1 – 17. Galbraith, Deane. 2015. “Giants: Film.” In The Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception. Vol. 10. Ed. Dale C. Allison et al, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Pp. 205 – 6. Gilbert, James. 2006. “Auteur with a Capital A.” In Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays. Ed. R. Kolker. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 29 – 42.

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Gueye, Oulimata. 2013. “Africa and Science Fiction: Meeting with Wanuri Kahiu.” Le Moulin d’André. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWMtgD9O6PU; accessed March 20, 2015. Kozlovic, Anton K. 2001. “From Holy Aliens to Cyborg Saviours: Biblical Subtexts in Four Science Fiction Films.” Journal of Religion and Film 5.2: http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/cyborg.htm; accessed February 22, 2015. Kuhn, Annette, ed. 1990. Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema. London: Verso. Lefèvre, Pascal. 2007. “Incompatible Visual Ontologies: The Problematic Adaptation of Drawn Images.” In Film and Comic Books. Ed. I. Gordon, et al.; Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi. Pp. 1 – 12. McGrath, James F., ed. 2011. Religion and Science Fiction. Eugene, Oreg.: Pickwick Publications. McKee, Gabriel. 2007. The Gospel According to Science Fiction: From the Twilight Zone to the Final Frontier. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox. Moore, John. 1999. “Vagabond Desire: Aliens, Alienation and Human Regeneration in Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic and Andrey Tarkovsky’s Stalker.” In Alien Identities: Exploring Difference in Film and Fiction. Ed. D. Cartnell, et al. London/Sterling, Va.: Pluto Press. Pp. 121 – 40. Nahin, Paul J. 2014. Holy Sci-Fi! Where Science Fiction and Religion Intersect. New York: Springer. Neale, Steve. 1990. “‘You’ve Got to Be Fucking Kidding!’: Knowledge, Belief and Judgment in Science Fiction.” In Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema. Ed. A. Kuhn. London: Verso. Pp. 160 – 68. Possamai, Adam. 2003. “Alternative Spiritualities and the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” Culture and Religion 4.1: 31 – 45. Ruppersberg, Hugh. 1990. “The Alien Messiah.” In Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema. Ed. A. Kuhn. London: Verso. Pp. 32 – 38. Sagan, Carl. 1997. Contact. New York: Simon and Schuster. Salvestroni, Simonetta. 1987. “The Science-Fiction Films of Andrei Tarkovsky.” Science Fiction Studies 14: 294 – 306. Strugatsky, Arkady and Boris. 2012. Roadside Picnic. London: Gollancz. Suvin, Darko. 1972. “The Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre.” College English 34.3: 372 – 82. Telotte, Jay Paul. 1990. “The Doubles of Fantasy and the Space of Desire.” In Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema. Ed. A. Kuhn. London: Verso. Pp. 152 – 59. Uhlenbruch, Frauke. 2015. The Nowhere Bible: Utopia, Dystopia, Science Fiction. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Uhlenbruch, Fraude, ed. Forthcoming. “Not in the Spaces We Know”: An Exploration of Science Fiction and the Bible. Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, Special Edition.

Films Cited 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968, MGM, US/UK). Alien (dir. Ridley Scott, 1979, Brandywine Productions, US/UK). Ancient Aliens (dir. Kevin Burns, David Silver, Susan Leventhal. 2009-, Prometheus Entertainment, US). Blade Runner (dir. Ridley Scott, 1982, The Ladd Company, US). Cargo (dir. Ivan Engler and Ralph Etter, 2009, Atlantis Pictures, CH). Close Encounters of the Third Kind (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1977, Columbia, US). Contact (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1997, Warner Brothers, US). Dark City (dir. Alex Proyas, 1998, Mystery Clock Cinema, US).

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The Day the Earth Stood Still (dir. Robert Wise, 1951, Twentieth Century Fox, US). E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1982, Universal, US). Enthiran [a.k.a. Robot] (dir. S. Shankar, 2010, Sun Pictures, IN). Event Horizon (dir. Paul W.S. Anderson, 1997, Golar Productions, US). The Fifth Element (dir. Luc Bresson, 2007, Gaumont, FR). The Handmaid’s Tale (dir. Volker Schlöndorff, 1990, Bioskop, US/DE). Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (dir. Steven Spielberg, 2008, Paramount, US). Interstellar (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2014, Paramount, US). Invasion of the Body Snatchers (dir. Don Siegel, 1956, Walter Wanger Productions, US). Jurassic Park (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1993, Universal, US). Life of Brian [a.k.a. Monty Python’s Life of Brian] (dir. Terry Jones, 1979, Handmade Films, UK). The Matrix (dir. Wachowski Siblings, 1999, Warner Brothers, US/AU). The Matrix: Reloaded (dir. Wachowski Siblings, 2003, Warner Brothers, US). The Matrix: Revolutions (dir. Wachowski Siblings, 2003, Warner Brothers, US). Metropolis (dir. Fritz Lang, 1927, Universum Film, DE). Moon (dir. Duncan Jones, 2009, Liberty Films, UK). Pi (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 1998, Harvest Filmworks, US). Prometheus (dir. Ridley Scott, 2012, Twentieh Century Fox, US). Pumzi (dir. Wanuri Kahiu, 2009, Inspired Minority Pictures, KE/ZA). Shin seiki evangerion [a.k.a. Neon Genesis Evangelion] (dir. Hideaki Anno, 1995 – 96, Gainax, JP). Solyaris [a.k.a. Solaris] (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972, Creative Unit of Writers and Cinema Workers/Kinostudiya, SU). Stalker (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979, Kinostudiya Mosfilm, SU). Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (dir. George Lucas, 1977, Lucasfilm, US). Stargate (dir. Roland Emmerich, 1994, Canal+, FR/US). Sunshine (dir. Danny Boyle, 2007, DNA Films, UK). The Terminator (dir. James Cameron, 1984, Hemdale Film, UK/US). Terminator 2: Judgment Day (dir. James Cameron, 1991, Carolco Pictures, US). Total Recall (dir. Paul Verhoeven, 1990, Carolco Pictures, US). Welt am Draht [a.k.a. World on a Wire] (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, DE).

Terry Lindvall and Chris Lindvall

15 The Word Made Gag: Biblical Reception in Film Comedy As the Good Book says… [laughs] Why should I be telling You what the Good Book says? (Tevye to God in Fiddler on the Roof, dir. Norman Jewison, 1971)

The lowly and suspect genre of film comedy, as vulgar as Jerome’s Vulgate Bible, provides a manger where the grotesque and common are cradled alongside the holy. In Frederick Buechner’s classic little book, Telling the Truth, the gospel speaks as tragedy, comedy, and fairy tale. If the biblical texts speak of the inevitable tragedies of life, they also speak of the unexpected comedies. Abraham and Sarah laughed at the miraculous intervention of God, not just in disbelief, but in full bodily laughter, even falling down. Their laughter had physical fruit (tied up with sex) in the birth of Isaac, which in Hebrew means laughter.¹ Several preliminary observations must be made regarding film comedy. First, a definition of the comic entails two classic qualities: it makes audiences laugh and it ends happily, although there are some exceptions.² The reception of the biblical text in most film comedies does seek to evoke laughter.³ And the inclusion of the sacred in Hollywood films is incongruous, surprising, and meant to be funny. Second, in his Logic of the Absurd, Jerry Palmer points to two primary sources of the comic surprise, the sudden interruption of expectations in the narrative itself and the contradiction of knowledge from outside the world of the text (Palmer 1987, 3). In the first instance, spectators laugh at Phil Vischer’s VeggieTales just to see a biblical character like Daniel played by Larry the Cucumber or at Woody Allen’s quip, “Some guy hit my fender the other day and I said unto him, ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’ But not in those words.” The comedy of a vegetable as a character or an allusion to performing an impossible sexual act in King James vernacular do not require a knowledge of the Bible, but work as gags independent of their larger context.⁴ Yet, knowledge of the source adds an extra dimension of pleasure. It is the juxtaposition of

 Buechner (,  – ). See also Lindvall (,  – ).  The subgenres of satire and black gallows comedies do disobey the criterion of ending happily, but their purpose is to expose folly and death with a sense of the ridiculous. Like God in His heavens, they mock. See Quintero (); Jemielity (); and Peters ().  While there exist three major theoretical explanations of why we laugh (relief theory, superiority theory, and incongruity theory), I would argue that the first two can be subsumed as functions of the pleasures of the incongruous surprise. See Morreall (), with whom I agree on most things, except his perspective that Christianity is a solemn religion. Also see Lindvall ().  Woody Allen’s line about “the lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won’t get much sleep,” offers a comic juxtaposition, but an understanding of its source in the book of Isaiah enhances the pleasure of its distortion.

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privileged spectator knowledge with the embedded text that sparks extra-textual pleasures. For example, in the Boulting brothers’ Heavens Above! (1963), a crafty old servant Simpson warns his mistress, Lady Despard, about the Reverend Smallwood (Peter Sellers), the guileless new vicar in a snobbish, materialistic Anglican parish, who wants her to help feed the poor. “Whenever you hear the Bible quoted, look out, because it’s probably the devil itself.” After chaos has crippled the vicar’s idealism, Simpson throws him out of the house with his own diabolical lines: “Now I am going to give you two bits of the Bible: Matthew 27:5: ‘and he went out and hanged himself;’ and Luke 10:27: ‘Go thou and do likewise.’” Recognition of the biblical texts taken out of context is humorously juxtaposed with their twisted use, even reflecting back on the primary texts in what Larry J. Kreitzer calls “reversing the hermeneutical flow,” enabling us to see the originals in fresh light (Kreitzer 1993, 18). Third, one may delineate among various types of film comedies, ten sub-genres if you will, that exploit the biblical texts: vaudevillian slapstick, parody, character comedy, comedy of manners, romantic/screwball comedy, musical comedy, adventure comedy, farce (animal or anarchic comedy), satire/black comedy, and mockumentary.⁵ Biblical texts are often acted out in slapstick, as Charlie Chaplin mimes a silent sermon on David and Goliath in The Pilgrim (1923), with a young boy in the stunned congregation applauding with delight, or Stan Laurel in Slipping Wives (dir. Fred Guiol, 1927), extricating himself from suspicion of an affair by miming the story of Samson and Delilah. Notably, the comic aesthetic is rooted in the vaudeville circuit, with its caricatures of Jewish and other ethnic humor often playing off Bible stories.⁶ Both silent films assume familiarity with the biblical text, even as director Mel Brooks’s masterly parody History of the World, Part I (1981) alludes to da Vinci’s The Last Supper as Brooks, as a waiter, holds up a dinner plate behind Jesus’ head to form a halo. In character comedy, or Steve Seidman’s more specialized branch of comedian comedy, a picaro, or fish-out-of-water Everyman, throws the individual against the world, bouncing and bumping off other people (Seidman 1981). The comedy of the loser, the underdog, the wandering Jew, the comic pilgrim is rooted in David versus Goliath or Don Quixote against the windmills. This stranger in a strange land is also a bit of the biblical Jacob, a trickster as in the roles played by Woody Allen, the selfproclaimed “loyal opposition to God.”⁷ Allen’s nebbish characters are often immersed in the Torah and quip seemingly improvised lines that parody familiar scriptures, such as Psalm 23 in Love and Death (1975). Boris, contemplating death, ruminates: “And so I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Actually, make that  Key sources dealing with typologies of comedy are Horton/Rapf (); Mast (); and Tueth ().  The vaudeville roots of film comedy are delightfully documented in Jenkins ().  Stardust Memories (dir. Woody Allen, ).

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‘I run through the valley of the shadow of death’—in order to get OUT of the valley of the shadow of death more quickly, you see.” So, too, Allen echoes the biblical imago Dei of Genesis, when Sonja tells Boris that they are created in the image of God, he retorts, “Take a look at me. You think He wears glasses?” Sonja replies, “Not with those frames.” When an angel of God promises that he will be pardoned just moments before his execution, Boris’s faith is renewed and he starts spouting snippets of twisted scriptures: “Moses was right. He that abideth in the truth will have frankincense and myrrh smeared on his gums. He shall abideth in the house of the Lord for six months with an option to buy. But the wicked man – his tongue shall cleave unto the roof of his mouth and he…he will talk like a woman. He that has clean hands and a pure heart is OK in my book. But he who…who… fools around with barnyard animals must be watched.”⁸ The comedy of manners with sparkling wit and quick repartee found a conquering hero in writer/director Preston Sturges, whose Hollywood satire, Sullivan’s Travels (1941) brought revelation to the eponymous character, director Sullivan (Joel McCrea) who discovers, as a leg-chained convict, the value of laughter in a southern black church showing a cartoon and singing Exodus 7:16, “Let My People Go” or in his multiple references to the book of Genesis in The Lady Eve (1941). Romantic and screwball comedies using a blend of slapstick and verbal dexterity play with the eternal incongruities of male and female, of various versions of Adam and Eve, such as the playful Theodora Goes Wild (dir. Richard Boleslawski, 1936), where the “glory of God” lady wrestles with the temptations of the Big Apple and plays the organ for the church as she sings for God to “make me pure.” Biblical texts enhance the narrative of musical comedies, where scripture helps Milly (Jane Powell) civilize backwoods boys in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (dir. Stanley Donen, 1954) as she clasps their hands to pray and reads from Matthew 7:6: “Cast not your pearls before swine lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you.” With such authority behind her, she disciplines the boys from pigs to civilized men. David Greene’s 1973 Godspell is mostly a vaudevillian series of shticks on the parables, such as the prodigal son. Music and jokes and slapstick intermingle to make the stories sparkle.⁹ Adventure comedy frequently uses the non-diegetic insert that removes the spectator from the seamless narrative, as when Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is slapped by his father (Sean Connery) for using the name of Jesus Christ blasphemously (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, dir. Steven Spielberg, 1989). However, films like The Gaucho (dir. F. Richard Jones, 1957) weave biblical texts throughout, such as

 For a discussion of the religious in Allen’s films see Blake (,  – ).  Particularly ironic is the fact that the hymn of “Day by Day” in Godspell becomes the comic sacred text of a prayer in Meet the Parents (dir. Jay Roach, ). Hollywood teaches American how to pray.

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in explicit references to not judging others and giving to the poor.¹⁰ When the spiritual journey wears comedy, as in the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Homer’s Odyssey meets Southern gospel with its baptisms and salvations. When the Blind Seer prophesies over the three escaping convicts, his words carry the flavor of Isaiah, “Though the road may wind, yea, your hearts grow weary, still shall ye follow them, even unto your salvation” (cf. Isa. 40:29 – 31).¹¹ In the farcical apocalyptic comedy Ghostbusters (dir. Ivan Reitman, 1984), Ray cites the New Testament book of Revelation 7:12 [sic, actually Revelation 6:12]; “And I looked, as he [the Lamb] opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became as black as sackcloth. And the moon became as blood.” The gang twists the final escalation into comic exaggeration with their warning of a disaster of biblical proportions, meaning “Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff!” with “fire and brimstone coming down from the sky! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes! Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats, living together! Mass hysteria!” Yet, the film is tame in comparison to co-directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s raunchy, gross-out This Is the End (2013), where altered verses from Revelation 17 force the sophomoric friends to realize they have been “left behind” in the apocalypse amid earthquakes, disasters, and a beast with seven heads about to devour them. In the midst of bawdy jokes, judgment comes for Hollywood as the dwelling place of demons, with wrath falling upon its “kings” who practice all kinds of drunken immorality. Farce comedy has rarely descended into a more extreme bestial or Dionysian abyss of comedy, with its wild and unfettered references. Dark satire, the humore noir, exploits biblical texts as wickedly as any other subgenre, from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction’s (1994) misquoting of Ezekiel 25:17 where Jules has been saying “such shit” as: The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost chil-

 Prayers bracket the entire film, both leading to miraculous healings. The Gaucho (Douglas Fairbanks) does receive a vision of the Virgin Mary, played ironically by his soon-to-be-divorced wife, Mary Pickford.  As adventure comedy, one particular sports comedy, Angels in the Outfield (dir. Clarence Brown, ), cleverly incorporates Matt. : into a defense of the usually foul-mouthed, bad-tempered manager. When asked how such an uncouth person could have a guardian angel, a priest counters that “if a man has  sheep and one goes astray….” Less innocently, Louise Pendrake (Faye Dunaway), the sexually repressed wife of a gluttonous husband, the Reverend Silas Pendrak, displays the hypocritical double standard of much religion in Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man (). As she seeks to teach and redeem Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman), the last white man to survive Custer’s Last Stand, she bathes the poor boy with a comically erotic undertow. The woman of feigned piety tries to seduce the naïve young man, even while singing “Bringing in the Sheaves,” a song from Ps.  that emphasizes how we shall “come rejoicing,” bringing in the sheaves and scrubbing his private parts in the tub.

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dren. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.

Only the deadpan delivery by Samuel L. Jackson keeps the scene from swirling off into a Woody Allen monologue. So, too, in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970) and Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), the odd inclusion of biblical passages and images provoke recognition of more nuanced humor. Mockumentaries offer similar droll tableaux, which require keen attention by those who can read against the narrative grain. The low-budget parody of low-budget biblical films, The Making of ‘… And God Spoke’ (dir. Arthur Borman, 1994) mocks the Lord’s Prayer with the filmmakers gathering their crew for a tradition of saying a blessing, “Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be our film.” In Borat (dir. Larry Charles, 2006), when faux journalist Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) attends a Pentecostal church service, he is told the lesson of the Good Samaritan, that Jesus calls us to love our neighbor (Matt. 22:36 – 40 par.). When Borat asks, “So Does Jesus love my neighbor Nursultan Tulyiagby?” the church pastor responds, “Yes, Jesus loves everyone.” But, Borat answers, “Nobody like my neighbor Nursultan Tulyiagby.” One must discern the voice, trying to decipher the Kierkegaardian irony, of the slippery and ambiguous humor of the mockumentary. Returning to his village in Kazakhstan at the end of the film, Borat enthusiastically points out a new ritual has replaced the traditional “Running of the Jew,” namely “crucifying Christians.” A joke on persecution unites unlikely victims even as it elicits disquieting laughter. To laugh at crucifixion may strike one as perverse mocking or as an imitation of the God who laughs to scorn, the ultimate recognition of the defeat of sin and death. After all, crucifixion, for St. Augustine, was the Easter joke played on Satan (Schreech 1997, 35).

The Comic Turn In the interaction between spectator and any biblical or cinematic text, the fuller knowledge a viewer has the greater will be her insight and comic appreciation. Special links are created as the viewer processes the film, connecting inter-textual references. In reception theory, contextual factors, such as religious tradition and biblical literacy, influence the ways in which the spectator views biblically influenced films.¹² The cultural religious backdrop is crucial for interpreting the inclusion of sacred

 Film Comment critic Richard Corliss attended a showing of Bruce Beresford’s painfully cheesy adaptation of King David (). As he watched David dance before the Ark of the Covenant, wearing only an ephod, his boredom was broken up by the unexpected laughter of several boys sitting behind him. He asked why they had guffawed so loudly at that scene. “Oh,” explained one of the boys, “we know where they got that idea of the Ark thing. That came from Spielberg.” cited in Johnston (, ).

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texts and in seeing its embedded potential humor in a clashing context. The spectator negotiates his or her meaning, interpreting the text in light of understanding and attitude. Comedy erupts even when a character in a film misreads a text. In Big Mamma’s House (dir. Raja Gosnell, 2000), Malcolm Turner (Martin Lawrence) comes to testify and confess his duplicity to a hostile congregation. He begins by noting “I believe the Good Book says, ‘If you don’t know me, don’t judge me’” and is then set straight by the Reverend (Cedric the Entertainer), “That was Tupac.” A young boy Trent tells him it says that “Jesus says that we should love one another as we love ourselves,” to which his friend Nolan (Anthony Anderson) interrupts and says, “no, that’s an old lyric from Al Green.” The Reverend corrects him, “Jesus did say that,” and the congregation shouts, “Amen!” The meaning of biblical texts in films depends then not so much on the embedded references themselves, but on the familiarity of the reader or spectator with that text. In film comedy this is essential. If one does not know the context of the reference, one might miss the joke altogether. Tyler Perry’s Madea character strangles and pulverizes biblical texts with merry abandon. “Her” instructions on prayer in I Can Do Bad All by Myself (dir. Tyler Perry, 2009) mix biblical characters and cinematic trivia with chutzpah. The comic turn requires keen perception of both text and intention. Fortunately, many biblical texts are still (but barely) culturally recognizable enough that an enthymemic joke will work. One does not need to spell out the syllogism of the comic bit for it to function in comic ways. The enthymeme, that rhetorical device which leaves one part of a syllogism out so that the audience must fill it in, makes for a funnier joke because the hearer has figured it out for herself. For example, Mel Brooks’s vulgar slapstick play of Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai carrying three tablets, announces: “God has given us fifteen,” then dropping one of the tablets, corrects himself and says, “ten, ten commandments.” In John Ford’s bucolic Irish romantic comedy, The Quiet Man (1952), a local lad quips that he caught a fish so large that he expected Jonah to pop out of its mouth.¹³ The fleeting references to the number of commandments and to the recalcitrant Hebrew prophet jolly up the scripts, but only to those who catch the allusions. The biblically savvy reader can appropriate the reference and integrate it into an interpretation of the comic bit of the film. Scriptural allusions and quotations frequently function as transgressions in a coherent narrative. Donald Crafton cleverly contrasted the seamlessly edited chase of film comedy (the narrative) to the pie in the face, the disruptive moment when one steps outside the story and laughs (Crafton 1995, 106 – 19). As Tom Gunning argues, while the gag frequently interrupts the smoothly flowing narrative, it can be

 So, too, a comic moment occurs in The Avengers (dir. Josh Whedon, ) when Ironman asks, “Ever hear of Jonah?” just as he is about to enter the belly of a mechanical monster, to which he is given the reply, “But I wouldn’t use him as a role model.”

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absorbed into the overall structure. But first, it stops the story and points to itself. In a dramatic film, the reference to a biblical text can be woven seamlessly into the narrative arc; however, in comedies, such references break the illusion and draw attention to themselves as “the potholes, detours, and flat tires of narrative” (Gunning 1995, 121). The context of biblical reception in the comedy film genre is almost always humorous, although one may find rhetorical points being made with more sober insertions, such as Charlie Chaplin in his satire The Great Dictator (1941) placing words from the Gospel of Luke (17:21), “The kingdom of God is within man,” into the mouth of his little Jewish barber. The valence of the embedded text may be positive, negative, or unclear, but its intentional inclusion mostly means for it to be perceived as a gag. Its salience is usually not more than a passing bon mot, but at times can rise to reveal the character of a speaker.

Comic Techniques How do biblical texts embedded in films elicit laughter? First, by a literal application of the text to the situation, they tease out strict interpretation of biblical verses. In the naïve hermeneutics of John Wesley’s famous plunk method of finding God’s guidance, the Bad Little Angel (dir. Wilhelm Thiele, 1939) finds direction for her life by landing on a verse that says “Flee to Egypt” which she does, except of course, the train goes to Egypt, New Jersey. So, too, in Spitfire (dir. John Cromwell, 1934), Katharine Hepburn reads about prayer that one should “knock and it shall be opened unto you.” “I don’t know why it says knock, but it says to, so here goes.” She taps on the wooden table and says, “Amen.”

Fig. 27: Katharine Hepburn learns to pray in Spitfire (1934)

Even the intra-textual knowledge of biblical texts works for viewers. Having been to many weddings to find willing females and fornicate, two divorce mediators in The Wedding Crashers (dir. David Dobkin, 2005) are familiar with religious terminology.

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John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) mocks one show-off with a biblical allusion to Jesus, “What are you going to do for an encore? Walk on water?” Even more, during one wedding ceremony, they show awareness of the sacred texts. When Father O’Neil says, “And now for our next reading, I’d like to ask the bride’s sister Gloria up to the lectern,” Beckwith bets his partner Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn), “Twenty bucks, First Corinthians.” Grey counters, “Double of nothing, Colossians 3:12.” Gloria ascends and says, “And now a reading from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians,” a reference to the love chapter 13. The mocking of biblical texts themselves appears in a Monty Python sketch in The Meaning of Life (dir. Terry Jones/Terry Gilliam, 1983), in which obfuscation, incoherence and irreverence inform the obtuse Bible performance of modern sanctimonious headmaster, Humphrey Williams (John Cleese). Williams offers a Bible reading, “‘And spotteth twice they the camels before the third hour. And so the Midianites went forth to Ram Gilead in Kadesh Bilgemath by Shor Ethra Regalion, to the house of Gash-Bil-Betheul-Bazda, he who brought the butter dish to Balshazar and the tent peg to the house of Rashomon, and there slew they the goats, yea, and placed they the bits in little pots.’ Here endeth the lesson.” Second, biblical texts provide an ironic counterpoint to what is expected. The comic juxtaposition of the biblical sampler “Thou Shalt Not Steal” that admonishes Mary Pickford in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (dir. Marshall Neilan, 1917) tempted to taste a juicy cherry pie is pitted against Benjamin Franklin’s American proverb on a second sampler of “God helps those who help themselves.” American civil religion wins out as she gobbles down the dessert. Similarly, both A Serious Man (dir. Joel/ Ethan Coen, 2009) and Adam’s Apples (dir. Anders Thomas Jensen, 2005) take on the problems of evil and suffering akin to the book of Job, even in looking for signs of certainty or grace in a “goy’s teeth” or in baking an apple pie. One usually expects ministers to maintain a serious and cautious application of biblical texts. However, in film comedies, the minister can unleash unexpected uses. In the cleverly titled, frothy, and good-hearted Keeping Mum, (dir. Niall Johnson, 2005), the Reverend Walter Goodfellow (Rowan Atkinson) is a failed Episcopal vicar and father. His family is falling apart; his preaching is dull; his lonely wife Gloria (Kristin Scott Thomas) is beginning an affair with her golf instructor (Patrick Swayze). Into their lives comes Grace (Maggie Smith), both literally and figuratively. Grace not only kills sin, but also the law that constrains the vicar and his family. Investigating how the Lord works in mysterious ways (Isa. 55:8), the film insinuates the necessary role of humor in religion and reaffirms the surprising idea of the Bible as an aphrodisiac. Grace informs Goodfellow that the Bible is full of sex. He remains unconvinced, suggesting that The Song of Solomon is “the passionate declaration of love from a devout man to God.” No, says Grace, “It’s about sex.” Later as his wife undresses for bed, he reads “Behold, thou art fair my love…Thy two breasts are like fawns feeding among the lilies. Thy navel is like a round goblet where in no mingled wine is wanting. Thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies” (cf. Song 4:1, 5;

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7:2). As he continues, the couple renews their erotic passion and enjoys the benefits of the text. The use of the Bible to excite and arouse runs counter to dull devotions and creates a true comedy of marriage. Third, when biblical texts are mangled and misquoted, they produce a transgressive tone, in both satiric and playful ways. The dark irony in the dramatic The Shawshank Redemption (dir. Frank Darabont, 1994) of the warden’s office sign, “His Judgement Cometh and That Right Soon” (stitched by his wife in her church group), is that the film focuses upon it just as the warden realizes his misdealing are about to be exposed and he blows his brains out.¹⁴ Parodic quotations from canonical texts appear in black film comedies, satirizing the tendencies of some religious characters to exaggerate their knowledge of the Bible. Whoopi Goldberg’s fish-out-of-water character, a lounge singer hiding in a church in a witness protection program, in Sister Act (dir. Emile Ardolino, 1992) pretends to be a nun and, when asked to give the grace for a meal, appropriates what limited knowledge she does possess and mixes the 23rd Psalm, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Pledge of Allegiance: “Bless us, oh Lord, for these Thy gifts which we are about to receive. And yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of no food, I will fear no hunger. We want you to give us this day, our daily bread. And to the republic for which it stands, and by the power invested in me, I pronounce us ready to eat. Amen.”¹⁵ Reception theory focuses upon what people see in the media, what they recognize, and the meanings they construct. Rather than being passive consumers of media products, spectators negotiate meanings, even resisting preferred traditions of interpretation with oppositional readings. Because biblical literacy provides an ability to read against the grain, they can recognize the mangling of biblical discourse. When viewers share a template of what is normal, what the actual text or practice consists of, they can laugh at how it is altered. The outrageous prayers of Talledega Nights (dir. Adam McCay, 2006) provoke a knowing and comic contrast with genuine prayers. As vehicles for biblical reception, film comedies can also illumine our understanding of biblical texts. They broaden the intertextual relationship by reframing the original in a fresh light. In the very funny mystery/comedy French film, L’assassin habite…au 21 (dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1942, The Murderer Lives at Number 21), the Chestertonian detective Inspector “Wens” (Pierre Fresnay) disguises himself as a minister attending an evangelical conference in Paris in order to find a serial killer in a boarding house full of eccentric suspects. As he knocks upon the door, he announces, “I was walking along reading my Bible, ‘Knock and the door shall be opened,’ so I knocked.”  Irony also occurs with Andy’s use of a passage from Mark :a (“watch ye therefore, for ye know not when the master of the house cometh”) that tells of his wary awareness of his captors.  A similar jumble of Protestantism and Americanism pops up in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (dir. Jeremiah S. Chechik, ).

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Even his suspects possess biblical literacy, as a boxer stands in front of his mirror and takes off his robe, muttering, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” However, a female voyeur gets out her binoculars to get a better look at vanity. At dinner, “Reverend” Wens makes everyone stand for a scriptural prayer just before eating, employing the Bible to prophesy his secret motive. His paraphrased passages from Isaiah are apt: “The faithful city has become a whore where once lived justice, now live murderers.” He promises one suspect that “if God exists, the culprit will be caught.” Not only do Matthew 7:5, Isaiah, and Ecclesiastes provide the raw material for the scriptwriter, but the film summons the audience back to the text, enabling one to “see” vanity or the wickedness of “the faithful city.” Finally, biblical texts function as comic mirrors to spectators. Like Jonathan Swift’s satiric mirror where everyone sees everyone else’s face but his own, the comedy looks back at us. Such biblical reception mocks the modern reader, who has forgotten her Bible. When the obscure line “Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah” (Song of Solomon 6:4) appears in Nell (dir. Michael Apted, 1994), its meaning stymies a linguist, Jerry (Liam Neeson). He and his psychologist colleague meet a backwards young woman, Nell (Jodie Foster) abandoned after the death of a fundamentalist mother. Nell, however, learned her Bible well. When Jerry goes swimming with her to allay her fear of strangers, Nell touches Jerry’s chest, recites the aforementioned line, and laughs. Jerry has no idea or frame of reference for the allusion and asks, “Who’s Tirzah?” (Reinhatrz 2003, 176 – 83). Here stands one of the most telling parables of intellectual modernity, of secular professionals who do not recognize the biblical traditions, suggesting a biblical illiteracy even among the most educated spectators. If we do not know our biblical texts, we lose the joke.

The Bible, Tomato Soup and a Chicken Comic inversion provides an alternative perspective that enables the spectator to consider ideas in topsy-turvy ways. For example, in Tom Shadyac’s Bruce Almighty, a weatherman (Jim Carrey) is offered the opportunity to play God. Giving divine powers to a selfish modern man revives the sense of carnival, where the lowest assumes an office of authority and power. Shadyac’s allusions to biblical texts are scattered like manna throughout his film, as Bruce walks on puddles, parts his red tomato soup, and poses on top of a skyscraper in a storm prating, “I am Bruce Almighty! My will be done!” His benign irreverence inverts a theme of Job, when he boasts, “Bruce giveth and Bruce taketh away. Don’t like it? Megabyte me.” Comic markers cue astute spectators, offering the cognitive delight of juxtaposing the original material and Shadyac’s clever reframing of the texts. The rooted references to the biblical texts of the Lord’s Prayer and Job transcend mere jokes; yet the lines disrupt the narrative flow as one steps outside the comedy to realize how the director has teased out the incongruity of comic art and religious faith.

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Fig. 28: God and Bruce walk on water in Bruce Almighty (2003)

The close juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane has disturbed some viewers who found offense in Monty Python’s cannibalization of the story of Jesus in Life of Brian (dir. Terry Jones, 1979). Any similarity to persons living or actual was not coincidental, but targeted, as the troupe tweaked the gospel narratives just enough to let ambiguity reign. Director Tyler Perry’s caricature of the loud black woman in Madea extends the image of the dangers of a little learning. In I Can Do Bad All by Myself, the grandma tries to teach a young girl how to pray, she borrows and pirates diverse bits of the biblical text. Perry unleashes one of the funniest improvisations of textual riffing: “Fadder God, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God of Shadrech, Meshit, and de billy goat, who was in the fiery furnace that they barbequed on the day of Pentecost, when the Jewish people returned from the Sabbath day up on the mountain top in uhh, Ethiopia. Ah, God, Mary, Jableisch.” Madea tells her young charge about Peter, one of “the twelve disciplines” who saw Jesus walking on water (cf. Matt. 14:22– 33). As long as Peter kept his eyes on Jesus, he stayed afloat. But then he got distracted. In one of the most hilariously mangled compilations of scripture and popular culture, Madea waxes eloquently on Peter’s predicament: Jonah passed by in the belly of the whale. He looked down, Free Willy, with Jonah inside the belly and it made him distracted so he started to sink. He said, “Jesus, Jesus, help me.” Jesus said, “I can’t. I got to go to Calvary. I’m late.” So Jesus went on to the cross. He said, “Don’t worry though. I’m gonna send you a comforter. When the comforter come, you gonna be alright.” So he’s swimming. He try and swim. He was worried. And Jaws was coming. Spielberg did that Jaws thing. And he was surrounded. You know what happened?

The young girl Jennifer fulfills the role of spectator, allowing the comic to set up her schtik, and asks, “What?” Madea merrily twists the story of Noah, as he rows up with the “St. Louis Arch” and saves Peter. Peter finds Eve on the ark and invites her to a show. Medea continues: They had tigers. You know, they had two tigers, two bears, two lions. You know how they had the male and the female. Well, Siegfried and Roy was there, and they had the two lions there. And them Lions jumped up and scratched Eve. That’s how Eve get them two paws there. You ever see Eve with the paws? She got two paws right there. Read your Bible some time, honey. Read your Bible.

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This last line punctuates the role of biblical reception in film comedy: “Read your Bible honey. Read your Bible.” Familiarity with the sacred text enhances the pleasures of its presence in film comedy. G. K. Chesterton once quipped, “It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.” If Chesterton is right, the Jewish and Christian faiths are good religions as attested to by the inclusion of their biblical texts in film comedies. Even if one does not always get the jocular reference, even if one has not yet read “your Bible,” one can laugh, even like Tevye, whose knowledge was a bit sketchy. When he quips, “As the good book says, when a poor man eats a chicken, one of them is sick,” his friend Mendel asks, “Where does the book say that?” Tevye concedes, “Well, it doesn’t say that exactly, but somewhere, there is something about a chicken.”

Works Cited Blake, Richard A. 1991. “Looking for God: Profane and Sacred in the Films of Woody Allen.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 19. 2 (Summer): 58 – 65. Buechner, Frederick. 1977. Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale. New York: Harper & Row. Crafton, Donald. 1995. “The Pie and the Chase: Gag, Spectacle and Narrative in Slapstick.” In Classical Hollywood Comedy. Eds. Kristine Brunovska Karnick and Henry Jenkins. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 106 – 19 Gunning, Tom. 1995. “Response to ‘Pie and Chase’.” In Classical Hollywood Comedy. Eds. Kristine Brunovska Karnick and Henry Jenkins. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 120 – 22. Horton, Andrew, and Joanna E. Rapf, eds. 2013. A Companion to Film Comedy. West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell. Jemielity, Thomas. 1992. Satire and the Hebrew Prophets. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press. Jenkins, Henry. 1992. What Made Pistachio Nuts?: Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic. New York and Oxford: Columbia University Press. Johnston, Robert K. 2007. Reframing Theology and Film. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic Press. Lindvall, Terry. 2001. The Mother of all Laughter: Sarah and the Genesis of Comedy. Nashville: Broadman & Holman. —. 2011. Surprised by Laughter: The Comic World of C. S. Lewis. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. Mast, Gerald. 1973. The Comic Mind. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Morreall, John. 1983. Taking Laughter Seriously. Albany: State University of New York Press. Palmer, Jerry. 1987. The Logic of the Absurd. London: British Film Institute. Peters, David A. 2008. The Many Faces of Biblical Humor. Lanham, Md.: Hamilton Books. Quintero, Ruben, ed. 2007. A Companion to Satire, Ancient and Modern. Oxford: Blackwell. Reinhartz, Adele. 2003. Scripture on the Silver Screen. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press. Screech, M. A. 1997. Laughter at the Foot of the Cross. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. Seidman, Steve. 1981. Comedian Comedy: A Tradition in Hollywood Film. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research. Tueth, Michale V. 2012. Reeling with Laughter: American Film Comedies from Anarchy to Mockumentary. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow.

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Films Cited Adams æbler [a.k.a. Adam’s Apples] (dir. Anders Thomas Jensen, 2005, M&M Productions, DK/DE). Angels in the Outfield (dir. Clarence Brown, 1951, MGM, US). The Avengers (dir. Josh Whedon, 2012, Marvel Studios, US). Bad Little Angel (dir. Wilhelm Thiele, 1939, MGM, US). Big Mamma’s House (dir. Raja Gosnell, 2000, Twentieth Century Fox, US/DE). Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (dir. Larry Charles, 2006, Four by Two, US/UK). Bruce Almighty (dir. Tom Shadyac, 2003, Spyglass Entertainment, US). Christmas Vacation [a.k.a. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation] (dir. Jeremiah S. Chechik, 1989, Warner Brothers, US). Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1964, Columbia Pictures, US/UK). Fiddler on the Roof (dir. Norman Jewison, 1971, Mirisch Production Company, US). The Gaucho (dir. F. Richard Jones, 1927, Elton Corporation, US). Ghostbusters (dir. Ivan Reitman, 1984, Black Rhino Productions, US). Godspell: A Musical Based on the Gospel According to St. Matthew (dir. David Greene, 1973, Columbia Pictures, US). The Great Dictator (dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1941, Charles Chaplin Productions, US). Heavens Above! (dir. John and Roy Boulting, 1963, Charter Film Productions, UK). History of the World, Part I (dir. Mel Brooks, 1981, Brooksfilms, US). I Can Do Bad All by Myself (dir. Tyler Perry, 2009, Tyler Perry Company, US). Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1989, Paramount, US). Keeping Mum (dir. Niall Johnson, 2005, Summit Entertainment, US). L’assassin habite…au 21 [a.k.a. The Murderer Lives at Number 21] (dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1942, Continental Films, FR). The Lady Eve (dir. Preston Sturges, 1941, Paramount, US). Life of Brian [a.k.a. Monty Python’s Life of Brian] (dir. Terry Jones, 1979, Handmade Films, UK). Little Big Man (dir. Arthur Penn, 1970, Cinema Center Films, US). Love and Death (dir. Woody Allen, 1975, Rollins-Joffe Productions, FR/US). M*A*S*H (dir. Robert Altman, 1970, Twentieth Century Fox, US). The Making of ‘…And God Spoke’ (dir. Arthur Borman, 1994, Brookwood Entertainment, US). The Meaning of Life [a.k.a. Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life] (dir. Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam, 1983, Celandine Films, UK). Meet the Parents (dir. Jay Roach, 2000, Universal, US). Nell (dir. Michael Apted, 1994, Egg Pictures, US). O Brother, Where Art Thou? (dir. The Coen Brothers, 2000, Touchstone Pictures, UK/FR/US). The Pilgrim (dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1923, Charles Chaplin Productions, US). Pulp Fiction (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 1994, Miramax, US). The Quiet Man (dir. John Ford, 1952, Argosy Pictures, US). Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (dir. Marshall Neilan, 1917, Mary Pickford Company, US). A Serious Man (dir. The Coen Brothers, 2009, Focus Features, US/UK/FR). Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (dir. Stanley Donen, 1954, MGM, US). The Shawshank Redemption (dir. Frank Darabont, 1994, Castle Rock Entertainment, US). Sister Act (dir. Emile Ardolino, 1992, Touchstone Pictures, US). Slipping Wives (dir. Fred Guiol, 1927, Hal Roach Studios, US). Spitfire (dir. John Cromwell, 1934, RKO Radio Pictures, US).

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Stardust Memories (dir. Woody Allen, 1980, Rollins-Joffe Productions, US). Sullivan’s Travels (dir. Preston Sturges, 1941, Paramount, US). Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (dir. Adam McCay, 2006, Columbia Pictures, US). Theodora Goes Wild (dir. Richard Boleslawski, 1936, Columbia Pictures, US). This Is the End (dir. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, 2013, Columbia Pictures, US). The Wedding Crashers (dir. David Dobkin, 2005, New Line Cinema, US).

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16 Drawing (on) the Text: Biblical Reception in Animated Films BUSTER BUNNY and BABS BUNNY walk up the ark’s gangplank. They stop and turn to NOAH, who holds a clipboard, checking off species as the animals board. BUSTER BUNNY and BABS BUNNY [in unison]: Buster and Babs Bunny. No relation. NOAH [addressing the camera]: Let’s hope not. It’s a children’s show. ¹

Animation as Life-Giving Art In a pivotal scene from The Prince of Egypt (dir. Brenda Chapman, et al., 1998), Moses slumps against a column in his bedroom while a musical voiceover confidently affirms his identity as an Egyptian. Moses has just come from his first encounter with his birth sister, Miriam, who told him that he was born a Hebrew. As Moses drifts into a disturbed sleep, the film’s animation shifts from hyperrealism to a two-dimensional style in which images painted on the palace walls act out the story of Moses’ birth. Awakening suddenly, Moses runs to find the wall paintings corresponding to the last moments of his dream; upon finding them, he accepts that he is, indeed, Hebrew. This sequence dramatically illustrates animation’s core contribution to film. Animation makes the unbelievable believable. It renders the unreal real. Animators produce films by reproducing drawings (cels), models, or computerrendered images one frame at a time; rapid playback produces the illusion of motion (as, indeed, with all motion pictures). Because the images thus reproduced are purely the product of human imagination, animated films operate under far fewer constraints than live-action films. An animated film can represent as real anything that an artist can depict. Dinosaurs provide a familiar example. One of the first cel animated films, Winsor McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), featured line drawings of the title character capering about the screen and interacting with McCay himself (Wells 2009, 86 – 87). Extending Roland Barthes’s analysis of photography, Eric Jenkins theorizes that the punctum – the “prick” or singularly arresting quality – of animated film is life: “If photographs portray a ‘that-has-been’ that can lead to the contemplation of time [and death], animation presents a never-has-been that seems to live in time” (Jenkins 2013, 583). Animation’s inherent blurring of the boundaries between real and unreal is mirrored by the difficulty of defining just what constitutes an “animated film.” Animation is not a genre, but “an art, an approach, an aesthetic, and an application” of filmmaking amenable to a variety of genres.² Moreover, animation has become ubiq-

 Animaniacs segment “Noah’s Lark” (dir. Greg Reyna, ).  Wells (, ); also see pp.  –  for a substantial discussion of animation and genre.

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Fig. 29: A century of animation from the hand-drawn Gertie the dinosaur (1914) to CGI animals in Noah (2014)

uitous in contemporary movie making. Paul Wells calls it “arguably the most important creative form of the twenty-first century” and “the omnipresent pictorial form of the modern era” (Wells 2002, 2). Gertie the Dinosaur already problematized any neat definition for “animated film” – the film itself was embedded in McCay’s vaudeville act – and cartoon characters have starred alongside human actors in numerous films, pre-eminently Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1988). The advent and advancement of computer-generated imagery (CGI) has muddied the waters still further. The Noah’s ark sequence in Fantasia 2000 (dir. Francis Glebas, 1999), with its stately parade of cartoon animals, obviously qualifies as an animated film. But if Cynthia Erb is right to call King Kong (dir. Merian C. Cooper/Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933) an animated feature because its title character was a model animated using stop-motion techniques (Erb 2009, 64), a similar observation must apply to Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2014), in which all of the animals (save three birds) are CGI creations. Indeed, Wells argues that “virtually all contemporary cinema is reliant on animation as the key source of its story-telling devices and effects,” but notes further that “‘composite’ cinema has always sought to make its animation invisible” (Wells 2002, 28). For practical and theoretical reasons, then, this essay will reserve the term “animated films” for films in which animated presentation predominates, leaving aside “composite” films in which animation provides special effects for an otherwise live-action film.

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Types of Animated Bible Films Richard Walsh “thinks of biblical films as stories alongside [their] memorable precursor” (Walsh 2009, 225). Walsh’s taxonomy delineates five distinct types of biblical films, of which the first three are most pertinent here: (1) “realist” films that visualize and retell “a biblical story in the mode of historical realism,” (2) “fictional” films that recreate “a biblical story as fiction,” sometimes in a “clearly unrealistic or fantastic” vein, and (3) films in which “a minimalist depiction of biblical story provides an interpretive context for a richer, more fully developed modern story” (Walsh 2009, 225 – 26, 228). However, certain aspects of Walsh’s taxonomy prove problematic in practice. Therefore, I re-envision Walsh’s first category as adaptations, recast Walsh’s second category as tangents, and treat Walsh’s third category as entwinings. These categories cannot serve as watertight compartments, of course, but nevertheless prove useful in organizing the discussion.

Adaptations I offer adaptation as an adjustment to Walsh’s “realist style.” An adaptation places biblical material front and center; the source text provides at least the basic storyline for the film. When Walsh speaks of the “realist style,” he refers to mode of cinematic storytelling without necessarily implying anything about the historical veracity or accuracy of biblical narratives that look, on the surface, like historical reports. However, when Walsh discusses the “fictional style,” he implicitly categorizes any deviation from the biblical story as “fiction,” even if the biblical source material itself might seem fictional. For example, it seems odd to distinguish between “realist” and “fictional” re-enactments of the parable of the prodigal son. Walsh himself considers “animated family fare, like The Prince of Egypt […] and the movies of NEST [E]ntertainment” to be “[b]y far, the most common example of the fictional style in recent years” (Walsh 2009, 226). On the one hand, this categorization dovetails well with animation’s core strength of realizing the unreal. On the other hand, it problematically implies that “realism” in Walsh’s sense is inaccessible via the animated form. In contrast to The Prince of Egypt, Walsh categorizes The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956) as a realist film. A realist film, Walsh observes, “typically purport[s] to be a reverent, accurate reprise of the biblical story,” but such films also “depend upon scripts (at least, since Griffith and DeMille) that differ greatly from their biblical precursors in terms of rich visual details; in terms of heroic, romantic and melodramatic plots; and in terms of modernly conceived characters,” such as “assum[ing] a ‘great man’ view of history” (Walsh 2009, 225). This description, however, applies no less well to The Prince of Egypt than to The Ten Commandments. The

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Prince of Egypt follows the “great man” Moses along his “hero’s journey,”³ recasts his relationship to Zipporah along the lines of a modern romance, and foregrounds a sibling rivalry between Moses and Ramses that has no analogy in the biblical book of Exodus but strongly recalls both The Ten Commandments and Dorothy Clarke Wilson’s 1949 novel, The Prince of Egypt, which influenced both films. Indeed, by specifically naming anonymous biblical pharaohs as Seti I and Ramses II, all three works “historicize” a biblical story that is notoriously vague in this respect. Furthermore, the presence or absence of miracles cannot be used to distinguish realist from fictional films in Walsh’s typology; both The Ten Commandments and The Prince of Egypt depict the ten plagues and the parting of the sea. Similarly, NEST Family Entertainment’s direct-to-video Animated Stories from the Old Testament and Animated Stories from the New Testament series explicitly aim to “help educators and students gain respect and understanding of the history and prophesy about Jesus through God’s special relationship with the people of Israel.”⁴ NEST’s filmmakers clearly think of the biblical stories themselves as historically reliable, and would surely see their own work as no less “realist” than The Ten Commandments – probably more so, since NEST films tend to eschew the types of melodramatic embellishments that Walsh’s “realist” films embrace. Therefore, it seems prudent to regard animated films like The Prince of Egypt and NEST’s Animated Stories as adaptations, in the same category as live-action films like The Ten Commandments. In her analysis of one episode each from the Animated Kid’s Bible (dir. Frantz Kantor, 2005), Animated Stories from the Bible, Friends and Heroes (dir. Dave Osborne, 2007– 2009), and VeggieTales (prod. Mike Nawrocki/Phil Vischer, 1993–present) series, Suzanne Scholz criticizes these adaptations’ “literalist-positivist hermeneutic” (Scholz 2012, 100 – 101). Filmmakers adapting biblical stories do often seem to feel constrained not to change any “vital” aspects of the story, but this sense of constraint is not unique to Bible adaptation. Scholars studying the adaptation of literary works for film have struggled against “the historic reduction of adaptation criticism to a measure of fidelity; is the film as ‘good’ as the book?”⁵ DreamWorks anticipated such reactions, prefacing The Prince of Egypt with a disclaimer admitting “artistic license” in Philip LaZebnik and Nicholas Meyer’s screen-

 As Walsh himself notes (, ). Cf. Rohrer-Walsh ().  “NEST Entertainment Animated Stories from the Old Testament on DVD,” NEST Learning : http://www.nestlearning.com/animated-old-testament-bible-stories-dvds_c.aspx (accessed February , ). NEST-branded films were originally produced by Living Scriptures for a LatterDay Saints audience and are marketed by NEST Family Entertainment for a broader Christian spectrum (“Our History,” Living Scriptures, : http://www.livingscriptures.com/History.aspx; accessed February , ). Originally, NEST used the name Animated Stories from the Bible instead of Animated Stories from the Old Testament, but in more recent years they have used the title Animated Stories from the Bible to embrace both series.  Quinn (, ); cf. Leitch ().

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play, but averring that the film remains “true to the essence, values, and integrity” of the biblical story. During development, DreamWorks invited over three hundred scholars and clergy to comment, and made alterations (sometimes at significant expense) in response to their concerns (Watanabe 1998). Similarly, the makers of The Miracle Maker (dir. Derek W. Hayes/Stanislav Sokolov, 2000) consulted theologians and clergy while preparing the film, albeit a less diverse group than those consulted for The Prince of Egypt. The Prince of Egypt’s disclaimer could just as easily stand at the head of almost any Bible adaptation. The hermeneutic actually seems less literalist-positivist than excavatory, seeking an “originary core, a kernel of meaning and events which can be ‘delivered’ by an adaptation” (Stamm 2005, 15). The producers and consumers of animated Bible adaptations recognize that “a filmic adaptation is automatically different and original due to the change of medium” (Stamm 2005, 17) and therefore can tolerate substantial “artistic license,” as long as the “essence” or “message” or “meaning” of the biblical story gets preserved. Critical scholars schooled in contemporary literary theory may go further, affirming that no such stable “essence” exists, that “there is no such transferable core” (Stamm 2005, 15). Such viewers might agree to consider animated biblical adaptation as modern “midrash,” as Burton Visotzky characterized The Prince of Egypt (Watanabe 1998). Each production demands individual analysis to learn how it functions as a unique interpretation of its biblical inspiration. Consumers of animated Bible films, however, have not adopted such views, and continue to hold “fidelity” as a chief criterion for assessing animated Bible adaptations (Turner, et al. 1989, 231– 32).

Tangents Walsh’s “fictional” category includes “film that creates a fiction on the margins of biblical stories.” He also considers “the reprise of biblical stories in other settings and in non-historical genres” an example of “fiction.” At first glance, telling a story that overlaps in time and space with a related biblical story, as in Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959) or The Life of Brian (dir. Terry Jones, 1979), seems to be quite a different activity than revisiting biblical themes and storylines in modernday settings, as with Bruce Almighty (dir. Tom Shadyac, 2003) and Evan Almighty (dir. Shadyac, 2007). What these approaches share, however, is the creation of a new story that somehow contacts a biblical story; in some films the new story is primary, while in others it is secondary. Walsh’s second category need not be bifurcated, therefore, although it does seem helpful to distinguish between synchronous tangents, in which the new story is set in the same temporal-spatial frame as the biblical story, and asynchronous tangents, in which the new story and the biblical story occupy different settings. Some films that could otherwise be labeled as adaptations shade into synchronous tangents by introducing point-of-view characters through whose experiences

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viewers enter biblical stories. NEST’s Animated Stories sometimes, but not always, include such point-of-view characters drawn from the world the biblical stories imply. For example, the “Miracles of Jesus” episode (dir. Richard Rich, 1989) presents its stories chiefly from the perspectives of various people healed by Jesus. Joseph Barbera’s pet project for Hanna-Barbera, The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible (dir. Ray Patterson/Don Lusk, 1986 – 1992), uses time travel as a mechanism for inserting modern point-of-view characters into biblical stories. The title sequence for each episode explains how “two young archaeologists, Derek and Margo, and their nomad friend Moki” happen upon a magical door in “some ancient ruins.” Upon passing through the portal, the three friends begin to travel through a series of biblical stories. The usual problems posed by time travel are ignored; with very few exceptions, the “Bible times” characters seem unsurprised by the modern characters’ idioms and clothing, and everyone speaks English, needing no translation. The Superbook family of shows – starting with Superbook (Anime oyako gekijo, 1981– 1982) and continuing through the 2009 revival of Superbook as a CGI series (dir. Bryant Paul Richardson, et al., 2009 – 2013) – use the same technique.⁶ The Christian Broadcasting Network launched the original Superbook as an evangelistic effort. In that light, this strategy of viewing the biblical story through recurring nonbiblical characters’ eyes presents both opportunities and challenges. In series that seek to give moral guidance, filmmakers can use recurring nonbiblical characters to model the hermeneutical moves they want viewers to make. However, serial storytelling demands that recurring characters exhibit more character development and growth than “guest stars,” who can develop only minimally within the short time they are on screen.⁷ Therefore, young viewers watching these series may identify more with the ongoing non-biblical characters than with biblical characters, who appear episodically. Using fictional characters to focalize a story they consider historically accurate catches filmmakers in another dilemma, especially when modern characters use magic or technology to enter the biblical stories. Most cartoons give viewers no way to distinguish King David’s or Jesus’ historicity from Chris Peeper’s (Superbook) or Moki’s (The Greatest Adventure), lending an air of unreality to the biblical stories and undermining the filmmakers’ alleged “literalist-positivist hermeneutic” (Brenner 2006, 15). This tension is exacerbated when the point-of-view characters are talking animals, as in El Arca (dir. Juan Pablo Buscarini, 2007), based on the biblical flood story but focusing on political machinations among the animal population. Indeed, if the punctum of animation is indeed making the unreal real, then perhaps the animated form itself inherently resists any attempt at persuading audiences that the stories they depict could be historically accurate, even in attenuated forms.

 For further discussion of biblical reception in anime, see the chapter by Hoiki and Ogura in Part I (Pp.  – )  Turner, Jones, and Blazer (,  – ) criticize The Greatest Adventure in this regard.

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Fig. 30: Continuing characters in animated Bible series including Superbook’s Gizmo, Chris, and Joy (top left), The Flying House’s Sir, Corkey, and Angie (top right), The Greatest Adventure’s Margo, Moki, and Derek (bottom left), and Portia and Mackey from Friends and Heroes (bottom right)

Noah’s Lark (dir. Dave Fleischer, 1929) – historically important as the first of the Fleischer brothers’ Talkartoons, and the third animated Bible film on record – provides an early example of an asynchronous tangent. While at sea aboard the ark, Noah and the animals engage in various sorts of hijinks, mostly improvised and outlandish musical performances, such as a barbershop quartet sung by four mice and a chimpanzee playing a giraffe’s neck like a xylophone. When one of the birds spots Luna Park at Coney Island through a spyglass, Noah and the animals take shore leave, disembarking with a parade in which the animals form a marching band and perform “Stars and Stripes Forever.” The fun comes to an end when two snakes crawl into Noah’s trousers and the ensuing dance provokes the ire of the local constable. The animals pile back aboard the ark, which promptly sinks, and Noah swims away in pursuit of a mermaid. Animation’s reality-warping, anarchic powers are on full display throughout the short. The film’s biblical forerunner provides little more than a suggestive setting in which the filmmaker can envision humorous situations. Taken individually, most of the Bible story segments of VeggieTales (US) programs take the form of asynchronous tangents, re-envisioning biblical characters and situations in alternate settings. For example, “Moe and the Big Exit” (dir. Brian Roberts, 2007) presents Exodus 1– 15 as a Western, with Moses cast as a

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Lone Ranger figure; “The Wonderful Wizard of Ha’s” (dir. Roberts, 2007) blends the parable of the prodigal son with a Wizard of Oz parody, and “The Little House that Stood” (dir. Roberts, 2013) combines the parable of the wise and foolish builders with the story of the three little pigs. Viewers familiar with the Bible will easily recognize the transposed storylines. Looser ties bind other episodes to the Bible, such as the two featuring Minnesota Cuke, an Indiana Jones figure who goes hunting for Samson’s hairbrush and Noah’s umbrella. Although open to numerous criticisms (including some discussed later in this chapter), these VeggieTales segments do echo, albeit faintly, the free-wheeling spirit of Noah’s Lark and other early shorts. One can at least imagine the VeggieTales characters tying off Noah’s ark at Coney Island.

Entwinings In Walsh’s third, unnamed style, a nonbiblical narrative frames biblical adaptations in such a way that the latter serves as commentary on the former, or the former serves as a hermeneutical guide to the latter. VeggieTales episodes, taken as wholes, often fit this description. Early episodes (the series began in 1993) established a pattern that most subsequent releases followed: recurring vegetable characters, usually Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber, answer a fictional viewer’s letter by joining with their vegetable friends to act out one or two stories. Occasionally the stories loosely adapt biblical stories, often they present asynchronous tangents (as discussed above), and some develop the writers’ understanding of “biblical values” with minimal reference to specific texts. Big Idea Productions’ original motto of “Sunday morning values, Saturday morning fun” still provides a convenient summary of the producers’ goals. Most episodes (except, notably, those broadcast on network television in 2006)⁸ end with Bob consulting a computer named Qwerty for a relevant Bible verse, after which Bob and Larry remind viewers that “God made you special, and he loves you very much.” Most VeggieTales episodes are clearly designed to construct a hermeneutical triangle between their young viewers’ lives, the lives of fictional children introduced in the framing device, and the story segments. Like VeggieTales, Friends and Heroes uses a framing device as a hermeneutical key to two biblical adaptations presented in each episode, but with a consistent story, set in the first century C.E., that binds the framing device across episodes. As Macky (a Jewish teenager), Portia (a Roman teenager), and their friends and families encounter various challenges (many spawned by the Judean rebellion against Rome), they turn to biblical stories for encouragement and moral guidance. Uniquely, Friends and Heroes pairs up a story from the Hebrew Bible and a story from the New Testament in each episode. Friends and Heroes self-consciously embraces its own nature as a series not about Bible stories as such, but about how Bible stories encour For a brief discussion of the removal of biblical content from VeggieTales episodes aired on NBC, see Hoechsmann (,  – ).

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age and guide Macky, Portia, and other recurring characters. To help viewers distinguish the biblical stories from the nonbiblical ones, Friends and Heroes presents the former in CGI and the latter in cel animation. Similarly, The Miracle Maker presents its main storyline using clay animation, with flashbacks and visions adopting a style similar to watercolors. Presumably, the filmmakers consider CGI animation “more realistic” than cel animation. The choice of animation style thereby reflects the filmmakers’ conscious attempt to distinguish “real” from “unreal” despite animation’s inherent blurring of this distinction.

Themes, Trends, and Issues in Animated Biblical Films Animated Bible adaptations have yet to receive much scholarly attention. As Suzanne Scholz rightly notes, despite numerous direct-to-video adaptations and a few notable theatrical releases, “children’s Bible films” – mostly animated – “have barely been studied at all” (Scholz 2009, 99). No book-length studies and only a dozen or so shorter treatments have been published to date. Biblical studies is not alone in this regard; until recently, a similar situation obtained for scholarly study of any animated films (Beck 2005, ix–x). Even so, a few recurring areas of interest and directions for further research emerge from these pioneering studies of animated Bible films and the literature on animated films in general.

Theology and Animation’s Audiences Scholz rightly perceives that “religiously conservative companies keep producing and distributing these films,” which naturally shapes the films’ theological standpoints (Scholz 2009, 100 – 1). From her feminist point of view, Scholz finds several aspects of this theology troubling, and those issues will receive attention below. First, however, it should be acknowledged that the audiences willing to purchase such films influence producers’ decisions. Scholz’s call for “children’s Bible films written from socioculturally and politically, religiously, and theologically progressive perspectives that broaden the spectrum of biblical storytelling in film” (Scholz 2009, 101, 116 – 18) seems to naïvely address only the supply side of the animated Bible film economy, without considering whether demand for less conservative films exists or could be generated in the current market. Adaptations that draw explicit moral lessons from biblical stories do tend to reinforce conservative Christian values. Naturally, conservative Christians, including the filmmakers themselves, will consider this a strength, while individuals (including Scholz) who approach these materials from other ideological perspectives will count it a weakness. Some ongoing animated Bible series, such as Superbook, are explicitly evangelistic. However, the largest market for such films seems to be conservative

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Christian parents seeking alternatives to secular cartoons they consider overly violent or sexualized. The irony of turning to violent or sexually charged biblical materials like the stories of Samson and Esther apparently does not interfere with such series’ sales. Filmmakers producing animated Bible stories aimed at family audiences tend to present biblical violence rather bloodlessly, in the manner of most North American cartoon fare, and sexual behavior is generally either reduced to something like mild flirting or left completely offstage, though posited indirectly. This bowdlerizing appears to motivate Walsh’s placement of animated biblical adaptations in his “fictional” category (Walsh 2009, 226). Most animated Bible series draw on the same relatively small range of biblical stories whose “lessons” reinforce desired values. Among Hebrew Bible stories, creation, Noah’s ark, the binding of Isaac, the Exodus, the Battle of Jericho, David and Goliath, Daniel in the lion’s den, and Esther recur most often. The various series exhibit more diversity in the selection of New Testament stories and the granularity of their presentation. NEST’s Animated Stories from the New Testament series, for example, has one video entitled “The Parables of Jesus” (dir. Rich, 2003) but a separate video for “The Prodigal Son” (dir. Rich, 1988) and another for “The Good Samaritan” (dir. Rich, 1989). Naturally, longer-running series can explore more diverse canonical territory. However, none of the series surveyed include any stories from the deuterocanonical books, underscoring the degree to which Bible adaptation has thus far been chiefly a conservative Protestant enterprise (Joseph Barbera’s personal Catholicism notwithstanding). Director Eduard Hofman’s Stvoření světa (1958, The Creation of the World) also serves a relatively conservative theological agenda, though not necessarily of a piece with contemporary North American evangelicalism. The film premiered in Czech theaters, later screening in other European countries. Based on a series of cartoon books by “Jean Effel” (François Lejeune, La Création du Monde, 1945), the film depicts creation as a wry contest between God and Satan. God starts by creating four eggs; three hatch to yield angels, while the fourth yields a satyr-like Satan. As God and the angels proceed through a re-ordered six days of creation, Satan and his demons introduce various changes. Satan intends baleful changes, but God counteracts or redeems each such change. In this way, Stvoření světa functions not just as entertainment, but also as theodicy. Regardless of one’s attitude toward the conservatism evident in most Bible series, a few films have bucked the trends Scholz identifies. The “faith” celebrated in The Prince of Egypt rests as much in human determination as in divine power. This and the film’s heavy emphasis on freedom arguably mark the film’s ideology as classically liberal. In a different vein, El Arca develops environmental themes not normally associated with evangelical theology. Noah hesitates to build the ark because obtaining sufficient lumber requires him to fell trees his ancestors had planted, and as one of his sons remarks, “he loves that forest.” Such elements led one Argentinian newspaper to proclaim Noah “the first environmentalist” and “a conservationist in advance” (La Prensa 2007). Similar themes recur in Aronofsky’s Noah,

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although the CGI animals in Aronofsky’s film simply board the ark and then fall asleep. Yogi’s Ark Lark (dir. Joseph Barbera/William Hanna, 1972) makes Yogi Bear the captain of a flying ark, built with the help of Noah Smith and crewed by Snagglepuss, Huckleberry Hound, Magilla Gorilla, Atom Ant, Quick-Draw McGraw, and other Hanna-Barbera cartoon stars. The gang’s motivation for building the ark is explicitly ecological: the characters need new living quarters because their customary habitats are rendered intolerable by human tourists’ litter and pollution. The spinoff series Yogi’s Gang saw the crew opposing such villains as Mr. Smog, Mr. Waste, and Lotta Litter as well as the Greedy Genie, Mr. Bigot, the Envy Brothers, and other purveyors of social ills.

Identifying (with) Animated Characters: Humans Observing that “animated films for children, including animated Bible DVDs, play a significant role in forming children’s notions about gender, race, and otherness, regardless of whether they address these issues explicitly,” Scholz criticizes four episodes of ongoing animated series for “reorder[ing] the world’s power structures in favor of the status quo” (Scholz 2012, 101– 2) Scholz suggests that the “Creation” episode of The Animated Kid’s Bible reinforces “androcentric, Western, and conservative Christian perspectives” by portraying Eve as “secondary” to Adam, although Scholz’s treatment seems to imply that this apparent gender hierarchy stems chiefly from the sequence of creation, in which the filmmakers follow Genesis 2 (Scholz 2012, 104– 5). On the other hand, Athalya Brenner observes only a “small margin of inferiority” on Eve’s part in five animated adaptations of Genesis 1– 3, including the creation episode from The Greatest Adventure, and even here that sense of “inferiority” rests primarily on physical characteristics (Eve is slightly shorter than Adam, and a bit more modest) and the sequence of creation, which again follows Genesis 2.⁹ More egregious than following Genesis 2 in the sequence of creation is the occasional practice of giving the Genesis 3 serpent a female voice, as documented by Scholz for The Animated Kid’s Bible and echoing the convention in some Western artwork of giving the serpent a face similar to Eve’s, on the supposed principle that “like speaks to like” (Scholz 2012, 105). Despite Scholz’s characterization of this practice as “predictable,” however, Brenner finds masculine serpents in the five creation cartoons she examines (Brenner 2006). Some other films and series make self-conscious efforts to counteract or attenuate gender stereotypes, with varying degrees of success. The Prince of Egypt increases several women’s power and prominence in the story – chiefly Miriam, Zipporah, and Moses’ adoptive mother – and does so specifically in response to concerns feminist scholars raised during production (Watanabe 1998). Interestingly, ongoing series using recurring nonbiblical characters tend to have one strong male lead and one  Brenner (,  – , in summary; cf. , , , ,  –  for details).

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strong female lead: Chris and Joy in Superbook, Corkey and Angie in The Flying House, Derek and Margo in The Greatest Adventure, and Macky and Portia in Friends and Heroes. The producers of these series seem keen to provide both boys and girls an ongoing character with whom to identify. The biblical adaptations themselves, however, often reproduce modern Western gender stereotypes for the biblical characters, as Scholz convincingly demonstrates for the “romantic” aspects of the “Ruth” episode of NEST’s Animated Stories from the Bible (Scholz 2012, 108 – 109) and Julia’s fashion accessories in the VeggieTales episode “Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Noah’s Umbrella” (Scholz 2012, 114– 15). Ethnic minorities fare somewhat more poorly than women in these series. The Greatest Adventure’s portrayal of the bumbling, dark-skinned, accented Moki as “comic relief” is particularly lamentable. Scholz similarly criticizes “Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Noah’s Umbrella” for giving its chief villain, Wicker, a Mexican accent, despite the fact that Wicker’s twin brother, Rattan, is one of the film’s heroes (Scholz 2012, 115). Perhaps more to the point, a central conceit of VeggieTales is that all of the characters are “good people” who might play the roles of villains in dramatized stories within the overarching story frame. By contrast, Friends and Heroes intentionally nurtures a respectful ethnic diversity among the recurring characters, within the limits of its narrative settings in first-century C.E. Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Rome. Even within ethnic groups, physical stereotyping serves as a common way to distinguish “good” and “bad” characters in animated films. In the Animated Stories from the Bible episode “Elijah” (dir. Rich, 1993), for example, the Baal-worshipers’ chief priest wears accessories that seem intended to depict him as effeminate, while Elijah is the very model of a “manly man,” not to mention that Baal’s priests are just plain ugly and stupid in this adaptation (Heard 2000). Brenner observed a similar phenomenon in the “Creation and the Flood” installment of Testament: The Bible in Animation (dir. Yuri Kulakov, 1996), in which “[a]ntediluvian men […] were ugly and strange and looked like bizarre foreigners” (Brenner 2006, 25). The most common cause for concern with regard to ethnicity, however, is the banal yet problematic depiction of biblical characters as Caucasians that Brenner and I have noted.¹⁰ It is striking that the title sequence for The Greatest Adventure series places apparent Arabs in an Egyptian setting, but the ancient Near Eastern characters within the stories have skin tones hardly distinguishable from the modern Caucasian characters, Derek and Margo. The occasional exceptions to this, most notably the Middle Eastern skin tones and physiognomies in The Miracle Maker, draw attention to the majority trend, and even The Miracle Maker features primarily British voices coming from those Middle Eastern faces. As Brenner notes, “[t]hat the animated figures are always light-skinned is hardly justified by the intended audiences,”

 Brenner (, ); Heard (, ); Scholz (,  et passim).

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(Brenner 2006, 29) especially for productions with explicit educational goals like Animated Stories from the Bible.

Identifying (with) Animated Characters: Animals From the pioneering Gertie the Dinosaur to the ubiquitous Mickey Mouse, animal characters have been fixtures in animated film. Animal characters “can be beasts and humans, or neither; can prompt issues about gender, race and ethnicity, generation, and identity, or not; and can operate innocently or subversively, or as something else entirely” (Wells 2002, 3). This malleability makes animal characters particularly well-suited to animation’s power to realize the unreal. Some animated biblical films embrace animal characters’ polyvalent potential, while others steer a more realist course. Adaptations of the sort found in Animated Stories from the Bible or The Greatest Adventure tend toward a staid representation of the “real world,” and therefore tend to treat animals simply as animals. In Aronofsky’s live-action Noah, the CGI animals are “‘slightly tweaked’ so they don’t resemble anything alive in the jungle today” (Newman 2014). By contrast, the “Noah’s Ark” episode of The Greatest Adventure (dir. Ray Patterson, 1986) and similar installments in other series try to make their animals as realistic as possible within the limits of their animation. The animals on The Greatest Adventure’s ark take on a few circus-animal qualities, as when a rhinoceros plugs a leak with its horn or the elephants help to bail water from the ark, but this is as far as most biblical adaptations push the animal envelope. Filmmakers presenting tangents rather than adaptations, however, have felt more free to explore the freewheeling potential of anthropomorphic animals or theriomorphic people. Sadly, no prints of the first animated biblical film, When Noah’s Ark Embarked (dir. John C. Terry, 1917), seem to have survived studio fires and other ravages of time,¹¹ although the social context and director’s filmography suggest that the silent short probably focused on silly animal behavior. In Amateur Night on the Ark (dir. Harry Bailey, et al., 1923), some of the animals (with a little help from Noah, “played” by the then-popular cartoon figure Farmer Al Falfa) put on a talent show for the other passengers. At one point, a granite horse, part of a statue in a painted scene, runs away into the background of the painting. No concerns over realism are allowed to stand in the way of the spectacle. Noah’s Lark, also focused on animal antics, as discussed above; so did Disney’s first ark film, the Silly Symphony Father Noah’s Ark (dir. Wilfred Jackson, 1933). Thus the first four animated biblical films on record, all from secular studios, use Noah’s ark primarily as a handy source of animals for typical cartoon gags.

 Susan Oka (archivist at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), e-mail message to author (August , ).

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As previously mentioned, El Arca makes anthropomorphic animals the main characters in a story synchronously tangential to the biblical flood story, while Yogi’s Ark Lark uses a similar but sillier approach to an asynchronous tangent. Using animals as point-of-view characters has almost become a staple of animated Christmas and Easter films. Disney’s theatrical short The Small One (dir. Don Bluth, 1978) and Rankin-Bass’s made-for-television Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (dir. Jules Rankin and Arthur Bass, 1977) both focused on basically realistic donkeys who end up carrying Mary to Bethlehem. Once Upon a Stable (dir. Chris Schoultz, 2004) focused on talking animals, whose stable hosted Joseph, Mary, and the newborn Jesus, and its sequel, The Lion of Judah (dir. Deryck Broom/ Roger Hawkins, 2011) had the same animals trying to rescue their friend, a lamb named Judah, from becoming a Passover sacrifice. Fantasia 2000 features a Noah’s ark sequence that combines both trends. Most of the animals on the ark are portrayed using Disney’s usual hyperrealistic style, but two animals – Donald Duck and Daisy Duck – stand in for Noah’s sons and their wives. The look on Donald’s face as two “real” ducks board the ark highlights the incongruity of the situation. Similarly, the “Noah’s Lark” Animaniacs episode foregrounds the Hip Hippos, who treat the ark’s voyage like a pleasure cruise and demand luxury treatment from the bedraggled Noah. As in the early days of animation, so with these more recent attempts: secular studios’ treatments of the Bible gravitate toward Noah’s ark, and exploit the self-referential reality-making powers of animation to a higher degree than explicitly Christian cartoons.

Engaging Animated Biblical Films Producers of animated biblical films have leveraged animation’s ability to realize the unreal in relatively limited ways. Filmmakers aiming for “edutainment” seem attracted to animation as a relatively low-budget alternative to live-action biblical re-enactments, with artists recreating ancient backdrops and miraculous happenings at a fraction of the cost required to achieve the same effects on a soundstage or with physical special effects. These filmmakers, however, also feel constrained by their source material and anticipated audience to present a “faithful” adaptation of their biblical source material, and this prevents them from greater experimentation with the medium. VeggieTales stands as a notable exception; by opting for tangents rather than straightforward adaptations, Big Idea creates more space for animation’s characteristic whimsy. On the other hand, filmmakers playing biblical stories chiefly for laughs have given free reign to animation’s reality-bending powers, though to date this play has occurred almost exclusively aboard cartoon versions of Noah’s ark. Animated biblical films offer fertile ground for further scholarship. Brenner’s study of animated creation films suggests one way to proceed, via studies of a single biblical story or incident across multiple animated films or series. Scholz’s study of selected episodes from several different series draws sweeping conclusions that

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could usefully be tested against “diachronic” studies of long-term trends within each series. Brenner, Scholz, and I have all speculated about the effects of animated biblical films on viewers’ attitudes, but these speculations remain largely impressionistic rather than empirical, deriving from personal experiences and anecdotes rather than controlled studies of viewers’ responses. It could be very difficult, but very instructive, to learn what actual impact series like VeggieTales have had on their viewers over time. Finally, scholars troubled by theological trends in existing animated biblical films might wish to take up Scholz’s challenge and become involved with the production of animated biblical films that interrogate or even subvert problematic perspectives. The problems involved with such supply-side activism are logistical rather than conceptual: barring support from an ideological sympathizer unconcerned about return on investment, the would-be producer of explicitly feminist (for example) animated biblical films would need to demonstrate to potential producers and distributors a convincing likelihood of turning a profit on such ventures. More modestly, professors could incorporate critical analyses of animated biblical films into their teaching, exposing problematic tropes and subtexts in existing films. Animation’s popularity with filmmakers and audiences shows no signs of abating. Whatever animated biblical films may come, existing films and series remain in circulation through DVD sales and online streaming video. The existing scholarly studies of this medium for biblical reception are promising but few; the appeal and influence of the medium invites further and more rigorous engagement.

Works Cited Beck, Jerry. 2005. The Animated Movie Guide. Chicago: A Capella. Brenner, Athalya. 2006. “Recreating the Biblical Creation for Western Children: Provisional Reflections on Some Case Studies.” In Creation and Creativity. Ed. Carolyn Vander Stichele and Alastair G. Hunter. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Pp. 11 – 34. Effel, Jean. 1945. La Création du Monde. Paris: Gallimard. Erb, Cynthia. 2009. Tracking King Kong: A Hollywood Icon in World Culture. 2nd ed. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Heard, R. Christopher. 2000. “They’re Not Just Bad, They’re Stupid and Ugly, Too: The Characterization of Baal-Worshipers in NEST Entertainment’s Animated Stories from the Bible.” In Culture, Entertainment, and the Bible. Ed. George Aichele. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Pp. 89 – 103. Hoeschsmann, Michael. 2008. “Convertoons? VeggieTales for Young Souls.” In Christotainment: Selling Jesus through Popular Culture. Ed. Shirley R. Steinberg and Joe L. Kinchloe. Boulder: Westview Press. Pp. 117 – 29. Jenkins, Eric S. 2013. “Another Punctum: Animation, Affect, and Ideology.” Critical Inquiry 39: 576 – 91. La Prensa (Argentina). 2007. “Noé fue el primer ecologista.” July 8. Leitch, Thomas. 2007. Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From “Gone with the Wind” to “The Passion of the Christ.” Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Newman, Bruce. 2014. “No Real Animals Aboard Hollywood Noah’s Ark.” National Geographic Daily News (March 28): http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140328-noah-ani mals-ark-movies-hollywood/; accessed February 26, 2015. Quinn, Maureen. 2007. The Adaptation of a Literary Text to Film: Problems and Cases in “Adaptation Criticism.” Lewiston: Mellen. Rohrer-Walsh, P. Jennifer. 2013. “The Prince of Egypt.” In Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films. Ed. Adele Reinhartz. London: Routledge. Pp. 206 – 11. Scholz, Susanne. 2012. “Veggies, Women, and Other Strangers in Children’s Bible DVDs: Toward the Creation of Feminist Bible Films.” In Text, Image, and Otherness in Children’s Bibles: What Is in the Picture? Ed. Caroline Vander Stichele and Hugh S. Pyper. Semeia Studies 56. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Pp. 99 – 120. Stam, Robert. 2005. “Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation.” In Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Ed. Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo. Cambridge: Blackwell. Pp. 1 – 52. Turner, Helen Lee, Amy E. Jones, and Doris A. Blazer. 1989. “The Hanna-Barbera Cartoons: Compounding Biblical Ignorance?” The Christian Century 106: 231 – 34. Walsh, Richard. 2009. “Bible Films.” In The Continuum Companion to Religion and Film. Ed. William L. Blizek. London: Continuum. Pp. 222 – 30. Watanabe, Teresa. 1998. “An Ecumenical ‘Prince of Egypt.’” Los Angeles Times (December 12): http://articles.latimes.com/1998/dec/12/local/me-53174; accessed February 27, 2015. Wells, Paul. 2002. Animation: Genre and Authorship. London and New York: Wallflower. —. 2009. The Animated Bestiary: Animals, Cartoons, and Culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Wilson, Dorothy Clarke. 1948 The Prince of Egypt. New York: Pocket Books.

Films Cited Amateur Night on the Ark (dir. Harry Bailey, John Foster, Frank Moser, and Jerry Shields, 1923, Aesops Fables Studio, US). Animaniacs [“Noah’s Lark” Season 1, Episode 33] (dir. Greg Reyna, 1993, Warner Brothers Animation, US/JP). The Animated Kid’s Bible (dir. Frantz Kantor, 2005, PIPS Premiere, AU). Animated Stories from the Bible [“Elijah”; video] (dir. Richard Rich, 1993, NEST Family Entertainment, US). —. [“Ruth”; video] (dir. Richard Rich, 1994, NEST Family Entertainment, US). Animated Stories from the New Testament [video series] (dir. Richard Rich, 1988 – 2005, NEST Family Entertainment, US). —. [“The Good Samaritan”; video] (dir. Richard Rich, 1989, NEST Family Entertainment, US). —. [“Miracles of Jesus”; video] (dir. Richard Rich, 1988, NEST Family Entertainment, US). —. [“The Parables of Jesus”; video] (dir. Richard Rich, 2003, NEST Family Entertainment, US). —. [“The Prodigal Son”; video] (dir. Richard Rich, 1989, NEST Family Entertainment, US). Animated Stories from the Old Testament [video series] (dir. Richard Rich, 1992 – 93, NEST Family Entertainment, US). Anime oyako gekijo [a.k.a. Superbook; TV series] (dir. Ryôji Fujiwara, et al., 1981 – 1982, Christian Broadcasting Network, JP). Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959, MGM, US). Bruce Almighty (dir. Tom Shadyac, 2003, Universal, US). El Arca [“The Ark”] (dir. Juan Pablo Buscarini, 2007, Patagonik Film Group, AR/IT).

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Evan Almighty (dir. Tom Shadyac, 2007, Universal, US). Fantasia 2000 (dir. Francis Glebas, 1999, Walt Disney, US). Father Noah’s Ark (dir. Wilfred Jackson, 1933, Walt Disney, US). Friends and Heroes [TV series] (dir. Dave Osborne, 2007 – 2009, Friends and Heroes Productions, UK/CA). Gertie the Dinosaur (dir. Winsor McCay, 1914, Vitagraph, US). The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible [video series] (dir. Ray Patterson and Don Lusk, 1986 – 1992, Hanna-Barbera, US). —. [“Noah’s Ark”; video] (dir. Ray Patterson, 1986, Hanna-Barbera, US). King Kong (dir. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933, RKO Radio Picutres, US). The Life of Brian [a.k.a. Monty Python’s Life of Brian] (dir. Terry Jones, 1979, Handmade Films, UK). The Lion of Judah (dir. Deryck Broom and Roger Hawkins, 2011, Animated Family Films, US). The Miracle Maker (dir. Derek W. Hayes and Stanislav Sokolov, 2000, BBC, RU/UK). Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (dir. Jules Rankin and Arthur Bass, 1977, Rankin-Bass Productions, US). Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2014, Paramount, US). Noah’s Lark (dir. Dave Fleischer, 1929, Fleischer Studios, US). Once Upon a Stable (dir. Chris Schoultz, 2004, Animated Family Films, ZA). The Prince of Egypt (dir. Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, and Simon Wells, 1998, DreamWorks, US). The Small One (dir. Don Bluth, 1978, Walt Disney, US). Stvoření světa [a.k.a. The Creation of the World] (dir. Eduard Hofman, 1958, Ceskoslovakiá Televize, CZ/FR). Superbook [TV series] (dir. Bryant Paul Richardson, Tom Bancroft, and Robert O. Corley, 2009 – 2013, Christian Broadcasting Network, US). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956, Paramount, US). Testament: The Bible in Animation [“Creation and the Flood”; Season 1, Episode 5] (dir. Yuri Kulakov, 1996, Sianel 4 Cymru, UK). VeggieTales [TV and video series] (prod. Mike Nawrocki and Phil Vischer, 1993–present, Big Idea Productions, US). —. [“The Little House that Stood”; video] (dir. Brian Roberts, 2013, Big Idea Productions, US). —. [“Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Noah’s Umbrella”; video] (dir. Mike Nawrocki and John Wahba, 2009, Big Idea Productions, US). —. [“Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Samson’s Hairbrush”; Season 1, Episode 3] (dir. Mike Nawrocki and John Wahba, 2006, Big Idea Productions, US). —. [“Moe and the Big Exit”; video] (dir. Brian Roberts, 2007, Big Idea Productions, US). —. [“The Wonderful Wizard of Ha’s”; video] (dir. Brian Roberts, 2007, Big Idea Productions, US). When Noah’s Ark Embarked (dir. John C. Terry, 1917, Powers Picture Plays, US). Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1988, Touchstone Pictures, US). Yogi’s Ark Lark (dir. Joseph Barbera and William Hanna, 1972, Filmation Associates, US). Yogi’s Gang [TV series] (dir. Charles A. Nichols, 1973 – 1975, Hanna-Barbera, US).

Fumi Ogura and N. Frances Hioki

17 Anime and the Bible The end of the world was only the beginning. (English tagline for Akira, dir. Katsuhiro Ōtomo, 1988)

In the mid-1970s, Japanese media started using the word “anime” to designate domestically produced children’s animations aired on television. Since then, the term has grown to include animated movies and become a globally recognized genre designation. At present, anime production occupies a significant position in Japanese popular culture, and anime’s treatment of biblical narrative and symbolism correlates with contemporary Japanese society’s perception of the Bible. It is important to realize in reviewing the relation between anime and the Bible that biblical tradition is almost entirely unfamiliar to Japanese anime producers and Japanese audiences at large. Consequently, biblical stories and symbols in anime are generally perceived without their spiritual heritage. Apart from exploring representative modes of biblical reception in anime, this chapter intends to suggest that this absence of biblical tradition in Japanese culture has positively worked to pave the way for anime producers to appropriate the stories and symbols from the Bible liberally for their own storytelling without preoccupations.

The Genre The earliest appearance of the word anime in Japanese media was in a 1975, as the title of children’s picture book that retold the stories of TV animations: Terebi Meisaku Anime Gekijo (“Theater of Famous TV Anime”). The history of animated films in Japan goes back much further, however. Although all the works have been lost, three different artists (two cartoonists and one painter) experimentally produced animation films as early as in 1917 (Tsugata 2004, 85 – 92). One of the artists, Seitarō Kitayama (1888—1945), founded the first Japanese animation studio in 1921, and he made the production of animated films into a successful business, through commercials (shown in theaters) for large companies and public offices. During World War II, the Japanese military generously funded the animation studios to produce nationalistic propaganda films for children, which ironically helped the development of early animation technique in Japan (Tsugata 2004, 98). In those days, the term dōga (“moving pictures”) was used to designate animated films. After the end of the war, in 1950, Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (dir. William Cottrell, et al., 1937) was shown in Japanese theaters, and the term animeshon (transliteration of animation) gradually became known to viewers. Then, in 1963, around the time when black-and-white television sets became affordable for ordinary households, manga (comic) artist Osamu Tezuka’s television animation series or terebi manga (TV cartoon), Tetsuwan Atom (“Mighty Atom,” 1963 – 1966), also

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known as Astro Boy, became a major hit, earning 40 % in viewers’ ratings. Tezuka (1928 – 1989) was not only the first major producer of animated films in post-war Japan but also the first to employ the “limited animation” method. This method, which reuses the same frames for common parts, considerably reduced the work of animators, and contributed to the flourishing of animation series in Japanese television in the 1960s and 70s. It was in the mid-1970s when animation producers ventured out of the world of television production and started making movies for theaters. By the time Hayao Miyazaki started producing his widely popular original animation movies in the 1980s, the word anime had taken over the notion of terebi manga, and its audience had expanded from children to teenagers and young adults. Outside Japan, the success of the movie Akira (dir. Katsuhiro Ōtomo, 1988) as well as Miyazaki’s works helped lend the term anime global recognition. In the domestic anime scene of the 1990s, the unexpected success of the offbeat TV anime series Shin seiki evangerion (dir. Hideaki Anno, 1995 – 96), also known as Neon Genesis Evangelion, evoked much controversy that mushroomed into a social phenomenon. In particular, the last half of the series portrayed the young hero’s psychological breakdown and his bitter failure in defending the world against the attack of the giant humanoids. The debate on this unconventional ending included the implication of the storyline and speculation on the reason for the series’ continued popularity among teenagers. Further, since the 1980s, anime production has been closely connected with the video game industry. A number of anime movies have been developed starring characters from popular games. Similarly, many computer games have been created based on original anime series.

Representative Mode of Reception With regard to the reception of the Bible in anime, three typical modes of reception merit attention: 1) retelling of biblical stories in line with traditional interpretation, 2) borrowing of biblical paradigms, and 3) use of biblical allusions or echoes for special effect to add enigmatic allure to a story (Burnette-Bletsch 2014, 142– 53). Tezuka produced a TV anime series of the Old Testament (Tezuka Osamu no Kyūyakuseisho monogatari, 1993, also known as In The Beginning) on a commission from the Italian television network Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI). This is a significant work belonging to the first category above. The Italian network primarily marketed the series for children, and its narrative is thus shorn of sexual elements or thorny ethical dilemmas. Further, RAI most likely wanted their Bible anime to represent the tradition of biblical narrative for children; that is, to follow the way the Italian parents had learned the stories when they were children. Still, as we shall demonstrate below, Tezuka successfully refashioned the famous stories in certain episodes by introducing new subplots and characters never mentioned in the Bible. As a result, these thirty-minute anime episodes not only teach morals to chil-

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dren, but also offer an adult audience Tezuka’s insights into how we can read the Hebrew scriptures in our contemporary context. In contrast to Tezuka’s up-front approach toward biblical heritage, other Japanese anime creators are indifferent to exploring the religious implications of the biblical narrative. Instead, they transplant biblical themes, terms, and symbols into their work in order to enhance their own storytelling. For instance, Japanese anime makers are fascinated with the theme of the end of the world (Napier 2005, 249); nonetheless, anime’s apocalypse or “apocalypticism” is distinct from the biblical one (e. g., Collins 1998, 12– 14), as the former does not illustrate a glorious triumph of good against evil, and their endings tend to be open ended and without closure. In anime, people in the post-Armageddon society continue to live with the filth created by the war – as in the case of the Sea of Decay in Hayao Miyazaki’s Kaze no tani no Naushika, 1984, also known as Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind – or the hero suffers a psychological breakdown and refuses to fight his enemies when he is most needed (Shinji in Neon Genesis Evangelion). In the following, we will first discuss the episodes “The Story of Noah” and “The Tower of Babel” from Tezuka’s In the Beginning as a milestone of biblical anime for children. We will then turn to a discussion of the apocalyptic anime, using the examples of three popular works: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Akira and Neon Genesis Evangelion. ¹

Tezuka Productions’ Old Testament Stories Tezuka Productions’ CEO, Takayuki Matsutani, recalls that RAI first contacted the company about producing an anime series on the Old Testament in 1984. When Matsutani and Tezuka met with RAI’s producer, one of Tezuka’s first questions was whether he could produce the series based on his own interpretation of the Bible. At the time, the Italian producer assured him, “There are a few restrictions, but you are free to do what you want.”² Tezuka was excited about the offer and immediately came up with the synopsis of the twenty-six episodes and the idea of a new character, the fox Roco, to play the role of a clown. Yet, it took almost two years to create a pilot episode, “The Story of Noah” (Gen 6 – 9), and Tezuka died from stomach cancer in 1989. The series was completed by the staff of Tezuka Productions and aired on RAI in 1993. Junji Kobayashi relates that the production was delayed because RAI disagreed with some of the ways in which Tezuka refashioned the biblical story (Kobayashi 1999, 714). Matsutani also states that they encountered “problems regarding the interpretation of the Bible,” further saying that “even though they promised [creative] freedom, we still had many problems.”³ To resolve

 For a detailed synopsis of each work, see Clements/McCarthy ().  Matsutani (, ). Translation Hioki.  Matsutani (, ). Translation and brackets Hioki.

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these conflicts, the production team worked with Japanese Paulist nun and biblical scholar, Yōko Imamichi, who is credited in all episodes as the supervisor of biblical interpretation. The details of their disagreements have not been disclosed; but as far as the pilot episode “The Story of Noah” is concerned, Tezuka probably wanted to tell the entire story from the perspective of the animals, especially through the eyes of the series’ mascot, Roco the fox. Indeed, in the episode that was finally aired, half of the story was dedicated to a narration of Roco’s adventure on the ark, in line with Tezuka’s intentions. Tezuka was involved in the entire production process of “The Story of Noah.” His original storytelling is manifested in the portrayal of interactions between humans and animals, with a variety of animals helping each other inside the ark. He also included a moralistic subplot dealing with Roco, the only “single” animal that comes on board without a partner. At first, Roco is a troublemaker on the ark, stealing food from others and threatening a couple of little rabbits. Then, during a storm, he is thrown out of the ark into the raging water, only to be rescued by the same rabbits he had been harassing. When the water subsides and the ark finally lands on solid ground, Noah offers a sacrifice to God in thanksgiving, and the animals leave the ark one after another – except Roco, who does not have a partner with whom to go. Disappointedly, he glances over the water and finds a little vixen afloat, hanging onto a log. He runs into the water to rescue her, and the episode ends with a shot of a great rainbow over the mountain, with Roco and his partner hugging each other, watching the rainbow. This ending readily delivers a moral for children that everyone needs friends and partners in life, and the portrayal of the interaction of Noah’s family and the animals makes a point that humans carry the responsibility of watching after the survival of animals. Another episode from Genesis (11), “Tower of Babel,” poses questions on the opposing values of urban vs. rural environments and market economy vs. self-sustenance in a way that is comprehensible for children. In this episode, Tezuka features a new character, Asaf, a nomad boy living in his family’s tent in the desert. Asaf hears about the construction of a great tower in the city and leaves his family to see it. Upon arriving in the city, Asaf realizes that the city’s prosperity is incomparable to his family’s simple nomadic life, but that the city also has a dark side: the people have been forced into hard labor to build the tower, as they would not otherwise have had the money to buy food. Back home, Asaf had never learned what money was. He joins the laborers, receives his first wage, and purchases some fruit at the market. Living in the city seems fine at first, but as the construction of the tower proceeds (by this point, it is clear to an adult viewer that the tower symbolizes capitalism and money worship⁴), Asaf comes to realize that there is no paradise at the top

 The analogy may have been prompted by Fritz Lang’s famous film, Metropolis (). Tezuka’s first comic was also titled Metropolis (Metoroporisu; ); he borrowed the title from the film, although he had not seen the film when he wrote the comic. See Makela (, ).

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of the tower, as he has been told; there is just a barren mass of cut stone on which the city’s clergymen are trying to build a statue of their material god. As the construction nears completion, a thunderstorm attacks the tower, but the people cannot join forces because God has divided their languages. Asaf escapes, but when he reaches the ground, he finds the city hopelessly defunct. The story ends with the scene of Asaf’s homecoming, showing his joy at the fact that he and his family still speak the same language. In these episodes, Tezuka incorporates the social issues that he has often dealt with in his comics: the harmonious co-existence of humans and animals and the pitfalls of technology and material society. The former was also the central theme of another popular television anime produced by Tezuka, Janguru taitei (1965 – 66), also known as Kimba the White Lion; the latter theme was broached in his very first comic, Metropolis (1949), and later in his lifework, Hinotori (1954– 1986), also known as The Phoenix. ⁵ However, in comparison with The Phoenix, which radically retells ancient Japanese history and “offers a revisionist history that is highly critical of the conventional, officially approved one” (Phillips 2008, 87), Tezuka’s approach to biblical stories is considerably benign. Certainly, in the examples above, Tezuka successfully refashioned the stories incorporating his own insights, but his originality in retelling the Hebrew scripture is hardly perceptible beyond these two episodes, in large part due to his terminal illness and untimely death.

Anime and the Apocalypse Apocalyptic literature is defined by John Collins as a “genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality, which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another, supernatural world” (Collins 1998, 5). Collins also says, “The revelation of a supernatural world and the activity of supernatural beings are essential to the apocalypses. In all there are also a final judgment and a destruction of the wicked” (Collins 1998, 6). The theme of “the end of the world” recurs in the anime genre, with the notable influence of the Christian concept of the apocalypse. That particular notion does not exist in the native Shinto tradition, and with the exception of the medieval mania regarding the “Latter Days of the Law,”⁶ the Buddhist tradition is not particularly concerned with the world’s beginning or end. Historically, when groups of prophetic

 The -volume paperback edition was published in  by Kadokawa Shoten.  The “Latter Days of the Law” was a prevalent theory in th-th century Japan. It claimed that Buddha’s law (dharma) would degenerate  years after the death of Buddha and the world would turn into chaos. In medieval Japan, it was believed that the Latter Days of the Law began in the year  C.E.

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“new religions” attracted attention with a prophecy of heavenly “reconstruction of the world,” they often exposed social injustice and called for a radical change in the social order. A part of the appeal of this non-indigenous theme may be attributed to the fascination with the imagery of a radical, albeit violent, change in human life and society. A puzzling aspect, however, is that, as already mentioned, anime and computer game productions are closely connected, and the theme of a “final war” is a frequent setting for such games; nonetheless, apocalyptic representations in anime tend to rule out victories and closure – there is no final judgment or destruction of the wicked – thus going against both Jewish apocalyptic and the basic purpose in computer games. The three anime that we will discuss in this section deal with a mysterious knowledge crucial for the survival of humanity and represent its mediators, who are blessed (or cursed) with extraordinary, supernatural power. In contrast to biblical apocalyptic literature, in the anime: 1) the stories take place in a post-world-war society (e. g., World War III), in which a malicious legacy of the war poses the final, deadliest threat to the people; and 2) the fighting characters cannot be easily divided between “good” and “evil,” and the exciting battle scenes do not always end with the triumph of the “good.” The setting of Miyazaki’s anime Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is the world after a devastating war known as the “Seven Days of Fire.” The people are fighting against the poisonous Sea of Decay, giant insects called Ohm, and destructive humanoids called Giant Warriors. All three came into being because of the Seven Days of Fire. The heroine, Nausicaä, is a young princess from the Valley of the Wind who has a special ability to communicate with Ohm. When a massive herd of Ohm starts approaching her valley, she exploits her ability to make peace with them, while also trying to convince the aggressive princes of the Tolmekian Empire to give up fighting the Ohm. In the end, Nausicaä sacrifices her own life to stop the revival of the Giant Warriors that would have swept all living beings off the face of the earth. The story echoes the framework of the book of Revelation (Napier 2005, 258 – 60), and its climax, in which Nausicaä is resurrected from death by the Ohms and becomes a blue-robed messiah, alludes to Christian eschatology. However, the story’s ending differs notably from the biblical pattern in that the global environment is not improved. There is no vision of a purified New Jerusalem, and the people must continue to live with the filthy Sea of Decay and the Ohms in a renewed order of co-existence. Ōtomo’s Akira is particularly known for its “visual tour-de-force” (Clements/ McCarthey 2012, 15) with a dazzling view of neon-colored, decadent Tokyo in 2019 and a breakneck bike-chase involving gang members. The film also echoes the memory of the nuclear bombs and the threat of biological warfare.⁷ In the film, Tokyo has just recovered from the devastation caused by World War III, and the story unfolds

 On the imagery of catastrophe in anime and its cultural significance, see Napier (,  – ).

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around the mystery of Akira, an experimental human bio-weapon that was created during the war and got out of the scientists’ hands. The young biker Tetsuo is mysteriously connected to this bio-weapon: he starts developing telekinetic powers without understanding why. The film hints that Akira/Tetsuo could be the messiah of the new world order, but it is also an uncontrollable force that is powerful enough to destroy the whole world. While Akira tries to consume Tetsuo, his friend Kaneda fights to revive the latter, with the help of three mysterious dwarfs (“kids”) who seem to know some important secret about the whole incident. Finally, the battle violates the electro-magnetic balance of the globe, causing a tsunami that crushes Tokyo’s skyscrapers into ruins. Kaneda survives the tsunami with his girlfriend Kei, a guerilla fighter, but Tetsuo is nowhere to be found. The film ends mysteriously, with a voiceover by the dwarfs – “It has already begun” – and the figure of Tetsuo being resurrected, declaring in Akira’s voice, “I am Tetsuo.” The television series Neon Genesis Evangelion became known beyond its circle of teenage anime fans, partly because its ending stirred considerable controversy. The boom of Evangelion engendered a sub-culture term, sekai-kei (literally “world-related”), which refers to, among other things, the plaintive attitude of youth (represented by protagonist Shinji) toward retreating from world-changing events and internalizing the momentousness of the end of the world. The debate over this anime phenomenon in Japanese media included opinions from sociologists and psychologists, who attempted to interpret the meaning of its complex storyline and see through the worldview of the Japanese youth (Maijima 2010).

Fig. 31: Subversion of traditional symbolism? A giant cross rises as the villain robot explodes in Shin seiki evangelion, shito shinsei (1999)

The setting of Evangelion is suburban Tokyo in 2015, where three teenagers – two girls and one boy – are chosen to be the pilots of the giant “Evangelion” robots and to fight against the attack of the “Shito.” (The Japanese word shito usually refers to biblical apostles, but it can also mean messengers. In the English subtitle, it is translated as “angels.”) The series adopted a number of biblical (including apocryphal) terms and symbols and used them suggestively in the story. For example, the name of the first Shito is Adam and the second is called Lilith. In the TV version, a giant cross rises when a Shito is destroyed, although the Shitos are enemies of human beings and are considered an evil force. The incorporation of foreign biblical elements, albeit superficially, added a mysterious, exotic flair to the story and contributed to its popularity. However, the story makes an unexpected turn as it ap-

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proaches its end; the protagonist Shinji, the boy who was chosen to be the foremost Evangelion pilot, runs away from the fight. In a sharp contrast to the previous episodes, which attractively portrayed Shinji’s double life as a high-school student and a world-saving hero, the final episode was devoid of robot fights and focused instead on Shinji’s inner struggle. Curiously, however, the fans’ enraged reactions attracted further attention, and it appears that the series gained additional fans because it left so many “mysteries” unexplained, including the origin of the Shito. Two Evangelion movies were made as a follow-up to the television series: Shin seiki evangelion: air, magokoro o kimini (dir. Hideaki Anno, 1997) and Shin seiki evangelion shito shinsei (dir. Hideaki Anno, 1997) – also known, respectively, as The End of Evangelion and Evangelion: Death and Rebirth. The latter finally brought some kind of closure, although a depressing one, to the series – only Shinji and his female colleague Asuka survive through the end of the world, but as they wake up on the bloody beach, Asuka bitterly rejects him as a partner of new life. Four more remakes or spinoffs (the producer calls them “rebuild” versions) with additional characters and subplots have been or are being produced.⁸

Fig. 32: “The Story of Noah” in Tezuka Osamu no Kyūyakuseisho monogatari (1993)

In examining anime’s re-presentations of the apocalyptic theme, we can observe that, since Tezuka’s time, there has been a continual pattern to integrate into anime the most current concerns about the human condition. These include the fear of natural disasters and another world war, as well as the critical question (especially for the younger generation) of whether to fight against threats or to run away. Indeed, in Evangelion, the protagonist’s mental breakdown and retreat is triggered by the incident in which he had to kill a boy of his age during his mission. In Akira, the socially inherited memory of real disasters – the atomic bomb and the tsunami – plays an important role in the film’s imagery. Tezuka also includes a depiction of flood/tsunami in “The Story of Noah” with a horrifying image of people  The titles of the Evangelion remakes/spin-offs are as follows (all are directed by Hideaki Anno): Evangelion shin gekijoban: jo (JP, , a.k.a. Evangelion .: You Are (Not) Alone); Evangelion shin gekijoban: ha (JP, , a.k.a. Evangelion .: You Can (Not) Advance); Evangelion shin gekijoban: q (JP, , a.k.a. Evangelion .: You Can (Not) Redo). Evangelion ., has not yet been released at the time of publication.

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drowning in water. In children’s Bibles, such a realistic representation of death and catastrophe is rather unusual.⁹ Further, in Nausicaä and Evangelion, women are actively involved in battle. These fighting anime girls are honorable soldiers equipped with physical, mental, and psychic abilities that match their male counterparts. Such a portrayal of women may be positively understood as a sign of the deterioration of the patriarchy in Japanese society. Yet, the phenomenon of fighting girls calls for further study,¹⁰ as what is observed in the Evangelion series may point to a reversal of gender roles that still unfairly separates men and women: more girl-soldiers get hurt in the war, while the boy pilot runs away from the battle and other adult men continue to take orders from a supercomputer sheltered in a high-tech fortress.

Conclusion American Bible animations such as The Prince of Egypt (dir. Brenda Chapman et al., 1998) are known to sugarcoat gruesome aspects of the Bible and sanitize their stories for children. However, this outlook on biblical animation needs to be rethought when considering the relationship between the Bible and anime. Unlike the “animated family fare” (Walsh 2009, 226) that is common in the U.S. and elsewhere, the primary audience for anime consists not of small children, but teenagers and young adults. Moreover, in a country where barely one percent of the population is Christian, only a few among the audience have actually read the Bible in earnest. In Japan, the reception of the Bible occurs in a vacuum of biblical tradition. Thus, anime’s treatment of biblical symbols, such as the use of the cross in Evangelion series, often appears superficial or even disrespectful of the tradition. However, materials from the Bible continue to provide anime producers rich resource for their creative exploration as they seek to express their most current internal or social concerns. Much remains to be done in terms of analyzing ways in which anime borrows biblical paradigms and absorbs or refuses biblical symbols, sometimes mixing them with materials of other religious traditions.

Works Cited Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda. 2014. “The Bible and Its Cinematic Adaptations: A Consideration of Filmic Exegesis.” The Journal of the Bible and Its Reception 1.1: 129 – 60. Clements, Jonathan, and Helen McCarthy, eds. 2012. The Anime Encyclopedia [2006]. Rev. and exp. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press. Collins, John J. 1998. The Apocalyptic Imagination [1984]. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans.

 Cf. Emma England’s () discussion of the flood story in children’s books.  Japanese psychiatrist Saitō Tamaki () calls this the production of phallic girls.

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England, Emma. 2012. “The Water’s Round My Shoulders and I’m—GLUG! GLUG! GLUG!: God’s Destruction of Humanity in the Flood Story for Children.” In Text, Image, & Otherness in Children’s Bibles. Eds. Caroline Vander Stichele and Hugh S. Pyper. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Pp. 213 – 40. Kobayashi, Junji. 1999. “Seisho Monogatari.” In Mori no Densetsu. Ed. Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka Osamu Ekonte Taizen Series 7. Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsha. Pp. 715 – 16. LaMarre, Thomas. 2009. The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Maijima, Ken. 2010. Sekai-kei to wa Nanika. Tokyo: Softbank Creative. Makela, Lee. 2008. “From Metropolis to Metoroporisu.” In Japanese Visual Culture: Explorations in the World of Managa and Anime. Ed. Mark W. MacWilliams. New York: M. E. Sharpe. Pp. 91 – 113. Matsutani, Takayuki. 1994. “Seisho terebi shirizu-ka ni atatte.” In Tenchi Sōzō. Ed. Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka Osamu no Kyūyakuseisho Monogatari Series 1. Tokyo: Shūeisha. Pp. 284 – 86. Napier, Susan J. 2005. Anime: from Akira to Howl’s Moving Caster. Updated Edition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Phillips, Susanne. 2008. “Characters, Themes, and Narrative Patterns in the Manga of Osamu Tezuka.” In Japanese Visual Culture: Explorations in the World of Manga and Anime. Ed. Mark W. MacWilliams. New York: M. E. Sharpe. Pp. 68 – 90. Saitō, Tamaki. 2000. Sentō Bishōjo no Seishin Bunseki. Tokyo: Ota Shuppan. Tezuka, Osamu. 1992. Hinotori. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten. Thomas, Jolyon Baraka. 2012. Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. —. 2009. “Religion in Japanese Film: Focus on Anime.” In The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film. Ed. John Lyden. New York: Routledge. Pp. 194 – 213. Tsugata, Nobuyuki. 2004. Nihon Animeshon no Chikara. Tokyo: NTT Publications. Walsh, Richard. 2009. “Bible Movies.” In The Continuum Companion to Religion and Film. Ed. William Blizek. New York: Continuum. Pp. 222 – 30.

Films Cited Akira (dir. Katsuhiro Ōtomo, 1988, TMS Entertainment, JP). Evangelion shin gekijoban: ha [a.k.a. Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance] (dir. Hideaki Anno, 2009, Gainax, JP). Evangelion shin gekijoban: jo [a.k.a. Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone] (dir. Hideaki Anno, 2007, Gainax, JP). Evangelion shin gekijoban: q [a.k.a. Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo] (dir. Hideaki Anno, 2012, Gainax, JP). Janguru taitei [a.k.a. Kimba the White Lion; TV series] (dir. Eiichi Yamamoto, et al., 1965 – 67, Mushi Productions, JP). Kaze no tani no Naushika [a.k.a. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind] (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 1984, Hakuhodo, JP). Metropolis (dir. Fritz Lang, 1927, Universum Film, DE). The Prince of Egypt (dir. Steve Hickner, Simon Wells, Brenda Chapman, 1998, DreamWorks, US). Shin seiki evangerion [a.k.a. Neon Genesis Evangelion] (dir. Hideaki Anno, 1995 – 96, Gainax, JP). Shin seiki evangelion: air, magokoro o kimini [a.k.a. The End of Evangelion] (dir. Hideaki Anno, 1997, Gainax, JP).

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Shin seiki evangelion shito shinsei [a.k.a. Evangelion: Death & Rebirth] (dir. Hideaki Anno, 1997, Gainax, JP). Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (dir. William Cottrell, et al., 1937, Walt Disney, US). Tetsuwan Atom [“Mighty Atom”; a.k.a. Astro Boy; TV series] (dir. Osamu Tezuka, et al., 1963 – 66, Mushi Productions, JP). Tezuka Osamu no Kyūyakuseisho monogatari [a.k.a. In The Beginning; TV series] (dir. Osamu Dezaki, 1993, Tezuka Productions and Radiotelevisione Italiana, JP).

III Biblical Themes and Genres

Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch

18 God at the Movies Modern cultures have cinematically imagined the biblical God in a variety of ways through diverse film genres. God naturally factors into screen adaptations of biblical stories, where the divine presence is most typically signaled indirectly by iconic images, miraculous phenomena, natural beauty, and the incarnation of the cinematic Jesus. Few biblical adaptations are willing to risk public censure and viewer backlash by displaying the deity directly onscreen in corporeal form, although this practice was not unknown in the early days of cinema and still occasionally finds expression in less reverential productions. The reception of biblical ideas about God is also evident in a number of movies that are not based explicitly upon scripture, but nonetheless represent the deity in both direct and indirect ways. A smaller number of movies feature characters that do not claim to be the biblical God, but are in some ways god-like (omnipotent, omniscient, creator of life, lawgiver, judge). In this way filmmakers explore specific aspects of divinity from a ‘safe’ metaphorical distance. Finally, many films also contain theological discourse, in which film characters or documentarians discuss popular beliefs or questions pertaining to God. In this chapter, I will consider representative films from each of these categories in turn, paying attention to how filmmakers have engaged with biblical source material. All of these movies inevitably borrow biblical tropes as they pose for the modern world many of the same questions raised within and by canonical texts: How could a benevolent deity allow so much human evil and undeserved suffering?¹ Does God judge and punish sin? Are misfortunes a sign of divine displeasure or indifference? Do humans determine their own destinies or is there an unseen master plan? Many movies also add more recent questions that arise when ancient texts encounter the (post)modern world: How might the biblical God relate to other world religions and their deities? Can the concept of a divine creator be reconciled with a modern scientific worldview? As many have noted, depictions of God in scripture include not only those of a benevolent deity who hears the cries of the oppressed and is merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, but also many darker images. There is a not insignificant number of passages in both testaments that portray the deity as violent, vindictive, and even abusive.² Filmmakers must decide whether to ignore or downplay

 See also in Part I, Zwick’s discussion of theodicy (Pp.  – ) and Rindge’s discussion of lament in film (Pp.  – ).  There has been a relative explosion of academic and popular literature on this topic over the last two decades. See, for example, the discussions of divine violence in Crossan (), Römer (), Sparks (), Copan () Lamb (), Baker (), Seibert (), Matthews/Gibson (), Penchansky/Redditt (), Penchansky (), Desjardins (), and Miles ().

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such passages or deal directly with the theological issues that they raise. As one of the most pervasive forms of storytelling in the (post)modern world, movies become an important site of popular theology where biblical depictions of God might be interrogated, and perhaps our understanding of them modified, through the cinematic reception of these texts.

Direct Adaptations of the Bible Understood as films of various genres that translate to screen biblical characters within biblical storylines, ‘direct adaptations’ employ a variety of representational strategies to depict God. Most common among these titles are epic films and biopics – genres with roots in early silent cinema, which peaked in popularity in the midtwentieth century, and which have experienced a notable resurgence in the early twenty-first century. Biblical stories have also been adapted more or less directly to screen by comedy and satire films that also have to grapple with the question of how God should be portrayed. Chief among the concerns of biblical adaptations is communicating the relationship between (visible) biblical heroes and the (often invisible) deity whose directives they claim to be following. In doing so, many of these films – in particular, those that adopt an unquestioningly reverential approach to their subject matter – ignore or attempt to downplay the more difficult theological issues raised by their biblical source material. What kind of deity would demand the sacrifice of one’s child, exact excessively harsh punishments for relatively minor sins, and either command or personally carry out wholesale human slaughter? Other films intentionally pursue and interrogate these very questions. While especially evident in more recent biblical epics by self-described atheist filmmakers, such as Darren Aronofsky (Noah, 2014) and Ridley Scott (Exodus: Gods and Kings, 2015), this interrogative approach to biblical adaptation has existed alongside reverential adaptations for almost as long as the film medium has supported narrative storytelling.

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Adaptations During the early, experimental years of cinema, the role of God was occasionally played onscreen by an old man sporting a long white beard and wearing pristine white robes – the Ancient of Days (Dan. 7:9 – 10). In Pathé’s Le vie de Moïse (1905), for example, Moses receives stone tablets directly from a corporeal, bearded deity, distinguishable from the surrounding angels only by the presence of a halo and the absence of wings (Shepherd 2013, 55). Since the days of silent cinema, God has rarely been pictured in bodily form in biblical epics. Most movies based on the text of Hebrew scripture favor non-corporeal representations of the deity signified by picturesque rays of sunlight breaking through clouds,

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raging storms or distant thunder, special effects,³ disembodied voices, and (most importantly) character reactions to these phenomena. A preferred manner of signifying theophany in epic films is by focusing on the uplifted, radiant face of the human recipient as she/he attends to the divine voice, which may or may not be audible to movie-going audiences. Where cinematography and special effects end, it is up to actors to make the audience believe that God has been made manifest onscreen. However, when the Bible anthropomorphizes God, film sometimes follows. For example, Abraham’s meal with three angelic visitors (Gen. 18) is depicted naturalistically in John Huston’s The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966). That one (or possibly all) of these angels is actually God is indicated by their unnaturally slow and deliberate movements, the ghostly way that they fade into and out of frame, and the fact that all three of them are played by Peter O’Toole. The pleas of Abraham (George C. Scott) for “the judge of all the earth” to “do what is right” followed by the violent destruction of Sodom raise questions of theodicy and violent divine retribution – topics that Huston neatly sidesteps (at least in this scene). The film’s use of King James dialogue and its focus on visual spectacle in Sodom momentarily distract viewers from any weightier theological questions potentially raised by the text.

Fig. 33: Peter O’Toole as God/angel in The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966)

In contrast, these questions of theodicy and divine violence are foregrounded during this sequence by the intentionally reverential television miniseries The Bible (prod. Mark Burnett/Roma Downey, 2013). The Bible indicates the otherness of Abraham’s visitors via sound effects and character reactions. Here, however, one of the three angels is clearly singled out as God. Unlike the other two, who defer to him, his face remains hidden; he is hooded, turns his back to the camera, and stands in shadow. He also seems to have the supernatural ability to occupy two spaces at once: outside the tent with Abraham (Gary Oliver) and inside with Sarah (Josephine Butler). Al-

 One often-overlooked example is the surreal representation of Abraham’s theophanic vision in Genesis  offered by John Huston’s The Bible: In the Beginning… (). Rather than depict this God-human covenant ceremony naturalistically onscreen, Huston communicates the deity’s presence through stark lightning, jarring musical cues, tilted camera angles, and rapid cutaways to a solar eclipse. The director himself provides the disembodied voice of God, while Abraham (George C. Scott) falls into a trancelike state for over three movie minutes (an eternity on film).

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though uncredited in this role, the Portuguese actor Diogo Morgado, who portrays Jesus in later episodes, also plays the role of this God/angel, suggesting a virtual equivalence between Jesus and God that goes beyond traditional Trinitarian theology.⁴ It is this God/angel who stays behind to converse with Abraham as the other two angels proceed along their way. Dramatic music creates suspense while the miniseries cuts between Abraham’s theophany and events in Sodom. Evident in this sequence are several (largely unsuccessful) attempts to soften the hard edges of the biblical story. In a departure from Genesis, God/angel reveals that he has engineered a test to determine if there are any righteous people in the city. Accordingly, the angels in Sodom pretend to be in distress and are ‘rescued’ by Lot. When Abraham pleas on behalf of fifty, then thirty, then twenty righteous men, God/angel reassures the patriarch that the whole city would be spared for the sake of only ten righteous and reminds Abraham that he must “have faith” (a recurring theme in this series) as he watches the distant city’s fiery destruction. However, the gratuitous violence of the angels gleefully hacking apart the people of Sodom with swords stands strangely at odds with these reassuring words. Here and elsewhere in The Bible, graphic violence is perpetrated in God’s name at God’s behest using the conventions of the action movie genre. While intended to be a reverential adaptation of the Bible that would provoke religious awakening among viewers (Blacktree 2013), the miniseries inadvertently highlights many of the Bible’s darker theological themes in its efforts to capture the attention of modern-day film audiences. Perhaps the most theologically troubling moment in the Abraham story is God’s command that the patriarch sacrifice his long-awaited son Isaac (Gen. 22).⁵ Filmmakers exploit the conflict inherent in this text between Abraham’s love for his child and his desire to obey God, but most films pass quickly through the theological horror that the command elicits to reassure audiences that it is, after all, only a test. God’s command is usually conveyed by a disembodied whisper, followed by a predictable but brief protest from the patriarch. “Have I not shown you enough faith?” he demands in The Bible. The Abraham installment of The Bible Collection series (Abraham, dir. Joseph Sargent, 1993) prefaces the akedah with a scene in which the patriarch (Richard Harris) dotes excessively upon the child of his old age. When he hears God’s whispered command the old man emits an anguished “No!” Nonetheless, just as in the biblical text, most of these cinematic Abrahams quickly steel their resolve and obey God, only to be stopped at the last moment from plunging in the knife. Huston, however, extends the patriarch’s obligatory protest into a cinematic midrash on the biblical text. Abraham questions God (in George C. Scott’s gravelly

 Morgado also provides the disembodied voice of God during other theophanies in the miniseries. Overall, The Bible provides a distinctly christological interpretation of Hebrew scripture.  See Zanger’s discussion of this biblical trope within Israeli cinema in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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voice): “Wouldst thou I do even as the Canaanites, who lay their firstborn on fires before idols? Art thou truly the Lord my God? […] Thou wilt not…ask this of me!” He does reluctantly prepare for the journey, and the film inserts a touching leave-taking between Sarah and Isaac. But the journey to Moriah unexpectedly takes father and son through the ruins of Sodom – a visual reminder of God’s violent wrath and a creative juxtaposition of two separate episodes from the Abraham cycle. Father tells son the story of Sodom’s destruction as the latter’s gaze is drawn to charred human bones littering the ground. Evoking images that film audiences would associate with the Holocaust, Abraham elaborates: “And lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. The Lord, our God, must be obeyed.” Isaac questions whether God also killed the children of Sodom: “Were they also wicked?” A serpent slithers from the eye socket of a small skull, and, rather than answer, a distraught Abraham turns and flees. As he stumbles through the ruins of Sodom alone, the patriarch voices with great feeling – like a dramatic Shakespearean soliloquy – a compilation of biblical verses about God, beginning with the contextually appropriate echo, “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen. 18:25), and continuing with phrases drawn non-sequentially from Isaiah 34 and 40: Call the nobles to the kingdom! [Isa. 34:12] And the mighty – All the princes are nothing! The thorns have come up in the palace. [Isa. 34:13] From generation to generation it will lie – waste! [Isa. 34:10] He shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion! [Isa. 34:11] Has it not been told from the beginning: [Isa. 40:21] God is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, that stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent wherein to dwell [Isa. 40:22] that bringeth the princes to nothing? [Isa. 40:23] He shall blow upon them, and they shall wither! And the whirlwind [yelling and echoing] shall take them away [whispering] as stubble. [Isa. 40:24]

By the time the frantic Isaac finally locates his father, Abraham has found his resolve. Recalling God’s earlier promises and the call to be blameless (Gen. 17:1), he concludes: “In all things, we must obey him.” Although the patriarch is now resolute, viewers are nonetheless drawn into Isaac’s dawning realization that he is to be the sacrifice as Abraham binds him, lays him atop a pile of brush, and sets it on fire. Tearfully, the boy asks: “Is there nothing He may not ask of thee?” “Nothing,” replies the disturbingly stoic patriarch. The expected last-minute reprieve, followed immediately by the film’s triumphant conclusion, cannot quite override a sensitive viewer’s theological unease.

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In the biblical tradition, only Moses and David rival Abraham’s close personal relationship with God. Several religious melodramas tracing the life of King David have attempted to represent his relationship to the divine. Most notable among them is Henry King’s David and Bathsheba (1951), which focuses on an older, somewhat cynical monarch who questions his faith as well as his own worthiness to be king. Tired of political scheming and treachery, David (Gregory Peck) seeks comfort in the arms of Bathsheba (Susan Hayward) and, after she becomes pregnant, has her husband killed. When their affair is exposed, Nathan and the people demand that Bathsheba be stoned to death, according to the requirements of the law. Produced under the Hays Code, the film could not allow adultery to go unpunished, but its sympathies are clearly with the star-crossed lovers nonetheless.⁶ This film contrasts two images of the deity – the merciful God, who was the focus of David’s boyhood devotion, and the God of Nathan, who ruthlessly demands justice for violations of the law. The film also rearranges biblical chronology so that David’s affair (2 Sam. 11) overlaps with the transport of the ark to Jerusalem (2 Sam. 6). As the ark approaches the city, two events occur that illustrate the merciless God of Nathan: a nameless woman is stoned for adultery at the city gate, and Uzzah is struck dead for balancing the unsteady ark (2 Sam. 6:7). The first event evokes the story of the adulterous woman from John 8:1– 11, but no savior comes to her aid; her cries for mercy are ignored. Nathan interprets Uzzah’s death, which clearly troubles David (“A God who punishes the guiltless!”), as a sign that the ark cannot yet enter Jerusalem until God’s wrath against Israel is appeased. David ultimately saves Bathsheba, and perhaps himself, by directly confronting God (represented by the ark in the tabernacle). His selfless prayer is answered when touching the ark brings not death, but the revival of David’s faith and an end to a drought that has plagued Israel. Nathan’s words end the film: “No man can hope to know the real nature of God, but he has given us a glimpse of his face.” Bruce Beresford’s much-maligned King David (1985) uses the story of Jacob wrestling with an angel (Gen. 32:22– 32) as a metaphor for David’s (Richard Gere) relationship with God. David wants to see God face-to-face as Jacob did (cf. Ps. 27:7– 9), and this desire often leads him to overstep appropriate divine-human boundaries in the eyes of other characters. Gere’s David also objects to Nathan’s strict interpretation of God’s laws, particularly the execution of women and children under the ban of holy war; he prefers a religion of the heart – once again setting up a simplistic Protestant dichotomy between works of the law and personal faith. Upon his deathbed, David advises Solomon to “be guided by the instincts of your own heart, no matter what the prophets tell you. It is through the heart alone God speaks to men.” Both of these

 Uriah is portrayed as an unfeeling, neglectful spouse who has spent only a few days with Bathsheba during the entirety of their brief marriage because of his desire for military glory. Likewise, David is flanked by a scheming Absalom and a shrewish Michal.

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David films reject biblical texts that associate God with harsh retribution as inadequate representations of the deity’s real character. According to biblical tradition it is Moses, not David, who sees God face-to-face (Exod. 33:17– 23). The spectacle of Moses’ call appealed to filmmakers from the earliest days of cinema, although the quality of special effects used to depict the burning bush theophany has varied widely. Much of this scene’s potential power rests on the reactions of fear and awe displayed by the actor portraying Moses himself. This actor also frequently provides the (sonically modified) disembodied voice of God,⁷ possibly gesturing toward the inner subjectivity of a theophanic experience. The giving of the law on Mount Sinai offers filmmakers another opportunity to indulge in special effects. In DeMille’s 1923 The Ten Commandments, an invisible God emblazons the commands across the night sky in sparkly lights, and then, after Moses has chiseled them into the cliff-face, uses a flash of lightning to carve out two stone tablets.⁸ DeMille’s identically titled 1956 film takes a similar approach with more elaborate special effects; God’s own fiery finger inscribes the commands. By contrast, in The Bible Collection’s more naturalistic and lower-budget Moses (dir. Roger Young, 1995), the purified Israelites approach the mountain en masse to hear God’s voice, but shrink in terror at the sound of trumpets and a violent windstorm. In response, Moses (Ben Kingsley) begins to decipher God’s otherwise unintelligible words by reciting the commandments and, gaining courage, the Israelites gradually rise to their feet and join their voices to his. All Moses films must decide how to depict theologically troubling aspects of the exodus/wilderness story such as God’s plaguing of Egypt, including the death of firstborn Egyptian children, as well as instances of divine retribution against rebellious Israelites. Both of DeMille’s movies downplay divine violence by suggesting that God’s wrath is deserved by Pharaoh’s bratty son and the calf-worshipping Israelites. Violence is also downplayed in DreamWork’s animated The Prince of Egypt (dir. Brenda Chapman, et al., 1998), where God warns Moses in advance that it will be necessary to “stretch out my hand and smite Egypt with all my wonders” [emphasis added]. Plagues one to nine are passed over in a humorous musical montage; and it is Rameses’ decision to kill the Israelite firstborn (echoing his father’s earlier massacre of Hebrew male children, Exod. 1:15 – 22) that determines the substance of the tenth plague, redefining it as a pre-emptive strike to protect the Israelites. DeMille’s 1956 film used the same ploy to diffuse the impression of divine violence.

 There are conflicting reports regarding who provided the voice of God for Cecil B. DeMille’s  The Ten Commandments. Charlton Heston claimed credit and does seem to be the voice actor used in the call scene (Hoffman , ). Burt Lancaster voiced God in the  miniseries Moses the Lawgiver (dir. Gianfranco De Bosio), as did Val Kilmer in DreamWorks’s animated movie The Prince of Egypt (dir. Brenda Chapman, et al., ).  Michael Curtiz would emulate this iconic image in the part-talkie Noah’s Ark (), where God communicates with Noah in a fiery scrawl across stone tablets on a mountaintop as thunder booms in the heavens.

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Much more moral ambiguity is evident in Moses the Lawgiver (dir. Gianfranco de Bosio, 1974). This British telefilm lingers over the plagues, emphasizing the suffering of the Egyptians. Loathe to kill his cousin Moses (Burt Lancaster), Pharaoh attempts to persuade him that slavery is a normal part of society that the Israelites themselves would likely adopt should they gain their freedom (as they later do, despite Moses’ emphatic denials). Anticipating the tenth plague, Pharaoh stands vigil with priests and servants over the bed of his infant son, lest the “God of Destruction,” as he calls the Israelite deity, attempts to harm the child. The grief of both parents is poignantly intense when the infant dies. As Moses points out in the film’s repeated refrain, “Freedom always has its price.” This idea is also evident in later scenes where Israelites are executed for violating laws of the covenant, first for the serious sin of worshipping the golden calf and then for what seems the lesser sin of gathering palm fronds on the Sabbath. The film does not flinch away from showing these executions in grisly detail – a man being forced to drink molten gold, another being flung from a cliff, and several graphic stonings. Again and again viewers are subjected to images of seemingly gratuitous violence inflicted by God or in God’s name. Wearied by the burden of enforcing these laws, even Moses eventually casts the deity in the role of Pharaoh and begs God to “[l]et thy servant go.” God refuses this plea, vowing, “I will never let you go,” and bars Moses from entry into the land of promise apparently as a punishment for his protest. Before his death, an elderly Moses contemplates whether his real sin might have been loving the people too little, and he laments that he had always loved the law more than he loved Israel. Likewise, in Roger Young’s Moses, when the titular character finds the Israelites worshipping the golden calf, he demands that the remaining faithful “do God’s work” by purifying Israel and laying the sinners to waste. He watches tearfully as the Levites massacre their errant kinsmen. Both of these films recognize and capitalize on the fact that biblical depictions of God’s wrath often clash with modern-day morality. Their graphic scenes bring this fact forcibly to viewers’ attention. This recognition of the biblical God’s dark side is taken further in Ridley Scott’s recent epic, Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), which dares to offer a nontraditional, corporeal portrayal of the deity in the form of an eleven-year-old boy called Malak (Isaac Andrews). Scott attempted to preserve ambiguity, and perhaps to lessen religious backlash against his film, by insisting in press interviews that this character was an angelic messenger rather than God (Merritt 2014). Nonetheless, Malak remains the face of God in this film – speaking for the Israelite deity in the first person, claiming responsibility for choosing Moses (Christian Bale), inflicting the plagues, and giving the law. Other than a single line in which Moses says that he is “tired of talking with a messenger,” nothing else in this picture would indicate that he is anything other than God. The name Malak (which means “messenger”) appears only in the credits and is never spoken in the film. In fact, when Moses asks the boy’s name, he twice responds “I am” (Exod. 3:13 – 14).

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The menace of this character is never far from the surface from the moment that Malak first gets Moses’ attention with a rockslide and allows him to nearly drown in the resulting slurry. Their first encounter leaves Moses gravely injured. While tending his wounds, Zipporah raises the possibility that the boy was only in his head – a possibility that Moses vehemently rejects, although it arises again later in the film when a spying Joshua sees what appears to be Moses talking to himself. If not for the otherwise unexplained supernatural elements of the film, it would be simple to understand Malak as a manifestation of Moses’ guilty conscience as he remembers his enslaved people. “I think you should go see what’s happening to your people now,” Malak suggests. “You won’t be at peace until you do. Or are they not people in your opinion?” As Malak continues to haunt Moses, the film repeatedly makes use of horror movie motifs. Children are, after all, a prevalent feature in horror films (Lennard 2014); and Malak’s sudden, unexpected appearances – accompanied by flashes of lightning, ominous music, or a rapid reverse dolly of the camera – suggest that a volatile supernatural force is stalking Moses. Later that force turns its fury against the Egyptians. When Moses’ attempts to fight a war of attrition do not produce immediate results,⁹ Malak takes over and the plagues begin. As in Moses the Lawgiver, emphasis is placed on the inordinate suffering of the Egyptians under the plagues.¹⁰ Most interesting are the numerous exchanges between Moses and Malak as the former laments the suffering of those he once counted as his people. Moses questions the deity’s sudden impatience after four hundred years of slavery, while Malak reminds Moses that he too is culpable for sitting by and watching the Israelites suffer without intervening. As theodicies go, this one is not very convincing. As Moses says, “I was impressed at first. Not anymore. This is affecting everyone. So, who are you punishing?” Malak seems perhaps less interested in liberating the Israelites than in bringing Egypt to its knees. He rants angrily, “These pharaohs who imagine they’re living gods, they’re nothing more than flesh and blood. I want to see them on their knees, begging for it to stop!” Overall, this film represents the full horror of divine violence along with the filmmakers’ awful suspicion that it might not be balanced by divine wisdom and mercy. The film makes sense of the

 A deleted scene shows Moses leading an attempt to kidnap Pharaoh, which would have moved his efforts beyond a war of attrition had it been included in the released film. In this scene, an eagle miraculously saves Moses when Pharaoh tosses a poisonous viper in his direction. Moses attributes this miracle to Malak and thanks the boy for saving him.  In fact, the film seems more in sympathy with the Egyptians than the Israelite slaves. Malak frequently mentions the Hebrews’ four hundred years of subjugation, but relatively little Israelite suffering is shown onscreen in comparison with other exodus films. One deleted scene does show Egyptian overseers burning the bodies of Israelite slaves and telling Moses that about a hundred die per day. The inclusion of this scene might have counterbalanced the film’s apparent pro-Egyptian slant. Its deletion removes the visual justification for Malak’s wrath.

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darker side of scripture by imagining a God with the temperament of an eleven-yearold child possessing unlimited powers. Moses and Malak last speak in a cave on Mount Sinai, where the former transcribes the Ten Commandments onto tablets as the latter makes tea. Malak notes fondly that, although Moses has not always agreed with him, they are nonetheless still on speaking terms. They agree on the importance of having a written law that will endure unchanging, as opposed to a human leader who might falter. Future communications from God, it is implied, will take place through a presumably immutable and authoritative written text.¹¹ When an aged Moses last sees Malak walking with the Israelites through the wilderness, no words are exchanged between the two. God is still present within the covenant community but accessible only in written form via those authorized to interpret the commandments – a synecdoche for holy writ. In stark contrast to the scandal of Scott’s embodied deity, Darren Aronofsky’s Noah (2014) received criticism in some religious circles for portraying God too obliquely. Rather than using the standard disembodied-voice-from-heaven technique, Aronofsky represents Noah’s theophanies as vivid dreams and hallucinogenic visions that make God’s will a matter of interpretation. By making ‘the Creator’ invisible, Aronofsky renders visible what Scott’s film did not – that those who claim to speak for God, whether through direct revelation or the interpretation of a sacred text, speak out of their own subjective experiences. Unlike Ridley Scott’s Moses who repeatedly questions and argues with Malak, Aronofsky’s Noah (Russell Crowe) is depicted as a religious zealot who obeys God’s will (as he perceives it) without question – even when that leads him to participate in global genocide, terrorize his own family, or contemplate the murder of his granddaughters. As they listen to the screams of people drowning outside the ark, Noah justifies his actions by telling a story passed down patrilineally (cf. Gen. 1– 4). This story – richly illustrated by a CGI creation/garden sequence, which includes a thematic series of images (serpent, fruit, bludgeoning) repeated several times throughout the film – blames humanity for choosing to “follow the temptation of darkness” rather than “hold on to the blessing of light.” Because humans have committed murder and corrupted the world, the Creator has rendered judgment: humanity must end with the flood and the dying out of Noah’s line. The film’s female characters offer an alternative interpretation of the Creator’s will. Noah’s wife, Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), rejects the suggestion that the end of humanity is a just penalty for their sins, and she pleads with Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins) to provide a future for her sons. Although he insists that Noah alone has been authorized to interpret God’s will, Methuselah does make it possible for the barren Ila (Noah and Naameh’s adopted daughter) to conceive a child by Shem.

 This, of course, overlooks the process of textual transmission and the ever-changing character of a transmitted and received text as well as the politics of interpretation.

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But when Noah learns of Ila’s pregnancy he is filled with despair and, for the first time, hesitates to follow what he perceives as God’s will. Making his way quickly to the rain-drenched deck of the ark, he shouts into the heavens, “Please! I cannot do this! Tell me I don’t need to do this! […] Have I not done everything that you asked of me? Is that not enough? Why do you not answer me? Why?” Then, falling to his knees, Noah steels his resolve and declares, “I will not fail you. It shall be done.” God remains stubbornly silent, but at that moment the rain suddenly stops causing the whole family to emerge onto deck. Again alternative explanations of God’s will are attached to this ‘sign’. Ila offers, “The rains have stopped. The Creator smiles on our child.” But Noah, the authorized interpreter, overrides her theology. He announces that he will allow a male child to die a natural death but will kill a female child at birth. Noah’s belief that God has ordered him to slaughter his granddaughters and his momentary protest against this ‘command’ call to mind cinematic versions of the akedah (Gen. 25). These echoes become stronger when, after Ila gives birth to twin girls, he holds a knife suspended in the air above the sleeping infants. But no divine voice or messenger halts the sacrifice; instead, Noah chooses to disobey God. He kisses his granddaughters, drops the knife, and says to the heavens, “I cannot do this.” As a he climbs back down into the bowels of the ark, feeling himself a failure, the dejected Noah fails to notice a dove flying overhead clutching a leafy branch. Could this have been a sign of divine approval had Noah been paying attention? The film gives Ila’s theology the last word, as she counsels her shattered, postdiluvian father-in-law. She suggests that in sparing her daughters, Noah had decided that humanity was worth saving after all. The Creator gave Noah a choice and, because he chose mercy, humanity has now been given a second chance to “do better this time.” The film ends on a note of reconciliation and a new beginning. However, like the biblical text, it makes no attempt to reconcile the deity who drowned most of humanity with the God of rainbows who endorses new beginnings, leaving viewers to wrestle with this unsettling ambiguity.¹²

Jesus Films¹³ In the final scene of La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (dir. Ferdinand Zecca/Lucien Nonguet, 1902– 05; 1907), a cardboard cut-out of Jesus ‘ascends’ into  Aronofsky and his co-scriptwriter, Ari Handel, are playing on the Jewish interpretive tradition of questioning the righteousness of a Noah who does not attempt to intercede for humanity. This interpretive tradition assumes that the Creator was testing Noah or that God’s wrath might have been averted by human intercession (cf. e. g., Gen. ; Exod. : – ; Num. :; Deut. : – ). Such an interpretation of the film warrants greater scrutiny. See also the discussion of this film by Runions in Part II (Pp.  - ).  Because Jesus films have received more scholarly attention than any other area of the Bible’s cinematic reception, my comments on this genre will be brief. For further discussion of the Jesus film

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the clouds to be replaced by a superimposed view into the heavenly court. The disciples standing below are afforded a glimpse into heaven where the Son has returned to the Father and both are surrounded by angels. Jesus assumes a second throne beside that of God – who is sporting a full white beard and glowing white robes. As the film ends, the two lean closer to one another in intimate conversation.

Fig. 34: A heavenly vision of God and Jesus in La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (1902 – 05; 1907)

Such corporeal depictions of God in a Jesus film are atypical. Instead this genre of biblical adaptation tends to focus on the deity in one of two ways, reflecting the classic christological doctrine that Father and Son are simultaneously one God and two persons. Jesus films emphasize in a variety of ways the Son’s own divinity as God incarnate, but they also presuppose a relationship between the visible Jesus and his invisible Father. Especially important in regard to the incarnation are annunciation and birth sequences, which provide opportunities to emphasize Jesus’ divine origin through Mary’s virginity, miraculous signs, and both human and angelic witnesses (Reinhartz 2007, 97– 122). Literal, onscreen representations of Jesus’ miracles can also hint at his divinity (e.g, The Gospel of John, dir. Philip Saville, 2003), as opposed to films that convey this information through miracle reports (e. g., King of Kings, dir. Nicolas Ray, 1961) or treat Jesus’ supernatural abilities with skepticism (e. g., Jésus de Montréal, dir. Denys Arcand, 1989). As mentioned above, The Bible miniseries suggests a near-equivalence between Jesus and God by casting the same actor in both roles. To a lesser extent, films that rely heavily on John’s gospel also evince a high Christology (e. g., The Greatest Story Ever Told, dir. George Stevens, 1965). Most Jesus films also contain scenes that represent the Father-Son relationship, such as when Jesus engages in the biblical tradition of lament – crying out to God for relief or protesting divine abandonment – in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross. In the musical Jesus Christ Superstar (dir. Norman Jewison, 1973), Jesus (Ted Neeley) climbs over rocks while singing a song of protest to God demanding to

genre, see Tatum’s chapter in Part II (Pp.  – ) along with Baugh’s addendum to that chapter (Pp.  – ).

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know why his death is necessary. The song ends with Jesus surrendering angrily to the divine will (“Take me now before I change my mind!”). In contrast, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) has Jesus (James Caveizel) praying like a psalmist: “Shelter me, O Lord. I trust in You. In You I take refuge.” This film transforms the Gethsemane scene into a second temptation narrative in which Satan attempts to dissuade Jesus from accepting his divine mission. The scene ends triumphantly when Jesus, the second Adam, resists temptation and stomps upon the head of Satan’s serpent (cf. Gen. 3:15). Gibson’s film, more than any other, represents the crucifixion as a bloody sacrifice required by God in payment for the sins of humanity. The Passion simply assumes the logic of blood atonement theology without attempting to deal in any way with the theological violence inherent in this model.¹⁴ God’s judgment is softened only by a single special effect. As Jesus dies on the cross, the camera pans to an aerial view, as though God is looking down from heaven, and a large teardrop falls upon the ground. Gibson seems to be implying divine grief at the death of Jesus – a counterpoint to the fury of Satan who screams within a deep pit. Finally, the Jesus-God relationship is a primary focus of The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988), based on the 1953 Greek novel by Nikos Kazantzakis. Scorsese’s film presents a Jesus (Willem Dafoe) who is psychologically tormented by God to the point of physical pain that causes him to writhe upon the ground in agony. In voiceover he explains, “God loves me, I know he loves me. I want him to stop, I can’t take the pain. The voices and the pain. I want him to hate me. I fight him and make crosses [for the Romans] so he’ll hate me. I want him to find somebody else. I want to crucify every one of his messiahs.” However, by film’s end, after overcoming an infamous (and extra-biblical) last temptation, Jesus embraces his messianic destiny and addresses God like the prodigal son (cf. Luke 15:11– 32): “Father, will you listen to me? Are you still there? Will you listen to a selfish, unfaithful son? […] Father, take me back! Make a feast. Welcome me home. I want to be your son!” The film ends with Jesus dying on the cross with a smile. Both Gibson’s Passion and Scorsese’s Temptation presuppose a God determined to see Jesus sacrificed; the difference lies only in the Son’s willingness to accept the sacrificial role. Reverential adaptations emphasize Jesus’ divinity and posit his unwavering submission to the Father’s will (cf. John 12:27), more daring filmmakers allow Jesus’ humanity to make this outcome less certain.

The Bible in Comedy and Satire While corporeal representation of God onscreen is rare in serious epic films, it often forms the central conceit of biblical parodies, which range from comedy to satire.  A few Jesus films interpret Jesus’ death apart from blood atonement theology (e. g., Son of Man, dir. Mark Dornford-May, ).

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The Green Pastures (dir. Marc Connelley/William Keighley, 1936) is cast as a retelling of several biblical stories by an African American pastor speaking to African American children.¹⁵ It presents a heaven and earth populated by an all-black cast – including “De Lawd” (Rex Ingram), a grandfatherly character, bathed in heavenly light, who dresses like a preacher and grows in self awareness as he struggles with his recalcitrant earthly creation.

Fig. 35: Rex Ingram as De Lawd in The Green Pastures (1936)

Conscious of potential backlash from 1930s white audiences, who might be shocked by such an unconventional representation of the deity (not only as a man, but as a black man), the film begins with a defensive statement: “God appears in many forms to those who believe in Him. Thousands of Negros in the Deep South visualize God and Heaven in terms of things they know in their everyday life. The Green Pastures is an attempt to portray that humble reverent conception.” This overt framing of the film as an innocent fable permitted the portrayal of God by a black actor and allowed filmmakers to consider the nature of divine wrath in ways that might otherwise seem irreverent. In particular, the film struggles to reconcile the loving and wrathful images of God in Christian scripture. It is De Lawd’s repeated struggles with a recalcitrant humanity that lead him to become “a God of wrath and vengeance.” After several attempts to fix the earth, he eventually declares in a booming voice to the sinners of Babylon (represented by a 1930s New Orleans Barrelhouse): That’s about enough. I stood all I can from you. I tried to make dis a good earth. I helped Adam and I helped Noah, I helped Moses and I helped David. And what’s the green that grew out of the seeds? Sin, nothing but sin throughout the whole world. […] Listen, you children of darkness, your Lawd is tired. I’m tired of the struggle to make you worthy of the breath I gave you. I put you

 The film is based on the  Pulitzer prize-winning play, which was itself adapted from Roark Bradford’s collection of stories entitled Ol’ Man Adam an’ His Chillun (). Story, play, and film are full of racial stereotypes. Aside from the cast itself, the majority of people involved in this film’s production were white. Ironically, a white man even instructed the actors on how to speak a black Louisiana dialect (Strausbaugh , ). See also Weisenfeld (,  – ).

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in bondage again to save you, and you’re worse than you were among the fleshpots of Egypt. So I renounce you. Listen to the words of your Lawd God Jehovah, for they is the last words you ever gonna hear from me. I repent of these people I made and I’ll deliver them no more.

Yet, De Lawd is irresistibly drawn back to his creation by the heartfelt prayers of a spiritual man, named Hezdrel (also played by Ingram, as was Adam). Hezdrel tells God that humanity has “a new Lawd” now in place of “that old Lawd of wrath”: Maybe we just got tired of his appearance that old way. I mean that old God that walked the earth in the shape of a man. I guess he lived with man so much that all he could see was the sins in man. That’s what made him a God of wrath. Of course, they’s the same God. He just ain’t fearsome no more. Now he’s a God of mercy.

De Lawd confesses that he had been left “behind the times” and, intrigued by the concept of humans learning about mercy through suffering, decides that he also must suffer. With a faraway look upon his face, he returns to heaven where his angels, looking down on the earth, comment on a pitiful crucifixion that is taking place. Thus, the film ends with the suggestion of God’s incarnation in Jesus, reconciling the two sides of the divine nature in scripture as Christians often have – by (heretically) distinguishing between the wrathful God of the Old Testament and the merciful God of the New. Overall, Rex Ingram’s masterful depiction of De Lawd creates the impression of a deity who is capable of a wide range of emotions and who changes and grows through his interactions with humanity. Although clearly a parody of earlier biblical films, set for comic effect within the language and folkways of 1930s black Southern American culture (as it is imagined by white authors and filmmakers), the film is uplifted by the stellar performances of its cast (especially Ingram). A handful of low-budget satires have also cast a human actor to depict God onscreen. For example, The Real Old Testament (dir. Curtis and Paul Hannum, 2003) imitates reality television by inserting confessional interviews into biblical scenes. This allows the film to propose (usually trite and irreverent) answers for such questions as why God preferred Abel’s sacrifice to Cain’s (Gen. 4:4– 5), why God tested Abraham (Gen. 22), why God decrees death for violating the Sabbath (Exod. 35:2), etc. Director Curtis Hannum portrays God as wearing whites robes, sporting an ill-fitting white wig and beard, and behaving all too humanly. The movie ends, reality-TV style, with a reunion show where an embittered deity muses: “I don’t think I want people around anymore. They’re not worth it…I’ve just about had it with humans.” Similarly, The God Complex (dir. Mark Pirro, 2009), a heavy-handed screed against religion, caricatures God as a narcissistic, overweight, balding dimwit in a bowling shirt, who obsesses over whether or not people love him. Two vigilantes, Sy (“Science”) and Telly (“Intelligence”), eventually force him into retirement, which allows humanity to evolve “beyond primitive superstition.”

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God in Nonbiblical Films God also appears both directly and indirectly in nonbiblical movies that, nonetheless, borrow heavily from the storehouse of biblical language and images. For example, several comedy films cast an actor (usually an older man) in the role of God, capitalizing on the spectacle that can be created onscreen as the deity performs miracles to ‘prove’ his divinity to a skeptical human. Echoes of biblical stories connect the onscreen deity with the God of the Bible. In Carl Reiner’s Oh, God! (1977, US), when a doubtful Jerry Landers (John Denver) asks the would-be deity (played by octogenarian George Burns) to demonstrate his powers, he causes it to rain inside Jerry’s car. Burns’s God, however, professes a general dislike of performing miracles: “I don’t like miracles. They’re too flashy and upset the natural balance. […] The last miracle I did was the 1969 Mets. Before that I think you have to go back to the Red Sea. That was a beauty!” Actor Morgan Freeman portrays an affable, grandfatherly God, who walks on water in Bruce Almighty (dir. Tom Shadyac, 2003) and transforms the reluctant Evan (Steve Carell) into modern-day Noah in the sequel, Evan Almighty (dir. Shadyac, 2007). Biblical echoes continue throughout these films. When God appears in Jerry’s bathroom, he initially refuses to leave the shower because he is ashamed of his nakedness (cf. Gen. 3:10). When endowed with God’s powers, Bruce uses them to part his red tomato soup in a parody of the Red Sea scene as it was envisioned in DeMille’s 1956 classic. Evan builds an ark with the help of his three sons and paired exotic animals. While Shadyac’s second film is obviously in dialogue with the flood story, Bruce Almighty is a loose modern retelling of the biblical book of Job, where Bruce’s “suffering” is characteristic of upper-middle class America. Rather than question Bruce from a whirlwind, God temporarily grants him divine powers to teach him that being a deity is far beyond his human experience. The meeting-God film scenario allows characters to interrogate the deity about aspects of the biblical text and popular theology that are in dissonance with modern culture and values. The authoritarian voice of ‘God’ can then provide answers and comforting reassurance, creating a deity who is more congenial to audiences’ belief systems. Typically, for American films, this involves constructing a consistently benevolent and loving God, who is not bound by any particular religious tradition, never interferes with human free will, and expects humans to solve their own problems simply by being good people. The 1970s onscreen deity in Oh, God! responds to the spread of atheism (exemplified by the famous April 1966 “Is God Dead?” cover of Time magazine) by insisting, “I’m tired of all the talk that I may be dead, or that I never was at all, or that God was just particles of cosmos. Gas. I’m not gas. I found that very insulting.” Yet, he also reveals that there is no divine scheme guiding human destinies, and, when Jerry protests that humans need help, he responds, “That’s why I gave you each other.” This God insists that he is not responsible for human suffering because: “Free will. All the choices are yours. […] You can love each other, cherish and nurture each other, or

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you can kill each other.” Asked whether Jesus Christ was his son, he responds, “Jesus was my son. Buddha was my son. Muhammad, Moses, you, the man who said there was no room in the inn was my son.” When Jerry protests against his prophetic call based on the fact that he does not to belong to any church, God agrees, “Neither do I.” Morgan Freeman’s portrayal of God in the Almighty films intentionally avoids direct mention of Israel, Jesus, or the church, although audiences are expected to be familiar with iconic biblical images like the parting of the Red Sea and Christian gospel music. (“Come and take a closer walk with me,” God suggests to Bruce.) When Evan points out the violence of the biblical flood story and protests the idea of God visiting his wrath once more on the earth’s population, the deity affably reassures him, “Let’s just say whatever I do, I do because I love you.” Evan’s flood, it turns out, is caused by greedy capitalists rather than God. In both Almighty films, the protagonists are encouraged to “be the miracle” and “change the world” without divine assistance. “People want me to do everything for them when what they don’t realize is they have the power,” this God explains to Bruce (ironically voicing a very different theology than the book of Job). “That’s your problem, Bruce. That’s everybody’s problem. You keep looking up.” Bruce is given only two rules when he receives God’s power: (1) he should not tell anyone he is God, and (2) he cannot “mess with free will.” When Bruce’s long-suffering girlfriend leaves him, he asks how to “make somebody love you without interfering with free will.” God chuckles knowingly and quips, “Welcome to my world, son. You come up with the answer to that one, you let me know.” Whereas in 1936 American audiences were expected to find the blackness of Rex Ingram’s God naively ludicrous in The Green Pastures, the race of African American actor Morgan Freeman passes without comment in the early twenty-first-century Almighty films. While this difference is undoubtedly attributable to the achievements of the Civil Rights movement, it is also in no small part due of the respect and affection audiences grant to Freeman in particular. In contrast, in 1977 George Burns’s God prevents Jerry from “outing” him by temporarily transforming into a middle-aged black woman. Jerry quickly swallows his words realizing that no one would believe him. Apparently, in the 1970s, God could look like George Burns but not like an uncredited black actress. God does briefly appear as a white woman (Alanis Morisette) in Kevin Smith’s intentionally edgy comedic fantasy, Dogma (1999). Very rarely do dramatic movies present God as an onscreen character, and, when they do, they usually maintain some doubt about the character’s credibility. For example, in God Has a Rap Sheet (dir. Kamal Ahmed, 2003), an ethnically and culturally diverse group of New Yorkers is incarcerated for the evening with an alcoholic homeless man who claims to be God. As the men clash along predictable lines (Irish Catholic/English Protestant, Arab/Jew, black/white), ‘God’ tries to convince them of their shared humanity and fields predictable theological questions. Meanwhile, the camera lingers on his missing teeth and stained clothes as ‘God’ struggles to stand and defecates in the holding cell’s toilet. Eventually, however, the film con-

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firms his divine identity with the arrival of Satan and an apparent group exorcism that leads to an abrupt social transformation among the incarcerated men. Many more nonbiblical films choose to represent God in a non-corporeal manner or as an offstage presence. Such is the case in the 1950 drama The Next Voice You Hear… (dir. William A. Wellman), in which God is a central character despite being unseen and unheard by film audiences. A voice claiming to be God – speaking simultaneously in every known language – preempts all radio programming for six nights, riveting the attention of Joe Smith’s average family and others all over the world. Initially met with skepticism, God conjures a violent global rainstorm to prove his power. Although film viewers are never allowed to hear the voice, God’s words are paraphrased or recited by film characters, whose lives are gradually transformed over the course of the week. On the seventh day, large crowds gather at places of worship to hear the broadcast, leading film audiences to believe they will finally hear the voice as well, but the airwaves remain silent as the Lord rests (cf. Gen. 2:2– 3). As in the Oh, God! and Almighty films, divine revelation serves only to remind humanity of God’s existence and restore bourgeois cultural values. A very different image of God as a spider vision appears in Ingmar Bergman’s Såsom I en spegel (1961, a.k.a. Through a Glass Darkly).¹⁶ This vision, which induces the final psychotic break for schizophrenic Karin (Harriet Andersson), stands in contrast to her father’s film-concluding claim that “God is love” (1 John 4:8; note also the echo of Paul’s love hymn in the film title, 1 Cor. 13:12). In his production diary, Bergman described Karin’s possession by “a god” as an experience that tormented her, leaving her “empty and burned out, without any possibility of continuing to live in this world” (Bergman 1990, 252). Yet, by constructing the character of Karin as a schizophrenic, the film allows viewers the option of dismissing her vision/theophany in favor of her father’s positive theological affirmation. This film was the first of a ‘Silence of God’ trilogy in which Bergman, responding to his own strict religious upbringing and later spiritual crisis, explores the deity’s desertion of humanity. While Bergman’s films emphasized divine absence, many other films represent God’s presence in the world through some combination of natural phenomena, miraculous events, and unlikely coincidences interpreted as divine intervention. The childlike Bess O’Neil (Emily Watson) in Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves (1996) has frequent conversations with God, speaking the deity’s replies in her own voice, as she cleans the church in her Scottish village. Audiences could dismiss Bess’s conversations with God as the misperceptions of a mentally unbalanced woman (like the schizophrenic visions of Bergman’s Karin), making her an unreliable witness to the divine will and nature. This likelihood only increases when Bess, blaming herself for her husband Jan’s paralysis, decides that God wants her to prostitute herself as a means of ‘healing’ him. She is eventually raped, brutalized, and

 Bergman may be drawing from Friedrich Nietzsche’s (, ) description of the Christian God as a “spinner of cobwebs” in Der Antichrist, which was originally published in .

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killed; and, having branded her as a sinner, the religious community denies her body a proper Christian burial and consigns her soul to hell. But a restored Jan steals Bess’s body for burial at sea, and bells toll mysteriously from the heavens indicating that God does not share in the Church’s condemnation of this woman. Audiences are encouraged to interpret Jan’s healing and the bells as miracles affirming God at work behind the scenes and are thus forced to re-evaluate the credibility of Bess’s earlier theophanies. Similarly, in Signs (dir. M. Night Shyamalan, 2002), Rev. Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) recovers his faith in God when several seemingly unrelated events, including the nonsensical final words of his wife before her tragic death years earlier, allow him to save the life of their young son. God also becomes an active, if invisible, character in Anders Thomas Jensen’s Job/Genesis film, Adams æbler (2005, a.k.a. Adam’s Apples), in a series of ‘plagues’ that beset an apple tree; in the fact that a dropped Bible repeatedly falls open to the book of Job; and in a violent storm that marks the climax of the film, fells said apple tree, blows open the church doors, and strips a scarecrow of its clothes, leaving behind a windblown cross. In each case, musical clues and details in the storyline aid audiences in concluding that the biblical God is at work behind the scenes of this story.

God-figures Many films feature characters that make no claim to be the biblical God but are in some ways God-like. The temptation to multiply God-figures in cinema is subject to the same criticism that pertains to the uncritical multiplication of Christ-figures (Burnette-Bletsch 2014, 150 – 51). The exercise is only helpful insofar as it rests upon clear indicators within the film in question and interpretive benefits accrue from the intertextual relationship established between film and biblical text. Otherwise the imposition of a theological reading upon a film is just that. Moreover, even an invited theological reading of a film cannot exhaust its interpretive possibilities. Many of the films that intentionally construct God-figures belong to the fantasy/ science fiction genre, which provides a ‘safe’ vehicle for the exploration of difficult theological issues – especially those aspects of the divine that (post)modern culture finds unappealing.¹⁷ Here I will focus very briefly upon several films in which a character exerts God-like control over his/her creation in ways that evoke anxiety and resistance from those who wish to be self-determining. One example is Ridley Scott’s cyberpunk classic, Blade Runner (1982, adapted from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). It imagines a world in which humanoid ‘replicants’ have been manufactured by a powerful Earth corporation to serve as slave labor to ‘real’ humans in off-world colonies. The God-figure in  See the chapter on biblical reception in science fiction films by Uhlenbruch in Part I (Pp.  – ).

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Blade Runner is the replicants’ creator, Dr. Eldon Tyrel (Joe Turkel), who loves his creations but tightly controls them and limits their potential through a pre-programmed four-year lifespan (cf. Gen. 6:1– 2). Playing upon Genesis 2– 3, especially as interpreted through the lens of John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, the novel and film become extended reflections on personhood and rebellion against the Creator (Burnette-Bletsch 2013, 41). Replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) ultimately does confront and kill his maker, only to die tragically himself shortly thereafter in a scene brimming with existential angst. Similar theological concerns are evident in a number of other films. In Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998), the protagonist, Truman (Jim Carrey), escapes from the controlling grasp of ‘God’ (Ed Harris) – represented as Christof, the obsessive director of a giant television studio in which he orchestrated every detail of Truman’s existence until his star’s enlightenment and liberation. In Gary Ross’s Pleasantville (1998), ‘God’ is a supernatural TV repairman (Don Knotts), who berates the film’s protagonist for bringing free expression and, thus, change into the scripted existence of Pleasantville’s inhabitants. However, near the film’s end, the repairman drives away with a smile indicating that this is what he had intended to happen all along. Likewise, in George Nolfi’s The Adjustment Bureau (2011), an unseen God-figure, called the ‘Chairman’, writes broad plans for human lives and sends agents to make ‘adjustments’ when humans go off-course in significant ways. However, at the film’s end, the Chairman is reportedly pleased that the film’s protagonists fought to determine their own destiny. Most recently, in Wally Pfister’s Transcendence (2014), scientist Will Caster (Johnny Depp) becomes a God-figure when his memories and knowledge are downloaded upon his death into an artificial intelligence program, which eventually allows him to develop the ability to heal the sick and disabled and to purify Earth’s air and water (expressed as a new creation and epitomized by the garden [of Eden?] he lovingly tends with his wife). Castor promises to end pollution, disease, and human mortality. Yet, both U.S. government officials and anti-technology extremists view his growing powers with fear and suspicion, especially when he amasses a virtual army of sick and disabled people now apparently converted into physically-enhanced, mind-controlled minions. His enemies attempt to destroy him and Caster ultimately sacrifices himself for the sake of love, disappointed that his beneficent, god-like intentions were misunderstood by those who “fear what they do not understand.” As a result of the energy expended to kill Castor, humanity is left with a barren wasteland rather than a new creation. All of these movies include numerous elements inviting theological interpretation.¹⁸ Moreover, they all construct a world in which a controlling God-figure limits (or appears to limit) the full personhood and potential for self-determination of

 Space here does not permit a full discussion of these elements for each film. Readers are referred to discussions elsewhere, such as Burnette-Bletsch (); Mercandante (); Reinhartz ().

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other less powerful beings. The prevalence of this theme in Western fantasy/science fiction film suggests widespread cultural ambivalence toward the idea of a deity who might in any way subvert individual free will. Yet, based on the examples examined here, it seems that films over the past three decades have moved away from an egomaniacal God-figure who must be destroyed or escaped, to a God-figure who secretly nurtures self-determination in humans, and finally to a God-figure who is tragically misunderstood and rejected by a fearful humanity. Whether other films follow this trend and whether this might reflect fluctuating cultural attitudes toward religious belief invites further inquiry.

God Talk Most of the films discussed above include some theological discourse about the nature of God and God’s relation to Creation, often allowing an actor portraying the deity to make authoritarian pronouncements or a human representative of God (e. g., clergy, saint, etc.) to interpret God’s will. In other cases, this conversation occurs exclusively among human characters asking theological questions without the benefit of divine response (whether direct or indirect). While this category of films is potentially limitless, a particular constellation of themes appears with great frequency. Cinematic theological discourse frequently poses questions about the plausibility of faith in the biblical God within a modern scientific world. Often its point of departure is the presumed (in)compatibility of biblical and scientific accounts of origins. Preeminent among the many films that take the life and work of Charles Darwin as their subject is Jon Amiel’s Creation (2009), based on Randal Keynes’ biography Annie’s Box (2001). In this beautifully photographed film, Darwin’s (Paul Bettany) observations of the natural world, combined with the death of his beloved daughter, lead him to renounce belief that a good deity created and superintends the universe. Darwin’s growing commitment to atheism is contrasted with the deep religious faith of his wife, Emma (Jennifer Connelly), who accuses her husband of waging war with God. Characters in the film presuppose a stark incompatibility between biblical theism and Darwinism. As Darwin’s supporter Thomas Huxley (Toby Jones) gleefully proclaims, in light of his friend’s findings: “Clearly, the Almighty can no longer claim to have authored every species in under a week. […] You’ve killed God, sir, and I for one say good riddance to the vindictive old bugger!” Similarly, biblical theism must clear the way for scientific progress in Stanley Kramer’s courtroom drama Inherit the Wind (1960), as well as in the 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee upon which it is based. These works offer a fictionalized account of the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” Trial, in which science teacher Bertram Cates (Dick York) is prosecuted for violating a state law that prohibits the teaching of evolution in public schools. Both works lampoon the prosecuting attorney, Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March), as a vainglorious figure intent upon

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saving the good people of Hillsboro, Tennessee from “a wicked attack from the big cities of the north” by those who would “measure the distance between the stars and forget Him who holds the stars in His hand.” Brady later admits to his rival and erstwhile friend, defense attorney Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy), that he would gladly reject progress if progress required relinquishing faith in God. By contrast, Drummond likens Brady’s faith to a beautiful wooden rocking horse that he coveted as a child that turned out to be rotten, “all shine and no substance.” “So long as the prerequisite for that shining paradise is ignorance, bigotry, and hate,” Drummond proclaims, “I say to hell with it!” Following Brady’s fatal heart attack in the courtroom, the film concludes with Drummond’s departure carrying copies of the Holy Bible and Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species, suggesting the possibility of a synthesis between science and faith. While the play and its original screen adaptation used the Scopes Trial to comment obliquely on threats to intellectual freedom during the McCarthy era, repeated stagings and remakes attest to continuing interest in these themes on the part of Western audiences. Negotiations between theistic and scientific worldviews may also be seen in science fiction films, such as Robert Zemekis’s Contact (1997). Adapted from a 1985 Carl Sagan novel, the film presents a storyline in which SETI scientist Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) makes contact with what appears to be an alien intelligence. This event sparks worldwide controversy as people discuss (with varying degrees of sophistication) what alien contact might mean for traditional religious worldviews. Ultimately, atheist Arroway experiences a direct alien encounter but, due to apparently malfunctioning equipment, has no scientific proof that this encounter occurred. The film ends with her testimony before a congressional committee in which she ironically defends her experience in language that could easily be used to defend theistic belief in a scientific world: I…had an experience. I can’t prove it, I can’t even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am, tells me that it was real! I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever, a vision of the universe that tells us undeniably how tiny and insignificant and how rare and precious we all are! A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not, that none of us, are alone. I wish I could share that. I wish that everyone, if only for a moment, could feel that awe and humility and hope. That continues to be my wish.

More recently, the Christian film industry defended the compatibility of science (“rightly practiced”) and biblical theism in God’s Not Dead (dir. Harold Cronk, 2014). Exploiting a popular urban legend, the film posits a Christian college student who refuses to sign a statement in his philosophy class affirming that “God is dead.” His atheist professor then challenges him to a series of debates on the topic, setting up a classic (if predictable) David and Goliath trope. Interestingly, the film’s protagonist does not attempt to debunk scientific theories of origin, such as the big bang, but to reconcile them with biblical account(s) of creation. However, the film ultimately is less interested in the argument itself than in using heavy-handed rhetorical force

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to celebrate characters who are committed to the Christian faith and villainize those who are not. The debate is won when the professor is provoked into admitting that he has hated God since boyhood, when his mother died of cancer despite his fervent prayers for her recovery. A second theme frequently found in cinematic theological discourse is the question of whether a God-provided and -enforced moral order underpins the universe. A number of films focus on individuals who are self-appointed enforcers of divine morality. In The Confession (dir. David Hugh Jones, 1999), a devout Jew, Harry Fertig (Ben Kingsley), insists upon pleading guilty and making expiation for his sins after killing negligent hospital workers who were responsible for the death of his son. Obsessed with the prevalence of evil and why God would allow it to continue unabated, Fertig acted in the belief that he was executing divine justice on the guilty even while incurring guilt himself. A similar vigilante theme, without the resulting moral responsibility, is found in The Boondock Saints (dir. Troy Duffy, 1999) in which two brothers believe themselves called to enact God’s vengeance upon the wicked. These killings are filmed as audio-visual symphonies of sanctified violence consummated by the ritualized recitation of a biblical-sounding prayer ending with the words in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. A more nuanced analysis of this theme can be found in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), in which Judah Rosenthal (Martin Landau) is a respectable and prosperous Jew who has his mistress murdered to prevent the public exposure of their longstanding affair. Before and after the murder, Judah struggles with a belief instilled in him as a child that he had abandoned as an adult: the awful possibility that a moral God observes his actions. Visiting his childhood home, Judah recalls in flashback a Seder at which his devout father and Marxist aunt debate whether there is a God who punishes those “who don’t obey the rules.” Using the Holocaust as evidence, Aunt May rejects the concept of a morally structured universe, arguing instead that “might makes right” and the murderer who “chooses not to be bothered by the ethics” is “homefree.” Judah’s father, however, insists that sinners are always punished and, even if the wrongdoer escapes human authorities, “that which originates from a black deed will blossom in a foul manner.” Ultimately, the film’s rejection of this pious sentiment is symbolized by the progressive ocular degeneration of Judah’s spiritual advisor, Rabbi Ben, who also affirms the existence of a universal moral structure. At the film’s end, a content Judah proposes a movie scenario to a filmmaker, Cliff Stern (Woody Allen), loosely based upon his own story. When the story’s protagonist commits his crime, Judah says: [At first] he’s plagued by deep-rooted guilt. Little sparks of his religious background, which he’d rejected, are suddenly stirred up. He hears his father’s voice. He imagines God is watching his every move. Suddenly, it’s not an empty universe at all, but a just and moral one, and he’s violated it. Now, he’s panic-stricken. He’s on the verge of a mental collapse, an inch away from confessing the whole thing to the police. And then one morning, he awakens. The sun is shining, his family is around him and mysteriously the crisis has lifted. He takes his family on a vacation to Europe and as the months pass, he finds he’s not punished. In fact, he prospers. The killing gets

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attributed to another person, a drifter who has a number of other murders to his credit, so I mean, what the hell? One more doesn’t even matter. Now he’s scot-free. His life is completely back to normal, back to his protected world of wealth and privilege.

A dejected Stern objects that the film’s protagonist should instead turn himself in so that “in the absence of God, he has to take responsibility for himself. Then you have tragedy.” However, Judah insists that his version is more realistic. The universe has no underlying moral order for those who choose “not to be bothered by the ethics.” Perhaps the most prominent theme in cinema’s theological discourse has to do with exploring the character of the God who superintends such a callous and, at times, immoral universe. One example is John Duigan’s Romero (1989), in which El Salvadoran sharecroppers wonder whether the human rights violations they are suffering accord with the divine will. A young woman protests, “I think God looks at these things and vomits!” Romero (Raul Julia) gradually comes to agree that the Church is called to stand with the oppressed: “How can I love God, whom I cannot see, if I do not love my brothers and sisters whom I can see?” This film expresses the liberationist perspective that God stands with the poor against the oppressive practices of the aristocracy and the foreign superpowers that support them. Questions of theodicy also arise in storylines about personal loss and grief. In Shadowlands (dir. Richard Attenborough, 1993), renowned Christian theologian C. S. Lewis lectures confidently on the didactic importance of suffering: I’m not sure that God particularly wants us to be happy. I think he wants us to be able to love and be loved. He wants us to grow up. I suggest to you that it is because he loves us that he gives us the gift of suffering. Or to put it another way, pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world. You see we are like blocks of stone out of which the sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of his chisel, which hurt us so much, are what make us perfect.

However, his confidence is shaken by personal experience with pain occasioned by the death of his wife, Joy. At the end of the film, Lewis retains his faith but claims fewer answers: “I have no answers anymore, only the life I have lived… [repeating Joy’s earlier words to him] ‘The pain now is part of the happiness then. That’s the deal.’” Theological discourse and questions of theodicy are also characteristic of most Holocaust films. Especially noteworthy in this regard is Andy De Emmony’s God on Trial (2008), a BBC adaptation of Elie Wiesel’s 1979 play The Trial of God. Prisoners in Auschwitz, waiting to learn which of them will be killed to make room for a newly arrived shipment of Jews, decide to put God on trial for breaking the covenant with the Jewish people. When some of the pious inmates object to this proceeding, they are reminded, “Abraham haggled with God. Jacob wrestled with the angel. The name Israel means striving with God.” Amidst heartbreaking stories of personal loss, the prisoners express different perspectives on God’s relationship to the Holocaust, ranging from belief that God suffers alongside Israel to the possibility that the destructive biblical deity who sent the flood and the plagues and demanded the ake-

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dah has now turned against the Jews. This latter view is given the final word in the trial as a Jewish scholar traces a litany of divine acts of violence through Hebrew scripture and concludes: Did the Amalekites think that Adonai was just? Did the mothers of Egypt – the mothers! – did they think that Adonai was just? […] Did God not make the Egyptians? […] And what did he make them for? To punish them? To starve, to frighten, to slaughter them? The people of Amalek, the people of Egypt, what was it like for them when Adonai turned against them? It was like this! […] We are learning how it was for the Amalekites. They faced extinction at the hand of Adonai. They died for His purpose. They fell, as we are falling. They were afraid, as we are afraid. And what did they learn? They learned that Adonai, the Lord our God…that our God is not good. He is not good. He was not ever good. He was only on our side.

Finding God guilty of breaking the covenant, the Jews who are led away to their deaths can only cover their heads and pray the words of Psalm 90: “From age to age, before the mountains were born, before the earth came to be, from eternity to eternity, you are God. […]” In so doing, the play and its film adaptation demonstrate the Jewish tradition of fearless theological questioning partnered with enduring faith.

Concluding Thoughts An exhaustive study of how cinema represents God and thus participates in biblical interpretation and theological discourse is far beyond the scope of the present chapter. However, the above discussion illustrates that cinematic theology extends far beyond direct biblical adaptations into mainstream films that also interact in intentional ways with the Bible’s interpretive tradition. Film provides a culturally significant venue for wrestling with conflicting images of God, for continuing to explore the Bible’s own theological questions, and for posing new questions that arise when ancient texts encounter the (post)modern world.

Works Cited Baker, Sharon L. 2010. Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught about God’s Wrath and Judgment. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox. Bergman, Ingmar. 1990. Images: My Life in Film. New York: Arcade Publishing. Blacktree. 2013. “The Bible: Exclusive Interview.” Tinsel Talk (March 12): https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=ZJzJdh5wKnw; accessed March 28, 2015. Bradford, Roark. 1928. Ol’ Man Adam an’ His Chillun: Being the Tales They Tell about the Time When the Lord Walked the Earth Like a Natural Man. New York: Harper & Brothers. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda. 2013. “Blade Runner.” In Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films. Ed. Adele Reinhartz. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 39 – 45. —. 2014. “The Bible and Its Cinematic Adaptations: A Consideration of Filmic Exegesis.” Journal of the Bible and Its Reception 1.1: 129 – 60.

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Copan, Paul. 2011. Is God a Moral Monster: Making Sense of the Old Testament God. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books. Crossan, John Dominic. 2015. How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence in Genesis through Revelation. New York: HarperOne. Darwin, Charles. 2006. On the Origin of the Species [1859]. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Desjardins, Michael. 1997. Peace and Violence in the New Testament. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Dick, Philip K. 1996. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [1968]. New York: Del Rey. Hoffman, Michael. 2007. “The Good Book and Bad Movies: Moses and the Failure of Biblical Cinema.” In Milk and Honey: Essays on Ancient Israel and the Bible in Appreciation of the Judaic Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego. Ed. Sarah Malena and David Miano. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Lawrence, Jerome, and Robert Edwin Lee. 1955. Inherit the Wind. New York: Random House. Kazantzakis, Nikos. 1960. The Last Temptation of Christ [1953]. New York: Simon and Schuster. Keynes, Randal. 2001. Annie’s Box: Charles Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution. London: Fourth Estate. Lamb, David T. 2011. God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist, and Racist? Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press. Lennard, Dominic. 2014. Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors: The Child Villains of Horror Film. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press. Matthews, Shelley, and E. Leigh Gibson, eds. 2005. Violence in the New Testament. London and New York: T&T Clark. Mercadante, Linda. 2001. “God Behind the Screen: Pleasantville and The Truman Show.” Journal of Religion and Film 5.2: http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/truman.htm; accessed April 4, 2015. Merritt, Jonathan. 2014. “Christian Bale and Ridley Scott Talk Religion and ‘Exodus’: An RNS Interview.” Religion News Service (December 10): http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/ 2014/12/10/christian-bale-ridley-scott-talk-religion-exodus-rns-interview/; accessed March 29, 2015. Miles, Jack. 1995. God: A Biography. New York: Vintage Books. Milton, John. 2004. Paradise Lost [1667]. Norton Critical Editions. 3rd rev. ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2013. The Anti-Christ [1895]. New York: Tribeca Books. Penchansky, David. 1999. What Rough Beast? Images of God in the Hebrew Bible. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox. Penchansky, David, and Paul L. Redditt, eds. 2000. Shall Not the Judge of the Whole Earth Do What Is Right? Studies on the Nature of God in Tribute to James L. Crenshaw. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Reinhartz, Adele. 2003. Scripture on the Silver Screen. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox. —. 2007. Jesus of Hollywood. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Römer, Thomas. 2013. Dark God: Cruelty, Sex, and Violence in the Old Testament. New York and Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press. Sagan, Carl. 1985. Contact. Delran, N.J.: Simon & Schuster. Seibert, Eric A. 2009. Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress. Shelly, Mary. 1994. Frankenstein [1818]. 3rd ed. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Shepherd, David. 2013. The Bible on Silent Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sparks, Kenton L. 2012. Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture. Cambridge and Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans. Strausbaugh, John. 2006. Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture. New York: Penguin.

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Weisenfeld, Judith. 2007. Hollywood Be Thy Name: African American Religion in American Film, 1929 – 1949. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Wiesel, Elie. 1995. The Trial of God [1979]. Transl. Marion Wiesel. New York: Shocken Books.

Films Cited Adams æbler [a.k.a. Adam’s Apples] (dir. Anders Thomas Jensen, 2005, DK/DE). The Adjustment Bureau (dir. George Nolfi, 2011, Universal, US). The Bible (prod. Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, 2013, Lightworkers Media, US/UK). The Bible Collection [Abraham; TV miniseries] (dir. Joseph Sargent, 1993, Lux Vide, DE/IT/US/CZ/FR). —. [Moses; TV miniseries] (dir. Roger Young, 1995, Lux Vide, US/CZ/UK/FR/IT/DE/ES). The Bible: In the Beginning… (dir. John Huston, 1966, Dino de Laurentiis, US/IT). Blade Runner (dir. Ridley Scott, 1982, The Ladd Company, US/HK/UK). The Boondock Saints (dir. Troy Duffy, 1999, Franchise Pictures, CA/US). Breaking the Waves (dir. Lars von Trier, 1996, Argus Film, DK/SE/FR/NL/NO/IS/ES). Bruce Almighty (dir. Tom Shadyac, 2003, Universal, US). The Confession (dir. David Hugh Jones, 1999, El Dorado Pictures, US). Contact (dir. Robert Zemekis, 1997, Warner Brothers, US). Creation (dir. Jon Amiel, 2009, Recorded Picture Company, UK). Crimes and Misdemeanors (dir. Woody Allen, 1989, Jack Rollins & Charles H. Joffe Productions, US). David and Bathsheba (dir. Henry King, 1951, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Dogma (dir. Kevin Smith, 1999, View Askew Productions, US). Exodus: Gods and Kings (dir. Ridley Scott, 2014, Cherin Entertainment, US/UK/ES). Evan Almighty (dir. Tom Shadyac, 2007, Universal, US) The God Complex (dir. Mark Pirro, 2009, Pirromount Pictures, US). God Has a Rap Sheet (dir. Kamal Ahmed, 2003, Score on Four Productions, US). God on Trial (dir. Andy De Emmony, 2008, Hat Trick Productions, UK). God’s Not Dead (dir. Harold Cronk, 2014, Pure Flix Production, US). The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1965, United Artists, US). The Green Pastures (dir. Marc Connelley and William Keighley, 1936, Warner Brothers, US). Inherit the Wind (dir. Stanley Kramer, 1960, Stanley Kramer Productions, US). Jesus Christ Superstar (dir. Norman Jewison, 1973, Universal, US). Jésus de Montréal [a.k.a. Jesus of Montreal] (dir. Denys Arcand, 1989, Centre National de la Cinématographie, CA/FR). King David (dir. Bruce Beresford, 1985, Paramount, UK/US). King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961, MGM, US). La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ [a.k.a. The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ] (dir. Ferdinand Zecca and Lucien Nonguet, 1902 – 05, 1907, Pathé Frères, FR). The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988, Universal, US/CA). Le vie de Moïse [“The Life of Moses”] (dir. Unknown, 1905, Pathé Frères, FR). Moses the Lawgiver (dir. Gianfranco De Bosio, 1974, Associated Television, UK/IT). The Next Voice You Hear… (dir. William A. Wellman, 1950, MGM, US). Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2014, Paramount, US). Noah’s Ark (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1928, Warner Brothers, US). Oh, God! (dir. Carl Reiner, 1977, Warner Brothers, US). The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004, Icon Productions, US).

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Pleasantville (dir. Gary Ross, 1998, New Line Cinema, US). The Prince of Egypt (dir. Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, and Simon Wells, 1998, Dreamworks Animation, US). The Real Old Testament (dir. Curtis and Paul Hannum, 2003, PCH Films, US). Romero (dir. John Duigan, 1989, Paulist Pictures, US). Såsom I en spegel [a.k.a. Through a Glass Darkly] (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1961, Svensk Filmindustri, SE). Shadowlands (dir. Richard Attenborough, 1993, Price Entertainment, UK). Signs (dir. M. Night Shyamalan, 2002, Touchstone Pictures, US). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1923, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, US). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956, Paramount, US). Transcendence (dir. Wally Pfister, 2014, Alcon Entertainment, UK/CN/US). The Truman Show (dir. Peter Weir, 1998, Paramount, US). The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John (dir. Philip Saville, 2003, Visual Bible, CA/US).

Peter Malone

19 Satan in Cinema The devil has long been a staple of popular films, and recent cinematic images have overtaken older traditions in many people’s imaginations. When we see a movie about Satan or the demonic, we can ask ourselves just what aspect of the biblical tradition the filmmakers are tapping into. Some will be remembering “the Adversary,” that tester of human fidelity, who afflicted the righteous Job in an effort to make him curse God (Job 1– 2). Some will be drawing on the story of the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3) where Eve and Adam are tempted by a serpent – identified as Satan or his instrument in later Christian tradition. Others will be stimulated by New Testament texts, such as the temptation narratives where Satan tests Jesus in the desert – just as the Adversary tested Job, but now wanting to be worshipped in the place of God (Matt. 4:1– 11 par.). Also of interest to filmmakers are the many narratives of diabolical possession in the gospels and Acts as well as scattered texts that describe Judas, the betrayer, or Jesus’ opponents¹ as a tool of Satan (Luke 22:3; John 6:70 – 71; 8:44; 13:2, 27– 30). Other filmmakers will be stimulated by biblical images of hellfire and torment and gnawing worms (e. g., Matt. 8:12; 22:13 – 14; 25:41; Mark 9:47– 48;² Luke 16:19 – 31). Still others will be channelling the fall of Lucifer (Luke 10:13 – 15, quoting Isa. 14:13 – 14);³ scattered and obscure references to an enemy or antichrist (2 Thess. 2:4; 1 John 2:22); and descriptions of cosmic battles (Rev. 7; 12– 13; 15; see also Dan. 10 – 11; Ezek. 39 – 40). There are also the many writers and directors who are not so familiar with the texts and its interpretive traditions and draw on their own memories and imaginings, however, accurate or inaccurate they may be. So, when we are enjoying a horror movie with a satanic theme, we need to do a bit of homework to appreciate what is going on and what is in the mind of the makers. Are they in touch with the biblical text? Are they mixing Bible texts with its long interpretive traditions? Satan has had a long life in Jewish and Christian traditions. The oral folklore; the literature, including the commentaries on the biblical texts and the theological writings; the sculptures and paintings; the transformation by disciples of witchcraft and Satanism; the secular interpretations (both comic and serious) mean that there are quite different pictures of the demonic – that there is a developing iconography throughout the centuries. And, for the last hundred years or more there have been the cinema images, reinforcing old ideas and pictures, playing

 Because the Gospel of John refers anachronistically to the enemies of the Jewish Jesus as “the Jews,” this has led to harmful antisemitic depictions of Jewish characters in films based on the gospels. For a discussion of anti-Judaism in John see the collected essays in Bieringer, et al. (). For a discussion of antisemitism in film, see Reinhartz’s essay in Part II (Pp.  – ).  In this Mark text, Jesus seems to be paraphrasing Sirach : and Isaiah :.  Although Isaiah seems to have a proud human king in mind, by the time of Jesus this text has apparently been reinterpreted in reference to Satan and the demonic.

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with the old ideas, and producing new images – as well as some plain old moneymaking ventures. In this chapter I will examine selected, illustrative films about Satan and the demonic to demonstrate the ways in which they draw on the leads from the Jewish scriptures or the New Testament, but also draw from eclectic sources of literature and visual arts as well as the film-writer’s imagination.

In Jesus Films With the gospel symbolism of evil, it is interesting to note the ways in which filmmakers have chosen to depict Satan. Many filmmakers draw on Genesis 3 to present Satan as a serpent. A very traditional example is the slithering snake with an extremely cultivated British accent that appears in the temptation scene of Jesus (dir. John Krish/Peter Sykes, 1979). In other films, Satan appears in the form of a human and may even reappear later in the story after the temptation scene. The sinister figure of Donald Pleasence, who portrays Satan or ‘The Dark Hermit’ in The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1966), turns up repeatedly in the film. Not only does he confront Jesus in an eerie mountaintop cave during the temptation scene, he also appears at the stoning of the woman taken in adultery (here identified as Mary Magdalene) where he advises Jesus that they will meet again, and he later reappears in the crowd at Jesus’ trial before Pilate. In Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Satan is visualized as a young girl, significantly recalling the biblical warnings about angels of light and darkness (2 Cor. 11:14). This seeming angel of light urges Jesus to come down from the cross in a hallucination scene were Jesus is persuaded by the ‘angel’ that God has been satisfied with his offer of self-sacrifice and that he can now lead an ordinary life, marry, have a family, and live into a comfortable old age. When the apostles arrive in Nazareth and tell him they had expected him to die on the cross, Jesus regains consciousness. The alleged angel of light has trapped him into a ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me’ experience and he wakens to ‘Into your hands I commend my spirit’. The principal Satan in Roger Young’s Jesus (1999) is played by Jeroen Krabe, who appears in the desert as a modern man in a black, casual suit and slick black haircut. But, Young also presents Satan as a female in flowing red dress. These male and female images of Satan interchange during the temptation sequence as they attempt to convince Jesus that humanity is not worth saving. But, it is Jeroen Krabbe who reappears in what must be one of the longest Agony in the Garden sequences in cinema. This Satan is smart and has a way with insinuating words. He and Jesus have a theological/philosophical discussion, arguing the cruelty of God and the futility of Jesus dying as well as issues of free will and sin. While Jesus and Satan talk, Satan accompanies Jesus through vivid and vigorous scenes of the Crusades and the condemna-

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tion of a witch in the Middle Ages, all in Jesus’ name. Satan wryly points out as the witch burns that she is innocent. They then they go to the trenches and battles of World War I. This experience has a draining effect on Jesus, who nonetheless professes a deep commitment to his Father. Another arresting visualization of Satan is the character (played by Rosalinda Celentano) that stalks Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004). Gibson’s presentation of this dark-cowled figure borrows elements of horror film. A male actor provides the voice of Satan, giving this character an androgynous quality. Moreover, Celentano’s eyebrows were shaved for the part, and special effects ensured that she never blinks (Powell 2004, 73). During the scourging of Jesus, the androgynous Satan carries around a misshapen infant in a grotesque parody of the Madonna and Child. Much like Donald Pleasence’s Dark Hermit in Greatest Story and Jeroen Krabe’s tempter in Jesus (1999), Celentano’s Satan expands far beyond the biblical depiction of this character – haunting Jesus’ footsteps from Gethsemane to Golgotha (Poole 2009, 198). Celentano’s Satan attempts to dissuade Jesus during his Agony in the Garden, going so far as to unleash a snake (again drawing on Gen. 3) upon which Jesus stomps triumphantly (cf. Gen. 3:14– 15). Satan also appears among a crowd of demonic Jewish children, who torment Judas and drive him to commit suicide. This scene, among others, prompted the criticism that Gibson visually associated Satan with Jews who were not followers of Jesus (cf. John 8:44). Finally, Satan is seen screaming in a deep pit following the death of Jesus on the cross. Mark Dornford-May’s South African film, Son of Man (2006) offers another imaginative interpretation of Satan. The film opens with a black-and-red-clad, sinister, black African Satan sitting on a cliff with white-clad, black African Jesus. Satan has a cane with a goat’s hoof at the end and a serpent tattoo on his neck (once again echoing Gen. 3). During the temptation scene (shown out of sequence at the beginning of the film), Jesus actually pushes Satan down a hill. “Get behind me Satan! This is my world,” Jesus taunts (cf. Mark 8:33). Satan disagrees; and, throughout the film, the two are engaged in a battle over the fate of the earth. Satan reappears in the next scene (recognizable by his distinctive cane even though his face is not visible) among contemporary warlords after a school massacre where he ensures that the dead in a school are really dead. He also reappears just before and after the Massacre of the Innocents and when Jesus is ‘disappeared’ by the provisional government. Satan, thus, lives in others’ evil in Dornford-May’s film. The films discussed here demonstrate a tendency for filmmakers to expand the minor role that Satan plays in the New Testament gospels. Satan’s cinematic incarnations regularly appear at Gethsemane, at Jesus’ Roman trial, and at the crucifixion. Drawing upon a long history of Christian interpretation, filmmakers who emphasize this figure tend to interpret the Jesus story as a cosmic battle between supernatural forces of good and evil. Jesus is constructed as an epic hero who resists temptation and overcomes great odds before his eventual triumph. Jesus films also frequently identify Satan with serpent imagery, connecting the gospel story to the Garden of

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Eden and presenting Jesus as a Second Adam who will resist the lure of temptation (cf. Rom. 5:12– 21).

Sympathy for the Devil Carl Theodor Dreyer’s only Jesus film,⁴ Blade af Satans Bog (1920, Leaves from Satan’s Book) retells a portion of the gospel story from the perspective of Satan (played by Helge Nissen). This portmanteau silent film presents four different stories linked by the character of Satan, who is condemned to wander the earth through the ages to tempt the human race to sin and Hell. For every soul that resists his temptation to sin, one thousand years are removed from his sentence of wandering; but for every soul that succumbs to temptation, one hundred years are added. The four stories were set in Jesus’ time, the Spanish Inquisition, the French Revolution, and the Finnish Civil War. In the first part of the film, Satan enters into the Pharisee who leads Judas (referred to as “the devil’s son”) to betray Jesus. Judas is shown as the keeper of the disciples’ money, complains about the financial extravagance of Jesus’ anointing, and hears Jesus’ rebuke that there will always be the poor. After this confrontation, Satan approaches the despondent Judas and suggests that Jesus is not the Son of God, but rather derives his power from the devil (cf. Mark 3:22– 30). He also plays upon Judas’ vanity by suggesting that he would be acting as the chosen tool of God by betraying Jesus. Judas refuses to listen and recoils in horror at Satan’s words. However, after the Last Supper, he meets Satan at an arranged time and place and goes with him to meet Caiaphas. Following Jesus’ arrest, Satan congratulates Judas and hands him a bag of money, but the betrayer is overcome by anguish and despair. Here, as well as at several other points during this story, the camera lingers on the solemn face of Helge Nissen suggesting the reluctance with which he engages in this work. An intertitle interprets: “Satan, the fallen angel, who desired to find favour in eyes of the Almighty, saw with sorrow his evil work finished.” The character then looks upward toward heaven as another intertitle explains that the Lord has commanded him to continue his work. Nissen sadly bows his head as this sequence fades to black. Similarly, the other episodes in Dreyer’s film have Satan involved in the Spanish Inquisition (as a Grand Inquisitor who persuades a monk to commit a rape); the French Revolution (as a Jacobin leader whose activities cause the death of Marie Antoinette); and, in a contemporary tale of the time, The Russian-Finnish war of 1918 (as a former monk, now a leader of the Red Guard, who threatens the family of a telegraph operator and, ultimately, drives her to suicide). Throughout Dreyer’s film evinces reluctant sympathy for the doomed Satan who is, after all, attempting to regain God’s favor rather than undermine God’s authority.  This is excluding Dreyer’s planned, but unrealized Jesus of Nazareth, . See Vander Stichele’s discussion of biblical reception in Dreyer’s oeuvre in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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Another four-part silent film from Scandinavia is Häxan (dir. Benjamin Christensen, 1922, a.k.a. Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages). This film is primarily a documentary on accusations of witchcraft in primitive and medieval cultures based upon the Malleus Maleficarum, but it also contains dramatized short stories reminiscent of horror films. Amid accusations of witchcraft and torture by religious authorities, there are scenes of Witches’ Sabbaths and appearances of Satan (portrayed by the director himself). To the extent that this film focuses on superstition and false accusations of witchcraft, the individuals associated with Satan are portrayed as sympathetic characters.

Satan Humorous Many films, like Häxan, do not visualize biblical storylines but still borrow from the Bible and its interpretive traditions when depicting Satan in non-biblical scenarios. Many of these films belong to the horror genre and depict gruesome diabolical incarnations, exorcisms, and apocalyptic scenarios. But other Satan films take a humorous turn. In English-language films prior to the 1960s, appearances by the devil tended to be allegorical, even comical, in moral fables like All That Money Can Buy (dir. William Dieterle, 1941, a.k.a. The Devil and Daniel Webster)⁵ and Heaven Can Wait (dir. Ernst Lubitsch, 1943). Outside of mainstream cinema, the African-American production The Blood of Jesus (dir. Spencer Williams, 1941) offers an interesting Satan-figure. When the central character, Martha, dies, she is confronted by a choice between good and evil at the crossroads (with quotations from the Sermon on the Mount in the background). Satan appears (dressed rather ludicrously like a pantomime devil) and commissions a well-dressed Judas to tempt Martha with a new dress and shoes. Martha goes to a club (with some extended scenes of dancing, an acrobatic dancer, some women of easy virtue putting cash into their stockings), but eventually a picture of Jesus helps her to recall biblical passages and resist the temptations of Satan and Judas. A rationale behind Satan’s fall is offered with more than a touch of spoof in Bedazzled (dir. Stanley Donen, 1967). Peter Cook, as the film’s manifestation of Satan, provides an object lesson to explain to the little Everyman, Stanley (Dudley Moore), why he defied God: sitting on a British post-box, he exhorts Stanley to circle him, continually chanting words of praise and adoration; after a while Stanley finds it is boring and wants to stop – and Satan draws the conclusion that this is why he re-

 The Faust legend, in which an individual sells his soul to the devil in exchange for material success, has been especially generative for Satan films across genres. Other comedic versions include Bedazzled (dir. Stanley Donen, ) and its  remake. Noncomedic film versions of this popular story include Alias Nick Beal (dir. John Farrow, ), Damn Yankees! (dir. George Abbott/Stanley Donen, ), Mephisto (dir. István Szabó, ), and Angel Heart (dir. Alan Parker, ).

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belled! The 2000 remake of Bedazzled (dir. Harold Ramis) has Elizabeth Hurley as Satan. Hurley lacks Peter Cook’s sardonic verbal-style and has devilish wiles of a more obvious kind. The film associates her with a large snake, evoking the long interpretive tradition that both Eve and the serpent are tempters of man. There are more tongue-in-cheek presentations of Satan. Adam Sandler is part of the Satan family in the spoof Little Nicky (dir. Steven Brill, 2000). Rodney Dangerfield plays Grandfather Lucifer with his usual facial tics and verbal deadpan. His ambitious son, Beelzebub (Harvey Keitel) wants to rule for a thousand years, but two of his sons are plotting against him. The soft touch, Nicky (Sandler) is sent to earth on a mission to bring his brothers back to Hell. But Nicky is routinely killed and finds himself, ashamed, back in Hell. The film offers lots of farcical comedy and mischief, with one son of Satan possessing a Cardinal in order to preach sin to his congregation. And Hell is rather lurid.⁶ Hell is also rather lurid in Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry (1998). The film offers a compilation of short story dramas throughout that are, like Harry’s life, constructions – distortions, perhaps being the more accurate word. When Harry (Allen) finds that his friend Larry (Billy Crystal) plans to marry the student that he wanted to marry, he smells sulphur – which leads to Harry going down by elevator, past different crime-punishment floors (the one for the media is full already) to visit Hell. There he finds a rather suave, Larry, a well-dressed smooth-talker with a cocktail in hand, urbanely discussing Harry’s ‘sins’ and introducing him to his atheist father (whom Harry forgives). The Devil explains that he was ready for Hell because he worked for two years with a Hollywood producer. Roberto Benigni’s Italian Catholic background entitled him to have his own humorous ‘go’ at Satan. In Il piccolo diavolo (1989, Little Devil), Benigni takes on the role himself, entering into persons in the street, unable to get out until an Italian priest, Father Maurice (Walter Matthau, with a shuffling gait and deadpan remarks), blesses him. It seems that the Devil has escaped and Hell wants him back. The Devil pursues Father Maurice, even attempting to celebrate Mass, vested but not knowing what to do, except to turn the ceremony into a fashion show, similar to the one that he had seen the day before, with the ladies all parading up and down the aisle as models. Then the Devil goes off on his own, meeting an attractive young woman, named Nina (played by Benigni’s wife, Nicoletta Braschi). She seems to be woman of loose morals and tries to tempt the Devil, who though he knows a lot of practical things, seems to be singularly ignorant about sexual matters, which have to be explained to him. It turns out that Nina is another devil with the commission to bring Benigni back home, to Hell, and, when she possesses him, he vanishes.

 Another famously lurid depiction of Satan appears in the animated South Park TV series (dir. Trey Parker, et al., -present), where Satan is a recurring character alongside Jesus. In South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (dir. Trey Parker, ), pre-the Iraq invasion of , mocks Saddam Hussein in bed with Satan.

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George Burns played both God and Satan in the third instalment of the Oh, God! series entitled Oh, God! You Devil (dir. Paul Bogart, 1984). Perhaps the producers of these films had in mind a Manichean idea of the two principles, of good and of evil, Satan as a kind of alter ego of God. God is an old, benign cigar-smoker – and Satan is an old, benign-looking, snappy-dressing cigar smoker. God is looking for some propaganda, while Satan is on the lookout for souls to snare. However, his singer target ultimately prefers real life to glossy, devilish ambitious dreams. Dogma (1999), Kevin Smith’s millennial spoof included a diabolical target. Alongside fallen angels Loke (Ben Affleck) and Bartleby (Matt Damon), appears Jason Lee as a cynical American con-man devil named Azrael, ever ready with smooth and semi-plausible temptations. But Smith’s depiction the devil draws on a long and, in modern times obscure, history of interpretation. Put simply and politely, from medieval times at least, the devil has been associated with scatological imagery. Chaucer, for instance, has no trouble in talking about some clergy as the devil’s faeces. There are images of the devil dropping excrement, reproduced, for example, by Pier Paolo Pasolini in his version of The Canterbury Tales (1972). Smith’s characters in Dogma are not averse to the ‘shit’ expletive. However, in one memorable scene set in a bar toilet, Satan rises from the literal bowels of the earth, as a large, odorous, faecal devil. It has been remarked by spiritual sages that one of the best ways of coping with the devil and bringing him down to size is to laugh at him. Kevin Smith, therefore, declares his belief in God but he mocks the devil as a real (literal) shit.

The Incarnation of Satan A new angle in Satan films was introduced in 1968 with Roman Polanski’s adaptation of the Ira Levin’s 1967 horror novel, Rosemary’s Baby. The 1960s had already raised issues about God language, ‘Death of God’ theology and the Catholic Church’s rethinking in the Second Vatican Council. Audiences were challenged to think of the presence of the Devil in the world differently. Rosemary’s Baby was the Devil incarnate. Blasphemous? Many thought so at the time. But, if God could become incarnate in human form, why not Satan? Polanski was aware of this contemporary thinking: Rosemary is impregnated during the 1965 visit of Pope Paul VI to the United Nations in New York (seen on television in the background of the film); when she visits her gynecologist, the Easter 1966 copy of Time Magazine with its ‘Is God Dead?’ cover is seen in his waiting room. It was only in 1976, that the main imagining of Satan incarnate, The Omen (dir. Richard Donner), appeared (with two sequels: Damien: Omen II, dir. Don Taylor, 1978 and Omen III: The Final Conflict, dir. Graham Baker, 1981). The most significant example of this was the original The Omen, where Damien, a diabolical baby with the symbolic 666 on his scalp, is born in Rome on June 6, 1966. The more worldly Damien: Omen II situates the boy in the American business world. By The Final Con-

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flict, Sam Neill as the suave, adult Damien is about to take over the world. The Antichrist finds his place in the U.S. world of politics and business. There was an attempt to revive this series with Omen IV: The Awakening (dir. Jorge Montesi/Dominique Othenin-Girard, 1991), where a little girl is the devil incarnate. However, it was box-office failure, and fans of the series refused to consider it. A somewhat more successful remake of The Omen (dir. John Moore, 2006), keeping the original title came in the aftermath of 9/11 and subsequent wars in the Middle East (Kawin 2012, 91– 94).

Apocalyptic Satans Another cinematic phenomenon could be called ‘apocalyptic devils’ seen in movies that present a would-be apocalyptic scenario that must be thwarted by the film’s hero.⁷ Such films thrived in the late 1990s run up to a new millennium. For example, in End of Days (dir. Peter Hyams, 1999), Satan is searching New York for a mother to bear his child, who is destined for absolute power. Intended as the big American action thriller for the end of 1999, this film offers comic-strip action and characterization – relying on a myriad of special effects and culminating in a giant appearance of a fiery dragon-like Satan. It is a blend of over-literal interpretation of scripture (especially the book of Revelation) as well as a cinematic use of Christian iconography. Satan is, of course, diabolical, though he takes the quietly persuasive form of Gabriel Byrne, especially in his temptation scene of Jericho Cane (initials J. C.). Arnold Schwarzenegger is the ambiguous Christ-figure, an alcoholic and despairing of God, yet protective of the Devil’s victim. The film is set against a visual background of church interiors and altarpieces with Crucifixion scenes as well as St Michael whom Cain imitates by destroying the dragon. J. C. is impaled in cruciform, and finally he is pierced through. In a different but equally fiery apocalyptic scenario, Al Pacino plays Satan in the New York legal profession and business world in Devil’s Advocate (dir. Taylor Hackford, 1997). This film appears as a courtroom drama with Keanu Reeves starring as a hotshot Florida attorney who has not lost a case, even though some of the clients he defends disgust him. His mother is a God-fearing Bible-quoting woman. His wife is devoted and shares his ambitions. When he is headhunted for a top New York firm, he willingly starts a journey to the top of his profession, but also a journey that requires him to struggle for his conscience and his soul. The head of the firm, played with panache by Pacino, is ominously named John Milton. He is a controller, a tester, and a tempter with genial and reasonable sounding advice. But, one’s suspicions that this multinational corporate legal firm is not all it seems are soon confirmed and the young lawyer discovers more about himself than  See the discussion on apocalyptic films by Pippin Part I (Pp.  – ) and Beddingfield’s discussion on Revelation films in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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he wanted to – that he is too vain, ambitious, neglectful of his wife, and prepared to double-deal. This brings him face to face with the devil and a debate about his own responsibility in his moral downfall. Satan scoffs at God but is prepared to adhere to a theology of free will, where human beings cannot blame others for the self-centred choices they make. There is more than a touch of the apocalyptic in the literally fiery scenes and in discussion of the evil of the twentieth century (the Devil at his peak). Although the young lawyer escapes just in time, Satan moves on immediately to his next potential victim. Also delving into the satanic was Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (1999), with Johnny Depp as a specialist in antique books. He is persuaded to go on a mission to find the few remaining copies of a demonic book from the seventeenth century, written by a man, inspired by Lucifer, who was burned at the stake with all his writings. Nine engravings from the books when placed together open a portal for the devil. It is melodramatic but also elegant. Constantine (dir. Francis Lawrence, 2005) offers a more notable depiction of Satan. The film presupposes that the angels of God and the demons of Satan are at war for the souls of humanity. The title character, John Constantine was a psychic child born with the ability to see the demonic world behind the visible world. It so frightened him that he killed himself and, because this suicide is a mortal sin, went to Hell. However, he was quickly revived, released from Hell after seeing its horror, and sent back to earth where he discovered that his mission was to destroy the demonic half-breeds and exorcise the hapless humans they inhabited. There are all kinds of allusions to the Bible and theology in the screenplay. God and the devil have made a wager to gain as many souls as possible, but they cannot interfere with free will. They can indirectly influence humans through the agency of angels and demons who represent them on earth. The film also suggests that Jesus did not die from his crucifixion alone but from his side being pierced with the lance (a misreading of John 19). This lance is called ‘the spear of destiny’, which, since it was the instrument of the death of the Son of God, could also be the means of the birth of the son of the devil. When this evil spirit tries to come to earth, it enters into the womb of a psychic woman (named Angela) – in a parody of Mary’s virginal conception of Jesus. However, Gabriel (in the female form of Tilda Swinton) is on earth and has tired of God being so merciful and forgiving. She is intent on destroying Angela and freeing the demon (a bit like Lucifer’s traditional sin of arrogance against God). Satan himself makes several appearances in the form of Peter Stormare: cynical, effete wearing fancy clothes, but no shoes. However, the final confrontation is with Gabriel, the new Lucifer, whom Constantine defeats in the end.

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Diabolical Possession and Exorcism The presence of Satan and the demonic in this world is best seen in films such as The Exorcist (dir. William Friedkin, 1973), which took the cinema world by storm with big box-office and Oscar nominations. While the melodramatic trappings of diabolical possession were seen in the possessed girl, Satan was not seen. But, a devil was heard, alternating spewing with blasphemies and crass language. The repercussions of possession were the victimization of the little girl, the examination of faith by her mother, and the personal religious crises for the two priests. The film led to two sequels – Exorcist II: The Heretic (dir. John Boorman, 1976) and The Exorcist III (dir. William Peter Blatty, 1990) – as well as two prequels – Exorcist: The Beginning (dir. Renny Harlin, 2004); Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (dir. Paul Schrader, 2005). During the 1970s and the early 1980s, there were a lot of imitations. Whether these films witnessed to any belief in possession is a moot point. A number of them were Italian horror movies (with some tongue-in-cheek attempts at humor and bilious special effects, with such titles as House of Exorcism, Beyond the Door, and Holocaust 2000 – where Kirk Douglas tries to stop his antichrist son from using nuclear power to achieve his ends) and several American telemovies with titles like Satan’s Triangle. There was even a Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby. The possession theme has proliferated after 9/11 (Wetmore 2012, 140). In addition to The Exorcist prequels, it was reintroduced into cinema with two high-profile films, The Exorcism of Emily Rose (dir. Scott Derrickson, 2005) and an Austrian film, Requiem (dir. Hans-Christian Schmid, 2006), which dramatized the original story that Emily Rose had transferred to the U.S. Both films brought a note of seriousness into treatments of the theme. While there are some scenes of the possessed, the films raise issues of belief and non-belief in the context of the prosecution of the priest who performed the exorcisms and who was blamed for resulting deaths. The exorcism theme continued in theaters with a Protestant film that tangled with Satanism, The Last Exorcism (dir. Daniel Stamm, 2010). Among films with Catholic exorcisms, there was the small-budget, The Devil Inside (dir. William Brent Bell, 2012), which surprised commentators with its instant big box-office appeal in the United States; but it was the big budget, The Rite (dir. Mikael Håfström, 2011), which offered a much more serious approach to the theme (while having several exorcism episodes, including the possession of the exorcist himself). The Rite is in two parts, each asking for a different response from the audience. The first part focuses more on theory, arguments pro and con possession, in the setting of an actual course for exorcists established in Rome. The second part shows cases of possession, which move the action into a more melodramatic phase. A young priest, who has been sent to Rome to study, observes a Jesuit exorcism and has to deal with the possession of the exorcist himself. Deliver us from Evil (dir. Scott Derrickson, 2014), another exorcism film, draws on elements of the original The Exorcist and its sequels – with mysterious goings on in the Middle East, especially with demons. The screenplay is up-to-date insofar as

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there are three American soldiers in Iraq in 2010, going down into a vault with video camera, smelling strange odors, finding a message on the wall, and photographing the material. But, three years later, each of the soldiers is in violent crisis back in New York City: one brutalising his wife; another found dead while doing a painting job; the third, present in a sinister manner at the Bronx Zoo, actually possessed. The possessed man is confronted by a New York police officer, Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana), who has been a lapsed Catholic from the age of twelve, denying a God who did not intervene in an attack on his family. The film becomes an exploration of evil when Sarchie encounters a Jesuit priest, Father Mendoza (Edgar Ramirez), an expert in psychiatry and working with people with violent mental difficulties and possession. Fr. Mendoza makes a distinction between Primary Evil and Secondary Evil, the latter being the destructive experiences in most people’s lives. His focus on Primary Evil is on the unexplained presence of pervasive evil, the dichotomy between God and the Devil, Primary Evil being a continual menace in the world. When the detective wants to upbraid God for not intervening in disaster, Fr. Mendoza says that they could talk all day on the problem of evil but they should focus on the problem of good, why so much good is in the world – and he makes the point that God relies on us humans to intervene and help with God’s work for good. The pertinent example is that of the detective and others in their police work confronting criminals and bringing them to justice. One of the best screen collections of exorcism stories was on the television screen – a series of six-hour episodes on the BBC, Apparitions (dir. Joe Ahearne/ John Strickland, 2008). Martin Shaw plays Father Jacob, a London-based exorcist. He is a polite, urbane man, being considered for the post of chief exorcist by the Vatican but opposed by a powerful cardinal. In the series, he has to perform a range of exorcisms on a young Indian gay seminarian, an abusive father, a prisoner, and an elderly woman who is pregnant with a devil-child. While this may sound sensational (and there are some highly dramatic and melodramatic situations), Fr. Jacob and his approach are very British, very commonsense. He is a man of faith and integrity.

Conclusion While there have been depictions of Satan from gospel narratives, principally the temptations in the desert and the agony in Gethsemane, most of the films discussed in this chapter have moved away from ‘pure’ biblical reference. Influenced by Hebrew apocrypha, with tales of fallen angels, for instance, they offer syncretistic tales and interpretations. This means that they still draw indirect inspiration from Jewish and Christian interpretive traditions. Most serious films with Satan themes date from the late 1960s to the present. The focus is on Satan in our world: Satan incarnate and Satan inhabiting men and women in possession. The exorcism films began in the 1970s. There has been a significant revival of such movies in the twenty-first century. It would seem that posses-

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sion and exorcism films will continue, reminding audiences of the possessive presence of Satan. In the decade after the release of The Exorcist, filmmakers drew on the traditions of diabolical characters like Dracula. As time has gone on audiences have become (at least in Western countries) less churched, so many writers and directors are now more familiar with satanic movie conventions than actual religious traditions, inventing all kinds of horror movie genres, sometimes with perceived external trappings of religious ritual that do not relate to reality. Nonetheless, there seems to be no abating of interest in such occult and demonic films. Which means that Satan has a lot more to answer for.

Works Cited Bieringer, Reidmund, Didier Pollefeyt, and Frederique Vandecasteele-Vanneuville, eds. 2001. Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel. Loiusville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox. Kawin, Bruce F. 2012. Horror and the Horror Film. London and New York: Anthem Press. Lehnhof, Kent R. “‘Intestine War’ and ‘the Smell of Mortal Change’: Troping the Digestive Tract in Paradise Lost.” In The Sacred and Profane in English Renaissance Literature. Ed. Mary Arshagouni Papazian. Danvers, Mass.: Rosemont Publishing. Pp. 278 – 300. Poole, W. Scott. 2009. Satan in America: The Devil We Know. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield. Powell, Mark Allan. 2004. “Satan and the Demons.” In Jesus and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Ed. Kathleen E. Corley and Robert L. Webb. London and New York: Continuum. Pp. 71 – 78. Wetmore, Kevin J. 2012. Post-9/11 Horror in American Cinema. London and New York: Continuum.

Films Cited Alias Nick Beal (dir. John Farrow, 1949, Paramount, US). All That Money Can Buy [a.k.a. The Devil and Daniel Webster] (dir. William Dieterle, 1941, William Dieterle Productions, US). Angel Heart (dir. Alan Parker, 1987, Carolco International, US/CA/UK). Apparitions (dir. Joe Ahearne and John Strickland, 2008, BBC, UK). Bedazzled (dir. Stanley Donen, 1967, Stanley Donen Films, UK). Bedazzled (dir. Harold Ramis, 2000, Twentieth Century Fox, US/DE) Chi sei? [a.k.a. Beyond the Door] (dir. Ovido Assonitis and Robert Barrett, 1974, Film Ventures International, IT/US). The Bible Collection [Jesus; TV miniseries] (dir. Roger Young, 1999, Lux Vide, CZ/IT/DE/US). Blade af Satans Bog [a.k.a. Leaves from Satan’s Book] (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1920, Nordisk Film, DK). The Blood of Jesus (dir. Spencer Williams, 1941, Amegro Films, US). Constantine (dir. Francis Lawrence, 2005, Warner Brothers, US/DE). Damien: Omen II (dir. Don Taylor, 1978, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Damn Yankees! (dir. George Abbott and Stanley Donen, 1958, Warner Brothers, US) Deconstructing Harry (dir. Woody Allen, 1998, Sweetland Films, US).

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Deliver us from Evil (dir. Scott Derrickson, 2014, Screen Gems, US). The Devil Inside (dir. William Brent Bell, 2012, Prototype, US). Devil’s Advocate (dir. Taylor Hackford, 1997, Warner Brothers, US/DE). Dogma (dir. Kevin Smith, 1999, View Askew Productions, US). Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (dir. Paul Schrader, 2005, Morgan Creek Productions, US). End of Days (dir. Peter Hyams, 1999, Beacon Communications, US). The Exorcism of Emily Rose (dir. Scott Derrickson, 2005, Screen Gems, US). The Exorcist (dir. William Friedkin, 1973, Warner Brothers, US). Exorcist II: The Heretic (dir. John Boorman, 1976, Warner Brothers, US). The Exorcist III (dir. William Peter Blatty, 1990, Morgan Creek Productions, US). Exorcist: The Beginning (dir. Renny Harlin, 2004, Morgan Creek Productions, US). The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1966, George Stevens Productions, US). Häxan [a.k.a. Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages] (dir. Benjamin Christensen, 1922, Aljosha Production Company, SE). Heaven Can Wait (dir. Ernst Lubitsch, 1943, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Holocaust 2000 (dir. Alberto De Martino, 1977, Aston Film, IT/UK). House of Exorcism (dir. Mario Bava and Alfredo Leone, 1975, Euro America Produzioni Cinematografiche, IT/DE/ES). I racconti di Canterbury [a.k.a. The Canterbury Tales] (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1972, Les Productions Artistes Associés, IT/FR). Il piccolo diavolo [a.k.a. Little Devil] (dir. Roberto Benigni, 1989, Yarno Cinematografia, IT). Jesus [a.k.a. The Jesus Film] (dir. John Krish and Peter Sykes, 1979, Inspirational Films, US). The Last Exorcism (dir. Daniel Stamm, 2010, Strike Entertainment, US/FR). The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988, Universal, US/CA). Little Nicky (dir. Steven Brill, 2000, Avery Pix, US). Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby (dir. Sam O’Steen, 1976, The Culzean Corporation, US). Mephisto (dir. István Szabó, 1981, Mafilm, DE/HU/AT). The Ninth Gate (dir. Roman Polanski, 1999, Artisan Entertainment, ES/FR/US). Oh, God! You Devil (dir. Paul Bogart, 1984, Warner Brothers, US). The Omen (dir. Richard Donner, 1976, Twentieth Century Fox, US/UK). The Omen (dir. John Moore, 2006, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Omen III: The Final Conflict (dir. Graham Baker, 1981, Twentieth Century Fox, US/UK). Omen IV: The Awakening (dir. Jorge Montesi/Dominique Othenin-Girard, 1991, FNM Films, US/CA). The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004, Icon Productions, US). Requiem (dir. Hans-Christian Schmid, 2006, 23/5 Filmproduktion GmbH, DE). The Rite (dir. Mikael Håfström, 2011, New Line Cinema, US/HU/IT). Rosemary’s Baby (dir. Roman Polanski, 1968, William Castle Productions, US). Satan’s Triangle (dir. Sutton Roley, 1975, American Broadcasting Company, US).

Gaye Williams Ortiz

20 Creation and Origins in Film

The book of Genesis and its stories about the origins of life have provided countless hours of cinematic entertainment and education. There are fewer films about the origins of life than there are about the end; popular film’s speculation on apocalypse and the end times peaked around the time of the millennium, but filmmakers seem to continue to be more fascinated with the special effects potential of the end of life on earth and of the universe. Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, which exposes the Great Flood and Creation “2.0” to the silver screen in all its computer-generated glory, was released in March 2014. It was the first big-budget (and live-action) Old Testament epic made for popular moviegoers since King David (dir. Bruce Beresford, 1985). It is an important story about starting over, the promise of new beginnings after the derailment of God’s plan for Adam and Eve and their subsequent expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Noah witnesses God’s destructive power as well as his covenant with humanity that he will never use it again on his creation. Although a significant percentage of the population today may not be acquainted with the basic biblical narratives, Noah will no doubt appeal to those who enjoy films about mythology and ancient history, as well as to Christian audiences, who proved themselves an economic force to be reckoned with due to the unexpected success of The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2003). Aronofsky, whose interest in Jewish mysticism has been seen in at least one of his previous films,¹ reportedly had to reassure studio executives near to Noah’s release date as to its adherence to the Genesis story, after religious conservatives expressed a worry that the story would not be literal enough. It is apparent from the advance trailers that Noah, portrayed by Russell Crowe, is more akin to a modern-day superhero than a traditional biblical one, and Aronofsky admitted that he assured Crowe that he would not be cast in a traditional mold: “We wanted to smash expectations of who Noah is. The first thing I told Russell is, ‘I will never shoot you on a houseboat with two giraffes behind you.’ […] You’re going to see Russell Crowe as a superhero, a guy who has this incredibly difficult challenge put in front of him and has to overcome it” (Chitwood 2014). Adele Reinhartz says that biblical texts used in films have been “filtered through the lens of Western culture” and asks whether “audience knowledge of the Bible is essential, desirable, or even helpful when viewing these films” (Reinhartz 2003, 186). Just as Middle Earth is a foreign, far-away place for twenty-first-century moviegoers, audiences may not have much of a contextual framework for understanding the Near Eastern, Hellenistic, and Roman civilizations, which are the settings for biblical texts. Although audiences might miss biblical allusions that are made in these films, film-

 Pi (), which involves the search for a solution to the mathematical code of the Kabbalah.

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Fig. 36: Noah as a superhero in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah (2014)

makers themselves, in making biblical epics, may lack an academic, or even apologetic, grounding in the Bible.

Revisioning Genesis 1 – 2 Of the films with biblical themes, there are few that portray a literal biblical description of creation. The beginning scene of the 1953 film Sins of Jezebel (dir. Reginald Le Borg) visually integrates both Genesis creation stories and “emphasizes the Bible’s authority as a source for both narrative material and commandments to live by” (Chattaway 2013). The film is mainly concerned with the life of the prophet Elijah and his conflict with Queen Jezebel (1 Kgs. 17– 21), but it begins with a reference to how the world came into being. The opening shot is a lengthy pan across an illustrated mural, moving from darkness to light shining on the earth; from there it pans across water with a whale swimming below seagulls in the air, and finally pauses where animals and Adam and Eve are already standing in the Garden. The film uses a voiceover, which paraphrases Genesis, “And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.” The camera draws back, and a robed narrator steps in front of the mural to intone that this is “the beginning of everything.” The mural supports the first chapter of Genesis’s image of Creation as environmental perfection (Gen. 1:31). Thirteen years later, The Bible: In the Beginning… (dir. John Huston, 1966) (which actually only covers a portion of Genesis from creation to the life of Abraham) employs a similar technique, a narrator (Huston) speaking the words of Genesis 1 over a four-minute creation montage; Huston’s choice of image was film of natural phenomena. He sent photographer Ernst Haas to capture footage of primordial elements such as steaming gases, torrential waters, and molten lava, which was then compiled to convey the gradual emergence of life on earth. Rather than accompanying this montage with the pompous musical background that so many epic films of the period employed, Huston used a modern experimental electronic music soundtrack by Toshiro Mayuzumi. It is obvious that in adapting stories from the Bible for the screen, filmmakers may feel the need – in the face of possible objections from literalists – to attempt to fill the many gaps they perceive in biblical stories. The editorial and artistic license

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of these filmmakers prompts one to ask, is it not the case that the writers of Genesis also employed their own personal understandings of their own time and culture when they wrote about creation? Aronofsky’s script contains Noah’s own retelling of the story of creation to his family; this oral history comes in the film at the point where the flood has begun in earnest. Noah’s explanation of how the world began closely follows the words of Genesis 1. Beginning his story by the light of a brazier, when Noah extinguishes its light stop-motion visuals take over as the story whizzes from the explosive Big Bang to Adam and Eve. Swirling galaxies and meteor showers, cell multiplication and division, aquatic creatures swimming on ocean beds are only some of the macro- and micro- phenomena portrayed that, in biblical times, Noah would not have been able to experience or even comprehend. Clearly this is an imposition by Aronofsky (like that of Huston) of his interpretation of cosmology onto the visual style of the film.² This display of artistic license leads Peter Chattaway to suggest that, in addition to a familiarity with the original Hebrew scripture of Genesis, audiences might benefit from knowing the ancient Hebrew cosmology, which comprises Heaven, Earth, Sea, and Underworld. This schema will help audiences in understanding why, in the film, the Flood is caused not just when the rains come, but also when “all the springs of the great deep burst forth “ – portrayed by Aronofsky as geysers shooting out of the ground into the sky (Chattaway 2013). Broadening out still further, in a twist on films that build upon the Genesis creation sequence, the opening credits sequence of Creation (dir. Jon Amiel, 2009), a film about Charles Darwin’s struggle to complete his work On The Origin of Species (1859), portrays the organic complexity of the created order. The images that fade in and out include of masses of birds, butterflies, and cattle, followed by a closeup of sperm swimming to penetrate an egg. Reaching into the frame is a fetal forearm, and concluding with a forefinger stretching forth, imitative of Adam’s reaching out to God’s in Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam (a gesture also ironically mimicked on the DVD cover with Darwin and an ape).

Fig. 37: The DVD cover image of Creation (2009)

 Aronofksy also draws upon the book of Enoch, a non-canonical Jewish writing that begins with the fall of the Watchers, the angels who fathered giants known as the Nephilim.

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A conversation is audible at this point; Darwin’s child asks to be told a story “about everything.” This request is evidence of the great contrast between Amiel’s film and Huston’s or Le Borg’s, where the text of Genesis is imposed upon the viewer and there is no need to ask for “the story.” The request also suggests a child’s innocence in, and wonder at, the created world. But the biggest contrast to the aforementioned films is the visual implication that forms of life on earth did not follow a heavenly command to appear day by day but, rather, slogged their way through an epic experience of survival and adaptation. Indeed, later in Creation, Darwin’s scientist friend Thomas Huxley makes clear the astonishing accomplishment of Darwin’s work when he tells him, “Clearly the Almighty can no longer claim to have authored every species in under a week; you’ve killed God, sir!”³ The negative American reaction to Creation – including the filmmaker’s lengthy search for a U.S. distributor – was said by some to be because it was too controversial for American audiences. A Gallup poll, carried out during the month Creation was released, found that only 39 % of Americans believe in the theory of evolution (Singh 2009).

Origins of Life in Science Fiction There are many science fiction films that explore the beginnings of life, but do so by tapping into a broader vein than just asking whether Genesis 1– 2 should be read literally: Contact (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1997); Star Trek: The Motion Picture (dir. Robert Wise, 1979); Planet of the Apes (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968); Creature from the Black Lagoon (dir. Jack Arnold, 1954). Science fiction in the West is a genre uniquely suited for dealing with questions of faith, such as “ the shape of ultimate reality, the meaning of life, and the place of human beings in the cosmos” (Stone 1998). This perhaps is because writers and filmmakers of this genre find that it is a safe space to ask “What if?” and to explore wildly utopian or dystopian scenarios. 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968) has been described as “an example of futuristic pessimism” (Hurley 1970, 162), but also as a film that offers to the viewer “a mysterious presence which enters the consciousness even as the filmmaker appears to deny its existence” (Wall 1992, 41). This film was made during a time of great global discord caused by the Cold War waged between the United States and the Soviet Union. It came just the year before the successful landing of American astronauts on the moon, so the interest in space travel and the popularity of the science fiction genre in general was significant.

 Here the film employs creative license. While the real Thomas Huxley was attracted by Darwin’s idea of a Creator who created “by laws” rather than by fiat, he admitted to a religious tendency tempered by theological skepticism, feeling that science and religious occupied two different spheres (Brooke , ).

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However, the film transcends mere geopolitical intrigue (although that informs a small subplot). It is obvious, from the initial visual of the opening scene – a stunning alignment of the Earth, Jupiter and the Sun, complete with celestial music (Richard Strauss’s Thus Spake Zarathustra) – that the film intends to “enter both universal space and time” (Wall 1992, 187). The film concerns the problematic relationship that humanity has had with technology since the “Dawn of Man”; this title belongs to the first of four distinct segments of the film, set in the “era of pre-consciousness” (Wall 1992, 187). In it, nomadic apes in communal groups forage vegetation, forced to live on the land but also to retreat from competing bands encroaching on their erstwhile territory, until something happens to change their lives and the future of life on the planet. These “prototypes of humanity” (Wall 1992, 187) are visited unexpectedly by a black monolith, which comes to rest in their midst; curious, they begin to touch and explore it. It somehow imparts knowledge to them, so that one of their number grasps an animal bone from the ground and uses it as a tool to kill a boar. Neil Hurley says, “…man’s [sic] tools as extensions of himself assume an ambivalence that is really within man himself, so that a bone used to hunt and kill prey for food also becomes a weapon whereby other men are slain” (Hurley 1970, 162). The power emanating from this violent act results in one of the film’s famous images (which has become a modern cultural icon) of the bone being thrown up into the sky in slow motion and becoming, through the power of Kubrick’s edited cut, a spaceship, which is also a technological weapon used to intimidate and kill others. “The bone as a weapon defines the human condition” (Wall 1992, 43). Just as Cain killing Abel signifies the first act of murder among humans, so this image in Kubrick’s film captures the innate capacity of humans to destroy and points to their “acquisition of knowledge” as “both a fall and an ascent” (Burnette-Bletsch, 2012, 5); the film’s bleakness comes, says James Wall, “from Kubrick’s belief that creativity is tainted at the center” (Wall 1992, 43). A God-figure in 2001: A Space Odyssey is never specifically shown; the closest image may be the Star-Child who appears as an out-sized spatial object in the closing seconds of the film. However, in terms of an omniscient and omnipresent power that has the capability to direct life on the spaceship, HAL the computer provides a Godlike presence.⁴ Its ability to read lips as the astronauts discuss its fate behind glass doors and its foreknowledge of the true purpose of the ship’s mission give it a divine power, stopped only by the dismemberment of its memory cells by the surviving astronaut. However, we soon realize that Hal is also a flawed creation of humanity, mirroring the potential of humanity itself to manifest both good and evil. Cinematic explorations of the questions surrounding the origins of life might also incorporate non-biblical creation myths. One such film is Prometheus (dir. Ridley Scott, 2012), the recent prologue to the Alien series, (dir. Ridley Scott, 1979; James Ca-

 For further discussion of depictions of God in film, see Burnette-Bletsch’s chapter in Part I (Pp.  – ).

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meron, 1986; David Fincher, 1992; Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997). Its title refers to the mythological Titan, who in the ancient poem Theogony by Hesiod created humanity out of clay and stole fire from the gods for the benefit of humankind. Like Genesis 2– 3 and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, this ancient tale provides an explanation for how humanity gained divine knowledge. This myth and its biblical resonances set a background for Scott’s film. Set in the late twenty-first century, the film’s deep space research spaceship bears the name Prometheus. It carries scientists who are on a quest to trace, via a star map left on Earth, ancient cultures that once visited Earth and left there the DNA building blocks of human life. These alien visitors, called the Engineers, are found on a distant moon that was once their military base and are found to have the same DNA as the humans who seek them. The Prometheus crew eventually discovers that the Engineers not only created life on Earth, they also planned to destroy it. Following an attack by a revived Engineer, only one human and the ship’s android survive. The sole human survivor, Elizabeth Shaw, is a devout Christian whose knowledge of ancient cultures and questions about the creation of humanity drive her personal desire to engage with the Engineers. The film ends as she and the android head to the home planet of the Engineers seeking answers. Like HAL in 2001, the android David is a human creation, created specifically by the self-serving corporate funder of the Prometheus project Peter Wayland, whose motives are exposed as no more than a vain attempt to keep himself alive by finding the essence of life that was used by the Engineers to create humanity: “If they made us,” Wayland reasons, “surely they can save us.” Told that he was created without a soul, David nonetheless (in contrast to the sinister HAL computer) turns out to be a hero of sorts when he assists the last survivor of the Prometheus. As the story unfolds, David develops what seems to be an authentic sense of compassion and sacrifice, possibly engendered when he holds the Engineers’ earth globe in his hands and sees a hologram of creation. However, his “humanity” is set in distinct opposition to the lack of humanity exhibited by his human Maker, Wayland. The human astronauts are driven to seek out the Engineers because they desire to know why they are here, why they were created, and why they were abandoned by the Engineers. These may have been the exact questions that the author(s) of Genesis were also asking in their attempt to provide a theological meaning to creation. S. Brent Plate refers to the ambiguous redundancy of humanity’s search for meaning: “In the Beginning…when, exactly, was the beginning? Beginning of what? …[I]n Genesis, it is essentially space that is in the process of being created, when God was creating the heavens and the earth. In other words, myths provide a built-in ambiguity that makes them applicable to a variety of people in a variety of times and places” (Plate 2008, 25). Western culture has always had a fascination with these supernatural questions; Prometheus, with its archaeologists who discover ancient art and interpret it as evidence that creator gods visited the Earth, plays upon speculation in recent decades from Erich Von Däniken, about alien visitors who left clues in Peru.

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The Genesis account of creation finds God pleased with the progression of his acts that turn chaos into order, nowhere more so than when male and female are created simultaneously “in the image” of God (Gen. 1:27). However, creation as “imago dei” is problematic in the Prometheus plot; Aaron Franz points out, “The concept that the Engineers are imperfect and violent themselves is important. What kind of creation is made by an imperfect god?” (Franz 2012). The Engineers may have been experimenting with the creation of life when something went very wrong. This idea could well resonate with audiences who are pessimistic about today’s world. Franz describes it as “the concept that humanity is in no way special, and in fact a parasitic presence upon the Earth. If there is any sort of god at all, it likely hates us [for what we have done to the planet].” (Franz 2012) This suggestion could also come from a reading of the first nine chapters of Genesis, which end with the Great Flood (Gen. 6 – 9) and the destruction of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11). The former is informed by “God’s desire to wipe the earth clean of rotten human action and intention” while, in the latter, as “the unchastened people try to infiltrate the realm of the divine one last time…God nips this overreaching in the bud by scrambling human language into a variety of tongues” (Havrelock 2011, 14). The end of Prometheus promises a direct link to the alien fossil found by the astronauts in Scott’s original Alien (1979) film, so if there is another film following it we may see whether the power wielded by this race of creator gods will end up being used to create or destroy human life. The film reflects questions currently prevalent in Western culture about humanity’s own reckless power in the face of self-destruction; revisiting the story of humanity in Genesis may tell us that, since the beginning of time, life has been “…an experiment plagued by repeated failure and dedicated to renewed attempts” (Alter 1992, xliv).

Eden and the Loss of Innocence⁵ “Civilization was preceded by the Golden Age, when everything man [sic] needed was supplied by the gods” (Sowa 2001). In different cultures, this Golden Age took different names, like the Garden of Eden in the Hebrew creation myth, where, Mircea Eliade says, “the manifestation of the sacred ontologically founds the world” (Donaldson 1998). The “creation of a sacred cosmos” is the metaphor that Mara Donaldson uses to explain the American heartland in Field of Dreams (dir. Phil Alden Robinson, 1989) that holds the baseball field, created after a ghost utters the classic phrase, “If you build it, he will come.” The main character, Ray, crosses into the sacred space that was once a cornfield in order to play with (long-dead) baseball legend “Shoeless” Joe Jackson; his appearance, Donaldson says, “is an irruption of the sacred that results in detaching a territory from the surrounding cosmic milieu and making it qualitatively different – making the space sacred, the only real, and ‘real-ly’ exist For the cinematic traditions relating to Adam and Eve, see Sanders’s chapter in Part I (Pp.  – ).

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ing space” (Donaldson 1998). There is similarly an implied separation of sacred and profane in the Garden of Eden, which is manifested upon the humans’ discovery of their nakedness. Adam and Eve lose the Golden Age, which until that moment (according to the interpretive tradition) offered life without death, childbirth without pain, and harmony between human and serpent. Robert Alter observes that this record of the initial split between humanity and the animal kingdom may be culturally mediated by “Canaanite myths of a primordial sea serpent” (Alter 1992, 13). Cora Angier Sowa claims that “the Golden Age has been a dominant myth in America since its beginning. The founders of America were haunted by the idea that coming to a new place, they could build a new Paradise, with a new Adam” (Sowa 2001). So how does American film deal with picturing the Golden Age? The Tree of Life (dir. Terrence Malick, 2011) is a film that offers an extended meditation on the loss of innocence. This film also has a creation sequence – twenty elaborate minutes comprising the birth of stars, a meteor hitting the Earth, and other apocalyptic images; the Hubble telescope was the source for some of the shots in the sequence. Its images were meant to represent, in a visceral though metaphorical way, the cycle of life, whether it be observed in the large-scale events of creation, or the personal level of family life. Throughout the film, Malick’s cinematography creates an Edenic atmosphere through use of golden-lit scenes and classical music that swells and ebbs dramatically. The struggle of the eldest of three sons in a 1950s American family is the focus of the film. The Fall in this Eden occurs when he comes to terms with suffering and loss, facing not only his own limitations but also those of life itself. A similar type of storyline is seen in The Great Gatsby (dir. Baz Luhrmann, 2013).⁶ Robert Alter observes that although the Creation Story, comprising the first chapters of Genesis, “repeatedly highlights the injunction to be fruitful and multiply,” the ancestral narratives make clear that procreation […] is fraught with dangers” (Alter, 2008, 15). Alter says that the two accounts of creation in Genesis, the Primeval History (chapters Gen. 1– 11) and the Patriarchal Tales (chapters Gen. 12– 50) offer “first a harmonious cosmic overview of creation and then a plunge into the technological nitty-gritty and moral ambiguities of human origins” (Alter 2008, 7). The Primeval History in its literary style is significantly more akin to a fable or myth, Alter observes. The Tree of Life (or Tree of the World, axis mundi) is a mythological image that appears in cultures worldwide: it shelters the never-setting moon and sun, and grows at the navel of the Earth Mother (Siberian); it can only be found by sensitive persons of knowledge (Hungarian); it is an ash tree that holds the cosmos together by its roots and branches (Norse; Pilch 2012, 23). The Bible only mentions the navel of the earth once (Ezek. 38:15), but Hebrew tradition identifies Bethel as the navel where Jacob sees the angels of God ascending and descending from heaven (Gen. 28:17); John Pilch claims that “holy men and women like the patriarch

 This is the most recent of at least six Gatsby adaptations, dating from .

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Jacob and the prophet Ezekiel can find the Tree of Life and gain insight from the middle world on that Tree, the ‘real’ world, to apply to life on earth where human beings live” (Pilch 2012, 25). In the Genesis account, the power of the Tree of Knowledge, from which the fruit is picked and eaten, is such that mortality results for all humanity. For some characters in The Tree of Life and The Great Gatsby, maturing to face the reality that is human existence is a transition too powerful to survive. Adele Reinhartz says that “Genesis imagery abounds in The Truman Show (dir. Peter Weir, 1998), in which Christof, like God, ‘cues the sun’, and in Pleasantville (dir. Gary Ross, 1998), in which a young woman takes a provocative bite out of a bright red apple” (Reinhartz 1999). But by delving deeper into these two comedydramas, both of which rely in their scenarios on an elaborate artificial world and resulting levels of reality, we are provided with a different approach to the loss of innocence. Christopher Deacy summarizes the import of this approach, when he says that these films “not only draw upon Christian ideas pertaining to the Creation and Fall of the book of Genesis but subvert them, inasmuch as it is suggested in these movies that it is theologically beneficial to accept change and disorder rather than live in a sterile, prelapsarian, Edenic paradise, in order for human beings to realize their potential and growth and to exercise their free will” (Deacy 2008, 13). Truman Burbank grows up and lives in a giant set filled with actors, oblivious to the fact that he is starring in the ultimate reality show and that millions of television viewers watch every moment of his life. The town of Seahaven in which he lives is built inside a giant dome, a safe, secure, and controlled Garden of Eden. The producer/director makes sure that no flaws exist for Truman, and no hint of artificiality makes him suspect his life is anything but ordinary until the day that, so to speak, a serpent makes its way into Paradise: one of the set lights falls from the sky and nearly hits him, followed by Truman hearing on his car radio the conversation of crew members who routinely follow him. What he does then is to weigh up the secure existence he has known against the desire to live in “true” freedom; as he steps through the “Exit” door, “Paradise Lost” becomes “Paradise Gained.” Pleasantville, likewise, features a wholesome town, in which two teenagers become trapped in a situation comedy show from the 1950s. They take on the roles of teenagers in the fictional family, but, as they interact with other characters, the back-and-white Pleasantville begins to experience bursts of color. Once the town has changed – and the fear of change has been assuaged for the citizens of the town – one teen decides to stay and the other returns to his modern-day world. This original parable of Paradise – which in fact is a place where people do not need anything beyond what they have – equates the Garden of Eden with the stereotypical 1950s American town. Reinharz says that “the 1950s represent perfection: family values, safe sex, everything pleasant, and everyone happy. All human needs are taken care of, as in the first creation story in which God gives everything to the first human beings” (Reinhartz 2003, 150). The film even features a rainbow after a rainstorm, reminiscent of the promise God made never again to destroy life upon the earth (Gen. 9:12– 13). The knowledge that the teens possess of another

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world and another way of being and behaving is analogous to the knowledge Adam and Eve gain when they eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. They precipitate the “Fall” of Pleasantville, which is introduced through the changes to the townsfolk’s lifestyle from the 1950s to the 1990s, bringing, in Reinhartz’s words, “complexity, eventfulness, and, above all, color” (Reinhartz 2003, 158). In Vaughn Roberts’s theological treatment of the Garden of Eve and the loss of innocence as seen in Western popular film, he discusses the “double-edged nature of the human desire for knowledge with its concomitant loss of childlike innocence” (Roberts 1997, 191). In The Mission (dir. Roland Joffé, 1986), the Roman Catholic priests who establish a mission and bring “civilizing” religious and cultural practices to the innocent Guarani indigenous tribe living above the falls in the South American wilderness also precipitate a changed world, one in which the Guarani become political pawns and fodder for the slave trade. The communal life of the Guarani is a self-sufficient one, but between the Church’s attempts to convert them and the slave trader’s attempts to capture them, they are subjected to a massacre, which only a few children survive. At the end of the film we see the young Guarani leaving the mission, taking with them what is arguably the only positive aspect of civilization introduced to them – musical instruments. Their Garden of Eden has been destroyed, not by their own disobedience to God, but by the conflict between individuals and institutions.

Stewardship and Care for the Planet While there are films that take metaphorical approaches to the biblical theme of innocence lost, this particular consequence of the Fall is seen in other films as provoking an urgent call for spiritual reconnection to creation through good stewardship of the environment. One of the earliest, in the experimental genre, is Koyaanisqatsi (dir. Geoffrey Reggio, 1982), which is a Hopi Indian term meaning “life out of balance.” This film is part of a trilogy that immerses audiences in images of the destructive impact of technology upon the earth and its ancient cultures. Documentaries, especially since the turn of the last millennium, have focused on various aspects of the environment. For example, Rivers and Tides (dir. Thomas Reidelsheimer, 2001) explores artist Andy Goldsworthy’s aesthetic creativity within natural settings. Winged Migration (dir. Jacques Perrin, 2001), filmed over a four-year period, documents the patterns of birds in a time of climate change. Who Killed The Electric Car? (dir. Chris Paine, 2006) explores the doomed 1990s innovation in environmentally friendly cars; its 2009 sequel, Revenge of the Electric Car, provides a hopeful look at how these cars are being reintroduced to the automobile market. Controversy about the bigger picture of global warming and its impending threat to our environment came in An Inconvenient Truth (dir. Davis Guggenheim, 2006). The 11th Hour (dir. Leila Conners/Nadia Conners, 2007), not a box-office hit, was nevertheless instrumental in boosting grassroots resistance to destruction of an ancient

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forest in northern Canada. Government officials eventually succumbed to public pressure and reversed the decision. More recently, Chasing Ice (dir. Jeff Orlowski, 2012) documents over several years a project that provides powerful proof of glacial retreat. Nature photographer James Balog took a team of engineers and scientists across the globe to record the slow loss of ice with no appreciable seasonal replenishment; the documentary, through time-lapse photography sequences, details the alarming speed at which this is happening. Trashed (dir. Candida Brady, 2012) had a celebrity champion, British actor Jeremy Irons; this film traces the extent and effects of the global waste problem on beautiful but polluted destinations across the globe and challenges governments to establish a “zero-waste” goal. Feature films also have been spreading the message about the danger of environmental disaster, starting with warnings about the potential consequences should humans abdicate their responsibility as stewards in the science fiction genre of films dating from the 1950s. Them! (dir. Gordon M. Douglas, 1954), Soylent Green (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1973), The China Syndrome (dir. James Bridges, 1979), and The Day After Tomorrow (dir. Roland Emmerich, 2004) are American films that explore the consequences of human neglect and exploitation of the environment. Silent Running (dir. Douglas Trumbull, 1972) transplants the earth’s forests into huge domes floating in outer space, tended by a renegade astronaut who is depicted as a St. Francis-like figure. Avatar (dir. James Cameron, 2009) is a spectacular computer-generated meditation on the lack of stewardship run amok: human technological exploitation of an extra-terrestrial paradise. Aronofsky’s Noah, as the latest of these, harks back to the original corruption of the earth and God’s despair over the state of humankind; Noah and his family are vegetarians who live sustainably on the earth, and whose attempt to protect the animal kingdom according to God’s wishes is in stark contrast to the selfish, desperate hoards who attack the ark to save themselves as it rises in the flood waters.

Conclusion By no means has this been a comprehensive survey of films that explicitly or implicitly use biblical themes to explore creation and the origins of life. For instance, other films explore creatureliness,⁷ as well as the attempt by would-be creators to fashion humans in their own image or artificial life in the image of humanity.⁸ It is a hopeful sign that the glory of creation and dire warnings about our failure to protect it still play well in Hollywood; in addition, the eternal questions about where we came

 Such as E.T. the Extraterrestrial (dir. Steven Spielberg, ) and the Terminator series (dir. James Cameron, , ; dir. Jonathan Mostow, ; dir. McG, ; dir. Alan Taylor, ).  Films that portray, in the words of Robert Alter “the act of God’s fashioning man [sic], then in God’s curse, and…banishment” (Alter , ) include more than  versions of Frankenstein beginning with director J. Searly Dawley’s  film.

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from and our purpose for existing seem likely to find a place in future film scripts for some time. Knowing the religious context for these themes will impart an added richness for audiences, who might then be curious enough to seek out these ancient stories in Genesis and other books of the Bible.

Works Cited Alter, Robert. 1992. The World of Biblical Literature. London: HarperCollins. Alter, Robert. 2008. The Five Books of Moses: A Translation. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda. 2012. “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In Bible and Cinema: 50 Key Films. Ed. Adele Reinhartz. New York: Routledge Press. Pp. 3 – 7. Brooke, John Headley, 2011. “Wilberforce, Huxley, and Genesis.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible. Ed. Michael Lieb, Emma Mason, Jonathan Roberts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 397 – 412. Chattaway, Peter T. 2013. “Bible Movie of the Week: Sins of Jezebel (1953)” Patheos (September 30): http://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2013/09/bible-movie-of-the-week-sins-ofjezebel1953.html; accessed February 27, 2015. Chitwood, Adam. 2014. “Paramount Relents to Darren Aronofsky’s Cut of Noah; Director Talks Bridging the Gap Between Religious and Non-Religious Audiences.” Collider (February 12): http://collider.com/noah-directors-cut-darren-aronofsky/#gwHDPDH1Jev4f5bb.99; accessed February 27, 2015. Darwin, Charles. 2006. On the Origin of the Species [1859]. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Deacy, Christopher, and Gaye Williams Ortiz. 2008. Theology and Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Donaldson, Mara E. 1998. “Teaching Field of Dreams as Cosmogonic Myth.” Journal of Religion and Film 2.3: http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/fieldof.htm; accessed February 27, 2015. Franz, Aaron. 2012. “Prometheus: exploring some of the movie’s symbolic keys.” The Age of Transitions. http://theageoftransitions.com/index.php/articlesbutton/243-prometheus-explor ing-some-of-the-movies-mystic-keys; accessed February 27, 2015. Havrelock, Rachel. 2011. “Genesis.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible. Ed. Michael Lieb, Emma Mason, Jonathan Roberts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 11 – 24. Hurley, Neil P. 1970. Toward a Film Humanism. New York: Delta. Pilch, John J. 2012. A Cultural Handbook to the Bible. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans. Plate, S. Brent. 2008. Religion and Film. London: Wallflower Press. Reinhartz, Adele. 2003. Scripture on the Silver Screen. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Reinhartz, Adele. 1999. “Scripture on the Silver Screen.” Journal of Religion and Film 3.1: https:// www.unomaha.edu/jrf/scripture.htm; accessed February 27, 2015. Roberts, Vaughn. 1997. “Between Eden and Armageddon: Institutions, Individuals, and Identification in The Mission, The Name of the Rose, and Priest.” In Explorations in Theology and Film. Ed. Clive Marsh and Gaye Ortiz. Oxford: Blackwell. Pp. 181 – 92. Singh, Anita. 2009. “Charles Darwin film ‘too controversial for religious America’.” The Telegraph (September 11): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6173399/ Charles-Darwin-film-too-controversial-for-religious-America.html; accessed April 16, 2015. Sowa, Cora Angier. 2001. “Ancient Myths in Modern Movies.” Presentation at the Center for Coordination of Ancient and Modern Studies from University of Michigan. Ann Arbor, Mich. February 21, 1973. Posted at Minerva Systems://www.minervaclassics.com/movimyth.htm; accessed February 27, 2015.

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Stone, Bryan P. 1998. “Religious Faith and Science in Contact.” Journal of Religion and Film 2.2 (October): Http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/stonear2.htm; accessed February 27, 2015. Wall, James M. 1992. “2001: A Space Odyssey and the Search for a Center.” In Image and Likeness. Ed. John R. May. New York: Paulist Press. Pp. 39 – 46.

Films Cited The 11th Hour (dir. Leila Conners and Nadia Conners, 2007, Appian Way, US). 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968, MGM, US/UK). Alien (dir. Ridley Scott, 1979, Brandywine Productions, US/UK). Alien3 (dir. David Fincher, 1992, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Alien: Resurrection (dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997 Twentieth Century Fox, US). Aliens (dir. James Cameron, 1986, Twentieth Century Fox, US/UK). An Inconvenient Truth (dir. Davis Guggenheim, 2006, Lawrence Bender Productions, US). Avatar (dir. James Cameron, 2009, Twentieth Century Fox, UK/US). The Bible: In the Beginning… (dir. John Huston, 1966, Dino de Laurentiis, US/IT). Chasing Ice (dir. Jeff Orlowski, 2012, Exposure, US). The China Syndrome (dir. James Bridges, 1979, Columbia Pictures, US). Contact (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1997, Warner Brothers, US). Creation (dir. Jon Amiel, 2009, Recorded Picture Company, UK). Creature from the Black Lagoon (dir. Jack Arnold, 1954, Universal, US). The Day After Tomorrow (dir. Roland Emmerich, 2004, Twentieth Century Fox, US). E.T. the Extraterrestrial (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1982, Universal, US). Field of Dreams (dir. Phil Alden Robinson, 1989, Gordon Company, US). Frankenstein (dir. Searly Dawley, 1910, Edison, US). The Great Gatsby (dir. Baz Luhrmann, 2013, Warner Brothers, AT/US). Koyaanisqatsi (dir. Geoffrey Reggio, 1982, IRE Productions, US). Le people migrateur [a.k.a. Winged Migration] (dir. Jacques Perrin, 2001, Bac Films, FR/DE/IT/ES/CH). Man of Steel (dir. Zack Snyder, 2012, Warner Brothers, US/CA/UK). The Mission (dir. Roland Joffé, 1986, Warner Brothers, UK). Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2014, Paramount, US). Planet of the Apes (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, APJAC Productions, 1968, US). Pleasantville (dir. Gary Ross, 1998, New Line Cinema, US). Prometheus (dir. Ridley Scott, 2012, Twentieth Century Fox, US/UK). Revenge of the Electric Car (dir. Chris Paine, 2009, Papercut Films, US). Rivers and Tides (dir. Thomas Reidelsheimer, 2001, Mediopolis, DE/FI/UK/CA). Silent Running (dir. Douglas Trumbull, 1972, Universal, US). Sins of Jezebel (dir. Reginald Le Borg, 1953, Sigmund Neufeld Productions, US). Soylent Green (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1973, MGM, US). Star Trek: The Motion Picture (dir. Robert Wise, 1979, Paramount, US). The Terminator (dir. James Cameron, 1984, Hemdale Films, US/UK). Terminator 2: Judgment Day (dir. James Cameron, 1991, Carolco Pictures, US/FR). Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines (dir. Jonathan Mostow, 2003, C-2 Pictures, US/DE/UK). Terminator Genisys (dir. Alan Taylor, 2015, Paramount, US). Terminator Salvation (dir. McG, 2009, Halcyon Company, US/DE/UK/IT). Them! (dir. Gordon M. Douglas, 1954, Warner Brothers, US). Trashed (dir. Candida Brady, 2012, Blenheim Films, US).

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The Tree of Life (dir. Terrence Malick, 2011, Cottonwood Pictures, US). The Truman Show (dir. Peter Weir, 1998, Paramount, US). Who Killed The Electric Car? (dir. Chris Paine, 2006, Plinyminor, US).

Reinhold Zwick¹

21 The Book of Job in the Movies: On Cinema’s Exploration of Theodicy and the Hiddenness of God

In the winter of 2003 – 2004, the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) presented a large-scale film retrospective on the theme “The Hidden God.” The wealth of films discovered just for the years since ca. 1940 representing “cinema’s explorations of a hidden or an absent God” surprised curators Mary Lea Bandy and Antonio Monda such that the planned companion volume quickly could have turned into several volumes. Even after the inevitable selection process, around fifty films remained and convincingly support the thesis of Bandy and Monda that “in modernist art […] the idea of a hidden God has acquired a particular resonance in the language of cinema” (Bandy/Monda 2003, 10). In addition to several essays on lesser known films, the retrospective’s catalog gathers commentaries on film classics, both religious ones and those critical of religion, created by master directors such as the three “B’s:” Luis Buñuel (e. g., Nazarín), Ingmar Bergman (Winter Light; The Silence) and Robert Bresson (e. g., The Devil Probably), as well as Carl Theodor Dreyer (Day of Wrath), Roberto Rossellini (e. g., Stromboli), Akira Kurosawa (Red Beard) or Andrei Tarkovsky (e. g., Andrei Rublev, Nostalghia), but also newer works by Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia), Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant), Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves) and Bruno Dumont (L’humanité).² With their selection of titles, MoMA clearly shows how intensive and varied cinema’s search has been to understand the meaning of suffering. This understanding is frequently colored by religion and leads to the question of how an infinitely good and powerful God can so frequently allow boundless suffering—above all that due to illness, misfortune, or natural catastrophe which is known as malum naturale in theological-philosophical tradition and differs from malum morale in that it cannot be derived from the human proclivity to err but, instead, is beyond human determination. Precisely this question of malum naturale brings the theodicy question to the fore with full force. The most important biblical paradigm for this question is the book of Job in which a series of grave calamities befall his property and his family and then inexplicably undermine his physical health and cause a radical shift in Job’s outlook – he now radically doubts God’s goodness and justice. With his grievances and accusations Job questions the very existence of this God, who doggedly remained hidden

 The author and editor are grateful to William Guess, MA (www.williamguess.net) who translated this article into English from the original German.  For further discussion of biblical reception in the works of many of these directors, see the following essays in Part II: on Buñuel see Elwell (Pp.  – ); on Bresson see Vaux (Pp.  – ); on Dreyer see Vander Stichele (Pp.  – ); on Rossellini see Page (Pp.  – ).

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throughout the depths of his suffering. It is no wonder that Bandy and Monda preface the introduction to their volume with a quote from Job that lucidly expresses his pain from this deus absconditus in the face of the suffering of a righteous man who is blameless: “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him: On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him” (Job 23:8 – 9, KJV). After that, the MoMA volume scarcely mentions the book of Job. As numerous and multiply nuanced, as open or covert as treatments of the theodicy question and the hiddenness of God in cinema are and are likely to remain,³ reference to the Bible’s book of suffering par excellence, the book of Job, are comparatively infrequent. This, of course, gives us the opportunity to concentrate on those films that unmistakably refer to the Job story, be it with more explicit quotations or, at any rate, with clear references – whether in the selection of characters, in the plot, or in more important plot motifs than was the case in the MoMA selection. Once again, emphasis here has been placed on films made after the turn of the millennium, not merely to have a terminus post quem but because the number of Job-themed films rose significantly after the year 2000. Our attention will focus on Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011)⁴ and a series of more recent Job comedies, augmented by a quick review of other Job-like films of the recent past not found in the MoMA volume, most of which have already been extensively discussed elsewhere.

The Tree of Life (dir. Terrence Malick, 2011) Like “The Hidden God” the Cannes winner The Tree of Life opens with a Job quotation that clearly establishes the central role the biblical book plays in the cinematic narrative to follow, qualifying it as a “modern Job story”: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? […] when the morning stars sang together, and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?” (Job 38:4, 7). With Terrence Malick’s film or, better yet, film-prayer, the decidedly biblical-theological reflections about the theodicy question achieve intellectual and film-aesthetic heights of the earlier works of Robert Bresson and Andrei Tarkovsky. In many respects, The Tree of Life is a complex, irritating masterpiece about which, as might be expected, opinions differ sharply. Without a doubt, however, Malick’s film is “one of the most spiritually challenging and theologically sophisticated films ever made.” (Leithart 2013, back cover).

 The film version of Cormack McCarthy’s somber novel The Road by John Hillcoat () can serve pars pro toto as a significant film within this group outside the time frame of the MoMA Project. The film’s dialogue frequently reveals a deeper theological dimension concerning questions of theodicy and deus absconditus.  See also also Zwick (), Leithart (), De Bleeckere (). For an analysis of this and other films as cinematic lamentations, see the chapter by Rindge in Part I (Pp.  – ).

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The platform for Malick’s narrative examining the theodicy problem – which is interlaced with other themes such as the relationship between nature and grace – uses extensive flashbacks, which include autobiographical elements, to tell the story of an average American family derailed by the premature death of the middle of three sons, the details of which remain unclarified.⁵ In the tradition of the biblical Job, the mother uses the personal form to address God in her prayer and lament as she desperately seeks a reason for her suffering, for any explanation of what to her seems to be completely senseless. Malick answers her lamentation with a cinematic paraphrase of God’s speech at the end of the book of Job to which he had already made reference with the opening lines from Job 38:4. This quote stems from the exposition in Job of God’s speeches with which the book’s author has God answer mightily from the midst of a whirlwind (Job 38:1). Rather than respond to Job’s accusations, the God-figure poses his challenger a set of questions to which he in turn is unable to respond. Already prefigured in Malick’s introductory quotation, Jahwe reproaches Job, his helpless and indignant accuser, for speaking “words without knowledge” (Job 38:2). In the course of his subsequent speeches, the God in Job insists on the mystery of his creation using many examples – in the style characteristic of the creation psalms – which far exceed human understanding. Therefore, humans cannot quarrel with God regarding suffering, no matter how inexplicable it seems. Although the God-figure has not responded to Job’s questions and attacks, the biblical Job concedes and confesses after the first of the two speeches of God: “See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but will proceed no further” (Job 40:4– 5). After God’s second speech, his challenger again submits with the words: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 42:2– 3) – Malick transforms these “things too wonderful for me,” which the creator God spread before Job in the form of questions, into a twenty minute sequence of powerful images, akin in spirit to the famous ode to creation in Genesis 1, contemplating the origin of the earth and the development of life forms from lower to higher. Pairing images with compositions by Zbigniew Preisner (Lacrimosa, 1998) and Felix Smetana (Die Moldau, 1880), Malick edits actual photos from astronomy and the micro- and macrocosms into the film that evoke the grandeur of creation and take the enraptured viewer into the realm of transcendent consciousness. While this does not nullify human suffering, it does place it within a larger context. This also provides the film a suitable transition to an optimistic vision of reconciliation or salvation that transcends the end of earthly existence. In a kind of preview of the world hereafter, Jack, the oldest adult son who has become a successful

 Various critics associate the death with the Vietnam War, others with suicide.

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Fig. 38: The mystery of creation in Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011)

architect and from whose perspective the flashbacks are seen, encounters his departed relatives on an ethereal beach with the contours of paradise in wordless bliss that erases all memory of pain. In addition to supplying the tree-of-life motif for the title (De Bleeckere 2012, 9 – 16), the light illuminating the celestial seashore provides the key cipher for transcendence from the film’s beginning and is treated in a variety of ways throughout. The most mysterious falls at the beginning, directly after the opening quotation from Job, and is taken up later as a refrain with repeated glimpses of the light installation of the Danish-American artist Thomas Wilfred, reminiscent of slowly undulating polar light, entitled Lumina Opus 161 (1965 – 66). This light, which then shimmers through the large tree in front of the O’Brien family house and is quasi incarnate in the sunflowers of the mother’s souvenir pictures, represents the gracious, sustaining power of a loving God that transcends all human suffering. Jack, too, is a suffering Job-like figure. Up until the moment of his great celestial vision resembling all-embracing reconciliation (Apokatastasis), Jack also had to bear the loss of his brother throughout his life. Despite Jack’s professional career, he remains a Job-figure – this feature being effectively stamped on him by the anagram formed by the uppercase letters of his name: Jack O’Brien or “JOB.” Malick clearly indicates the centrality of the theodicy question to his work by placing a sermon about the book of Job squarely in the middle of his film. This speaks against a thesis favored by most film critics about the centrality of the dualism of nature and grace⁶ important in the convent education of his mother, which is mentioned at the beginning of the film. This sermon, delivered on the occasion of the middle son’s funeral, serves as metacommentary pointing directly to the thematic axis of the film narrative and its central issue. Accordingly, the entire quotation, spoken by the pastor, follows: Job imagined he might build his nest on high. That the integrity of his behavior would protect him against misfortune. And his friends thought mistakenly that the Lord could only have punished him because secretly he’d done something wrong. But no. Misfortune befalls the good as

 The frequently derided scene in which a Tyrannosaurus Rex denies his carnivorous nature by sparing an injured plant-eating dinosaur ostentatiously introduces that dualism.

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well. We can’t protect ourselves against it. We can’t protect our children. We can’t say to ourselves: “Even if I’m not happy, I’m going to make sure they are.” We run before the wind. We think that it will carry us forever. It will not. We vanish as a cloud, we wither as the autumn grass and, like a tree, are rooted up. Is there some fraud in the scheme of the universe? Is there nothing which is deathless? Nothing which does not pass away? We cannot stay where we are. We must journey forth. We must find that which is greater than fortune or fate. Nothing can bring us peace but that. Is the body of the wise man or the just exempt from any pain? From any disquietude? From the deformity that might blight its beauty? From the weakness that might destroy its health? Do you trust in God? Job, too, was close to the Lord. Are your friends and children your security? There is no hiding place in all the world where trouble may not find you. No one knows when sorrow might visit his house any more than Job did. The very moment everything was taken away from Job, he knew it was the Lord who’d taken it away. He turned from the passing shows of time. He saw that which is eternal. Does he alone see God’s hand who sees that he gives? Or does not also the one see God’s hand who sees that he takes away? Or does he alone see God who sees God turn his face towards him? Does not also he see God who sees God turn his back?

The sermon underscores God’s presence even in suffering and, therefore, God may even be encountered therein. What he formulates in this sermon at a near metanarrative level, Malick delivers with the poetic narration of his film. Together, the repeated, fragmented laments and appeals Jack and his mother direct at a hidden God cumulatively act as a single prayer. Holding the film world in his hands in a God-like capacity, Malick answers this prayer by means of the dramaturgy and aesthetic of his film by the presence of light even during dark moments; by alluding to the inexplicable mystery of the cosmos and, despite all the suffering, its marvelous constitution; and, finally, through the ecstatic transport of Jack into the world beyond. While these things taken together do not nullify suffering, they transcend it in the larger context of life and the goodness of the creation. Malick’s cinematic-symphonic meditation on these circumstances takes us to the expressive limits of image and word; in fact, some critics opine that he transgresses these limits in the direction of the pretentious and kitschy. However, even those critics attest to the fact that his The Tree of Life decidedly extends cinematography and the articulation of theological-philosophical thinking in film.

Job in Moving Comedies Malick’s film faces the dark side of suffering, but it is shot through with profound optimism that, in the end, all suffering can be surmounted, echoing the optimism seen in Job’s exaggerated fairytale ending. In so doing, The Tree of Life is unique among the more recent films that explicitly or implicitly refer to the book of Job intertextually. It alone is grounded in tragedy and suffering; it alone reacts adequately to the biblical poetry characterized in such a traditional manner. In contrast with Malick, all other directors of the more recent Job-like treatments in film have surprisingly found strains of the comic, and they transform the Job-figure into a comedy or tragicomedy (Zwick 2013, 173 – 90 and Zwick 2012, 228 – 32). Job – a comedy? Recent

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exegetical and literary-critical approaches to the book of Job show that this notion is by no means grotesque. Traces of comedy, as well, come to light in this biblical poem of protest against suffering. Some films similarly structured have reacted independently to the comedic potential of the biblical book, but nonetheless treat the problem of suffering seriously and with originality in the guise of a comedic film. This must be seen against the background that comedy is often the only recourse for expressing precisely the most serious, unfathomable and horrible matters.

The Book of Job – A Comedy? It has long been known that the book of Job has much in common with a drama and has played out in many different variants (Klinger 2007, 36 – 48). Whereas this biblical book is usually seen as “bordering Greek tragedy in its form and content” and is classified more precisely as “drama influenced by attic tragedy,” others, such as Bernhard Klinger, choose to see it as a “form of its own,” namely as a comedy (Klinger 2007, 334). This minority opinion gained traction due to the influence of William Whedbee with a piece originally written in 1976 for the periodical Semeia (Whedbee 1990), but it also has found other sympathizers – and, naturally, critics as well. Whedbee’s most important argument is the basic movement of the plot in the book of Job together with the knowledge that, aside from their markedly contrasting conclusions, comedy and tragedy often lie close together (Exum/Whedbee 1985, 7– 9). Both forms normally open with a situation characterized by (relative) harmony, order, and integration. This then begins to shift. According to Northrop Frye, comedy exhibits a U-shaped hero movement; the hero experiences a decline, falls into an apparently hopeless crisis, and in the end recovers and is reintegrated into society (Frye 1964, 40 – 57). The conclusion is a happy ending marked by joy and a new lease on life. Two classic biblical examples of this basic movement are the Joseph narrative (Gen. 37– 50) and the story arc of Moses – from a birth marked by a death threat to the triumphal rescue at the Sea of Reeds (Exod. 1– 15). Biblical books ending with such moments as liberation, salvation, resurrection, or ascension share these typical themes with comedies. In contrast with comedies, tragedies exhibit an inverse U-shaped (∩) trajectory leading to a catastrophic rather than a carnivalistic ending: The hero’s rise in a tragedy is followed by his gradual decline or rapid fall and ends with his destruction, estrangement, or death. The basic trajectory of comedy just sketched out also characterizes the book of Job, despite the weight of its theme: protest over innocent, incomprehensible suffering. With a prose narrative emphasizing a sudden shift from a happy, satisfied life into profound crisis and then concluding with a fairytale happy ending, the plot of Job clearly matches the curve found in comedy (Whedbee 1976, 1– 4). Other ‘comic’ – but not funny – features are found, particularly in the form of parody (e. g., a parody of traditional wisdom as seen in the figures of Job’s friends) and irony (as in the poet’s presentation of God’s speeches, which in fact fail to address

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Job’s grievances and questions; Williams 1971, 231– 55 and Robertson 1973, 446 – 69). To this add the fairytale and grotesque aspects of his friends’ obtrusive and monotonous arguments, typical of comedy, turning them into a caricature of teachers of traditional wisdom in Israel. What remains decisive, however, is the conclusion of the Job story: “the fairytale ending torpedoes the tragic potential of the book” (Klinger 2007, 34) and allows the final swing of the pendulum to favor the comedic. The directors and script writers of the film comedies discussed below, who refer to the book of Job with varying degrees of explicitness, probably have not read the articles by those representing the thesis that, in the final analysis, Job is a comedy. But given their artistic sensibility, they nonetheless perceive the story’s subtle comedy and “reservoir of the comedic” (Fry 1965, 78), which it in fact actualizes and intensifies. Film versions transform this “reservoir of the comedic” into actual comedy. And this comedy occasionally takes on features that range from black humor to funny, even slapstick humor without betraying the earnestness of the biblical model and its great, eternal questions. Four films will receive scrutiny (in chronological order): Drifting Clouds (dir. Aki Kaurismäki, 1996, originally titled Kauas pilvet karkaavat); Bruce Almighty (dir. Tom Shadyac, 2003), Adam’s Apples (dir. Anders Thomas Jensen, 2005, originally titled Adams æbler), and A Serious Man (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2009).

Drifting Clouds On its narrative surface, the least evident connection with the book of Job is shown by the 1996 film Drifting Clouds, written, produced, and directed by the Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki. In addition to the U-shaped comedic movement beneath its surface, this deeply dark comedy makes reference to Job (Zwick 2001, 87– 89). The film tells the story of Ilona and Lauri, a married couple who lead a simple life in Helsinki and are deeply in love. Their life is overshadowed by the death of their child prior to the film’s start. Despite the quiet grief they share, they are content and manage – Lauri as a streetcar driver and Ilona as head waitress in an upscale restaurant. Quite soon, however, both experience a series of setbacks, the frequency and severity of which remind one of Job’s drastic turn of fate. Lauri loses his job with the municipal transport services as the result of a random draw and later has his driver’s license (the basis for his survival) cancelled due to vision problems discovered during a medical exam when he was applying for another job. Shortly thereafter, Ilona too becomes jobless because of dwindling business at the upscale restaurant as its clientele ages and it is eventually sold to a fast food chain. As Ilona tries mightily to find other work and is shamelessly exploited, Lauri sinks into depression and alcohol abuse. However, the situation miraculously shifts when Ilona chances to meet the woman who previously owned the restaurant at which she had worked. Out of sympathy for the couple, the woman surprisingly makes financial resources available to

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them to open their own restaurant. On their first day of business, hours pass and no one comes to dine, so the couple prepares to close. Then, a first guest appears. Soon, many more guests – people from many backgrounds ranging from a garbage truck driver to middle-class gourmets – arrive and fill the dining room to the last seat. With the restaurant already filled to the rafters, the local wrestling club calls to request a large table, making it quite clear: if these big eaters like the food as well as the current diners, the restaurant will certainly turn into the neighborhood favorite and Ilona and Lauri need have no further worries about their future. This fairytale-utopian ending, with persons of diverse origins coming together for a meal, serves as a preview of a celebratory eschatological banquet (cf., Isa. 25:6 – 10; Luke 14:15 – 24; Matt. 22:1– 14). The religious subtext of the happy ending is underlined when the newly minted restaurant owners step outside after the call from the wrestling club and look skyward in a moment of gratitude as the camera focuses on them from a seemingly divine perspective. The reference in the final sequence to the messianic banquet and the gesture of a wordless prayer of thanks intensifies the previously low-key linkages to biblical tradition delivered in quasi homeopathic dosages, especially to the episode with the tax collector Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1– 10) and the maxim that a camel can sooner pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man enter heaven (Matt. 19:24). The subtle biblical citations at the surface of the narrative function as the key to the biblical deep formatting of the basic plot movement. It runs in an arc from the fall on to the happy ending that trumps the opening situation and is transparent to the basic comic dynamic of the book of Job.

Bruce Almighty Whereas Aki Kaurismäki keeps associations to biblical tradition in Drifting Clouds quite discrete – hence for many viewers nearly imperceptible – as in other of his films (Zwick 2003), Tom Shadyac’s successful comedy Bruce Almighty points openly to its religious subtext. This is most explicit when he has well-known African-American actor Morgan Freeman play the role of “God.” This God first appears after TV reporter, Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey), who has been buffeted by a series of calamities, rails against divine justice. Due to a string of embarrassing misadventures on Bruce’s part, his competitor is chosen for promotion; and, in the ensuing dispute with his station, Bruce loses his job. In despair, Bruce drives through the city at night and pleads: “Okay God, you want me to talk with you! Then talk back! Tell me what’s going on! What should I do? Give me a signal. I need your guidance, Lord, please send me a sign!” But just as with many signs shown him already, Bruce is unable to perceive the present sign – this time a traffic warning sign – which he arrogantly ignores and ends up demolishing his car. That happens after – with prayer beads clutched in his hand – he demanded: “Lord, I need a miracle! I’m desperate. I need your help Lord. Reach into my life.” Immediately thereafter, Bruce crashes into a lamppost. His nerves completely shot, he flings the prayer beads away and

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provokes God by hurling a raging complaint heavenward: “Fine! The gloves are off, pal. Come on, smite me, Almighty Smiter! You are the one who should be fired – the only one around here not doing his job is you. Answer me!” Immediately after his Job-like outcry, a call comes in to his pager. Bruce reads the unfamiliar number – which relates, of course, to his unfamiliarity with God – and thinks: “Sorry, I don’t know you. I wouldn’t call you if I did.” But the caller refuses to give up and keeps calling, unwilling to be ignored or silenced by Bruce’s vain attempt to destroy his pager. When Bruce finally capitulates and pursues the unknown caller, he ends up in a large, apparently abandoned warehouse. The lone janitor he happens upon there straightaway turns out to be God. When Bruce blasts him with his indictments, God offers to give Bruce divine omnipotence to take over his job for a while—but, we learn later, for safety’s sake only within a limited part of Buffalo, N.Y. He tells Bruce to see whether he can do a better job, whether he can deal better with human suffering and complaints. As expected, Bruce’s career as God ends up in complete chaos with a situation bordering on civil unrest. Ruefully chagrined, he admits his failure and hubris in wanting to take God to task. When he ceases to rebel and admits the limits of his human capacities, things begin to change for the better. He can return to his TV station and succeed as a popular, sharp-witted local reporter. Things between him and his girlfriend also can be smoothed out, and the two find their way back together as a couple, seemingly for good. The name “Job” is never mentioned in Bruce Almighty. However, the biblical book is unmistakably apparent – whether in the sequence of the lesser and larger catastrophes that destroy Bruce Nolan’s professional and private spheres for a time, in the protest reminiscent of Job’s rebellion against the notion of a good and just God, or in the exaggerated happy ending in which everything turns out well. The most striking references to Job, however, are the scenes with the God-figure. With the appearance of the God-figure, the Bruce narrative jumps from the blows of fate and the torment of Job’s first laments directly to the speeches of God, skipping all of the tiresome, long and repetitive passages with the friends and Elihu. The biblical God explains the limits of Job’s human understanding rhetorically using a variety of hints about the mysteries of the universe; Bruce’s God conveys these limits to him through practical demonstration. He is permitted to take God’s place provisionally and left to experience how little he comprehends or ever will comprehend about God and the mysteries holding the world together.

Adam’s Apples If Tom Shadyac’s Hollywood blockbuster explicitly points to the book of Job without mentioning it, the Danish production Adam’s Apples clearly includes the biblical book in the plot and that in a concrete way. A Bible falls to the floor several times during the film, and each time it inexplicably opens to the first page of the book

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of Job, apparently as a divine instruction about what to read. This assignment is meant for Adam (Ulrich Thomsen), a Neo-Nazi offender, who was sent to a small rural parish for re-socialization. Others already present there under the guidance of the pastor, Ivan (Mads Mikkelsen), are Gunnar, an alcoholic who is a former tennis pro sentenced for child abuse, and Khalid, an Arab who describes his notorious gas station robberies as “political protests.” Later, they are joined by Sarah, who is pregnant and attempts to drown her fear that she might bring a handicapped child into the world with alcohol. Ivan, the head and heart of this bizarre community, is a modern Job-figure as far as the grotesquely exaggerated variety of blows of fate he has suffered are concerned. At the same time, he is a complete anti-Job with respect to his reaction to these trials. The burden of grief Ivan bears includes (only in part!) domestic violence and abuse as a child, the spastic paralysis of his son, his wife’s suicide, and a brain tumor that leaves him only a few weeks more to live according to the hospital’s head physician. Although these afflictions link Ivan with Job, his response is diametrically opposed to that of Job; Ivan tries to repress his terrible plight and live in a compulsively selfconstructed state of delusion. He attempts to immunize himself against anything evil or unpalatable – the fact that Gunnar still drinks, that Khalid continues to commit holdups, and his own history of suffering. Instead of rebelling against his innocent suffering like Job and radically questioning God’s omnipotence and mercy, Ivan constructs an idyllic, false house of cards that is permanently in danger of complete collapse. Such blatant repression and denial of evil and suffering increasingly provoke Adam to the point that he plans to make Ivan “crack”, i. e., destroy his delusional world by confronting him with the true nature of things. As Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch has observed, Adam corresponds to some extent to Job’s wife in the Bible, since she seeks to achieve the same thing as Adam does with Ivan – namely, that he be moved to curse God (Burnette-Bletsch 2014, 102– 3). With his physical attacks, Adam succeeds in bringing Ivan to the point of admitting his suffering, but Ivan then lets God off the hook by attributing all his misery to Satan, whom he claims is putting him to the test with temptations. When Adam fails to brutally pound the truth into Ivan, he switches to a theological tactic. He recalls the ‘divine directive’ in the form of the Bible that opens itself, and he finally reads the book of Job. Although his reading of it is mistaken (because he interprets the prologue in the sense that it is God who causes suffering rather than simply permitting it), its purpose is served all the same. When he confronts Ivan with the fact that the book of Job blames the purportedly good God rather than Satan as the source of his lifelong torment, Ivan breaks down mentally and physically. But Adam can no longer enjoy his triumph in having made the pastor crack. In the course of his confrontation with Ivan, this apparently brutal and cold-hearted Neo-Nazi, as a new “Adam” (one who tends an apple tree), undergoes a transformation that at first is barely noticeable then becomes ever clearer – a process that results in him becoming human. When the pastor returns from his stay in the hospital,

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Fig. 39: Ivan, devastated by Adam’s interpretation of Job in Adam’s Apples (2005)

mentally broken, Adam stands by him and, in his place, attempts to hold the community at the parsonage together. Although the community does disintegrate, it is partly for the better (in that Gunnar und Sarah find happiness together and care for the handicapped child of Sarah) and partly for the worse (in that Khalid decides to leave for a life of banditry), but Adam and Ivan stay together in the rectory. This conclusion adopts the happy ending of the book of Job and establishes a platform for a positive future, which – differently from Job – takes the presumed harmony and order of the opening situation and trumps the book of Job by far. An act of violence by Adam’s Neo-Nazi friends nearly costs Ivan his life but miraculously rescues him instead when the bullet wound to his head blasts away the tumor. At the end, we see Adam with his hair now grown out and robed like Ivan as his assistant. As the two them sit in a bus with two new rough recruits for re-socialization, the circle closes as it opened and the world is in order. Ivan and Adam understand each other nearly wordlessly and Ivan has abandoned his delusional world for a realistic view of things. Hence, both can now fully join in singing the refrain of the song “How Deep Is Your Love,” performed by the Bee Gees, that served as a leitmotif throughout the film. Previously, Adam had always turned it off when Ivan played it on the car radio because the song was symbolic of the outlandishly delusional notions of the pastor. Now, after having gone through suffering, both can sing along with the refrain in good conscience and bring a smile to the faces of moviegoers.

A Serious Man ⁷ While the basic dramatic movement in Drifting Clouds provides that film’s link to the book of Job, Bruce Almighty does this by transforming God’s speeches from the midst of a whirlwind into a plot that leads to insight and surrender. Adam’s Apples, however, draws upon elements of the prologue of the book of Job (which, unexpectedly, also appears on the film’s home page) to spark associations to the film’s narrative.  See also the discussion of this film in Kirk’s chapter on biblical reception in Coen Brothers’ film in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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The most recent and most interesting of the theodicy comedies, A Serious Man (2009), is the first to focus on Job’s dialogues with his friends (Job 3 – 37), an aspect largely ignored in other films. What is more, God’s speeches and the book’s narrative frame are also treated in original ways. Despite the title A Serious Man, this film by the brothers Ethan and Joel Coen is not a serious, earnest drama in the sense of being weighty or severe; it is a comedy, but one with typically Coen-esque irony and black humor. A Serious Man is set in Minnesota in the late 1960s, a period marked by, among other things, the contemporary 1966 hit song “Somebody to Love” by Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane. The setting shows obvious similarities with the place, time, and atmosphere in which the Coen brothers grew up (in Minnesota) in a Jewish family and, doubtless, their personal memories and experiences influenced the film considerably. However, it would be a mistake to discount A Serious Man as a funny, satirical reminiscence about growing up in a narrow parochial world, a coming of age film in the stuffy middle-class environment of conservative religiosity and morality. This film goes beyond the confines of the Jewish religion. Instead, it earnestly probes the human capacity to deal with blows of fate and to hold onto the belief in a merciful and omnipotent power in the face of suffering and evil. The serious man in the film title is Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhbarg), a man in his mid-forties. He teaches mathematics and theoretical physics at a local college and is cautiously optimistic that he will soon be granted tenure on the faculty. As the film opens, Larry’s world still seems to be in balance but quickly develops cracks and fractures. Larry undergoes tests during a physical examination and anxiously awaits a final diagnosis. His son Danny, who is halfheartedly preparing for his bar mitzvah, regularly smokes marijuana and only talks to his father about how lousy the TV reception is. Larry’s daughter Sarah spends most evenings out at a dubious nightclub named “Hole.” Larry’s socially challenged and gambling addicted brother Arthur also lives with the family and spends much of his time either in the bathroom or working out complex but entirely incomprehensible theorems. In addition, Larry is bound up in an ongoing dispute with his abrasive neighbor about their property lines. To this extent, the film’s opening situation, packed with conflict and turbulence, strikingly differs from the well-ordered, blissful life of the biblical Job. In addition to the regular irritations of everyday life, Larry, like Job, falls victim to a long series of greater and lesser misfortunes that, taken together, send him into deep existential crisis. Out of the blue, Larry’s wife Judith reveals to him that she has fallen in love with an eccentric widower, Sy Ableman, and plans to divorce Larry – both according to civil law and religious rite. At the college, a Korean student, who is dissatisfied with his grade on an exam, attempts to bribe Larry with a large sum of money; the student’s father increases the pressure by threatening to spread rumors of Larry’s alleged corrupt behavior among his colleagues, thereby sabotaging his prospect for a permanent appointment. Larry’s financial situation also deteriorates quickly due to legal expenses incurred through his wife’s divorce action and paying for the hotel into which he and his brother are forced to move.

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Although the crises afflicting Larry are not as severe as those Job faced, they are serious enough to awaken doubt in the notion of a kindly, merciful God and prompt him to seek out religious counsel that might provide answers to his questions about the meaning of suffering. Whereas Job is visited by three wise friends, who first mutely console him with their presence and then try to supply answers to the reasons for his suffering, Larry himself seeks out help and contacts three respected rabbis. However, their advice is as unsatisfactory for Larry as was that of Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar for Job. An inexperienced junior rabbi can only suggest that Larry meditate on the little things in life, such as the parking lot in front of the synagogue, as a way to approach God’s design and the mystery of being. The more experienced Rabbi Nachtner tells him – without any explanation – a mysterious story about the Hebrew letters on the inside of the teeth of a Goy (non-Jew). The third and last rabbi Larry contacts, the extremely well respected old Rabbi Marshak, refuses even to see him. Although the first and second rabbis both refer to the mystery of being, their banal answers to Larry’s existential questions differ markedly from the empathic, but ultimately weak arguments that Job’s friends deliver. The connection between culpability and retribution on which Job’s friends insist appears irrelevant to Job in explaining his situation. What the first two rabbis tell Larry in no way answers his questions and merely parodies the speeches of God in the book of Job. Like these two rabbis, when the biblical God speaks, he does not directly address Job or his questions but points instead to the mysteries of his creation and the limits of human understanding. The biblical Job surprisingly distances himself from his critique of the claims of an omniscient and loving God and yields to the nebulous arguments of the God-figure, Larry, in a parody of Job, likewise abandons doubting and resisting God – which is metonymically indicated by the fact that he raises the Korean student’s exam grade. A Serious Man exhibits clear structural and narrative links between the stories of Job and Larry, such as the series of catastrophes, the theological problem of unjust suffering, and the three incompetent advisors. However, these connections are repeatedly inverted or parodied. Even the ending of the story is inverted. As the film ends, it briefly appears that all ends well, even miraculously well, although not in such an exaggerated fashion as the book of Job. Sy Ableman dies in an auto accident, and Judith seems ready to return to Larry. Danny finally does manage to read from the Torah at his bar mitzvah celebration, despite being under the influence of drugs to the extent that he barely makes it to the podium containing the scroll and the letters seem only a blur. At the very end, however, Larry’s life again spirals downward even more profoundly than before. Larry receives a phone call from his physician who urgently wishes to speak with him despite an approaching tornado that could strike the city at any moment. The last scenes of the film show youngsters, among them Danny, standing in front of their school and staring at the sinister wall of the oncoming tornado, so in shock that they forget to seek shelter (never mind that the key to the shelter could not be found). Our imagination supplies what the screen no longer

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shows – the tornado strikes with fury as if fulfilling Job 1:19: “and behold, a great wind came across the wilderness, and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young people, and they are dead.” In the book of Job, this terrible report ends the sinister series of bad news. The ominous storm in A Serious Man opens a dark future lurking beyond the film’s end. In the Bible, the happy ending saves the book of Job from totally sinking into darkness of unprecedented, unresolved laments about the absence of God. As with other features of the book of Job, the Coen brothers also convert this positive ending into its opposite. This final inversion in the figure of the threatening tornado and the urgency of the doctor, which augurs no good, is the most serious attack on the optimism of the biblical book. The film’s end deepens the doubts held by the Coens about the presence of God and the possibility that life and suffering conceal a deeper truth and meaning which exists and is guaranteed by God in his wisdom – even if it shall remain hidden and incomprehensible to humans. In A Serious Man, this optimism at the end of the film is suddenly and lastingly shaken – ironically, just after it seemed that everything might end well. After miraculously succeeding with his bar mitzvah reading, Danny, in contrast to his father, is given an audience with the elderly and wizened Rabbi Marshak whose office with all of his books, objects and signs looks like the private chambers of a medieval scholar. Like all young men who have completed the bar mitzvah rite, Danny expects that the rabbi will reveal ultimate truths to him during his audience and provide him key input for conducting his life. But, instead, the rabbi recites the first verse of the Jefferson Airplane song “Somebody to Love,” in slightly altered form, then lists the names of the band members as though he were citing the authors of Holy Scriptures. Rabbi Marshak quotes the song with the lines “When the truth is found to be lies / and all the hope within you dies.” This is an extremely bitter rejection of the sense of human existence, which the Coens attribute not only to the rabbi, but also to religion and the heritage it represents. In the hands of the Coen brothers, parody and inversion are used to transform the Bible and particularly the book of Job into instruments of a fundamental critique of religion. The book of Job is seen in a radically skeptical context – skepticism about whether it is ever possible to distinguish truth from illusion. This seems to be the fundamental question motivating the Coens in A Serious Man. The theme “Truth and Illusion” also informs the mysterious prologue of the film; at first glance, the prologue seems unrelated to the Larry plot strand, but beneath the surface it provides the musical pitch of the score. The prologue introduces the viewer to a Jewish schtetl somewhere in the east in the distant past. It revolves around the question of whether a very old man visiting a Jewish couple one night is a “dybbuk” (the spirit of a dead person disguised in a human body) or is an actual living human being. The woman’s attempt to learn the truth – she stabs him in the chest with a dagger – fails to provide unambiguous results. The old man staggers out of the house wounded but, astonishingly, is still alive. The question “reality or illusion?” remains open. However, the answer is pursued later in Larry’s mathematics lecture when he presents “Schrödinger’s cat,” a well-known mathematical paradox accord-

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ing to which it is impossible to know whether a cat in a box is alive or dead, and consequently (mathematically speaking) it is paradoxically both at once. The prologue, Schrödinger’s paradox, and the film A Serious Man form as a whole is a vehicle that helps the Coens press home the question: Are there any trustworthy answers to the most elemental questions of life and death?

Job as an Actual Movie Character A Very Rare Case: Job Played by an Actor A number of other films contain explicit and significant implicit connections to the book of Job – most, however, without achieving the same intensity as the newer films discussed above. Actual film versions of the biblical book itself or parts thereof are extremely rare. Ignoring the uncomplicated evangelical treatments that seldom found their way into theaters and are known only in narrow circles (Page 2011), only two direct adaptations remain and they are nearly unknown. The first, a German silent film Hiob (dir. Kurt Matull, 1918, Job), includes only the characters Job, his wife (here known as Esther), and Satan. However, nothing more could be learned about this film because it apparently has been lost. It is worth noting that it was made at the end of World War I and premiered the following year. This suggests that actual experiences of suffering may have inspired the choice of the book of Job and influenced the script.⁸ It was another seventy years before The book of Job again was brought to the screen in the last of four episodes of the largely forgotten film Mon cas (1986) by the renowned director Manoel de Oliveira. The episodes of this film are varying treatments of a play by José Régio, with dialogue by Samuel Beckett, and consist of different settings of one and the same story. The biblical figure of Job appears in the final variation and recites portions of the book dedicated to him.⁹

The Job Story According to South Park The films of Natull and De Oliveira are the only feature films that present Job as an onscreen character. Add to that the animated episode“Cartmanland” from season 5, episode 6 of the cartoon series South Park (dir. Trey Parker, 2001). Like many other episodes in the series, this one takes up a timeless question and gives it a satirical twist. In this case, it reinforces the ancient wisdom in Israel that God’s justice is reflected by the level of prosperity enjoyed by the pious (Page 2008). In the story, Cart Matull’s Hiob (Job) is missing in the filmographies of Cuenca () and Campbell/Pitts ().  Knörer (). In a five-minute clip of this film in French on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=KtvdKq_ic; accessed February , ), an off-screen narrator gives an exposition of the plot, and the clip includes one of Job’s first lengthy monologues of lamentation.

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man inherits a million dollars and uses it to open an amusement park, while Kyle has to undergo hemorrhoid surgery and quarrels with his plight. That he must suffer while Cartman is blessed with good fortune leads Kyle to doubt divine justice and, ultimately, the existence of God. How can it be that a bad person can thrive while a good person must endure misfortune? His parents attempt to console him by pointing to the example of Job (Job 1:1– 2:10), which then is shown as a ninety-second film within a film. However, they achieve the opposite effect, not the least because they alter the story. They switch the opening situation so that not Satan, but God himself is the cause of the blows of misfortune in order for them to trump Satan with Job’s example of faithfulness. His parents end the story with Job’s profession of faith in God and suppress both his rebellion and the happy ending. After pointing out that Job kept his faith, Kyle’s father concludes with the words: “And God said to Satan: ‘As you can see, I told you that Job still praises me’” (cf. Job 2:3). Hearing this as he lay on the operating table, Kyle is aghast and replies: “That is the most gruesome story I’ve ever heard! Why did God do such terrible things to him just to prove a point to Satan?” When his parents are unable to answer, this further anchors Kyle’s conviction that there is no God and stifles his will to live. In the end, when Cartman frivolously sells his booming enterprise after quickly tiring of it and the payment of back taxes and liability for a death in his park cause the loss of his entire fortune, Kyle once again begins to believe in divine justice and, analogous to the fairytale ending of the biblical book, is healed in an instant. The last words he joyfully addresses to God (“So you do exist after all!”) end the episode.

Adaptions of Joseph Roth’s 1930 Novel, Hiob (Job) Two feature films simply titled Job adapt to the screen Joseph Roth’s 1930 novel, Hiob. ¹⁰ Both update the story, first setting it in a traditional Jewish shtetl in the Russian part of Galicia (like the prologue of A Serious Man) and, many years later, in New York. Job is Mendel Singer, a poor, pious Jew who, as a scholar of the scriptures, is well aware of the similarities between his life and Job’s. For years, he remains steadfast in his faith in God despite suffering many calamities – even when his third son, Menuchim, who was born with a disability is diagnosed with untreatable epilepsy. But when his two other sons fall during World War I and his daughter becomes mentally ill, Mendel breaks with his God and now finds him to be worse than Satan. His son, Menuchim, who had been left behind in Russia with a foster family and later was believed to be dead, became a famous musician and composer. When Mendel learns of this at an advanced age and meets his son again, he reconciles with God and once more finds inner peace. At the end of the novel, he hopes for a good death as an old man “surrounded by many grandchildren and ‘full of days’—as it  For a discussion of this novel and the reception of Job in literature see Langenhorst ().

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stands written in Job.” This moving novel, which informs the central motive and plot movement of the book of Job but provides no new perspectives, was twice filmed for television with the title Hiob (Job): first, in 1977 with a high-profile cast that delivered an outstanding, artistically nuanced three-part film directed by Michael Kehlmann and then under Peter Schönhofer in 2009.

Additional Popular Films with a Connection to Job Although they do not treat the book of Job as extensively as do the films discussed above, a number of other well-known recent motion pictures deepen the significance of their narratives with references to Job. The following selection, in chronological order, makes no claim for completeness.

Cape Fear Martin Scorsese’s film Cape Fear (1991), about the vendetta ex-convict psychopath Max Cady (Robert de Niro) carries out against his former defense attorney Sam Bowden’s (Nick Nolte) family, makes reference to Job. During Cady’s trial on rape charges, his attorney withheld material that was mildly exculpatory. Adele Reinhartz correctly emphasizes that Scorsese, in his remake of the film of the same name by J. Lee Thompson (1962), starkly exaggerates the moral ambiguity of the characters and enriches his source material with numerous references to the Bible – whereby particularly the book of Job provides “a structuring device and a key to the major themes and characters” (Reinhartz 2003, 68). However, I would not necessarily go as far as Reinhartz who says that the book of Job provides the central motifs and plot structure. Alongside of the tattoo of a gigantic cross on his back, Max Cady has added quotations from the Old Testament concerning “vengeance,” and he recommends to the attorney whom he wishes to see suffer more than he has: “Check out the Bible, counselor, the book between Esther and Psalms,” namely, the book of Job. The attorney does this repeatedly and, in fact, parallels do become clear between the suffering of Job and that of the family Cady terrorizes on so many levels. In contrast to the tattooed quotes, with which he identifies himself with God’s part, the avenger increasingly takes on the features of Satan who directs the blows against Job in the Bible. However, the film’s differences with the book of Job are far more numerous. In the end, like Job, the family survives the “lessons” Cady meant to teach Bowden about loss, but in the course of the brutal battle for survival, the attorney loses his moral integrity – already shown to be dubious during the trial – entirely and ends up behaving no less barbarically than Cady. Hence, Cady’s claim to be acting as the agent of divine punishment, supported by the Bible quotes, is at the least presumptuous if not “a diabolic use of the Bible, that is, use of the Bible to support purposes that are contrary to the fundamental ethos of the Bible itself” (Reinhartz 2003,

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80). However, Sam’s descent into barbarism ironically twists and even perverts Cady’s effort to cast the attorney and his family in the role of Job because, from the beginning, Sam was neither righteous nor without blame. Christopher Deacy thus ends his close analysis of Scorsese’s film fittingly when he writes: “Cape Fear is a complex and provocative movie whose ironic use, if not misuse, of key biblical themes and characters, Old and New Testament alike, plays upon our assumption that the mere citation of scripture is sufficient to provide divine sanction for one’s actions. Cape Fear takes Bible-film analysis to a new level, whereupon the greater, more explicit, the use of scripture, the more divergent and theologically problematic, such a reading becomes” (Deacy 2012, 59).

Mission Impossible The reference to Job in Mission Impossible (dir. Brian De Palma) is explicit but remains superficial. Ethan Hunt, as played by Tom Cruise, receives a cryptic email with the return address Job@Job 3:14. It later becomes clear that the address masks Hunts adversary, Jim Phelps (John Voigt). However, the biblical reference turns out to be no more than an inconsequential gimmick. As Nicola Denzey correctly noted: “a Bible citation as secret code clearly has more caché. Attentive movie-goers groused that Job@Job 3:14 is not a viable email address because it contains a space and colon, but few pondered the lack of connection between Job 3:14 and the plot of the movie, or the disconnect between Job and Phelps” (Denzey 2004). Any effort to find a deeper significance fails.

21 Grams Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu in his first international film success Amores perros (2000) included an unmistakable biblical context by making the central brother-conflict clearly analogous to the Cain and Abel story. In his second film, 21 Grams (2003), the book of Job penetrates the story, or more precisely, seeps into the plot strand involving Jack Jordan (Benicio del Toro). Before his release from a lengthy term in prison, Jack had to endure many things, but the greatest test of all awaited him after release. He causes a traffic accident in which a father and his two small daughters perish. Jack had become extremely religious in prison and – like Job in the Bible – he turns to God in despair seeking to make sense of this catastrophe, but to no avail. He finds no answers and God does not reveal himself so that, in contrast to the great sufferer of the Old Testament, Jack fails to find his way back to God and founders on the theodicy question, losing both his faith and his God.

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Life of Pi “Ein Hiob auf dem Meer” (A Job at Sea) is the title Hans-Jüergen Benedict gave to an article on Ang Lee’s 2012 film Life of Pi (Benedict, 2013). As the sole survivor of a shipwreck, the young Pi spends days, weeks, and months in his boat with a dangerous tiger until, after a ferocious storm that tops everything he has endured up until then, he is washed ashore after two hundred and twenty-seven days. At the height of his despair, Pi calls out (to which god, remains open, because his faith straddles Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam): “God, why are you doing this to me? I surrender! I surrender, what more do you want?” If we were to interpret this film and lamentation from a Christian perspective, the grandiose images of nature evoking the beauty and mystery of the cosmos would remind us of the speeches in which God told Job of the incomprehensible mystery of his creation.¹¹ Like Job (cf. Job 42:2– 3), Pi capitulates in the face of the omnipotence of the creator God but, unlike the biblical hero, does not find his way back to God; instead, influenced by his experience of suffering, he distances himself from the notion of a personal, transcendent God.

Conclusion Compared to the large number of films – as the MoMA Project mentioned at the outset – that explicitly or implicitly deal with the theodicy question and the hiddenness of God, the set of movies that in so doing explicitly refer to the book of Job is comparatively small. That is truly remarkable because cinema clearly lags the literary medium in this respect. The book of Job is treated in film always very selectively, with the narrative frame receiving more extensive treatment and the long exchanges between Job and his friends and Elihu being scarcely featured. Only the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man makes reference to the three rabbis from whom Larry Gopnick fruitlessly seeks advice, and that is done in a fragmented, satirical way. Sometimes, it is primarily the major Job plot strand, the prose narrative’s arc from his breathtaking crash to the fairytale happy ending, that inspires the film narratives as in Aki Kaurismäki’s Drifting Clouds. If the prologue and the reconciliation of the finale are most generously treated, Job’s extended laments are reduced to mere brief excerpts, revealing the basic structure of Job more clearly with its curious Ushaped movement. The lengthy exchanges of conversation found in the middle of the story during which the main plot marches in place are drastically compressed. In this respect, it is not surprising that the book of Job has inspired a number of cinematic theodicy comedies that treat these serious questions humorously yet in depth.

 It is possible to interpret the gigantic whale that appears in the film with the power of archaic chaos as an allusion to the leviathan in the book of Job (cf. Job : ff.). Larry Kreitzer (,  – ) has clearly and lucidly explored the connection between the whale and leviathan using Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick and its film versions.

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Despite this selective reception in film, the speeches of God from the midst of the whirlwind, which assert the grandeur and mystery of the cosmos, are often included. These speeches can be narratively treated as in Bruce Almighty when the hero becomes painfully aware of the grandeur and enigma of God due to the catastrophic course of his own brief time as “God.” Cinema, too, can evoke God’s response or its basic line of argumentation with cinematic originality as shown by the creation sequence in The Tree of Life. Malick’s film is also the only one that maintains the basic tone of lament and prayer using, at times, the visionary finale of the hereafter to echo extensive passages from the biblical book. In the above-mentioned preference shown for the prose frame in film versions of Job, the prologue is more frequently treated and usually closer to the Bible text than is the epilogue. Sometimes, a miraculous happy ending is seen, as in Drifting Clouds or Adam’s Apples, but the exuberance which closes the book of Job is always toned down. As has been true of the literary reception of the book of Job – shown paradigmatically in Goethe’s Faust Prologue – the exposition with God, Satan, and the profound fall of the just man has been the great source of inspiration for movies as well. The erroneous reading of the opening situation (in which not Satan, but God himself afflicts Job) is widespread because the concession to Satan is the only possibility for providing a way out of this constructed dilemma. Hence, in Adam’s Apples the hero in the title sees God as the evil attacker, hence an extremely shadowy God. This interpretation is even more clearly expressed in the Job episode of the cartoon series South Park. The biblical book does not support this view, but it does come into consideration as soon as leave is taken from the devil and the comfortable dualism of God and Satan (which, of course, is only marginally found in the Bible) crumbles. To this extent, the reception of the book of Job in cinema documents not only its durable vitality in cultural memory, it also shows how films sometimes apply today’s perspectives to the Bible to extend biblical narratives.

Addendum After completing this article, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan (2014) premiered at the Cannes festival, received the award for “Best Screenplay” followed by many international prizes, including a nomination for the 2015 Oscar in the category of “Best Foreign Language Film.” The title refers to Thomas Hobbes’s 1651 famous politico-philosophical tract that argues for the sovereignty of an authoritative state in order to control human egoism. But more so the film’s title points to the mythological creature described in the Old Testament, foremost in Job 40:25 – 41:26 (see also: Pss. 74:14; 104:26, Isa. 27:1). The main character of Zvyagintsev’s film, the mechanic Kolya Sergejew, who lives at the shores of the Barents Sea in northern Russia, is a modern Job-figure. He falls victim to the corrupt political authorities (represented through the town’s mayor, Vadim, and his accomplices in the police force and court) and loses his land, his house, and all his properties. While the biblical Job la-

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ments to God, Kolya appeals to the courts – but in vain. Finally, his wife commits suicide; and Kolya, almost drowning in vodka, is falsely accused of having murdered her and is sentenced to fifteen years in jail. In a dialogue shortly before his detention, the sincere local priest tries to console Kolya with a retelling of the story of Job, which he explicitly compares to his fate. By quoting Job 40:25 – 27 the priest reminds Kolya, that it is impossible for man to subdue the Leviathan. Hobbes’ Leviathan – clearly reflected in the political system – seems to triumph at the end of the movie. But invited by the explicit reference to Job and seen in the horizon of the late wisdom literature of the Old Testament, some hope still remains that even for the wicked archvillain Vadim, who incarnates almost all the disgraceful deeds castigated by a prophet like Amos, divine retribution is waiting.

Works Cited Bandy, Mary Lea, and Antonio Monda, eds. 2003. The Hidden God. Film and Faith. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. Benedict, Hans-Jüergen. 2013. “Ein Hiob auf dem Meer. Ang Lee’s 3D-Film Schiffbruch mit Tiger.” Tà katoptrizòmena 82: http://www.theomag.de/82/hjb15.htm; November 1, 2014. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda. 2015. “Speaking as ‘Any Foolish Woman’: Ms Job in the History of Reception.” In Celebrate Her for the Fruit of Her Hands: Essays in Honor of Carol L. Meyers. Ed. Susan Ackerman, Charles E. Carter, Beth Alpert Nakhai. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbraun. Pp. 81 – 110. Campbell, Richard H., and Michael R. Pitts. 1981. The Bible on Film. A Checklist, 1897 – 1980. Metuchen, N.J. and London: Scarecrow Press. Cuenca, Carlos Fernandez. 1960. Cine Religioso. Filmografia Critica. Valladolid: Sever-Cuesta. De Bleeckere, Sylvain. 2012. Het aards paradijs als zinnebeeld. Beschouwingen bij The New World en The Tree of Life van Terrence Malick, Hasselt, Belgium: Uitg. Men[s]tis Hasselt. Deacy, Christopher. 2012. “Cape Fear (1991).” In Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films. Ed. Adele Reinhartz. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 55 – 60. Denzey, Nicola. 2004. “Biblical Allusions, Biblical Illusions: Hollywood Blockbuster and Scripture.” Journal of Religion and Film 8.1: www.unomaha.edu/jrf//2004Symposium/Denzey.htm accessed February 21, 2015. Exum, Cheryl, and J. William Whedbee. 1985. “Isaac, Samson, and Saul: Reflections on the Comic and Tragic Visions.” In Tragedy and Comedy in the Bible. Semeia 32. Ed. Cheryl Exum. Missoula, MT: Society of Biblical Literature. Pp. 5 – 40. Fry, Christopher. 1965. “Comedy.” In Comedy: Meaning and Form. Ed. R. W. Corrigan. San Francisco: Chandler. Pp. 77 – 79. Frye, Northrop. 1964. Analyse der Literaturkritik. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer-Verlag. Klinger, Bernhard. 2007. Im und durch das Leiden Iernen. Das Buch Hiob als Drama. Bonner Biblische Beiträge 155. Hamburg: Philo-Verlag. Kreitzer, Larry. 1994. The Old Testament in Fiction and Film. On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow. The Biblical Seminar 24. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Langenhorst, Georg. 1995. Hiob unser Zeitgenosse: Die literarische Hiob-Rezeption im 20. Jahrhundert als theologische Herausforderung. Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag. Leithart, Peter J. 2013. Shining Glory. Theological Reflections on Terrence Malick’s TREE OF LIFE. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books.

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Page, Matthew. 2008. “South Park on Job.” Bible Films Blog (August 18): http://biblefilms.blog spot.com/2008/08/south-park-on-job.html; accessed February 21:2015. —. 2011. “Where Is My Father: New Job Film.” Bible Films Blog (February 16): http://biblefilms. blogspot.com/2011/02/where-is-my-father-new-job-film.html; accessed February 22, 2015. Reinhartz, Adele. 2003. Scripture on the Silver Screen. Louisville-London: Westminster John Knox Press. Robertson, David. 1973. “The Book of Job: A Literary Study.” Soundings 56: 446 – 69. Whedbee, William. 1990. “The Comedy of Job.” In On Humour and the Comic in the Hebrew Bible. Ed. Yehuda T. Radday and Athalya Brenner. Bible and Literature Series 23. Sheffield: Almond Press. Pp. 217 – 49. Williams, J. G. 1971. “You Have Not Spoken Truth to Me.” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 83: 231 – 55. Zwick, Reinhold. 2001. “Wolken ziehen herauf und vorüber. Strukturen des Komischen in der Bibel und bei Aki Kaurismäki.” In Göttliche Komödien. Religiöse Dimensionen des Komischen im Kino. Ed. S. Orth, et al. Köln, Cologne: Katholisches Institut für Medieninformation. Pp. 69 – 95. —. 2003. “Selig die Armen in den Wohncontainern. Aki Kaurismäki und seine Tragikomödie Der Mann ohne Vergangenheit.” Stimmen der Zeit 128: 546 – 60. —. 2012. “A Serious Man.” In Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films. Ed. Adele Reinhartz. London/New York: Routledge. Pp. 228 – 32. —. 2013. “Hiob im Kino. Die Theodizeefrage im Spiegel aktueller Filmkomödien.” In HIOB – transdisziplinär. Seine Bedeutung in Theologie und Philosophie, Kunst und Literatur, Lebenspraxis und Spiritualität. Ed. W. Schüßler and M. Robel. Münster: LIT-Verlag. Pp. 173 – 90. —. Forthcoming. “Kontrasterfahrungen mit Gott.” In Öffentliche Religion – religiöse Öffentlichkeit. Ed. K. Abmeier and M. Borchard. Paderborn: Schöningh-Verlag.

Films Cited 21 Grams (dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2003, This Is That Productions, US). Adams æbler [a.k.a. Adam’s Apples] (dir. Anders Thomas Jensen, 2005, M&M Productions, DK/DE). Akahige [a.k.a. Red Beard] (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1965, Kurosawa Production Company, JP). Amores perros [“Love’s a Bitch”] (dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2000, Altavista Films, MX). Andrey Rublyov [a.k.a. Andrei Rublev] (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966, Mosfilm, SU). Bad Lieutenant (dir. Abel Ferrara, 1992, Bad Lt. Productions, US). Breaking the Waves (dir. Lars von Trier, 1996, Argus Film Produktie, DK/SE/FR/NL/NO/IS/ES). Bruce Almighty (dir. Tom Shadyac, 2003, Spyglass Entertainment, US). Cape Fear (dir. J. Lee Thompson, 1962, Melvin-Talbot Productions, US). Cape Fear (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1991, Amblin Entertainment, US). Hiob [“Job”] (dir. Kurt Matull, 1918, Ideal-Film GmbH, DE). Hiob [Job] (dir. Michael Kehlmann, 1977, Fernsehfilmproduktion Dr. Heinz Schneiderbauer, AT). Hiob [“Job”] (dir. Peter Schönhofer, 2009, 3 Sat, DE). Kauas pilvet karkaavat [a.k.a. Drifting Clouds] (dir. Aki Kaurismäki, 1996, Sputnik, FI). L’humanité [a.k.a. Humanité] (dir. Bruno Dumont, 1999, 3B Productions, FR). Le diable probablement [a.k.a. The Devil, Probably] (dir. Robert Bresson, 1977, Sunchild Productions, FR). Leviafan [a.k.a. Leviathan] (dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2014, Sony Pictures, RU).

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Life of Pi (dir. Ang Lee, 2012, Fox 2000 Pictures, US/TW/UK/CA). Magnolia (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999, Ghoulardi Film Company, US). Mission Impossible (dir. Brian de Palma, 1996, Paramount, US). Mon cas [“My Case”] (dir. Manoel de Oliveira, 1986, Les Films du Passage, FR/PT). Nattvardsgästerna [a.k.a. Winter Light] (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1963, Svensk Filmindustri, SE). Nazarín (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1959, Producciones BarbachanoPonce, MX). Nostalghia [a.k.a. Nostalgia] (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983, Opera Film Produzione, SU/IT). The Road (dir. John Hillcoat, 2009, Dimension Films, US). A Serious Man (dir. The Coen Brothers, 2009, Focus Features, US/UK/FR). South Park [“Cartmanland,” Season 5, Episode 6] (dir. Trey Parker, 2001, Braniff, US). Stromboli [a.k.a. Stromboli, terra di dio; “Stromboli, Land of God”] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1950, Berit Films, IT/US). The Tree of Life (dir. Terrence Malick, 2011, Cottonwood Pictures, US). Tystnaden [a.k.a. The Silence] (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1963, Svensk Filmindustri, SE). Vredens dag [a.k.a. Day of Wrath] (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943, Palladium, DK).

Matthew S. Rindge

22 Lament in Film and Film as Lament Lament psalms in the Hebrew Bible function primarily as appeals to God to remove suffering. Rooted in painful experiences, laments give voice to the “multifarious forms of human affliction, oppression, anxiety, pain, and peril…” (Westermann 1981, 264). Laments provide a vehicle for expressing grief, mourning, anger, and confusion. As such, the lament gives voice to emotions and experiences that are often otherwise silenced or ignored. As Westermann notes: “The lament is the language of suffering; in it suffering is given the dignity of language. It will not stay silent!” (Westermann 1981, 272). In laments, these volatile emotions are expressed directly to God. Some laments complain to God about other people; other laments complain to God about God, bringing accusations against God to God.¹ Such psalms blame God for troubles the psalmist experiences, accuse God of being absent, and plead with God to remove the psalmist’s suffering. God, in such laments, becomes both defendant and the court of final appeal. These psalms often question the perceived divine absence, asking why God is so distant. Some have seen in this questioning not only a query to God but also a “protest, a complaint …” against God (Miller 1986, 101). Psalms of lament are fundamentally different from psalms of praise or thanks. The latter declare, affirm, thank, or praise God, either for certain attributes (e. g., faithfulness, everlasting kindness, mercy, patience) or for specific divine acts (e. g. deliverance, rescue, support). Lament psalms, on the other hand, accuse God of failing to be (or perform) the very things that psalms of praise or thanks affirm. For the lamenter, God has failed to deliver, rescue, or support; God not only fails to act in these helpful ways, but is also perceived as causing pain, suffering, and/or death. Although most lament psalms begin as a lament and transition at some point to praise (e. g. Pss. 13; 22), Psalm 88 retains its lament language to the end. The most famous lament in the New Testament is Jesus’ final cry from the cross in Mark’s gospel: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned/forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). These words are significant in Mark for being the only words Jesus speaks on the cross, and the final words he speaks in the gospel.² Even more noteworthy is what Jesus’ words convey – a sense, at the very end of his life, that God has forsaken him. The entire gospel of Mark can be read as a lament of God’s abandonment of Jesus (Rindge 2012). Discomfort with Jesus’ accusation of divine abandonment is a possible – perhaps likely – reason for its omission in Luke’s gospel. Whereas Matthew’s gospel retains Jesus’ lament (Matt. 27:46), Luke instead describes Jesus as saying, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). Luke thus depicts a Jesus who, rather  See also Burnette-Bletsch’s chapter on cinematic depictions of God in Part I (Pp.  – ).  If, that is, Mark : is the original ending to the gospel.

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than lamenting God’s abandonment, chooses to entrust himself to God’s care. In John’s gospel, Jesus utters neither of these lines, declaring instead: “It is finished” (John 19:30). Two of the four canonical gospels thus portray a Jesus who, while dying, laments God’s abandonment.

Lament in Film Many films lament God’s absence or abandonment. Like almost all lament psalms, films that incorporate lament typically transition from lament toward some kind of praise or resolution. Signs (dir. M. Night Shyamalan, 2002) highlights the spiritual development of Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), a former Episcopal priest whose despair over his wife’s death led him to abandon his faith and priestly vocation. His new worldview is clear: “There is no one watching out for us . . . we are all on our own.” Yet while watching his young son endure an asthma attack, Hess speaks to God, and he does so in the form of a lament: “Don’t do this to me again, not again; I hate you, I hate you.” Hess later realizes that his son’s asthma protects his lungs from a poisonous alien attack. As his son wakes from the attack, he asks, “Did someone save me?” His father’s reply (“I think someone did”) suggests a return to some type of belief in God as one who saves. The film’s final scene confirms this intimation by showing Hess emerge from his bedroom dressed in his priest’s garb. The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988), an adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’s 1953 Greek novel O Teleutaios Peirasmos, also shifts from lament to praise. As in Mark 15:34, Scorsese’s Jesus (Willem Dafoe) laments God’s abandonment, crying out while dying on the cross, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” Unlike Mark, this Kazantzakian Jesus is rescued from the cross (either supernaturally or psychologically): he subsequently marries, has children, and grows old. On his deathbed, however – and after Judas pointedly rebukes him for failing to fulfill his Messianic mission – Jesus pleads for God to accept him as his son and let him die on the cross. There he returns, and before dying he declares: “It is accomplished.” The Markan Jesus who laments God’s abandonment becomes the Johannine Jesus who willingly accepts his fate. Lament is an important stage in several films, but rarely the final destination. In denying lament the final word, such films suggest that there is a phase of greater maturity beyond lament. An exception is The End of the Affair (dir. Neil Jordan, 1999) in which God’s presence is perceived throughout as a threat. Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) declares: “I hate you, God. I hate you as though you existed,” and he ends the film (giving the title a dual meaning) by praying: “Dear God, forget about me […] leave me alone forever.” Another anomaly is God on Trial (dir. Andy de Emmony, 2008), in which a Jewish concentration camp prisoner summarizes a long list of divine atrocities in the Hebrew Bible by concluding, “God is not good. He has simply been strong. He has simply been on our side. […] He is still God, but not our God. He has become our enemy.” Like Psalm 88, this film ends with an accent on lament.

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Unlike biblical laments, this accusation about God’s unsavory nature is neither directed to God, nor is there a demand that God change. The absence of such a pointed lament reflects a tacit assumption by the prisoner that God will not change. The remainder of this chapter focuses on three relatively recent American films in which lament is not merely a sign of character development, but a fundamental part of the film’s fabric (Rindge 2015).

Personal Lament and Terrence Malick Lament suffuses Terrence Malick’s films The Tree of Life (2011) and To the Wonder (2012). The Tree of Life is a Jobian meditation on lamenting the death of a child. Parallels to Job in the film abound, including a minister’s two and a half minute sermon on Job that addresses the death of children.³ The film opens with a citation of Job 38:4, 7: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? …When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” This citation situates the film within God’s reference to creation as a response to Job’s lament over suffering. The image, immediately after this quote, of a fluttering light that hovers in the center of a black screen is a symbol of this link between suffering, lament, and creation, and this same light reappears during the film’s lengthy portrayal of the Universe’s creation. The film wastes little time in developing a narrative parallel to Job. Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain) concludes her opening monologue by claiming: “[The nuns] taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end. I will be true to you. Whatever comes.” Her belief and promise are immediately put to the test when she is informed by telegram that her son R. L. has died. Mrs. O’Brien’s grief is palpable. “My son,” she intones, “I just want to die and be with him.” As in Job, efforts to console her are futile. A minister promises, “He’s in God’s hands now”; but she retorts, “He was in God’s hands the whole time.” Her friend is equally unhelpful: “You have to be strong now. The pain will pass in time. Life goes on. You’ve still got the other two. If the Lord gives and the Lord takes away – that’s the way He is. He sends flies to wound that he should heal.” Like Job, Mrs. O’Brien rejects such impotent religious clichés, choosing instead to face her pain and channel it directly to God. “Lord, Why? Where were you? Did you know? Who are we to you? Answer me. We cry to you. My soul. My son. Hear us.” At one point she asks, eyes red eyes from crying, “Was I false to you?” Her laments reflect a choice to engage her pain, to dwell in it, and to demand that God answer for it. Her lament is voiced at the beginning of – and throughout – a seventeen-minute blossoming of the Universe’s creation. A visual and musical spectacle, the creation begins with radiant light shining through darkness, and is coupled with an operatic aria that pierces and shines as the Universe unfolds. As the heavens appear, a star  cf. Zwick (). Also see Zwick’s essay in Part I (Pp.  – ).

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Fig. 40: Mrs. O’Brien mourns her son’s death in Tree of Life (2011)

(our sun?) comes into being. Planets form. The earth’s core bellows fire to the surface. Clouds form, waterfalls pour forth, and canyons appear. Cellular formation produces oceanic life. Evolution blooms as we witness jellyfish, plants, a dinosaur, and the beating of a heart in an embryo. Pairing Mrs. O’Brien’s lament with this aesthetic display echoes the film’s opening link (via Job 38:4, 7) between suffering, lament, and divine creation. Like Job, Malick offers the Universe’s creation as a (divine?) response to Mrs. O’Brien’s lament over the death a child. The cry for a divine response to “Why?” is answered, not didactically, but aesthetically. As in Job, the film does not offer a reasoned or logical reply to lament. In doing so, the film – like Job – might signal the impossibility (and blasphemy?) of providing a propositional answer to the mystery and grief of suffering. As in the Jobian A Serious Man (dir. Ethan and Joel Coen, 2009), propositional replies to lament over injustice are entirely wanting. Pairing creation with lament over the death of a child also draws attention to God’s motherly role, for the creation sequence in the film is akin to a birthing of the Universe. The notion of God as a divine mother is compelling because the God to whom Mrs. O’Brien complains about the death of her son is the same deity who proceeds to birth – and mother – the cosmos into existence. This image of a birthing and mothering God has the potential to establish a shared bond with Mrs. O’Brien’s own motherhood. As a response to Mrs. O’Brien’s lament, the imagery of divine birthing and mothering can convey an understanding over her grievous loss. The opening quote of the film (Job 38:4, 7), so often read as God’s chastisement of Job, can instead be understood as an effort to express the deity’s ability to share in the pain over the loss of one’s own creation. In this way, Malick’s film has the potential to help us read Job with new lenses: God is not reprimanding Job so much as expressing a divine empathy for the loss of Job’s children. When understood in this manner, God’s reply to Job would offer a counterpoint to the previous divine complicity in Job’s suffering (Job 1:6 – 22; 2:1– 10). The Tree of Life differs from Job by omitting the deity’s self-critique. God speaks not only to Job, but also to Job’s friends, and what is spoken is somewhat surprising:

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“My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7b, NRSV). The repetition of this declaration underscores its importance: “for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:8b, NRSV). God defends the person (Job) who has been complaining against and finding fault with God, and chastises God’s defenders. Implicit in this comment is a validation of Job’s complaint against God. In neglecting this divine self-critique, the film fails to portray God’s tacit endorsement of lament. The Tree of Life concludes with an ambiguous, surrealistic vision that points to a possible consolation for those who lament. Like his mother, Jack O’Brien laments death. After a boy drowns, a young Jack pointedly asks God: “Was he bad? … Where were You? You let a boy die. You let anything happen. Why should I be good if You aren’t?” The adult Jack still grieves his brother’s death, but he has a vision at the end of the film that comforts him. He, his mother, father, and younger brother all walk along a beach with dozens of other people. He embraces his mom, greets his dad, and picks up and carries his younger brother. People walk into the water, perhaps symbolizing a passage into an afterlife. Possibly reflecting a transition from lament, Jack prays: “Keep us. Guide us. To the end of time.” A tension exists in Jack’s vision between letting go of those who have died and still pursuing them.⁴ Mrs. O’Brien physically releases her dead son R. L., and utters – with her arms raised toward heaven in a posture of supplication – “I give him to you. I give you my son.” This relinquishing seems to comfort Jack, who departs his vision, returns to his work office, and starts to smile. Yet Mrs. O’Brien immediately remarks, “Light of my life. I search for you. My hope. My child.” The mother now seems determined to find and connect with her dead son. The film thus ends with a dual embrace of letting go of the dead child while continuing to seek after him. Lament here transitions into a voluntary offering of trusting God with one’s dead child, but also a determination to reunite with that same child. To the Wonder (2012) is Malick’s meditation on the beauty of love and the pain of its demise. The film laments the deterioration of romantic and divine love, paralleling both relational dimensions. Shifting from the beauty of the French coast to the toxic pollution in an Oklahoma town symbolizes the relational dissolution between Neil (Ben Affleck) and Marina (Olga Kurylenko). Marina laments Neil’s increasing silence and emotional detachment: “Why do we come back down?” “How,” she asks, “had hate come to take the place of love? My tender heart grown hard?” The silences that haunt romantic relationships turn out to have a divine counterpart. Paralleling Neil and Marina’s romantic collapse is the despair Fr. Quintana (Javier Bardem) repeatedly expresses over God’s absence in his life. He offers five prayers at various points during the film, and the first four highlight his painful dissatisfaction with this divine distance:

 See also Gravett’s chapter on cinematic depictions of the afterlife in this Part I (Pp.  – ).

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Everywhere you’re present, and still I can’t see you. You’re within me. Around me. And I have no experience of you. Not as I once did. Why don’t I hold on to what I’ve found? My heart is cold. Hard. How long will you hide yourself? Let me come to you. Let me not pretend. Pretend to feelings I do not have. Intensely I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. Exhausted. Will you be like a stream that dries up? Why do you turn your back? All I see is destruction. Failure. Ruin.

The film suggests that the intimacy (human and divine) for which people yearn is – even if experienced – fleeting and unsustainable. Against Hollywood conventions, and despite their efforts, Neal and Marina are incapable of rekindling their romance. Long camera shots of isolated characters alone heighten this alienation. Simultaneous shots of Marina on an upper floor, and Neil on the floor below her, make palpable their respective alienation and disconnection. Like the toxic sludge that Neil investigates for his job, there are unseen forces that seem to conspire to keep the couple steadily succumbing to relational death. Neil remains emotionally distant; Marina has a casual sexual encounter, which Neil seems unable to forgive; and she returns with her child to France. Not unlike Lola rennt (dir. Tom Tykwer, 1998), the film proposes that people hunger for love (whether of the human or divine variety), which will forever remain elusive. In the case of Fr. Quintana, lament correlates with action. For despite (or perhaps because of) his ongoing pleas for the divine presence, Fr. Quintana frequently serves a wide variety of vulnerable populations. He visits patients in an elderly home, gives his coat to a poor woman on the street, listens to a deaf woman, cares for the sick at a hospital, gives communion to – and speaks with – prisoners in jail, cares for those who are poor and developmentally disabled. He embodies Jesus’ call to serve the “least of these” (Matt. 25:31– 46), the Catholic works of mercy. Such service might be fueled by his recognition that in a world where God is absent, love and justice can only be provided by people. In this way, lament empowers meaningful activity. Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote of a “weak and powerless” God, so too might Fr. Quintana’s lament catalyze acts of justice on behalf of the vulnerable (Bonhoeffer 1972, 360). Fr. Quintana’s commitment to action is evident in excerpts from his homilies: Love is not only a feeling. Love is a duty. You show love. Love is a command, and you say, “I can command my emotions.” They come and go like clouds. To that, Christ says you shall love, whether you like it or not. You fear your love has died. It perhaps is waiting to be transformed into something higher.

Failing to act is what Fr. Quintana condemns most harshly: We fear to choose. Jesus insists on choice. The one thing he condemns utterly is avoiding the choice. To choose is to commit yourself. And to commit yourself is to run the risk, is to run

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Fig. 41: Fr. Quintana, visiting the poor in To the Wonder (2012) the risk of failure, the risk of sin, the risk of betrayal. But Jesus can deal with all of those. Forgiveness he never denies us. The man who makes a mistake can repent. But the man who hesitates, who does nothing, who buries his talent in the earth, with him he can do nothing.

As in The Tree of Life, lament eventually culminates in a posture of seeking. The priest’s fifth and final prayer departs from the previous four in replacing complaint with a request for God’s presence: Where are you leading me? Teach us where to seek you. Christ, be with me. Christ before me. Christ behind me. Christ in me. Christ beneath me. Christ above me. Christ on my right. Christ on my left. Christ in the heart. Thirsting. We thirst. Flood our souls with your spirit and life. So completely, that our lives may only be a reflection of yours. Shine through us. Show us how to seek you. We were made to see you.

Seeking supplants lament. Lament shifts to gratitude for Marina who ends the film praying, “Love that loves us, … thank you.”

Film as Personal and Social-Political Lament⁵ Fight Club (dir. David Fincher, 1999) weds a personal lament over divine abandonment to a social-political lament over the bankruptcy of the American Dream. A crucial phase of the narrator’s (Edward Norton) religious development entails expressing lament. While the narrator’s alter-ego, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), burns his hand, he opines: Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God? You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen. We don’t need him! Fuck damnation, man! Fuck redemption! We are God’s unwanted children? So be it!

 The following material on Fight Club will appear in a slightly modified form in Rindge ().

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This theological lament both reflects and facilitates the narrator’s religious conversion. His initial zombie-like existence epitomizes the kind of passive compliance that thrives in the absence of lament. It is not a coincidence that his journey from psycho-spiritual death into ebullience coincides with his ability to protest his status as God’s unwanted child. Laments can also address concrete political realities and power relationships embedded in social structures. Laments seek to redress power inequities by redistributing power. Those in authority thus often have a vested interest in minimizing or eliminating expressions of lament. Such refusals to permit lament reinforce the legitimacy of the status quo, and thereby “sanction social control” (Brueggemann 1995, 102). Lament can thus have potentially significant socio-political – in addition to theological and religious – consequences. In the absence of lament a “theological monopoly is reinforced, docility and submissiveness are engendered, and the outcome in terms of social practice is to reinforce and consolidate the political-economic monopoly of the status quo” (Brueggemann 1995, 102). Central to the narrator’s conversion in Fight Club is the rejection of a socio-economic system that is spiritually stifling and psychologically toxic. Despite (or because of) experiencing a nice home, comfortable job, and good pay, the narrator is spiritually comatose, meandering through life in a vegetative-like state. His progress towards spiritual vitality requires a thorough rejection of many central pillars of the American Dream. Destroying his condo and possessions, quitting his job, and moving into a dilapidated house engender within him a religious and existential awakening. In lamenting the bankruptcy and meaninglessness of these sacred aspects of American culture, the film subverts a cherished myth of American religion. The tacit promise that one will find meaning through a stable career, steady income, and lifestyle of consumerism is shown to be as empty and superficial as the depressing contents (a few condiment bottles thinly spread out) of the narrator’s refrigerator. Cinematic elements supplement the film’s disorienting assault on a sacred cultural ethos. The visual disruption caused by shaking the camera, using grainy filters, and splicing split-second frames into the film enhances Fight Club’s destabilizing content. In one scene, Tyler preaches: “You are not your job. You are not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You are not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis.” Throughout his last line (during which Tyler looks directly at the camera and therefore the viewer), the camera shakes erratically and zooms in unevenly on him. The cinematography reinforces the subversive dynamic of Tyler’s rejection of American advertising. The dissociation of the narrator’s psyche also reflects the psychic trauma associated with undermining a sacred cultural ethos. The film more than hints at this psychosis in the opening credit sequence which plays over a camera shot emerging from the neural connections in the narrator’s brain. His psychosis is confirmed when viewers later discover that Tyler is not a separate individual, but a split personality who dwells completely within the narrator’s psyche.

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Fight Club links its theological and socio-political laments. Tyler’s sermon on divine abandonment is illuminated by a deleted scene, entitled “Mona Lisa,” on the supplemental Fight Club DVD (cf. Palahniuk 1996, 141). Speaking directly to the camera, the narrator declares: If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose? We’re the middle children in history. We have no special purpose or place. Unless we get God’s attention we’ll have no chance of damnation or redemption . . . Which is worse: Hell or nothing? Burn the museums, wipe your ass with the Mona Lisa. At least this way God will know your name.

Tyler’s anarchic behavior is rooted not in nihilism but rather in a desperate yearning for divine attention. He would rather be damned by God than neglected, for the cost of damnation is outweighed by the benefit of being known by God. Moreover, the more destructive a person becomes, the more one will be loved by God. Tyler repeatedly insists that self-destruction is a prerequisite for authentic living. “Only after disaster,” he claims, “can we be resurrected.” The narrator’s religious conversion in the film is wedded to (and the result of) a series of steps that bring him ever nearer to death, beginning with his attendance at a support group for men with testicular cancer. The blossoming of the narrator’s religious journey begins here, and he describes the various support groups he attends as a nightly experience of death, being born again, and resurrection. Fight clubs provide the narrator with physical pain, for their primary purpose is not about hurting others, but receiving and embracing pain. The first homework lesson Tyler assigns fight club members is to pick a fight with a stranger and lose. One turns not only one’s cheek but one’s entire body, offering it as a target for physical assault. Tyler models this himself when he lets Lou beat him to a pulp; the narrator follows suit with his work supervisor. The chemical burn Tyler inflicts on the narrator – later revealed to be another self-inflicted wound – illustrates the need to embrace one’s pain. Tyler’s proposal that meaning is found in accepting pain and confronting one’s mortality inverts the tendency – pervasive in American culture – to avoid suffering and death: Stay with the pain; don’t shut this out. […] Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing . […] This is your pain; this is your burning hand, it’s right here. […] Don’t deal with it the way those dead people do! […] This is the greatest moment of your life, man, and you’re off somewhere missing it!

In the final phase of his development, the narrator—near the end of the film—places a gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. Here the narrator’s path toward self-destruction is virtually complete; he comes as close to suicide as is humanly possible. It is no accident that this nearness to death simultaneously represents his final step of psycho-spiritual growth. Although Fight Club utilizes the general form of lament as an attempt to get God’s attention, the film reconfigures its primary aim in biblical texts. Whereas bib-

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Fig. 42: Tyler Durden, about to burn the narrator’s hand in Fight Club (1999)

lical laments are generally rooted in experiences of suffering, and consist of pleas to remove pain, Fight Club’s lament is steeped in numbness and the yearning for painful experiences. Biblical laments seek relief from pain and suffering; Fight Club finds relief in them since they rescue a person from a sedated life devoid of feeling. The film thus inverts the typical goal of laments. In doing so, Fight Club demonstrates the possibilities of cinema to appropriate and reconfigure biblical forms and genres.

Conclusion Although not as currently prolific or profitable as its apocalyptic counterpart, the biblical genre of lament has a noteworthy cinematic presence. In film, lament typically signals character type or marks character development, but Fight Club, Tree of Life, and To The Wonder elevate lament to center stage by weaving it as a thread throughout their respective works. These cinematic laments not only resonate with biblical texts (by protesting God’s abandonment, absence, or impotence), but also eclipse and invert biblical laments. Fight Club rails against the absence of pain, pleading for suffering as a means of awaking to life; Tree of Life depicts a divine maternal response to lament; To The Wonder explores and pairs lament of the divine and the romantic presence. “Lament in Film” and “Film as Lament” are fertile fields with ample untilled tracts of exploration. I offer three potentially fruitful avenues of investigation. Does the use of lament in film to indicate character or character development illuminate the function of biblical laments? In what ways, for example, might the cry of dereliction at the end of Mark or Matthew signify Jesus’ character development? Given the explicit social-political dimension of Fight Club’s lament, what might be the precise social and political rhetorical aims of biblical laments? Does Jesus’ la-

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ment in Mark and Matthew model or inspire political resistance to Roman imperial claims? Finally, how might documentaries elucidate and enhance our understanding of cinematic and biblical lament? Michael Moore’s films Roger & Me (1989), Bowling for Columbine (2002), Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), Sicko (2007), and Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) lament various social ills. These films not only join Fight Club in conveying broader social discontent, but also have potential to catalyze social-political change. How does lament function and operate differently in documentaries? A similar question can be asked of films based on actual events such as Fruitvale Station (dir. Ryan Coogler, 2013) and Selma (dir. Ava DuVernay, 2014). Does the lament of racial injustice in these films, and their audience reception, empower meaningful social change? How so? Such lines of inquiry would enrich appreciation for the potential power of biblical and cinematic lament.

Works Cited Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. 1972. Letters and Papers From Prison. New York: Collier. Brueggemann, Walter. 1995. “The Costly Loss of Lament.” In The Psalms and the Life of Faith. Ed. Patrick Miller. Minneapolis: Fortress. Pp. 98 – 111. [Reprint, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 36 (1986): 57 – 71.] —. 1984. The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary. Minneapolis: Augsburg. Miller, Patrick. 1986. Interpreting the Psalms. Philadelphia: Fortress. Palahniuk, Chuck. 1996. Fight Club. New York: W. W. Norton. Rindge, Matthew S. 2016. Profane Parables: Film and the American Dream. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press. —. 2015. “The “Hiddenness of God in Film.” In Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, vol. 11. Ed. Hans-Josef Klauck, et al. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. —. 2012. “Reconfiguring the Akedah and Recasting God: Lament and Divine Abandonment in Mark.” Journal of Biblical Literature 131: 755 – 74. Westermann, Claus. 1981. Praise and Lament in the Psalms. Transl. Keith R. Crim and Richard N. Soulen. Atlanta: John Knox. Zwick, Reinhold. 2013. “Hiob im Kino. Die Theodizeefrage im Spiegel aktueller Filmkomödien.” In HIOB – transdisziplinär: Seine Bedeutung in Theologie und Philosophie, Kunst und Literatur, Lebenspraxis und Spiritualität, Herausfordserung Theodizee. Vol. 3. Ed. Werner Schüßler and Marc Röbel. Münster: LIT Verlag. Pp. 173 – 90.

Films Cited Bowling for Columbine (dir. Michael Moore. 2002, Alliance Atlantis, CA/US/DE). Capitalism: A Love Story (dir. Michael Moore. 2009, Dog Eat Dog Films, US). The End of the Affair (dir. Neil Jordan, 1999, Sony Pictures, UK/US). Fahrenheit 9/11 (dir. Michael Moore. 2004, Dog Eat Dog Films, US). Fight Club (dir. David Fincher, 1999, Fox 2000 Pictures, US/DE). Fruitvale Station (dir. Ryan Coogler, 2013, Forest Whitaker’s Significant Productions, US).

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God on Trial (dir. Andy de Emmony, 2008, Hat Trick Productions, UK). The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988, Universal, US/CA). Lola rennt [a.k.a. Run Lola Run] (dir. Tom Tykwer, 1998, X-Filme Creative Pool, DE). Roger & Me (dir. Michael Moore. 1989, Dog Eat Dog Films, US). Selma (dir. Ava DuVernay, 2014, Cloud Eight Films, UK/US). A Serious Man (dir. The Coen Brothers, 2009, Focus Features, US/UK/FR). Sicko (dir. Michael Moore, 2007, Dog Eat Dog Films US). Signs (dir. M. Night Shyamalan, 2002, Touchstone Pictures, US). To the Wonder (dir. Terrence Malick, 2012, Brothers K Productions, US). The Tree of Life (dir. Terrence Malick, 2011, Cottonwood Pictures, US).

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23 What Lies Beyond? Biblical Images of Death and Afterlife in Film

Lisa Miller, religion editor of Newsweek and author of the book Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife, writes “Heaven, according to polls, is a place nearly everyone wants to go to, so why don’t movies ever remotely capture that yearning? We all carry inchoate visions of heaven around in our heads, but we don’t realize how bruising another’s interpretation can be until we see it in celluloid.”¹ However critical that perspective, human intrigue about what happens after death drives many films. In fact, this theme proves popular enough that the presentation of experiences of death and an afterlife transcends genre. For instance, blockbuster movies such as Ghost (dir. Jerry Zucker, 1990) and The Sixth Sense (dir. M. Night Shyamalan, 1999) represent romance and suspense, while smaller films like Constantine (dir. Francis Lawrence, 2005) and Jacob’s Ladder (dir. Adrian Lyne, 1990) cover supernatural action-thriller and psychological horror. If I Stay (dir. R. J. Cutler, 2014), Hereafter (dir. Clint Eastwood, 2010), Resurrection (dir. Daniel Petrie, 1980), and even Field of Dreams (dir. Phil Alden Robinson, 1989) get classified as drama. Heaven Is for Real (dir. Randall Wallace, 2014) adapts a claimed true story. Heaven Can Wait (dir. Warren Beatty and Buck Henry, 1978) or Defending Your Life (dir. Albert Brooks, 1991) provides a comic take. All That Jazz (dir. Bob Fosse, 1979) and Les Misérables (dir. Tom Hooper, 2012) even give musical theater a run. Not unexpectedly, the American religious landscape prompts Hollywood movies that frequently typify culturally Christian ideas about the afterlife.² In this regard, even lacking specifically religious references, themes of posthumous reward and consequence based on one’s behaviors prevail. Additionally, images of heaven as ensconced in the clouds or as an exaggeration of the earth’s great beauty and delight recur. The imagination of hell often revolves around fire or amplifies the worst aspects of earth. Most films – although not all – avoid explicit depictions of God or Jesus in association with death and afterlife (Haunton 2009), but often include other supernatural figures such as angels or demons. Who else a person might see in heaven or hell also regularly receives attention. Although by no means an exhaustive treatment of the afterlife in movies, this chapter explores a handful of films notable for their representative depictions of death and the afterlife.³

 Miller (). See also, Miller ().  For additional consideration of American expressions of the afterlife, see Smith ().  For additional insight into the films mentioned here and others, see King (), and the comprehensive bibliography found in Deacy ().

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Reward and Consequence Even though Jerry Zucker’s Ghost avoids overt religious references, it nonetheless conjures ideas of two distinctly opposed afterlife experiences. The villain Carl (Tony Goldwyn) gets dragged forcibly away at his death by shadowy figures with dark, hooded robes and long, skeletal fingers. These specters growl and one hears clattering from wings as well as a jarring soundtrack. By contrast, the dead hero Sam (Patrick Swayze) secures a serene and positive outcome. After fighting in non-corporeal form to protect the safety of his girlfriend Molly (Demi Moore), he ultimately appears to her as an ethereal figure. Reflecting a beautiful, distant, white light, he tells her, “It’s amazing, Molly – the love inside. You take it with you.” He proceeds then to walk away into a rainbow of light filled with the figures of people standing hand in hand. Clearly here, reward and consequence await the departed with a strong suggestion of a heaven and a hell. In fact, the movie shows the crook and schemer Carl as eluding earthly punishment and almost getting the girl. Only when the accidental and innocent victim Sam intervenes from beyond does Carl receive his just recompense. The seemingly meaningless death of Sam, then, becomes something greater as he saves his love, effects justice, and then transitions into a new and, by implication, improved reality. This idea of consequences for one’s deeds resulting in a particular afterlife experience also occurs in Albert Brook’s Defending Your Life, where the newly dead are sent to a place called Judgment City. There, the deceased appear before a panel charged with screening incidents from their lives. Although no punishment or hell exists, the process depicted somewhat parallels the idea of a Book of Life where all of a person’s deeds get recorded as a basis for judgment (cf. Rev. 20:12, for instance). Here, however, the examiners seek to understand the motivating force behind the choices a person makes. If the panel determines fear underlies the actions, they require a person to return to earth for another opportunity to live free of such a burden. Flatliners (dir. Joel Schumacher, 1990) explores the impact of a person’s actions on one’s final fate and moves one step closer to a Christian understanding of such by introducing the biblical concept of sin. In this film, a group of medical students allow themselves to die (followed by resuscitation) to see what, if anything, waits beyond. After each participant “dies,” that person starts experiencing unusual encounters with people from the past that they had hurt in some manner. Nelson (Kiefer Sutherland) explains: “Somehow we brought our sins back physically … and they’re pissed.” While pursuing how to make the increasingly frightening encounters stop, it becomes clear that the power of these wrongs continues to reverberate in each life. For example, Joe (William Baldwin) once videotaped women secretly during sex. His consequence comes when his fiancée Anne finds the evidence and breaks up with him. David (Kevin Bacon) seeks out a woman, Winnie (Kimberly Scott), whom he bullied as a child and asks for her forgiveness. Nelson, however, must lit-

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erally demonstrate his willingness to die for causing the accidental death of a schoolmate and his dog in order to find release. This understanding of sin relates directly to a Christian framework (Matt. 6:14– 15, for instance) by advancing the necessity of forgiveness in order to make right the offense. While this movie implies that sins adhere to an individual post-mortem, it does not suggest any physical heaven or hell or even an eternity. Francis Lawrence’s Constantine, however, does. This movie focuses on the punishment that awaits people who choose to end their own lives. For dramatic purpose, the film presents the Roman Catholic Church defining suicide as a mortal sin and, as such, activating eternally binding effects. Although John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) survived his childhood attempt to kill himself, the story reveals that he died for several minutes, went to hell, and will return once he dies for good. After meeting Angela (Rachel Weisz), John descends into hell to locate her twin Isabel (also Weisz) following a reported suicide. In spite of the specific invocation of the Roman Catholic Church and a claim that suicide inevitably seals one’s fate, the film shows Constantine securing from Satan (Peter Stromare) Isabel’s release. Indeed, Constantine’s action – a preparedness to die and thus go to hell for Isabel – evidences his ability to behave selflessly. This action, a salvific effort like the one in Flatliners, allows Constantine into heaven as well – or it will eventually. The attributes of reward and consequence in these movies illustrate how the afterlife becomes, much as in Christian thought (see, for instance, Rev. 20:11– 15), a point for a final evaluation of a person’s earthly existence and, potentially, a source of justice not realized prior to death. Absent a literal Christ, however, some of the films turn to the protagonists for an atoning sacrifice. In this no-savior-required framework, a person’s conduct alone determines an ultimate outcome and unlikely heroes emerge.

Heaven and Hell Biblical descriptions of heaven and hell tend more toward the suggested than the realized, but nonetheless provide the basis for an extensive treatment in Western art and literature.⁴ For heaven, pearly gates and streets of gold (cf. Rev. 21:21, for instance) provide a common theme along with figures in white robes (Rev. 6:11), angels, and the absence of pain or sorrow (Rev. 21:4; 22:1– 5). The image of a city nestled in white, fluffy clouds recurs frequently, evoked by the idea of heaven as above (cf. Rev. 21:2, 10). Hell, the fiery place of eternal torment (e. g. Rev. 20:10), typically appears as below earth with various imaginations of Satan and a cast of demons tormenting the dead. In movie-scapes, visions of hell occur far less commonly than those of heaven. One of the most graphic presentations comes in Constantine. This hell appears as  See, for instance, Volkova (,  – ) or Hughes ().

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a post-apocalyptic city on fire, complete with destroyed buildings and cars. Animallike demons with horrific faces, sharp teeth, and a hunger for human flesh and a distinct scent of sulfur signals the presence of this realm. A soundtrack comprised of keening, screeching, and moans of agony completes the picture. The setting communicates an ongoing existence in an uninhabitable environment. Such an imagistic translation makes sense for a contemporary audience familiar with images of the destruction caused by nuclear weapons. Satan and his minions look forward to inflicting endless torture on Constantine to destroy both his body and soul – and the location appears ideal for such a purpose. This particular film explicitly appropriates biblical names and terminology for its characters, albeit employed with some creative license. For example, Constantine engages in conversation with Lucifer and refers to him as “son of perdition” (John 17:12, in reference to Judas Iscariot, and 2 Thess. 2:3, which may refer to Antiochus IV), “little horn” (cf. Dan. 7:8; 8:9, which almost certainly refer to Antiochus IV), and “most unclean” (an apparent reference to the ruler of unclean spirits). In a discussion of the book of “Revelations” [sic], Constantine indicates that a version exists where the world will end in the “embrace of the damned.” Similarly, in the “Bible from Hell,” a reference to the fictional 17th tract of Corinthians says that the son of the Devil will forge his own kingdom in fire and blood (in the film, the text is written in Latin). More often, rather than generating quite so literal a rendering of hell, directors opt for something such as in Jacob’s Ladder, which contends that the promise of heaven or hell rests within a person. In this film, Jacob (Tim Robbins) dies in Vietnam after a member of his own unit stabs him during a drug experiment gone wrong. As he lay dying, he “dreams” snatches of both a real and an imagined life. In the latter, he glimpses heaven and hell. Louis (Danny Aiello), a chiropractor in the dream as well as divine figure explains: “If you’re frightened of dying and you’re holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. If you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.” As in Constantine, Jacob’s Ladder incorporates a cast of biblical characters and envisions hell as a cityscape – in this case New York City. The film evokes the city at its nadir – the late 1970s or early 1980s. Filthy streets and subway trains, closed stations, and signs of economic struggle and decay abound. For the Vietnam veteran Jacob, social services come from crowded and overburdened institutions struggling with a crumbling infrastructure. Jacob sees subway trains and cars filled with demonic figures whose hollow expressions and malicious intent differ only incrementally from the homeless or the criminals on the streets. This version of hell corresponds in some ways to what the Bible describes in 2 Peter 2:4 as a “gloomy dungeon” where one awaits judgment. It also suggests the idea of earth as a kind of ongoing hell where Jacob struggles with the death of a child, a broken marriage, and an unsatisfying career. In his dreams, Jacob lives with a woman named “Jezzie” (Elizabeth Peña) or Jezebel. Biblically, this wife of King Ahab encourages worship of other gods and the de-

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struction of the prophets of YHWH as well as promotes unfair policies to assist her husband in achieving his desires (1 Kgs. 18 – 21). Additionally, Revelation 2:20 identifies a woman as a false prophet and labels her as a “Jezebel.” The name commonly became associated with strong and promiscuous women in popular American culture. While the movie occasionally casts her as fighting for Jacob, as when she rids him of a dangerous fever, it more often shows her as resistant to letting him embrace memories of his lost family or of finding him staid and dull when she wants to cut loose and party. In this regard, she pushes him away from the things he needs to embrace in order to understand his life and let go. The name Jacob itself, of course, suggests the ancestral figure who dreams the ladder or stairway to heaven in Genesis 28:10 – 17. Angels ascend and descend at this point of connection between heaven and earth, which Jacob declares to be the “house of God and gate of heaven” (v. 17). Although the movie identifies the drug given to Jacob’s unit as “The Ladder,” and it is that drug that sets in motion the events that lead to Jacob’s death and prompts his extended psychological experience, the stairway becomes something different by the conclusion of the film. At this point, Jacob returns to the home he shared with his wife Sarah (Patricia Kalember) and son Gabe (Macauley Culkin). Here he encounters young Gabe on a staircase where the boy comforts his father before urging him to “go up.” Then, they walk hand in hand upward where the light streaming in through the stained glass windows on the landing of the stairs becomes a glowing white light. As viewers, we switch then to a Jacob in a medical center at the moment of his death from his wounds. In the movies, portraits of heaven and the ways to reach it rely on these kinds of stock images. The passage (a staircase, a corridor, a door, a tunnel) and the white or bright light frequently appear in death and near-death sequences. For instance, in Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter, Marie Lelay (Cécile de France) appears to drown in the 2004 tsunami in Thailand. Before coming back to life, she envisions not only the death that surrounds her in the water, but also a series of shadowy figures bathed in white light. Similarly, Daniel Petrie’s Resurrection details a near-death experience of Edna Mae Macaulay (Ellen Burstyn), who dies briefly on the operating table following a car accident that killed her husband. The movie shows her crossing as a dark tunnel with a purplish white light beckoning her along with the gentle sound of a wind chime. Further, she sees people in the tunnel, including figures she once knew as a child, but could not have possibly remembered. R. J. Cutler’s If I Stay also incorporates a tunnel-like experience when young accident victim, Mia Hall (Chloë Grace Moretz), sees the path toward death as a white light at the end of a hospital corridor. In Defending Your Life, Daniel Miller (Albert Brooks) joins, upon his untimely demise, in a procession of others. Dressed in white hospital gowns, they get wheeled through a series of institutionally white-lit corridors before transferring to a shuttle bus where a guide welcomes them to Judgment City. A similar transportation theme appears in Heaven Can Wait. Joe Pendleton (Warren Beatty), recently deceased, walks through a bank of clouds with The Escort

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(Buck Henry). They arrive at a boarding staircase – also white – with people checking in for their flight to the final destination. It should also be noted that the “death” of this character happens when he rides his bicycle into a tunnel. Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz also plays on this progression in its final moments. Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) dies at the conclusion of a spectacularly staged musical number the dying Gideon – a dancer, choreographer, and director – dreams. The camera shows him moving on a conveyer toward the viewer, but also down a long hallway towards Angelique (Jessica Lange), a recurrent character throughout the film. Visions of Angelique assist a sick and dying man in remembering and reflecting on his life. At the close of the film, she stands backlit, beautiful in white, in a clear outline of an angelic figure. Her arms open, they smile at one another, as the final “production number” (“Bye, Bye Love”) sounds again. However, in a stunning turn, the scene shifts to Joe Gideon getting zipped up in a body bag. In this film, no afterlife awaits. The tunnel simply represents the final passage from this life to death. But if something does indeed exist beyond that “white light,” what is it? Some films offer glimpses of that world. In Defending Your Life, the guide tells the recently deceased that “if we’ve done our work correctly” the bus consists of people from the western half of the United States and thus, even though not on earth, the surroundings should seem “pleasing” and “familiar.” John Constantine, dying in sacrifice for Isabel, floats upward toward a beautiful city in the clouds. The Lovely Bones (dir. Peter Jackson, 2009) features limbo – a place that combines elements of heaven and earth. From there, Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) narrates the events of her murder at the hands of a man from the neighborhood. The film presents this space as a personal heaven. A fantastical locale of bright colors and awesome sights, it incorporates elements from her life on earth, such as a much loved snow globe and a ship in a bottle. In this regard, it resembles the idea of a New Jerusalem descending in Revelation 21. The “new thing” arriving for eternity resembles the already known, but ramps up the intensity exponentially into something more magnificent. For instance, instead of the golden Jerusalem stone, this city and its streets appear as a kind of translucent gold as clear as glass (Rev. 21:18, 21). Light, warmth, and the magnificence of nature also suggest the heavenly dimension in cinema. For example, Heaven Is for Real, a supposedly true story dramatized for the screen, recalls what four-year-old Colton Burpo (Connor Corum) saw when he almost died during an operation for a ruptured appendix. Here, heaven appears as a vast sky with clouds, an almost blinding white light, and brilliant angelic figures. In another scene, Colton finds himself on a beautifully manicured and lush playground. A white robed Jesus accompanies him in both settings. Similarly, when Mia comes closest to dying in If I Stay, she walks through a set of institutional glass push doors at the end of a hall. A sunny day, with exaggerated and brilliant colors of nature, beckons. Likewise, Always (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1989) shows the newly dead Pete (Richard Dreyfuss) in a beautiful grove of tall trees with tons of flowers sprouting from the ground or in a field of wheat. He gets acquainted in these locales with a guide or mentor, Hap (Audrey Hepburn), a figure fully clothed in white. The Lovely

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Bones also reveals magnificent landscapes with snow covered mountains, lush hillsides, shimmering water, beautiful trees, and even extends out into the cosmos. When searching for a visual to express the magnificence of something unknown, nature offers a clear path by tapping the familiar and imbuing it with a richer palette. These scenes conjure up a kind of Edenic perfection, similar to the suggestion of Revelation 22. A return to a pristine world, unsullied by fallible humans, celebrates the splendor of the creation in a pure form and suggests that the human journey ends where it begins.

The Body in the Great Beyond Many movies depict some sort of persistence of an earthly physical form beyond this dimension. But, just as often, characters on earth cannot see their transformed loved one. For example, in Ghost Sam can move objects, but only Oda Mae (Whoopi Goldberg), a psychic, can see or hear him – at least until the conclusion. Always shows Pete possessing the ability to make his thoughts known in the minds of others, but not to manifest himself in any physical way. Fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon in The Lovely Bones projects herself in feelings and experiences to her family and the boy she liked, but without corporeal form. Mia, although not perceptible to her loved ones, manages some small connections to her “Gramps” (Stacy Keach). And The Sixth Sense makes Dr. Crowe quite real to the viewing audience, and yet in the story he appears and interacts only with a boy who sees dead people. An intermediary between the dimensions certainly comes out of the biblical tradition (in addition to the traditions of other cultures). First Samuel 28, for instance, presents the Medium of Endor conjuring up a dead Samuel for King Saul. The story reports the medium alone saw his figure (v. 14), but the two men engaged in a conversation (vv. 15 – 19). For the person existing in a life beyond, however, the resurrected Jesus serves as the model. While he appears to the disciples, they do not always recognize him (Luke 24:16); he can pass through locked doors (John 20:26); and yet he possesses the marks of his crucified body (Luke 24:39; John 20:27) and eats fish (Luke 24:42– 43). In other words, he functions as a hybrid between a new creation and a ghostly specter, but it is his presence – a soul or spirit or true self – in whatever form that clearly identifies him.⁵ Such a description captures both the continuity of form with the transformation of it (cf. I Cor. 15:35 – 56). Film presentations of the departed pick up on this odd relationship to a body. With regard to continuity with the physical form, the conclusion of Les Misérables offers Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) dying in the presence of his adopted daughter Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) and her new husband Marius (Eddie Redmayne). His body crumpled over in death exists on the screen simultaneously with him rising  For additional consideration of how the risen Jesus appears in film, see Mahan (); or the discussion throughout in Babington/Evans ().

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and walking away. To ease his journey, the previously departed Fantine (Anne Hathaway) and the Bishop (Colm Wilkinson) serve as guides. Valjean emerges on the Paris barricade with the other revolutionaries now passed, but still engaged in the fight for liberty. In death, all of these figures appear as last seen in life. Likewise, Mia, near death in If I Stay, separates from her physical self at the site of the car accident that takes the lives of her parents and little brother. Throughout the movie, while she struggles to live in the hospital, her form – complete with consciousness of her situation – appears in the clothes (except for her winter coat) from the car that day, unsullied by the wreck. Another near death experience in Heaven Is For Real also shows young Colton in his same body. As with Mia, he moves without regard to the restrictions one faces as a bodily presence. But whom Colton sees on the other side raises questions about the permanence of the post-death form, as do appearances of dead characters in other films. Colton claims, for example, to encounter a sister in heaven – miscarried by his mother some years previous without Colton’s knowledge – and a paternal great-grandfather he never knew. Here, some inconsistency arises. The sister, now a young girl, plays on a swing set. Clearly no longer embryonic, what determines her age? Does she change or grow in heaven? If so, at what point does such bodily development cease? By contrast, the great-grandfather shows up not old, as at the time of his death, but in the form of a much younger man. This image, known only to Colton’s father (Greg Kinnear) in photos he produces for Colton to identify, also raises questions. Although Colton tells his father that in heaven “everybody’s young” – what determines the age of that heavenly form remains unsaid. Tree of Life (dir. Terrance Malick, 2011) depicts the deceased in younger days as well. Toward the conclusion of the movie, an adult Jack (Sean Penn) encounters his family on a distant shore. He sees his mother (Jessica Chastain), father (Brad Pitt) and brothers R. L. (Laramie Eppler) and Steve (Tye Sheridan) as they appeared in his youth. Similarly, in Field of Dreams, Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) meets his dead father John (Dwier Brown); but the father shows up as a young man – one Ray, born in his father’s old age, never saw in life. Likewise, even though Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) dies at 64, he manifests in the fictitious Iowa cornfield during his prime. Only Archie Graham appears in two differently aged bodies. The youthful rookie (Frank Whaley) takes the field and the aged doctor (Burt Lancaster) serves his hometown and a medical emergency off of the diamond. One notable variation to this theme of continuity occurs in Heaven Can Wait. Joe Pendleton, taken from his football star quarterback body prematurely, should have lived into old age. Over the course of the film, however, it not only becomes clear Joe can inhabit other bodies, but he proceeds to do just that until his time on earth comes to its completion. Even though he might physically appear as another person, the movie clearly indicates that it is Joe – a spirit or a soul – that animates the form. In other words, the physical form functions only as a shell for the true self and that true self transcends any bodily limitations. The film signals such an intent

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by the actor Warren Beatty consistently portraying Joe, no matter what body he occupies (or even when he lacks a body on earth). A medium such as film naturally needs dramatic license to visualize people in the afterlife. By more often opting for the young, it evokes the idea of eternal strength and fitness as well as the hopefulness of youth. This choice also captures the valorization of youthfulness common in American culture – one reinforced all too often by actors. As with presentations of the post-resurrection Jesus in the gospel accounts, a changed but recognizable form captures both the transformation effected by death and the familiarity from earthly life. Heaven Can Wait, however, probably comes closest to what the apostle Paul, in seeking to describe the body after death, says in 1 Corinthians 15:42– 44. In shifting from a physical body to a spiritual form that will be imperishable and immortal (v. 53), the flesh passes away, but something of the essence of a person remains.

Reconciliation and Meaning A common plot device in films featuring the afterlife involves characters who die suddenly and tragically and get “stuck” between earth and the next step. The ensuing drama allows the newly deceased time to resolve outstanding issues and let go of the people and things that bind them to their abruptly interrupted life. In a related vein, some stories focus on the reconciliation of past hurts and offer miraculous crossings between the borders of life and death to heal emotional wounds. A second, similar, plot involves the near death experience. These storylines often allow for exploration of an unknown dimension while confronting life issues and, ultimately, living with renewed purpose. The sudden loss of a great love drives the narrative of multiple films. As seen previously, the character of Sam stays behind with his girlfriend Molly in Ghost until no threat to her exists and both feel prepared to let go of one another. That same romantic pattern recurs in Always (as well as its forerunner, A Guy Named Joe, dir. Victor Fleming, 1943). Pete (Richard Dreyfus) watches over Dorinda (Holly Hunter), even rescuing her from drowning. As time passes, he watches Ted (Brad Johnson) and Dorinda fall in love. Only at this point, assured of Dorinda’s happiness, can he move on – walking down a runway into a starry firmament. A comic take on these events comes in Truly, Madly, Deeply (dir. Anthony Minghella, 1990). The death of Jamie (Alan Rickman) leaves Nina (Juliet Stevenson) in despair. He returns as a ghost, irritating her with his presence in order to help her stop idealizing him, until she begins to heal and fall in love again. At that point, Jamie moves on. The Sixth Sense explores a different kind of barrier to the lead character completing a life. Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), a recognized child psychologist, dies at the hands of former patient, Vincent Grey (Donnie Wahlberg). The plot continues to show Dr. Crowe working with a new patient, Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), a year later. Cole’s visions of dead people torment him, and Dr. Crowe cannot move forward

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until he atones for failing Vincent by helping Cole. Even with this variant, a romantic subplot plays out. Crowe’s wife Anna (Olivia Williams) always believed he put his job above everything else, even her. His “stuckness” to life includes needing to tell her he loved her the most. Healing in these films includes emotional reconciliation. Field of Dreams tells the story of Ray Kinsella, a young husband, father, and farmer, who fears settling down means becoming his father. He constructs a baseball diamond at the behest of a strange voice informing him, “If you build it, he will come.” The realization of the field brought back to Ray a young John Kinsella – a man Ray never knew. Although estranged at the time of his father’s death, the two men get this second chance to find peace with one another. That baseball diamond also provides resolution for Shoeless Joe Jackson and seven other players banned in the Black Sox scandal of 1919; Terrance Mann, a writer withdrawn from his craft; and Archie Graham, a man seemingly denied his dream of a big league career. A conversation between Ray and John reveals the power of the place: John: It’s so beautiful here. For me, well for me, it’s like a dream come true. [pause] Can I ask you something? [Ray nods] Is…is this heaven? Ray: It’s Iowa. John: Iowa? Ray: Yeah. John: I could have sworn it was heaven. Ray: Is…is there a heaven? John: Oh yeah. It’s the place dreams come true. [Ray sees his wife and daughter on the porch swing of his house; his daughter laughing] Ray: Maybe this is heaven.

This interaction suggests that a plowed under corn field turned baseball diamond in Iowa reveals heaven – but not to everyone. Only people who take leaps of faith “see” the players and the game. Only the people who assume the risk to follow their dreams find peace. The afterlife as a place for reconciliation also receives emphasis in The Tree of Life. The film offers an extended reflection by Jack on his life, focused largely on his childhood. It also muses on how that life fits into a larger cosmic flow. At its conclusion, the movie presents a stone portal in a desert-scape to Jack. He steps through to a series of shots featuring the movement of planets, the flow of powerful forces on earth, flashes of light, and the dawning of something new as the narrator indicates in the voiceover the arrival at “the end of time.”⁶ Jack walks on a shoreline with others as the sun rises and gulls fly overhead. Eventually, families begin to reunite and Jack encounters his family, including a youthful version of his deceased brother. The scenes play with time and space and  See also in Part I the different interpretations of this film by Zwick (Pp.  – ) and Rindge (Pp.  – ).

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nature and show the parents, but particularly the mother, finding resolution with regard to the death of this child. Parallel in some ways to the claim in 1 Thessalonians 4:17– 18 that all, even the dead, will be reunited and dwell together with God forever, the film offers encouragement and hope that the end of all things produces something beautiful and profound. Near death experiences also result in transformation in many movies. For example, in Resurrection, Edna Mae dies in the car accident that takes the life of her husband Joe (Jeffrey DeMunn). Although she comes back to life with medical intervention, her injuries leave her a paraplegic – at least until her Grandmother (Eve La Gallienne) helps her recognize new abilities as a healer for both herself and others. John Constantine also returns from his near death experience with special gifts. As a child, he attempts suicide because he can see half-breed demons and angels on the earthly plain. Once he comes back from the other side, he uses this skill and a new strength to capture demons and send them back to hell. Young Colton in Heaven Is for Real, returns from his experience needing to reach out to the sick and grieving to assure them that something better waits on the other side. In some ways, then, the near death experience yields a positive that pushes the characters to find purpose in life. These gifts, however, come with a price. Edna Mae and Colton both become sources of controversy in their respective communities. Most strikingly, even though she attracts crowds seeking out her abilities, Edna Mae eventually withdraws from the world when her lover (Sam Shepherd) becomes obsessed with her gift and tries to kill her. John Constantine, similarly, faces constant threats from demons seeking to destroy him. Instead of withdrawing, he becomes cynical and world-weary and faces a paralysis of hope for something better until he meets Angela and Isabel. Even lacking a special gift as the result of her near death experience, Mia in If I Stay makes a choice to fight for her life. Knowing about the death of her parents at first bonds her to her younger brother who appears to pull through. But when he dies unexpectedly, she clings to the promise of her future as a musician and the love of her boyfriend, grandparents, and best friend to live the life her parents gave to her. These plotlines all attempt to communicate something about the issues that make people anxious about death. Who gets left behind, what remains undone, and never getting the chance to repair brokenness in relationship feels less fraught if an extension into an afterlife holds open the possibility of erasing such losses. But while an explicitly Christian frame of reference stresses the idea of dwelling eternally with God, most Hollywood films pull back from such a claim. Indeed, death as reality often takes precedence as the deceased disappear either immediately or eventually. Those left behind find ways to grieve and move forward.

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Conclusion This brief and selective survey of films by no means exhausts the treatment of death and the afterlife in Hollywood film, much less in world-wide cinema. It does, however, demonstrate how the pervasive cultural understandings, grounded in New Testament texts such as Matt. 11:20 – 24; Luke 16:19 – 31; 23:42– 43; 1 Cor. 15:35 – 58; 2 Cor. 5:1; Rev. 20:11– 15; 21:1– 27; and developed in the art and literature of the Western tradition, provide a familiar frame of reference for viewers. Reward and consequence, heaven and hell, appear linked to the moral and ethical actions of individuals. Reconciliation (1 Thess. 4:13 – 18) also gets stressed, less so in the biblical material than in the broader tradition. These films communicate to viewers, however, because they rely on such cultural commonplaces and, thus, operate within a familiar frame of reference without necessarily assuming explicitly religious overtones.

Works Cited Babington, Bruce, and Peter William Evans. 1993. Biblical Epics: Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Deacy, Christopher. 2012. Screening the Afterlife: Theology, Eschatology, and Film. New York: Routledge. Haunton, Christian. 2009. “Filming the Afterlife.” In The Continuum Companion to Religion and Film. Ed. William Blizek. London: Continuum. Pp. 251 – 59 Hughes, Robert. 1968. Heaven and Hell in Western Art. West Sussex: Littlehampton Book Services, Ltd. King, Mike. 2014. Luminous: The Spiritual Life on Film. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. Mahan, Jeffrey H. 2002. “Celluloid Savior: Jesus in the Movies.” Journal of Religion and Film 6.1: http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/celluloid.htm; accessed February 14, 2015. Miller, Lisa. 2009. “Heaven on Film.” Newsweek http://www.newsweek.com/heaven-film-75747; accessed February 18, 2015. Miller, Lisa. 2011. Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife. New York: Harper Perennial. Smith, Gary Scott. 2011. Heaven in the American Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. Volkova, Elena. 2009. “Visions of Heaven and Hell.” In The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology. Ed. Andrew Haas, et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 793 – 809.

Films Cited All That Jazz (dir. Bob Fosse, 1979, Columbia, US). Always (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1989, Universal, US). Constantine (dir. Francis Lawrence, 2005, Warner Brothers, US/DE). Defending Your Life (dir. Albert Brooks, 1991, Geffen Pictures, US). Field of Dreams (dir. Phil Alden Robinson, 1989, Gordon Company, US). Flatliners (dir. Joel Schumacher, 1990, Columbia, US). Ghost (dir. Jerry Zucker, 1990, Paramount, US). A Guy Named Joe (dir. Victor Fleming, 1943, MGM, US).

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Heaven Can Wait (dir. Warren Beatty and Buck Henry, 1978, Paramount, US). Heaven Is for Real (dir. Randall Wallace, 2014, Tristar Pictures, US). Hereafter (dir. Clint Eastwood, 2010, Warner Brothers, US). If I Stay (dir. R. J. Cutler, 2014; Dinovi Pictures, US). Jacob’s Ladder (dir. Adrian Lyne, 1990, Carolco Pictures, US). Les Misérables (dir. Tom Hooper, 2012, Universal, US/UK). The Lovely Bones (dir. Peter Jackson, 2009, DreamWorks, US/UK/NZ). Resurrection (dir. Daniel Petrie, 1980, Universal, US). The Sixth Sense (dir. M. Night Shyamalan, 1999, Hollywood Pictures, US). Tree of Life (dir. Terrance Malick, 2011, Cottonwood Pictures, US). Truly, Madly, Deeply (dir. Anthony Minghella, 1990, BBC, UK).

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24 This Is the End: Apocalyptic Moments in Cinema The Apocalypse of John is full of cultural and ideological references, none of them knowable for certain. Biblical scholarship has traditionally been focused on searching out the historical details, a slow but debatable collection of artifacts about the Roman world at the end of the first century C.E. These objects of our scholarly business – date, authorship, political and social context, and the rest – are becoming for some scholars of apocalyptic like dusty relics of the near past or nicely displayed artifacts in the museum of historical criticism. This museum has both permanent and special exhibitions of new criticism, but its categories are fairly uniform and organized around modern thought. There is outside this museum a different set of happenings and turns toward the postmodern. There is a wild and ambitious crowd gathering outside, and many in the crowd are film directors with a hankering for seeing John’s vision of the end of the world in some form on the big screen. These film directors represent an important engagement with the lived experience of some apocalyptic cultures. They are questioning the status of the last book of the Bible, just as early Christians debated it. These directors question the Apocalypse’s prominent place in culture and politics, thereby loosening its prime spot in the canon. It is almost as if the text was becoming unmoored from the bindings, that if you opened the Bible to the end these last pages might disintegrate in your hands, turn to ashes that you could blow back to earth. Instead the text awakens, roars in our ears, takes us to the edge and holds us over, threatening to let go. The Apocalypse continues offering eternal life in a rebuilt paradise. So we all, modernists and postmodernists alike, step to the opening and through it into the pages. I want the key to the abyss, to steal it away from the angel who holds it, so I make my way into the text – through the doors of a movie theatre. In this chapter I want to explore a few films that reveal or reveil biblical apocalyptic to show the ways that film influences both our memory of the biblical stories and the ways apocalyptic works as a cultural force. For example, many of my students are surprised to discover that the Rapture, the sudden event when Jesus appears in the sky and true believers disappear (out of houses, cars, airplanes, etc.) to rise with him to Heaven causing total chaos for those left behind, is not a biblical story. Our memories of the apocalyptic texts are tainted by these retellings and reinventions. Reception theory focuses on these reimaginings of texts. Hans-Georg Gadamer provided the grounding theory in his Truth and Method (1960), and many other literary theorists continued his reader-oriented approach to literature (e. g. Tony Bennett, Umberto Eco, Stanley Fish, Wolfgang Iser, Stuart Hall, Hans Robert Jauss, Steven Mailloux). Concepts such as “the aesthetics of reception” (Jauss), “readerresponse,” and “interpretive communities” (Iser) became the catchphrases of recep-

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tion theory. As reception theory relates to biblical apocalyptic and/in contemporary film, the focus is on how readers/spectators encounter texts and film. We are consumers, resisters, watchers, decoders, responders, reactors. As such, and assuming that reading/viewing is a political act, do we lend apocalyptic credibility or not? For Jauss reception theory opens up the reader to new encounters with the text; one effect is to “confront the reader with a new, ‘opaque’ reality that no longer allows itself to be understood from a pregiven horizon of expectations” (Jauss 1982, 44). This “horizon of expectations” that readers have (conscious or not) comes into play when encountering narrative. There is no original or final meaning to a text; interpreters read in their own times and contexts to influence meaning – and memory. But memory is tricky and Jauss warns that memory leads to a dead end, or as he puts it, there is “the decay of memory into a remembrance that contains only what is dead” (Jauss 1982, 154). Readers may not ever be able to know the historical particulars of biblical apocalypse, but are able to fathom their own times. The original text and meaning may be “dead” and we may be unable to recall or remember it. The good news is that the focus on the reader and history of reception of texts allows for textual “afterlives” to have a fuller authority in the interpretive process. But the history of reception of biblical apocalyptic cannot be as neatly determined as Jauss’s theory might suggest. With apocalyptic, interpretation can become quite dangerous and even deadly, as apocalyptically-driven social movements such as Aun Shinrikyo and Jonestown attest. Apocalyptic texts and films are first produced before they are received, and the production of texts over time in different formats is important to investigate. For example, forms of hypermasculinity (e. g. Terminator 2, dir. James Cameron, 1991; The Book of Eli, dir. The Hughes Brothers, 2010; The Matrix, dir. The Wachowski Siblings, 1999; Independence Day, dir. Roland Emmerich, 1996; Left Behind, dir. Vic Armstrong, 2014; etc.) and American exceptionalism (the same films plus many more) play on contemporary fears of terrorism, war, poverty and economic collapse, climate change, and the “Other” (be it from outer space or homebound). Robert Jay Lifton examines this “superpower syndrome” complex in light of 9/11 and the fears of multiple vulnerabilities of American borders. He defines this psychological syndrome as “…a national mindset – put forward by a tight-knit leadership group – that takes on a sense of omnipotence, of unique standing in the world that grants it the right to hold sway over all other nations” (Lifton 2003, 3). As Americans have survived 9/11, what emerged was a “death imprint” and “death anxiety” all reinforcing further violence (Lifton 2003, 138). Thus apocalyptic films rouse us out of our psychic numbing, and we enter into a cathartic journey through the realization of an apocalypse of some sort. Lifton says we “resort to a kind of double life” (Lifton 2003, 171) by living in the shadow of 9/11, the possibility of nuclear annihilation of the planet, and the potential outcomes of climate change. Flood, fire, ice, asteroids, space aliens, God, and Antichrist are some of the perpetrators. Lifton harshly critiques American militarism; he compares the stockpiling of nuclear and chemical weapons and continuous wars and use of torture to the Nazi’s “apocalyptic principle of killing to heal, of destroying vast numbers of human beings

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as therapy for the world” (Lifton 2003, 29). The responses to suffering implicit in biblical apocalyptic have turned violent. Lifton wants to return to what he sees as a nonviolent biblical apocalypse that emerged from groups of non-violent, suffering believers, before some of these believers “merge with God in the claim of ownership of death” (Lifton 2003, 21– 22). Apocalyptic visions can easily get out of hand, with a violent, vengeful deity leading the way (and the nation).

Collapse, Collision, Catastrophe Apocalyptic films often have traces or echoes of Daniel or the Apocalypse of John or other biblical prophecy of the end times.¹ Even the ones that claim a more literal reading of the Bible (e. g. Left Behind, dir. Vic Sarin, 2000; The Omega Code, dir. Robert Marcarelli, 1999) play with gaps in the text and contemporary context. In reflecting on reception theory and apocalyptic film, Melanie Wright observes that the biblical text …is not the film’s sole intertext, but part of a dizzying pastiche of scriptural and other references. […] At the same time, the mobilization of Revelation in film transcends any one genre or single ideological position, frustrating the cataloguer’s efforts. Yet the distinctive inflections of each of its usages reveal both the ubiquitousness of the bible in (western) cultures, and the particular concerns of specific cultural moments. (Wright 2009, 77– 78)

Thus, films that claim more biblical moorings are not necessarily more directly tethered to the text. Flights of fantasy (and horror) take hold of any attempted literal representation of the biblical texts. Apocalypse is bound with time – “do not seal off the words of prophecy in this book, for the right time is near” (Rev. 22:10) – that is, we as readers are to continue to break the seals with John to unleash the horrors. But as Jorunn Økland points out, the “now” is in every era (Øklund 2009, 8), and we had best look at these interpretations if we want to be rightly guided in the present. Chris Nashawaty summarizes this sentiment: “Although often set in a distant future, these spectacles tend to address the subconscious demons we’re grappling with right now” (Nashawaty 2014, 25). Apocalyptic film guides us not so gently into the “now” – into our present fears and anxieties and political moments. Apocalyptic films take many forms, and most do not directly reference biblical apocalyptic literature. For example, according to Nashawaty, only “24 % of apocalyptic films in the 1990s depict biblical events” (Nashawaty 2014, 25). The rest stand solidly in either science fiction or “cli-fi” (climate fiction). Cli-fi films often do not explain the disastrous environmental event that caused the post-apocalyptic landscape. Neither do other sci-fi apocalypses, such as, zombie films (although zombies often have origin stories in cli-fi disasters). But the echo of biblical apocalyptic  See Beddingfield’s discussion of films indebted to the Book of Revelation in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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lingers in these films even if a destructive deity remains unnamed. The cause of the End of Everything has its roots in human “sin” – either misuse of the environment that leads to climate change and global warming or a deadly plague or total infertility. In other cli-fi films there is a somehow deserved visit by an alien race or unwanted space object (usually a comet or meteorite). If there is a surviving remnant from a direct hit from outside or inside (nuclear war), the world reverts to a sort of barren, punk apocalypse of metal and rusting machines (e. g. Mad Max, dir. George Miller, 1979) or a medieval world of roaming and/or living off what land is still viable (e. g. The Day After Tomorrow, dir. Roland Emmerich, 2004; 2012, dir. Roland Emerich, 2009; The Book of Eli; A Boy and His Dog, dir. L. Q. Jones, 1975). Or the remnant is on the edge of collapse (e. g. The Road, dir. John Hillcoat, 2009; Snowpiercer, dir. Bong Joon-ho, 2014). In the ultimate cli-fi film, the nuclear apocalypse, there is often no world remaining at the end (e. g. On the Beach, dir. Stanley Kramer, 1959; Dr. Strangelove, dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1964). Or the action takes place in the time of impending doom (Last Night, dir. Don McKellar, 1998; Take Shelter, dir. Jeff Nichols, 2011; Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, dir. Lorene Scafaria, 2012). One recent film that combines cli-fi and biblical apocalypse is director Darren Aronofsky’s Noah (2014).² Aronofsky follows the storyline of a vengeful, genocidal diety, who is intent on saving only a remnant of creation (one family plus some animals). The ecocide at the center of this story fills the screen. Drugged animals, bickering, terrified family members, paternal authoritarianism, ethical dilemmas (the people left behind banging desperately on the ark door), along with a flooded planet with no known endpoint set the scenes. The enemies may be drowned, but one family has enough conflict to carry human sin into the future. A similar flood narrative is Emmerich’s 2012. There is advance warning of the climate catastrophe to come, and the G-8 nations prepare by building a group of hightech arks that they hide in caves in the Himalayan Mountains. Only the chosen (wellconnected and/or wealthy) survive, eventually finding land on a flooded planet on a mountain range in South Africa. This colonizers’ dream of an Africa without Africans echoes the erasure of all enemies and “bad people” in Genesis 6 – 9. In both Aronofsky and Emmerich’s narratives the cause of the flood is human sin (although a more specific human initiated climate change is the human sin in 2012.) And both filmic representations bridge the centuries by rescuing a white, heteronormative family as their central protagonists. Flood films carry the ancient Mesopotamian myth forward, continuing the genocidal but restorative themes. Also a theme of dominance is in the stories – whether the dominance of one deity over others (Gilgamesh) or only one dominant deity (Genesis). In his study of Noah’s flood in Western theology and science, Norman Cohn

 Useful discussions of this film are available online, such as Lilly (). Also see discussions of this film in Part I by Ortiz (Pp.  – ) and Kozlovic (Pp.  – ) as well as the extended discussion of Aronofsky’s Noah by Runions in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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notes, “The God who decrees the biblical flood is indeed enormously impressive. Not to be questioned, not to be reasoned with, not even to be understood, in solitary and terrifying majesty he decides the perdition or salvation of the world and all that is in it” (Cohn 1996, 18). The Mesopotamian/Jewish stories that lurk – overtly and not – behind recent flood films are about dominance – of the God of Genesis or America (and its imperialist allies in the G-8, as in 2012). Because of human sin, the world is wiped clean with deep and purifying water. The watery chaos eventually recedes, and the world can start anew, with a (hopefully) better group of humans. There is an indictment of humanity in the flood films that follows the Genesis, not the Mesopotamian, storyline. The floods just keep coming, even though God promised Noah there would only be one global flood: “I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth” (Gen. 9:11). The next biblical apocalypse substitutes fire for water. The Apocalypse of John has its ending with a scorched earth (Rev. 8:5, 7; 9:18; 16:8) and a lake of fire (Rev. 19:20; 20:10, 14 f; 21:8). The apocalyptic fire films emerged after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to depict the possibility of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) between the United States and the Soviet Union. Cold War anxieties emerged in films such as Kramer’s On the Beach (1959) and Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), and the continued post-Cold War and post 9/11 fears of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists in The Peacemaker (dir. Mimi Leder, 1997) and The Sum of All Fears (dir. Phil Alden Robinson, 2002). The threat of fire cannot be averted in the first two postWorld War II films. But terrorists can be overcome by the superpower America. Another, but much more subtle, cli-fi apocalypse is Jeff Nichol’s Take Shelter. Michael Shannon plays a working class family man in middle America. His visions of an impending, apocalyptic-scale storm are real, prophetic visions for him. But they are also warnings of a possible inherited schizophrenia. His conservative church offers little comfort; the believers in God’s just end cannot accommodate a real, live apocalyptic prophet. The protagonist builds a tornado shelter in the backyard, herding his terrified family into it the night of a tornado siren, and locking them in until his wife intercedes on the side of sanity. This film reveals the thin line between prophecy and mental illness that is a common theme in biblical (and other) apocalyptic literature. Lee Quinby describes the particular American predicament: “Americans have been taught to reside in apocalyptic terror and count on millennial perfection” (Quinby 1999, 2). Between fear and hope is a desire to be one of the elect – to be one of the survivors of the apocalypse or one of God’s chosen in some future kingdom. Quinby traces these visions through popular culture that is either heavily attached to biblical prophecy and apocalyptic, or more loosely connected. Thus there is both the concept of electism, the belief in the survival of the chosen few believers, and endism, a belief in the increasing nearness of an apocalypse. She observes, “Endism has long run deep in the United States, ranging from a literal acceptance of the divine apocalypse predicted in the book of Revelation to a more nebulous sense of impending doom,

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whether from asteroids, viruses, or technology. Believing that the end of the world looms means living in the shadow of fear” (Quinby 1999, 3). There is a consistent tug of fear and hope in apocalyptic that fuels a desire to look away, to look back, and/or to look toward the future. Erin Runions examines the apocalyptic elements in the film Magnolia (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999). From falling frogs to a critique of contemporary technology (in particular, television), the film echoes biblical judgment and catastrophe. Using Walter Benjamin’s concept of “‘the time of now’ (consciousness) to meet the time of [memory], tradition, and experience,” Runions shows how the film unveils the ambiguous nature of apocalyptic (Runions 2003, 148). Rather than follow a strict path alongside biblical apocalyptic, such films playfully mimic and defer so-called “happy” endings and neat conclusions. Visions of the end play well on the big screen. Biblical apocalyptic can be a conservative tool of Empire or a radical rearrangement of the current political and social infrastructure. Richard Walsh notes that the use of the Apocalypse of John has “an imperialist and a sectarian variant” (Walsh 2002, 3). He further investigates the use of the Apocalypse: Movies calculating the end do not, of course, have to interpret Revelation. Despite their wealth and power, Americans are insecure about the future in light of uncertainties about modernization, about mechanization and computers, about nuclear weapons, and about ecology. The calculable end provides catharsis for fears by naming and localizing the anxieties faced and by imagining successful denouements. (Walsh 2002, 3, n. 6)

Walsh observes that a film like Sarin’s Left Behind (2000) and a sect like the Branch Davidians offer a particularly American way of interpreting the biblical text. Walsh offers a counter-reading through the film End of Days (dir. Peter Hyams, 1999), as a way of reading the Apocalypse of John in the present, rather than as a past prophecy for an imperial future. He finds a too blatant use of the biblical text (Rev. 20:7– 8; 12:1– 9) and provides an inversion of the text in End of Days, going from the usual Schwartzenegger violence to faith (Walsh 2002, 10 – 11). Ultimately, says Walsh, “Placing End of Days alongside Revelation, then, exposes the anger and resentment at the heart of Revelation,” for there is no conflicted hero (the Lamb/Son of Man) to absorb any of the internal conflict (Walsh 2002, 13).

Perverse Reception/The Reception of Perversion As biblical apocalyptic is a perverse fantasy of the destruction of the world, so is the history of its reception. In her examination of the definition and role of the spectator (viewer) of American films, Janet Staiger notes that there is more than one kind of spectator, and any single spectator of a film can be more than one kind (Staiger 2000, 21). For example, when I view any of the Left Behind films, I am mining them for examples of premillennial Christian belief for my classes, but I am also a

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skeptical and cynical spectator. Staiger explains that in “classic Hollywood cinema” there are rules for perverse spectators: “1. Perverse spectators don’t do what is expected. 2. Perverse spectators rehierarchalize [film genre preference] from expectations” (Staiger 2000, 37). Staiger coins this term “perverse spectator” for any spectator who deviates from the norm, and she believes all spectators are perverse in some way. She offers a definition, “Perversion can imply a willful turning away from the norm; it may also suggest an inability to do otherwise. … The term perversion also keeps me from necessarily assuming that deviance is politically progressive” (Staiger 2000, 2). Thus many recent American end-of-the-world films have as a major theme the reemergence of American superiority (e. g. 2012; The Day After Tomorrow; The Omega Code; Left Behind [2000]). Reception history of the Bible is not necessarily about perversions of texts but rather about a more general revealing of intertextuality in culture and politics. The mission statement for the Centre for Reception History of the Bible at Oxford “is to explore the diverse ways in which the Bible has been interpreted, including its reception in different cultural media, such as literature, art and music” (http://www.crhb. org/index.html). Still, reception theory will venture into perverse, apocalyptic texts, such as the Apocalypse of John. Reception history opens up some of the most difficult encounters with the Apocalypse “in culture and ideology,” especially the issue of whether or not this biblical book is one of hope or horror. Heikki Räisänen rightly critiques Judith Kovacs and Christopher Rowland who in the end consider, when all is said and done, the Apocalypse an inspiring book of hope (Räisänen 2009, 151). Räisänen points out that “reception history also has a dark side” (Räisänen 2009, 163) and shows us how important it is to delve into the messiness of the texts and its interpretive history: “Like so many other biblical writings Revelation, too, appears to be an ambiguous book which has both the potential of enhancing life and of destroying it. It depends on the interpreter which side he or she chooses to emphasize” (Räisänen 2009, 164). The scholarly debate revolves around these interpretive choices, and also the context of the interpreter. I may find some readings of the Apocalypse oppressive to women or even sexist (e. g., Boesak 1987), but the contexts of war and oppression often create the need for hope. Like one of the stories of Pandora’s jar, all the evil stuff leaks out but hope remains at the bottom. I do not read the Apocalypse in this hopeful way, but I also sit in my comfortable firstworld house as I write. Pandora may bring hope along, but I am not sure the Apocalypse does. All the Hollywood and independent films confirm this leaky hope. The concept of intertextuality is thus central to reception history and theory. In his book on intertextuality, Graham Allen defines “text,” which has its Latin roots as “to weave” or “woven”: Traditionally, a text was the actual words or signs which made up a work of literature. It gave permanence to the work. In structuralist and poststructuralist theory the ‘text’ comes to stand for whatever meaning is generated by the intertextual relations between one text and another and the activation of those relations by a reader. (Allen 2000, 220)

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The challenge of Revelation 22:18 – 19 weighs in here; the words of the text are protected: “if someone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if someone takes away anything from the words of this prophetic book, God will take away his share in the tree of life […] described in this book.” Reception history boldly faces this challenge, scouring the landscape for traces of the Apocalypse of John. Reception history provides some creative and intuitive leaps, along with guidelines. For example, in encountering the Apocalypse in film, there is a range of motifs and allegories and stabs at the “literal” and they all evoke response and push interpretation further. Jorunn Øklund elaborates, “But films can indeed offer something to the attempt to map what Revelation is. Especially the emphasis on the miraculous in many of the films supplement the cleansed and neutralized representation of the Apocalypse offered by many academic commentators” (Øklund 2009, 13). Also there is a warning; Melanie Wright examines the “‘dangerous’ reception of Revelation” (Wright 2009, 78). The Apocalypse on screen – she points out, “Of equal import is the recognition that the cinema’s engagement with the book of Revelation is always partial, characterized by lacunae, discrepancies, ‘mis-readings’” (Wright 2009, 91). The creative call in this volume is to dig in and get messy with history, with culture, with ideology, with ethics, in spite of the dangers. One other backdrop is Judith Kovacs and Christopher Rowland’s emphasis on actualizing interpretations. “The biblical text is a springboard for other revelations, or a creative frame of reference for understanding their world. But the question is whether the Apocalypse is a text to be interpreted and deciphered or a text to be used and actualized” (Kovacs/Rowland 2004, 12). Their main interest is of course in reception history and the various visionary interpretations of the book. In this way they attempt to hold the traditional historical interpretations and the poetic/political rereadings of the apocalypse in tension as one way to battle fundamentalist interpretations. Apocalyptic films run the continuum from fundamentalist reinventions of “literal” readings of the text (e. g. Left Behind, 2000 and, as a parody of these premillennialist beliefs, This Is The End, dir. Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg, 2013; Rapture-Palooza, dir. Paul Middleditch, 2013) to more introspective visions of the end (e. g. Take Shelter; The Book of Life, dir. Hal Hartley, 1998). As Conrad Ostwalt explains, these films also involve either supernatural or natural (alien or human) causes (Ostwalt 1998). These films are mourning the past (Hiroshima, 9/11) or anticipating the worst (global warming, global war, global disease, etc.). Even the “biblical films” are not very biblical, as Darren Aronofsky describes his film Noah as “the least Biblical, Biblical film ever made” (Friend 2014). I would argue this about the Left Behind and The Omega Code films; these films evince an obsession with the Antichrist, the suffering, and battles of the Tribulation more than any interest in Christ’s return. There are more and more apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic films to come (e. g. as I write this Terminator Genisys, dir. Alan Taylor, is slated for released in July 2015). Imagining the end of the world continues to be a popular activity. As Susan Sontag reminds us from her classic essay, “The Imagination of Disaster”: “Ours is indeed the age of extremity. For we live under continual threat of two

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equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror” (Sontag 1965, 224). Like the genre of science fiction Sontag wrote about, apocalyptic films offer a certain satisfaction: from destruction of enemies to a destruction of the earth and a chance for a remnant to begin again (as in the Flood story).

Concluding Reflections We cannot ignore the last book of the Bible, so what are we (religious or not) to do? Reception history shows us ways to read alongside, with our hands and minds full of other “texts.” But these ways of reading and responding are not simply distractions from the various popular (and political) fundamentalist interpretations. They help to ground us, but also to open up the possibilities of unmooring, in the action of sealing and unsealing the texts with John. To paraphrase the angel in the Apocalypse of John, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near to open up to other texts, across cultures and genres and politics and ethical possibilities.” The ways of reading Revelation and other biblical apocalypse stories over the centuries are important markers of the Bible’s influence. Several questions nag at me: How is biblical apocalyptic liberating? What do these “dangerous” interpretations in the history of biblical reception in film tell us about how to be ethical interpreters of biblical apocalyptic? Why do I have a nagging feeling that something is missing? Why am I left, even after the films with “happy endings” of survivors who rebuild the planet or live in the New Jerusalem for a thousand years, with a sense of pessimism about the future? Biblical apocalyptic makes promises it threatens to fulfill, stirring up fear, desire, hope, and dread. Apocalyptic films of all sorts revel/reveal/reveil/revile in the never-ending story.

Works Cited Allen, Graham. 2000. Intertextuality. The New Critical Idiom. New York and London: Routledge. Boesak, Allan A. 1987. Comfort and Protest: The Apocalypse from a South African Perspective. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox. Breed, Brennan. W. 2014. Nomadic Text: A Theory of Biblical Reception. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. Cohn, Norman. 1996. Noah’s Flood: The Genesis Story in Western Thought. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Collis, Clark. 2014. “Pick Your Own Apocalypse!” Entertainment Weekly: The Apocalypse Issue (July 4): 36 – 37. Copier, Laura. 2012. Preposterous Revelations: Visions of Apocalypse and Martyrdom in Hollywood Cinema. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Eco, Umberto. 1972. “Toward a Semiotic Inquiry into the Television Message.” Transl. Paola Spendore. Working Papers in Cultural Studies 3: 103 – 21.

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Friend, Tad. 2014. “Heavy Weather: Darren Aronofsky Gets Biblical.” The New Yorker (March 17): http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/17/heavy-weather-2; accessed February 6, 2015. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2004. Truth and Method [1960]. 2nd ed. Transl. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. London: Continuum. Jauss, Hans Robert. 1982. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Transl. Timothy Bahti. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press. —. 1970. “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory.” New Literary History 2.1: 7 – 37. Kovacs, Judith L., and Christopher Rowland. 2004. Revelation: The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Lifton, Robert Jay. 2003. Super Power Syndrome: America’s Apocalyptic Confrontation with the World. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books. Lilly, Ingrid Esther, ed. 2013. Noah’s Flood: Ancient Stories of Natural Cataclysm: http://www. floodofnoah.com; accessed February 6, 2015. Mitchell, Charles P. 2001. A Guide to Apocalyptic Cinema. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Nashawaty, Chris. 2014. “A Brief History of the Cinematic Apocalypse.” Entertainment Weekly: The Apocalypse Issue (July 4): 22 – 27. —. 2014. “The Ultimate Apocalyst.” Entertainment Weekly: The Apocalypse Issue (July 4): 44. Newman, Kim. 1999. Millennium Movies: End of the World Cinema. London: Titan Books. Økland, Jorunn. 2009. “Setting the Scene: The End of the Bible, the End of the World.” In The Way the World Ends? The Apocalypse of John in Culture and Ideology. Eds. William John Lyons and Jorunn Økland. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Pp. 1 – 30. Ostwalt, Conrad. 1998. “Visions of the End: Secular Apocalypse in Recent Hollywood Film.” Journal of Religion and Film 2.1: http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/OstwaltC.htm; accessed February 6, 2015. —. 1995. “Hollywood and Armageddon: Apocalyptic Themes in Recent Cinematic Presentation.” In Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Film. Eds. Joel Martin and Conrad Ostwalt. Boulder, Colo.: Westview. Pp. 55 – 63. Quinby, Lee. 2014. “The Days Are Numbered: The Romance of Death, Doom and Deferral in Contemporary Apocalypse Films.” In The End All Around Us: Apocalyptic Texts and Culture. Eds. John Walliss and Kenneth G.C. Newport. London: Equinox. Pp. 97 – 119. —. 1999. Millennial Seduction: A Skeptic Confronts Apocalyptic Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Räisänen, Heikki. 2009. “Revelation, Violence, and War: The Dark Side.” In The Way the World Ends? The Apocalypse of John in Culture and Ideology. Eds. William John Lyons and Jorunn Økland. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Pp. 151 – 65. Reinhartz, Adele. 2013. Bible and Cinema: An Introduction. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Runions, Erin. 2003. How Hysterical: Identification and Resistance in Bible and Film. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Shapiro, Jerome Franklin. 2002. Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Image on Film. New York: Routledge. Sontag, Susan. 2001. Against Interpretation: And Other Essays. New York: Picador. Staiger, Janet. 2000. Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception. New York: New York University Press. Walsh, Richard. 2002. “On Finding a Non-American Revelation: End of Days and the Book of Revelation.” In Screening Scripture: Intertextual Connections Between Scripture and Film. Eds. George Aichele and Richard Walsh. Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International. Pp. 1 – 23. Walliss, John, and James Aston. 2011. “Doomsday America: The Pessimistic Turn of Post 9/11 Apocalyptic Cinema.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 23: 153 – 64.

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Wright, Melanie J. 2009. “’Every Eye Shall See Him’: Revelation and Film.” In The Way the World Ends? The Apocalypse of John in Culture and Ideology. Eds. William John Lyons and Jorunn Økland. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Pp. 76 – 94.

Films Cited 28 Days Later… (dir. Danny Boyle, 2002 DNA Films, UK). 2012 (dir. Roland Emmerich, 2009, Columbia Pictures, US). The Book of Eli (dir. The Hughes Brothers, 2010, Alcon Entertainment, US). The Book of Life (dir. Hal Hartley, 1998, Haut et Court, FR/US). A Boy and His Dog (dir. L. Q. Jones, 1975, LQ/JAF, US). Children of Men (dir. Alfonso Cuarón, 2007, Universal, US/UK). The Day After Tomorrow (dir. Roland Emmerich, 2004, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Det sjunde inseglet [a.k.a. The Seventh Seal] (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1957, Svensk, SE). Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1964, Columbia Pictures, US/UK). Dogma (dir. Kevin Smith, 1999, View Askew Productions, US). End of Days (dir. Peter Hyams, 1999, Beacon Communications, US). It’s A Disaster (dir. Todd Berger, 2013, Vacationer Productions, US). Last Night (dir. Don McKellar, 1998, Rhombus Media, CA/FR). Left Behind [a.k.a. Left Behind: The Movie] (dir. Vic Sarin, 2000, Cloud Ten Pictures, CA). Left Behind (dir. Vic Armstrong, 2014, Stony Lake Entertainment, US). Left Behind II: Tribulation Force (dir. Billy Corcoran, 2002, Cloud Ten Pictures, US/CA). Left Behind: World at War (dir. Craig R. Baxley, 2005, Cloud Ten Pictures, US/CA). Legion (dir. Scott Stewart, 2010, Bold Films, US). Mad Max (dir. George Miller, 1979, Kennedy Miller, AU). Magnolia (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999, New Line Cinema, US). The Matrix (dir. The Wachowski Siblings, 1999, Warner Brothers, US/AU). Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 (dir. Brian Trenchard-Smith, 2001, Code Productions, US). Melancholia (dir. Lars von Trier, 2011, Zentropa Entertainments, DK/SE/FR/DE). Night of the Living Dead (dir. George A. Romero, 1968, Image Ten, US). Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2014, Paramount, US). The Omega Code (dir. Robert Marcarelli, 1999, Code Productions, US). On the Beach (dir. Stanley Kramer, 1959, Stanley Kramer Productions, US). The Peacemaker (dir. Mimi Leder, 1997, Dreamworks, US). The Prophecy (dir. Gregory Widen, 1995, First Look International, US). The Rapture (dir. Michael Tolkin, 1991, New Line Cinema, US). Rapture-Palooza (dir. Paul Middleditch, 2013, Lions Gate, US). The Road (dir. John Hillcoat, 2009, Dimension Films, US). Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (dir. Lorene Scafaria, 2012, Focus Features, US/SG/MY/ID). The Seventh Sign (dir. Carl Schultz, 1988, Tristar Pictures, US). Snowpiercer (dir. Bong Joon-ho, 2014, Moho Films, KR/CZ). The Sum of All Fears (dir. Phil Alden Robinson, 2002, Paramount, US/DE). Take Shelter (dir. Jeff Nichols, 2011, Hydraulx, US). Terminator 2: Judgment Day (dir. James Cameron, 1991, Corolco Pictures, US/FR). Terminator Genisys. (dir. Alan Taylor, 2015, Paramount, US). This Is the End (dir. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, 2013, Columbia Pictures, US).

IV Biblical Characters and Stories (New Testament)

W. Barnes Tatum

25 Jesus and the Gospels at the Movies No biblical character has been more generative for filmmaking than the first-century Jew from Galilee named Jesus. In the Bible, the story – or stories – of Jesus appear primarily in the four canonical gospels, each with its own distinctive portrayal of Jesus as the Christ, originating in response to the needs of early Christian communities in the ancient Greco-Roman world. For over a century, filmmakers have appropriated these ancient sources to retell cinematically the story of Jesus, adding a rich layer to the global reception of Jesus Christ and the gospels. This essay on the cinematic reception of Jesus and the gospels proceeds in two stages. I will first discuss what I have elsewhere identified as “the problem of the cinematic Jesus” (Tatum 2004b). Then I will categorize Jesus films according to their use of biblical sources and epitomize the cinematic portrayal of Jesus in representative films from each category. These films and their Jesus portrayals reflect their contemporary cultural contexts and demonstrate that this cinematic tradition, like Jesus himself, has gone global (Tatum 2013a).

The Problem of the Cinematic Jesus While the Jesus story has been translated into a variety of artistic forms over the centuries, Jesus’ transformation into a film star involves a particular set of complications. The makers and viewers of these films confront what I have called the problem of the cinematic Jesus, consisting of four dimensions that must be addressed in the process of bringing Jesus to screen.

The Artistic Dimension The artistic dimension of Jesus movies rests upon the simple observation that films are films. Film possesses its own integrity as an art form and story-telling medium. More precisely, as an art form, cinema has become an audio-visual medium that embraces and requires a plethora of arts and sciences to retell the story of Jesus. Today, the film industry in many countries has come to recognize outstanding achievements in filmmaking. In the United States, for example, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences annually awards Oscars in a variety of categories appropriate for such a collaborative enterprise including: best picture, directing, acting, screenwriting, cinematography, editing, and music. Jesus films have not been neglected in the annual races for Oscars. Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959), a Jesus-movie based on Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, received a record-setting eleven academy awards including an Oscar for Best Motion Picture. Earlier in the 1950s, two other novel-based Jesus

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epics received multiple Oscar nominations: Quo Vadis (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1951), based on the book by Henryk Sienkiewicz (1895), and The Robe (dir. Henry Koster, 1953), based on the novel by Lloyd C. Douglas (1942).¹ In all of these mid-twentieth century American films, Jesus appeared onscreen only briefly, usually obliquely or from a distance largely due to a system of self-censorship codified in the film industry’s Production Code (1930 – 1968), which established standards that filmmakers were expected to uphold if their works were to be approved for public viewing. These standards not only included guidelines for treating sex and violence on the screen, but also the portrayal of religion and religious figures. Such guidelines discouraged the production of films that focused too directly on the person of Jesus himself. Similarly, the Legion of Decency, established by the Roman Catholic Bishops in the United States in 1934, existed to ensure that the film industry enforced its own Production Code as well as to give guidance to Catholic movie audiences. The Legion even established a rating system that included the dreaded “C” word – Condemned. When Nicholas Ray’s up close and personal Jesus epic, King of Kings (1961, US) was released, the Legion of Decency refused to classify it according to any of its “morally unobjectionable” categories. Instead, the film received a “special classification” with this explanation: “While acknowledging the inspirational intent of this motion picture, the poetic license taken in the development of the life of Christ renders the film theologically, historically, and scripturally inaccurate” (Tatum 2013a, 90). In 1965, the Legion of Decency was superseded by what became the Office for Film and Broadcasting (OFB). Three years later, in 1968, the film industry itself replaced the Production Code with an early version of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating system still used today by Hollywood. A variety of regulatory codes not only in America but in Europe and countries around the world have often restricted the freedom with which filmmakers can depict Jesus and other holy figures and sacred stories.

The Literary Dimension The literary dimension of the problem of the cinematic Jesus involves the four canonical gospels, the principal written sources available for fashioning a screenplay about

 Several Jesus films since the s have received Oscar nominations, although no actor has yet been nominated for playing the role of Jesus. Most notably, Jésus de Montréal (dir. Denys Arcand, ) won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film and, in Canada, received Genies for Best Motion Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. South African Jesus film Son of Man (dir. Mark Dornford-May, ) was nominated by SAFTA for eight Golden Horns, including one for Best Actress, which was awarded to Pauline Malefane for her portrayal of Jesus’ mother Mary. Marking the centennial of cinema, the AFI recognized Wyler’s Ben-Hur, the B.F.I. recognized Monty Python’s Life of Brian (dir. Terry Jones, ), and the Vatican recognized both Wyler’s Ben-Hur and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew ().

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the life of Jesus. There has been considerable scholarly discussion about the gospels’ literary genre, but, however their genre be defined, the canonical gospels themselves represent confessions of faith in Jesus as the Christ. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that these biblical sources contain limited information about Jesus and his outer life and virtually nothing about his inner life and motivations. Moreover, the Synoptics and John offer two strikingly different portraits of Jesus, which filmmakers must negotiate. For these reasons, cinematic appropriations of the gospels impose a coherent narrative template over the Jesus story, often derived from the biopic film genre (Reinhartz 2007, 4– 5), which is foreign to the gospels themselves. At the very least, filmmakers must engage in creative license to formulate a coherent and compelling narrative about Jesus from the sparse and often contradictory sources that we have available.

The Historical Dimension When constructing their story in a first-century Palestinian setting, makers of Jesus films have traditionally paid careful attention to historical verisimilitude. They replicate for the screen as accurately as possible the likeness of first-century location, dress, and customs. The visual arts have also contributed much to the appearance of Jesus movies, including images of the Jesus figure as well as the renderings of specific scenes from the gospel stories that have become fixed in the cultural consciousness. Sidney Olcott’s silent film From the Manger to the Cross (1912) was the first Jesus film shot on location in Egypt and Palestine. The film crew even consulted the richly illustrated 1904 Tissot Bible by French artist and illustrator, James Joseph Jacque Tissot, based on his own travels in the Middle East. Leonardo da Vinci’s mural of The Last Supper (1494– 98) became the template for many cinematic reproductions of this gospel moment. And in Norman Jewison’s Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), as Jesus wrestles with his destiny in the Garden of Gethsemane, viewers see a montage of classic paintings of the crucifixion. The historical dimension of the problem of the cinematic Jesus has involved not only the issue of verisimilitude, but also the issue of historicity. Since the late eighteenth century, the scholarly quest for the historical Jesus has produced a sizeable body of literature about Jesus’ life in his historical setting, which has paralleled the emerging tradition of the cinematic Jesus (Tatum 1999, 87– 139). Discussions of historicity in Jesus films are perhaps most marked around presentations of Jewish and Roman authorities. The stakes have been high because of the ways the gospel passion accounts have been used over the centuries to undergird anti-Jewish or anti-

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semitic rhetoric and behavior.² In the early days of American cinema, such films as D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) and Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings (1927) were altered in response to protests by Jewish organizations. More recently Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) also elicited vigorous debate over the question of its anti-Judaism or antisemitism (Reinhartz 2004). In the late 1980s, two very different films actually articulated onscreen the problematic relationship between Jesus as the Christ, as confessed in the gospels and church, and the historical figure of Jesus established through academic research. In Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), based on Nikos Kazantzakis’s O Teleutaios Peirasmos (1953), Jesus (Willem Dafoe) has a dying fantasy during which he encounters the apostle Paul (Harry Dean Stanton) who is proclaiming Jesus as the messiah, crucified and resurrected for the sins of the world. When Jesus vociferously denies Paul’s claims, the apostle counters, “I created the truth out of what the people needed and what they believed. If I have to crucify you to save them, then I’ll crucify you. If I have to resurrect you, then I’ll do that too.” In Denys Arcand’s Jésus de Montréal (1989), an acting troupe is commissioned to update the traditional passion play performed at a local shrine. This they do by performing their new play, “The Passion on the Mountain,” based on the latest archaeological discoveries. Conflict subsequently emerges between Daniel Coulombe (Lothaire Bluteau), the troupe’s leader who plays Jesus, and Father LeClerc (Giles Pelletier), the priest who commissioned the revised play. In a verbal brawl between the two, LeClerc holds up a discarded walking stick before Daniel and declares that those who come to church in their brokenness “don’t care about the latest archaeological finds in the Middle East. They want to hear that Jesus loves them and awaits them.” Filmmakers who translate the story of Jesus to screen must decide whether to aim for a historically accurate representation or simply enough cultural verisimilitude – drawing from familiar artistic traditions – to lend a vague air of authenticity to the film. They also must decide how (or whether) to represent Jesus’ own Jewishness as well as his relationship to other Jews of his day. These are decisions with both moral and financial potential consequences.

The Theological Dimension The theological dimension has to do with faith claims made about the one whose story flashes across the screen – Jesus of Nazareth. For the Church he represents not just another sacred person, but, in the language of early creedal formulations, he is one person of the holy trinity, one person in two natures, divine and human. Although Jesus’ cultural role may have been challenged in his passage through mod See, in Part II, Jefford’s discussion of the cinematic representation of Jews in New Testament films (Pp.  – ) and Reinhartz’s discussion of antisemitism in biblical films (Pp.  – ).

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ernity into the postmodern world, he remains the central figure for the Church and its constituents. Filmmakers must decide whether to approach Jesus reverentially or critically and whether to emphasize or downplay miraculous elements of gospel accounts. In the midst of public controversy in the United States over Scorsese’s Last Temptation, there appeared in the National Catholic Reporter (June 29, 1990) a playful but provocative article by Michael O. Garvey: “What does a man who is also God look like?” This is a daunting question for any filmmaker, especially when most viewers already know the story and have their own answers.

The Cinematic Jesus In light of the above discussion, my analysis of this cinematic tradition always asks to what extent a particular film is not only cinematically interesting, but literarily sensitive to the gospel sources, historically probable, and theologically satisfying. The following selective overview of the Jesus film tradition offers an analysis of representative films, categorized according to the diverse bases of their scenarios or screenplays.

Filmed Passion Plays The earliest cinematic retellings of the Jesus story followed the dramatic tradition of liturgical passion plays, which staged scenes from the Bible, particularly from the gospels, with actors playing the roles of biblical characters. Virtually simultaneous with the beginning of commercial cinema in the 1890s, several cinematic passion plays appeared on both sides of the Atlantic, most notably the French production La passion (Léar, 1897) and two American productions, The Höritz Passion Play (prod. William Freeman, 1897), and The Passion Play of Oberammergau (dir. Henry C. Vincent, 1898) (Shepherd 2013, 11– 34). La passion (a.k.a. Le passion du Christ) has been identified, not only as the earliest passion-play film, but as “the first motion picture to be based on any portion of the Bible” (Campbell/Pitts 1981, 73). This Léar creation, commissioned by the Catholic organization La Bonne Presse, lasted a mere five minutes and is no longer extant. We know only that it was shot on a vacant lot in Paris and consisted of twelve tableaux, from “The Birth of Christ” to “The Resurrection.” Only The Höritz Passion Play represented the filming of a traditional performance, authentically enacted by villagers in the Bohemian village of Höritz (today the village of Hörice in the Czech Republic). In the weeks following its Philadelphia premiere on November 22, 1897, the Philadelphia Public Ledger reported that the number of scenes projected in initial showings varied but included forty-five scenes representing three kinds of subject matter: local village life; scenes from the Old Testa-

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ment, beginning with Adam and Eve; and scenes from the New Testament gospels, from the annunciation to the crucifixion and resurrection. Jesus first appeared in New York when The Passion Play of Oberammergau was shown in the well-known Eden Musée owned by Richard G. Hollaman. This film included twenty-three scenes with a nineteen-minute screening time. Like the Höritz Passion, it projected no titles onscreen, requiring a live narrator to provide commentary for the viewers. The moving images and narration were complemented by live music, lending solemnity to the occasion. The initial presentation of this film received a favorable review in the New York Herald (February 1, 1898). However, the same article revealed that these pictures were not taken in the Bavarian village of Oberammergau but had been filmed on the roof of the Grand Central Palace in New York City. Motivated by his failure to obtain the screen rights to the Höritz Passion, Hollaman had collaborated with Albert G. Eaves to produce their own film, basing it on a scenario written for a theatrical passion play years earlier. The actual filming of what had been advertised as The Passion Play of Oberammergau had indeed been locally shot over a six-week period during the previous winter. Later reminiscences of the making of the film recall how the cast, including animals, had been transported to the rooftop by elevator and how snow needed to be shoveled from the Garden of Gethsemane. Stills from the filming display shadows from the crosses of Jesus and the two thieves on the backdrops shielding the city below from the camera’s eye. This early stage in the cinematic Jesus tradition embodies a transition from photographed traditional performances to productions that were deliberately staged for filming. Like the older liturgical passion plays, these early Jesus films often represent the Jesus story as part of a cosmic story of redemption, beginning with a fallen creation and ending with a triumphant resurrection.

Jesus Films Based on the Four Gospels Implicit in a passion play is the practice of selectively harmonizing the diverse contents of four gospels (and other biblical texts) into a continuous narrative that highlights events in the final week of Jesus’ life. This harmonizing approach, which would dominate the emerging cinematic Jesus tradition through the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, was anticipated in the earliest days of the church by Tatian, a Syrian Christian, who combined the four gospels into one linear story about Jesus known as the Diatessaron (“four-in-one”). The practice of creating gospel harmonies made its way through church’s liturgical tradition and religious drama into the cinematic tradition. Olcott’s From the Manger to the Cross (1912) provides one early example. This silent film was a marvel in its day, because it was filmed in Egypt and Palestine, because of its production cost of $100,000, and because of its length of five reels when two reels were still common. The title of the film accurately describes the scope of its

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story, with ten intertitles, from the opening “The Annunciation—and the Infancy of Christ” to the closing “Crucifixion and Death.” When on the cross, Jesus drops his head, and the words of John 3:16 appear onscreen. There is neither resurrection nor ascension. The prominent English stage actor, Robert Henderson-Bland, who later wrote two memoirs of his experience playing “Christus” in Olcott’s film, claimed it was his intention to “present Jesus as the Lion of Judah rather than the Gentle Shepherd.” These words reflect the then-current view in British circles of what was called “muscular” Christianity, an emphasis on Jesus as a man among men, far removed from his portrayals as soft and effeminate. Henderson-Bland’s Jesus projects himself as a doer, not a teacher – a “Man of Good Deeds,” not a sissy. Although the Synoptic phrase “the kingdom of God” occasionally appears onscreen, there is not one parable or any portion of the Sermon on the Mount. Rather, the film characterizes Jesus as a “do-gooder” by bringing together Synoptic and Johannine miracles: water into wine (John 2:1– 11), healing a leper and a victim of palsy (Mark 2:1– 12), raising a widow’s deceased son (Luke 7:11– 17), raising Lazarus (John 11), and healing blind men at Jericho (Matt. 20:29 – 34). Glimmers of “first wave” American feminism might be evident in the scriptwriting of Gene Gauntier, who also plays the role of Jesus’ mother Mary. Gauntier’s script highlights women throughout the scenario.³ This includes the story of the sisters Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38 – 42) where Jesus praises Mary who chooses to learn at his feet unlike Martha who busies herself with domestic chores. Gauntier also identifies these two as the same Mary and Martha in John 11. Conversely, Gauntier’s screenplay avoids casting women in the negative roles of “seducer” and “harlot,” omitting the Synoptic stories about Herodias and her dancing daughter as well as John’s adulterous woman. Whereas Olcott’s film remains a pageant about Jesus, a series of scenes with little dramatic development, DeMille, the consummate showman, transforms his Jesus story into an imaginative silent spectacle.⁴ DeMille’s The King of Kings (1927) begins by representing Mary Magdalene (Jacqueline Logan), as a courtesan surrounded by admirers as she laments her desertion by Judas, her lover. She summons her zebradrawn chariot and sets off to reclaim Judas from the “vagabond Carpenter,” whose band he has joined. The crucifixion sequence represents possibly the greatest spectacle in the history of Jesus cinema – darkness and a convulsive earthquake (Matt. 27:45, 51). DeMille’s title proclaims Jesus to be “The King of Kings,” recalling the name inscribed on the robe of the heavenly figure riding a white horse (Rev. 19:16). This messianic title also appears in the lyrics of George Friedrich Handel’s stirring “Hallelujah Chorus” (1741), which was later incorporated into an accompanying musical sound-

 See also the discussion of Gauntier by Hebron in Part II (Pp.  – ).  See also the discussion of this film in Kozlovic’s analysis of DeMille in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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track for this film. One might, therefore, assume that DeMille presents Jesus as a regal figure. However, a close examination of this harmonizing screenplay and the film’s wonderful camera work discloses that DeMille’s Jesus (H. B. Warner) is preeminently a “Healer.” Already in the opening scene, Magdalene’s guests warn her about the difficulty in winning Judas away from Jesus, who possesses “magical powers.” One claims to have seen him “heal the blind”; another reports that he “hath raised the dead” (italics original). When Magdalene finally encounters Jesus, she falls under his spell; and Jesus expels from her seven evil spirits (Luke 8:2). Through the double exposure technique, the spirits ghoulishly leave her body one by one, each labeled as one of the seven deadly sins. Even with all the healing stories available to him in the gospels, DeMille immediately creates two more healing episodes. On a Sabbath, Jesus heals the lameness of a young boy named Mark (of later gospel fame) and the blindness of a young girl through whose recovering eyesight the viewer first sees Jesus’ kindly face.

Fig. 43: Jesus (H. B. Warner) in The King of Kings (1927)

In another created scene that touchingly epitomizes Jesus as healer, he repairs a broken doll at the request of a small child. This scene becomes a symbol for Jesus as a mender of persons. The theme of Jesus as healer continues even at Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate, where Mary his mother shouts out to the crowds seeking his crucifixion, “His only crime has been to heal your sick, and raise your dead! Save him—ye may yourselves need mercy!” The first “talking” Jesus film, Julien Duvivier’s French film Ecce Homo (1935, dubbed into English in 1937 as Golgotha), also represents the harmonizing tradition. On one level, Ecce Homo (Latin for “Behold the Man,” John 19:5) recalls the very origin of Jesus cinema in passion plays since its scope is limited to the last week of Jesus’ life. Following the credits, it opens with the camera panning the city of Jerusalem as narrative voice-over introduces this story as the account of “a penniless, wandering prophet” who proclaimed “the kingdom of heaven and the brotherhood of man.” This Jesus (Robert La Vigan) is not seen onscreen until several minutes have passed, and then obliquely or from the rear. The story begins with the “first of all Palm Sundays,” continues with events from the Passion Week drawn from all four gospels, and

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concludes with post-resurrection scenes taken from Matthew, Luke, and John. Throughout, Jesus is celebrated – by the crowd as “King,” by Pontius Pilate (mockingly) as “King of the Jews,” and by the Roman Centurion beneath the cross with the kingly title “Son of God.” Perhaps the portrayal of this first “talking” Jesus can best be epitomized as, “The Crucified and Resurrected King.” Artistically, what sets this film apart from others in the early Jesus cinematic tradition (besides the sound) involves imaginative uses of the camera, especially the sequences of Jesus’ Jerusalem entry and his dramatic actions in the temple. The film also integrates memories of Jesus’ words from his public ministry into the narrative about his final week. For example, after Judas is asked to betray Jesus, he withdraws alone at night into a wooded area to ponder his decision. The camera focuses upon the seated Judas while the viewer hears his thoughts as he remembers snippets of words once spoken by his master: Go and sell what thou hast and give to the poor, and come and follow me…My kingdom is not of this world…Love thine enemies and do good to those who hate thee…If thou wouldst follow me take up thy cross…They shall spit upon me, they shall scourge me, they shall put me to death… When they should have crucified me, all shall be drawn toward me…You shall be persecuted for my name’s sake.

The harmonizing tradition of Jesus movies continued to thrive through the twentieth century in films produced in Mexico (El mártir del Calvario, dir. Miguel Morayta, 1952); in the United States (Day of Triumph, dir. John T. Coyle/ Irving Pichel, 1954; King of Kings, dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961; The Greatest Story Ever Told, dir. George Stevens, 1965; Jesus, dir. Roger Young, 1999), in Europe (Roberto Rossellini’s Il messia, 1975; Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, 1977); and in India (Karunamyudu, dir. A. Bheem, 1978, a.k.a. Ocean of Mercy). Space permits discussion of only a few of these films, The 1960s Hollywood Jesus epics were particularly ambitious (and pretentious) with Ray’s film having a running time of almost three hours and Stevens’s of over four hours. The theatrical release of both films included souvenir programs for audiences and featured musical overtures, formal intermissions, and exit music. King of Kings immediately contextualizes its Jesus story within the history of ancient Palestine. The opening sequences, based on the writings of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, depict the Roman conquest of Jerusalem under Pompey in 63 B.C.E. The viewer who listens carefully to the words of the unseen and God-like narrator (Orson Welles) as he describes these events will recognize allusions to more recent events, such as the Jewish holocaust under Nazi rule during World War II and the conflict between Jews and Arabs after the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel. Herod the Great, named “King of the Jews” by Rome is identified by the transcendent voice as “an Arab of the Bedouin tribe,” and thus is not himself a Jew, but by implication, an enemy of the Jews who slaughters the innocents in Bethlehem. Makers of Jesus films often use created characters or expanded minor biblical characters as a storytelling device. In King of Kings, a Roman centurion named Lu-

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cius (Ron Randell) provides continuity throughout the film via his presence and commentary. At Pilate’s order, he attends the Sermon on the Mount and reports that Jesus (played by a young Jeffrey Hunter) spoke about “peace, love, and the brotherhood of man.” Similarly, the film’s transcendent narrator describes Jesus as “the messiah of peace” in contrast to the revolutionary Barabbas, “the messiah of war.” Ironically, this film, which characterized Jesus as “Messiah of Peace,” was publically released during the Cold War when it seemed likely that the world might incinerate itself. This was the period of the U.S. backed invasion of Cuba known as “the Bay of Pigs,” in April, 1961, and the Cuban missile crisis, in October, 1962, when the United States confronted the Soviet Union over the placement of nuclear warheads on that island nation. Despite poor reviews and a less than enthusiastic box office reception, perhaps its message of peace was spot on for that moment in time. George Stevens’s The Greatest Story Ever Told, which appeared in theaters four years later, brackets its Jesus story within an ecclesiastical framework. It opens with the camera angled upward into the church’s dome, showing frescoes with scenes from the life of Jesus. As the camera pans downward, a narrator introduces this story of Jesus in a Johannine fashion: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The camera continues moving downward past a fresco of Jesus bearing the cross and a medallion with an inscription in Greek, translated by the narrator as “I am He.” Then there appears, painted on the wall, the face of Jesus, attired in a white robe with arms outstretched. The image has a traditional look but is none other than the Swedish actor Max von Sydow, who portrays Jesus in this film. The same church fresco reappears after the ascension at the end of the film.

Fig. 44: Max von Sydow as Jesus in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)

While Stevens’s film weaves together strands from all four gospels, no prior Jesus movie stands more under the influence of John’s gospel. This Jesus repeatedly refers to “the world,” which exists over against God and into which Jesus has come. In Jesus’ nighttime address on the altar steps in the temple, he declares “I have come as a light into the world.” In Gethsemane, he prays, “For this cause I have come into this world.” Before Pilate, he declares that his kingdom is not of this

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world” (italics added). Along the way, he articulates the familiar “I am” sayings: “I am the bread of life”; “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” At his final meal, he gives his disciples a “new commandment” that they love one another as he has loved them. These Johannine sayings, along with the prologue and the film’s ecclesial framing, epitomize this Jesus as the “Incarnate Word,” whose presence in the world continues beyond the ascension within the Jesus community. Analogous to Ray’s Lucius, Stevens uses a Satan-figure (the “dark hermit”) to facilitate and unify his Jesus story. The dark hermit (Donald Pleasence) appears intermittently throughout the film seeking to subvert Jesus’ disciplined life. To the threefold biblical temptation (Matt. 4:1– 11; Luke 4:1– 12), he adds a fourth – that the fasting Jesus eat cake! Early in Jesus’ ministry, he and his disciples dine in the home of Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha. In these two sequences, it becomes evident that the “dark hermit” serves as spokesman for a life of ease and consumption, and that Lazarus and his sisters live such a life. Stevens combines the Johannine Lazarus with the anonymous “rich young man” (Mark 10:17– 31), who refuses to divest himself in order to follow Jesus. The Greatest Story, therefore, reflects a critique of the materialism and consumerism evident in post-Depression and post-World War II America. Nevertheless, the film’s poor theatrical showing suggested that American audiences, engaged in the Civil Rights struggle and anti-Vietnam protests, had lost interest in biblical epic films. However, the harmonizing approach to Jesus films continued in Europe through the very different cinematic styles of two noted Italian filmmakers: Rossellini and Zeffirelli. Because a full discussion of Rossellini’s oeuvre, including Il messia (1975), may be found elsewhere in this volume,⁵ only a few comments about this neo-realist film will suffice here. It should be noted, for example, that Rossellini often draws upon the Gospel of John, which gives his Jesus (Pier Maria Rossi) a more obvious messianic consciousness. Indeed, the film’s cinematic characterization of Jesus conforms to its title. Jesus is indeed “The Messiah” that fulfills the promises made to ancient Israel, whose 1,000-year history is traced through the film’s opening sequence. Nonetheless, as Lloyd Baugh has convincingly demonstrated, this “Messiah” is not a performer of spectacular feats, but preeminently a “Teaching Messiah,” by word and example (Baugh 1997, 84– 93). Accordingly, Il messia belongs to that series of didactic films whereby Rosellini examines great men in history, such as Socrates (1970), Blaise Pascal (1971), and Descartes (1974). Occasionally, Jesus’ disciples and hearers are depicted teaching others what they have learned from their Maestro. Thus, incorporated into the script is his homily in the synagogue on Isaiah 61 (Luke 4) as well as selections from his Farewell Discourse (John 13 – 17) and Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5 – 7) – although words from the Sermon are imaginatively recast in a nighttime scene. The film also includes many of Jesus’ best-known parables such

 See the discussion of this film in Page’s analysis of Rossellini in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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as the Weeds and Wheat (Matt. 13:24– 30), the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25 – 37), and the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19 – 31). This portrayal of Jesus as a “Teaching Messiah” is thrown into relief by the virtual absence of miracles from the film. Although the viewer can identify moments on the screen where Jesus in the gospels performs such marvels as a catch of fish, the multiplication of bread, and the healing of a young blind man, these events have been edited to delete the “miraculous.” Also the scenes related to Jesus’ birth, crucifixion, and resurrection are treated very sparingly. Rossellini presents Jesus matter-of-factly as a Jew and acknowledges the Jewishness of his cultural setting – with scenes in synagogue, temple, and moments of audible prayers. Nonetheless, he also includes passages that become anti-Judaic tropes (e. g., Matt. 23, 27:25). It is Rossellini’s younger contemporary Zeffirelli, who determined to make his Jesus film a Jewish story under the influence of the 1965 Vatican Council II statement, Nostra Aetate (“Our Times”), which affirmed the common heritage between Christians and Jews, condemned antisemitism, and called for mutual understanding through biblical and theological inquiry. About his beautifully filmed Jesus of Nazareth (1977) , Zeffirelli explained, “The point I wanted to make was that Christ was a Jew, a prophet who grew out of the cultural, social, and historical background of the Israel of his time” (Zeffirelli 1986, 275). Instead of tracing the long history of Israel, like Rossellini, Zeffirelli begins his story in synagogues: worship, a wedding, and the circumcisions of both John and Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth effectively combines the messianic secret of the Synoptic tradition with the Johannine discourses, making Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi the film’s turning point. Prior to that scene, Jesus withholds his identity and after openly declares it with Johannine “I am” sayings. Jesus’ openness about his identity continues in Jerusalem. When asked by Caiaphas if he is the Messiah, the Son of God, Jesus affirms, “I am.” When asked by Pilate if he is a king, he affirms, “I am.” The central issue throughout the film is neither what Jesus said nor what he did, but who he claimed to be. It was his claims about himself that lead to his death.

Fig. 45: Peter recognizes Jesus as Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth (1977)

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Zeffirelli creates a non-biblical character named Zerah (Ian Holm), as a prominent leader of the Sanhedrin, who negotiates Jesus’ death, thereby detracting from the malevolent roles played by Judas, Caiaphas, and the Jewish crowd. But contrary to the gospels themselves, in this film Pontius Pilate, as Rome’s man, accepts responsibility for Jesus’ fate by declaring that “Jesus of Nazareth is guilty of treason by proclaiming himself king and is sentenced to be crucified.” Zeffirelli also chooses Nicodemus, a dissenting member of the Sanhedrin, to give the definitive interpretation of Jesus’ identity. As Jesus hangs on a distinctive lattice-like cross, Nicodemus (Laurence Olivier) is positioned nearby, gazes upon him, and recites the “suffering-servant” passage (Isa. 53), concluding with the words “he was wounded for our transgressions, he was abused for our iniquities.” Whereas Rossellini had characterized Jesus of Nazareth as a “Teaching Messiah,” Zeffirelli portrays him more comprehensively as “Suffering Servant Messiah” (Tatum 2013b). Outside of North America and Europe, the harmonizing tradition also made an appearance in the latter half of the twentieth century in India. A. Bheem Singh’s 1978 Indian film Karunamayudu (Telugu, “Man of Compassion”) tells the traditional story of Jesus based on the four gospels, filtered through the lens of Indian culture and Indian filmmaking (Friesen 2008).⁶ Its opening scene shows a young woman, presumably Mary, seated alone and holding a scroll before a small stand, followed by the birth and infancy of Jesus, with a transitional montage depicting his stages of growth into manhood. Jesus first appears as an adult, clad in white with a colored sash, at his river baptism where he hears a divine voice declare him to be “my Son.” In a rocky wilderness, he resists the threefold testing by Satan – represented by an owl, then by a serpent, and finally by a spooky, dark anthropoid figure with horns. The owl, a traditional Indian bad omen, serves as a counterpoint to the dove identified with Jesus at his baptism and in Christian iconography as the Holy Spirit. As the Telugu title indicates, the film portrays Jesus throughout his ministry of words, deeds, and death as a “Man of Compassion” (similarly, the film’s Hindi title Daya Sagar, “Ocean of Mercy”) Jesus calls disciples to follow him; and to a multitude in the wilderness, he declares the beatitudes (drawing from both Matt. 5 and Luke 6). At his last meal, he both washes the feet of his disciples and distributes bread and wine before sharing with them his “new commandment” of love (John 13:34– 35). He also says, “Unless I shed my blood, no salvation to this world.” Earlier, Jesus had healed the dumb and the lepers and intervened in the stoning of an adulterous woman. At his arrest, he heals the ear severed by Peter and orders Peter to put away his sword. He allows himself to be captured, scourged, mocked, crucified; and he displays compassion in his spoken words from the cross. Beneath the cross, a Roman centurion declares, “Surely this was a righteous man” (Luke 23:48). After Jesus walks out of his opened tomb and makes a farewell visit to his

 See also Friesen’s analysis of Indian audience receptions of Karunamayudu in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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disciples, the film ends in the style of early Jesus movies as the camera follows his ascent into the heavens. His final charge to the disciples includes words heard earlier in the film, “Expand the kingdom of God” and the oft-used final words, “I am with you always even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). After its release in commercial theaters in India, the worldwide rights to this film were secured by the American Evangelistic organization, Dayspring, and it continues to be shown throughout the villages of the Indian subcontinent (Tatum 2009, 236 – 37). Karunamayudu is distinctly an Indian film. For example, it embraces the Hindu practice of darshan (Sanskrit, “auspicious seeing”), referring to mutual interaction between a devotee and an object of devotion, whether a guru or a god. In Karunamayudu, there occurs at least three instances of a darshanic gaze between Jesus and others: the taxpayer Matthew, the zealot Barabbas, and those in the dancing/ singing crowd after his entry into Jerusalem on an ass (Eck 1998, 1– 10). It also incorporates a bit of the musical tradition of song and dance that characterizes Indian cinema. Jesus’ first appearances onscreen as a newborn babe are accompanied by a sound-track refrain of the Christian hymn “Silent Night.” A blind man, named Malachi, vocalizes a lament as commentary on the apparent God forsakenness of this world. But only the carefully orchestrated and choreographed singing, dancing, and whirling with palm branches at Jesus’ entry into the city rises to the level of the routines common in Indian cinema. The harmonizing tradition of Jesus films has continued into the early years of the twenty-first century with animated film The Miracle Maker (dir. Derek Hayes/Stanislav Sokolov, 2000) and the American productions The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004) and Son of God (dir. Christopher Spencer, 2014). Again space limitations prohibit discussion of all of these titles. Gibson’s Passion returns to the origins of the Jesus-film tradition in filmed passion plays, but with a difference. It narrates only the final twelve hours of the life of Jesus (James Caviezel), from his arrest in Gethsemane to his crucifixion on Golgotha with only a hint of resurrection. (Tatum 2004a, 140 – 50), Gibson’s intention to have the actors speak the ancient languages of Aramaic and Latin was realized, but he finally allowed the use of subtitles. The film opens with a quotation from Isaiah 53 displayed onscreen: “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, by his wounds we are healed.” Thus Gibson joins Zeffirelli in explicitly identifying Jesus with the Suffering Servant from the book of Isaiah. Visually separating the Passion of Jesus from the context of his life, the camera highlights in brutal detail the depth of his suffering during his final twelve hours – his scourging, his being mocked, and his crucifixion. However, there are occasional flashbacks that briefly cut into the narrative suggesting memories triggered by external events during his final hours. Most of these flashbacks represent moments from the gospel narratives: Jesus teaching his hearers to “love your enemies” and again declaring himself to be “the good shepherd” who lays down his life for his sheep; Jesus delivering Mary Magdalene from stoning; Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as people wave palm branches; Judas’ agreement

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with the priests to betray Jesus; Jesus washing the feet of the disciples at the final meal; Peter’s pledge to remain faithful but Jesus’ prediction to the contrary; and Jesus’ words over bread and wine at his institution of the sacrament “in remembrance of me.” Other flashbacks are more “apocryphal”: Jesus’ mother Mary rushes to gather up her young son when he stumbles and Jesus displays his carpentry skills by fashioning a tall table. These flashbacks mitigate against the claim that Gibson’s film completely ignores the broader narrative setting of the passion. However, these brief narrative insertions are overshadowed by a level of violence seldom seen onscreen outside of horror films.

Fig. 46: Simon and Jesus carry the cross in The Passion of the Christ (2004)

Gibson rediscovered his Catholicism in the midst of his professional movie career – specifically traditionalist Catholicism, a sectarian movement that emerged in the 1960s in reaction to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Thus, this film becomes very much a personal project for him and reflects many of the traditional devotional practices of Roman Catholicism. Gibson structures the movie around the fourteen Stations of the Cross. He is also influenced by the praying of the Rosary and the five Sorrowful Mysteries, which include Jesus’ agony in the garden, his scourging at the pillar, his crowning with thorns, his carrying the cross, and his crucifixion. Gibson is also influenced by the Good Friday meditations on Jesus’ seven last words from the cross, all of which are spoken in the film. Moreover, Gibson acknowledges his dependence on the mystical visions of an Augustinian nun, Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774– 1824), which appeared in print in 1833. Available in English as The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord, this imaginative work contains words and scenes that find their way into the screenplay. This accounts for an eerie sense of the demonic that often surfaces during the narration. Already in the opening sequence in Gethsemane, the viewer is introduced to the Satan figure as an androgynous personage with a telling gaze, who reappears throughout, once clutching a deformed baby perhaps a parody of the Jesus/Mary relationship. Along the way, there also appears a fleeting glimpse of a were-wolf phantasm and young Jewish boys are transformed into little devils. But at the moment of Jesus’

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death, heaven weeps, the earth quakes, the temple splits, and Satan looks heavenward as though from the very pit of hell, crying out in defiance and defeat. Even before its public release, Gibson’s film was engulfed in public controversy. Once again, a Jesus-movie was faced with accusations of anti-Judaism and antisemitism, partly because of its negative characterizations of Caiaphas and the Jewish priests in contradistinction to its more positive depictions of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate and his wife. Support for these accusations also comes from the way Satan seemingly holds sway over the Jews seeking Jesus’ death. In summary, the harmonizing tradition continues to dominate Jesus cinema. Yet filmmakers, who draw indiscriminately from the four canonical gospels without recognizing their fundamental differences, often produce a muddled presentation of a Jesus who both hides and discloses his messianic identity. Films within this tradition have dealt with this problem in several ways, but arguably Zeffirelli has been the most successful in creating a dramatically coherent “cinematic portrayal of Jesus” while drawing on the contrasting portrayals found in the Synoptics and John. Zeffirelli places the “I am” sayings from John on Jesus’ lips after Peter’s Synoptic confession that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Matt. 16:16 – 20). Accordingly, Jesus in Galilee maintains a certain reticence about his identity; but later in Jerusalem, he fully discloses who he is.

Jesus Films Based on a Single Gospel Over the last half-century a few filmmakers have departed from the harmonizing tradition to base their Jesus-story on the narrative of a single gospel. For example, Pier Paolo Pasolini brought to the screen a cinematic story of Jesus based on the Gospel of Matthew, Il vangelo secondo Matteo (1964, a.k.a. The Gospel According to St. Matthew). Not only was Pasolini’s single gospel approach distinctive, but so was his cinematic style in comparison with Jesus epics of the 1960s that used color, large screens, and well-known actors. Contrarily, Pasolini used black-and-white stock in the neo-realistic style suggestive of a documentary film and amateur actors, including his own aged mother as Mary and a Spanish economics student as Jesus (Enrique Irazoqui). He also filmed his Jesus story in the barren wasteland of southern Italy. Matthew provides a narrative framework that moves from the conception and birth of Jesus to his passion, crucifixion, and resurrection. Pasolini retained the underlying shape of Jesus’ ministry: an early period in Galilee and a later period in Judea. The journey from Galilee to Judea is marked by Peter’s confession (16:16); Jesus’ investiture of Peter as the “the rock” on which the church will be built (16:17– 19); and three passion predictions (16 – 21; 17:22– 23; 20:18 – 19). But whereas Matthew arranges Jesus’ teachings into five distinct discourses (5 – 7; 10; 13; 18; 24– 25), the film rearranges the sequences so that Jesus’ words on discipleship (10) precede the cinematic tour de force that is Pasolini’s Sermon on the Mount (5 – 7). The film does include a few sayings on the church (18); but omits virtually in its entirety

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Jesus’ judgment parables (13) and what Pasolini called “Christ’s eschatological sermons” (24– 25) – thereby making Jesus and his message more this worldly (Stack 1969, 96).

Fig. 47: Jesus (Enrique Irazoqui) in Il vangelo secondo Matteo (1964)

Overall, the film portrays Jesus as “Prophet and Sage.” He comes across as a hurried and harried teacher with unusual, even miraculous, powers. Above all, he appears as a social critic at odds with his social environment – especially religious authorities in Galilee and Jerusalem. And he is a man of the moment, concerned with the here and now. Therefore, Jesus appears as a prophet to those viewers who experience him onscreen and as a subversive sage to those who comprehend the film’s subtleties. Pasolini acknowledged that he was not trying to reconstruct the past, but to find some “analogy” between that past and his own present, between the religious authorities in Jesus’ day and those in twentieth-century Italy (Stack 1969, 82). So, as Pasolini’s film places responsibility for Jesus’ death on first-century priests and Pharisees, he actually takes aim at the Roman Catholic religious establishment of his own day. The film simply titled Jesus (dir. Peter Sykes/John Krish, 1979), based on the Gospel of Luke, originated with Bill Bright, the founder of the evangelistic organization CRU (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ). Bright joined forces with filmmaker John Heyman to explore making a Jesus film for evangelistic purposes. Jesus, which was shot in Israel, continues to be of central importance for CRU’s outreach with statistics regularly updated on the website of “The Jesus Film Project” (Staley/Walsh 2007, 90 – 100). The Gospel of Luke provides the basic narrative, individual stories, and sayings material for the screenplay. But, consistent with the film’s evangelistic purpose and use, the film’s story about Jesus (Brian Deacon) has been placed in a broader theological setting established partly by the Gospel of John. Jesus opens with the words of John 3:16 – 17 spoken by the narrator as they scroll upward across an image of the earth in a seemingly limitless universe. After the conclusion of the film, the narrator offers a seven-minute commentary on the film that represents a cinematic counterpart to the traditional altar call common in American Protestantism. Herein Jesus is described as “the most unique person who has ever lived.” Indeed, as articulated, “His birth was unique […] His life was unique […] His message was unique […] His death on the cross was unique […] His resurrection was unique….” These and

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other additions to the film belie the onscreen claim following the title frame that the film is, “A documentary taken from the Gospel of Luke.” Visual Bible International has produced two Jesus films, one based on Matthew’s gospel (The Gospel According to Matthew, dir. Regardt van den Bergh, 1993) and the other on John’s (The Gospel of John, dir. Philip Saville, 2003). Both screenplays follow their titular gospel word-for-word, the former using the New International Version and the latter the Good News Bible. Every word of the given gospel is spoken either by a character or the narrator. This approach, which owes much to earlier audio Bibles, reflects the ethos of conservative American Protestantism and its tendency toward literalism in biblical interpretation. The decision to base the script for a Jesus film word-for-word on a canonical gospel suggests a desire to minimize cinematic interpretation by anchoring the film in question firmly to the source. Indeed, in the production interviews packaged with the DVD of Saville’s film, director of photography Miroslaw Baszak claims that “we are not interpreting the Bible, we are filming the Bible.” However, in both films the interpretation of the text is evident in facial expressions, body language, voice inflection, and countless artistic decisions implicit in filmmaking. For example, Saville’s film holds its viewers’ attention during Jesus’ lengthy farewell discourse (John 13 – 17) by inserting black-and-white flashbacks to earlier moments in his ministry that illustrate and interpret his words. Filmmakers who decide to privilege a single gospel when bringing Jesus to screen still wield tremendous creative license. Like Pasolini, they might choose to excise material in their gospel source that they find unpalatable (e. g., the eschatological sermons of Jesus). Or, like Sykes and Krish, they might borrow a theological framework for interpreting Jesus from another source. Even filmmakers determined to remain “faithful” to the words of a single gospel cannot escape the vagaries of interpretation when translating the Jesus story into a cinematic language.

Adaptations of Modern Novels Other films begin with the reception of Jesus in modern literature by cinematically adapting a novel derived from the gospels. This category encompasses many films that have been variously identified as Roman-Christian epics or sword-and-sandal movies.⁷ Novels that have been successfully adapted for the screen include: Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880); Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero (1895); Lloyd C. Douglas’s The Robe (1942); Pär Lagerkvist’s Barabbas (1950), and Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1960). Jesus appears only briefly in most of these films to symbolize his continued presence with the movement that bears his name. In LeRoy’s Quo Vadis, for example, flashbacks to  For a discussion of many of these films, see Walsh’s chapter in Part II (Pp.  – ). For a discussion of the genre, see Reinhartz’s chapter on biblical epic films in Part I (Pp.  – ).

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Jesus’ ministry appear in dissolves as Peter preaches. Other film adaptations focus on the effect that brief encounters with Jesus have on another character (Barabbas, Judah Ben-Hur, or the slave Demetrius). Only Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Kazantzakis’s novel focuses directly on a very human Jesus. (Tatum 2005, 19 – 33). The film created a storm of controversy necessitating the film’s opening statement, which includes the disclaimer: “This film is not based on the gospels but upon the fictional exploration of the eternal conflict [between the spirit and the flesh].” Scorsese portrays Jesus (Willem Dafoe) as a psychologically tormented character, at war with God and struggling to discern his vocation. This is epitomized in an aerial shot that looks down upon Jesus writhing on the ground as he explains his struggle in voiceover. The film also includes an untraditional portrait of Judas (Harvey Keitel) as Jesus’ closest friend and supporter. A zealot, Judas chastises Jesus for collaborating with the Romans by making crosses. Indeed this film traces Jesus’ agonized journey from being a cross-maker to a cross taker. Retrospectively, Judas identifies for Jesus three stages along the way, “first it’s love, then the axe, and now you have to die.” The death stage begins after Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem and a night vision, in which the prophet Isaiah appears to him and points him to the Suffering Servant passage in Isaiah 53. So Jesus asks Judas to facilitate this by betraying him to the authorities.

Fig. 48: Jesus and Judas in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

The Last Temptation characterizes Jesus as a “Reluctant Messiah” whose struggle to accept the divine call continues to his last breath. While on the cross, Jesus has a long visionary experience in which he imagines that he survived his crucifixion through the intercession of a guardian angel, who takes him down from the cross. This vision shows Jesus what his life could have been like (his “last temptation”): the pleasures of a domestic life of wife and home, of sex and children. But at last, reality breaks through. Jesus awakens, embraces his fate, and dies with a knowing smile having been obedient to his divine call to the very end. The film includes no resurrection sequence.

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Adaptations of Stage Musicals The decade of the 1970s produced two notable cinematic recreations of the Jesus story adapted from stage-musicals that reflect the counterculture of the 1960s: Norman Jewison’s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) and David Greene’s Godspell: A Musical Based on the Gospel According to St. Matthew (1973). Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, the youthful English composers of Superstar, and John-Michael Tebelak, an American student whose work at Carnegie Mellon University became Godspell, were certainly attuned to the transformative cultural forces swirling about them. Shot in Israel, Superstar creates an intersection between the ancient and contemporary worlds, which becomes evident onscreen in startling ways (army tanks, jet fighters). Telling the Jesus story as a rock opera within a play, it opens with a company of actors riding in an old bus, with a large wooden cross atop, out into the Israeli desert where the performance of the rock-opera occurs. The opera itself has the scope of a passion play focusing on the final week of Jesus’ life ending with the crucifixion. The movie then concludes with actors boarding the same bus to leave the desert. Now the viewers can recognize the actors, out of their theatrical attire, in their respective roles, such as Pilate, Herod Antipas, and Caiaphas, with Mary Magdalene and Judas as the last two to climb aboard. But the Jesus character is missing. After the bus departs, the viewer sees a solitary cross on a hilltop at sunset (or sunrise?). Like Last Temptation, Superstar highlights the role of Judas (Carl Anderson) who sings a song expressing his alarm at how things have “gotten so out of hand.” He complains that Jesus (Ted Neeley) has been increasingly mythologized as more than a man – as “a new messiah” or even a “God.” Worse still, he has begun to believe these claims about himself. Jesus is a man on a mission unto death, placed on a pedestal by Mary Magdalene and the crowds, who have indeed been dazzled by his words and deeds, as is repeatedly noted in the lyrics of many songs. On the occasion of the Jerusalem entry, the crowds bestow on Jesus Christ that name above every name in a mass entertainment society: “Superstar.” Caiaphas and the priests share Judas’ concern and decide “this Jesus must die” (John 11:50; 18:14). Die he does. But as the most powerful scene in the film in Gethsemane divulges, Jesus accepted God’s “where and how” without receiving God’s “why.” Godspell keeps Jesus in New York where the city itself provides an urban stage. The film is a musical play introduced with a voiceover by God who speaks about the order of creation. Early scenes establish the hurly-burly of modern city life before focusing individually on eight young people who soon bond into a small group and end up frolicking in the angel-topped Bethesda Fountain (cf. John 5:2) in Central Park. They are joined by a John the Baptist figure (David Haskell), who has crossed the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan singing the play’s opening number, “Prepare Ye (the Way of the Lord).” The Jesus figure (Victor Garber) joins John in the waters exclaiming, “I want to get washed up,” and then introduces his first number, “Save the

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Fig. 49: The Gethsemene scene in Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)

People.” Jesus, John, and eight followers constitute a playful, talented, and energetic troupe that gleefully romps about the city – singing, dancing, and acting as they go. After Jesus is betrayed by Judas (also played by David Haskell), he apparently dies by electrocution tied by red ribbons to a chain-link fence surrounding a junkyard. His followers remove his body and carry him cruciform as they sing “Long Live God” and reprise lines from previous melodies. Godspell’s screenplay does draw heavily on the Gospel of Matthew, including the detail about John’s reluctance to baptize him and, especially, familiar sayings from the Sermon on the Mount. However, what really distinguishes it from most other Jesus-films is its abundant use and creative exposition of Jesus’ parables, drawn from both Matthew and Luke: the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18); the Unforgiving Servant (Matt. 18); the Good Samaritan (Luke 10); the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16); and the Prodigal Son (Luke 15). This theatrical interpretation seems consistent with the parable form itself, acknowledged by many scholars to be the most distinctive feature of Jesus’ oral teaching. The creators of Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell have succeeded in making Jesus into figures of their own time – the 1960s and 1970s. However, these two presentations of Jesus are quite different. In the former film, Jesus appears wearing a white gown with long hair and a modest beard, as a man who was elevated by public performance from obscurity to celebrity and became a “Superstar.” In the latter, Jesus appears with a red heart on his forehead, wearing a Superman pullover, red suspenders, and striped trousers. His curly hair projects the aura of a halo. He acts the part of a playful but serious clown, who does not perform before crowds, but drops out of society for the amusement of himself and his friends, as a “Hippie” was wont to do. Nonetheless, Jesus the Superstar and the Jesus the Hippie were both faithful unto death.

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Beyond Jesus Films Alongside the tradition of Jesus films lies a related tradition of Christ-figure films that characteristically tell stories in which characters, events, or details recall Jesus and his story. Indeed, some movies associated with the cinematic Jesus tradition are also Christ-figure films. Arcand’s Jésus de Montréal and Monty Python’s Life of Brian (dir. Terry Jones, 1979, UK), each satirical in its own way, include both a Jesus-character and a Christ-figure. A third film, the South African Son of Man (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2006), retells its Jesus-story as though it were happening in a modern cultural setting with figures in modern dress identified by traditional gospel names, who re-present Jesus and his ancient contemporaries. (Tatum 2013c). Because Son of Man and the works of Dornford-May are discussed elsewhere in this volume,⁸ I will confine my comments to the other two titles. Life of Brian may be described, in the words of the Monty Python troupe member Eric Idle, as “a biblical comedy film.” It involves two parallel narratives, both set in first-century Roman-occupied Israel: the story of Jesus and the story of a fictional contemporary of Jesus named Brian (Graham Chapman). Jesus appears as a character only twice: as an unseen babe in a manger before the opening credits and again immediately after the credits as an adult preaching the Sermon on the Mount. Thus viewers from the outset, learn to recognize that Jesus is not Brian, and Brian, not Jesus. But Brian’s story recalls and mimics the gospel story of Jesus in that his words and actions begin a movement that presumably outlives him. The film ends with a zany crucifixion scene where Brian and 139 other crucified persons ironically sing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” In the movie, the scenes involving the Jesus character recall traditional Christian iconography, from illustrated Bibles and from previous Jesus films, so that Jesus appears as a “Christian icon.” But Brian, Jesus’ Christ-figure counterpart, through his alleged miracles – and ironically in spite of his denials – becomes hailed as an “Accidental Messiah.” As the Pythons emphasized, the object of their humor in making this film was not Jesus himself, whose person and teachings they respected, but rather their humor called attention to how his followers had subsequently received Jesus and his story. Arcand’s film also involves two parallel narratives. The overarching story of the film is set in the twentieth century and centered on an actor named Daniel Coulombe (Lothaire Bluteau), who is invited to write an updated version of an outdoor passion play performed at a Roman Catholic shrine overlooking the city of Montreal. The second narrative is the passion play itself, acted out by Coulombe’s hand-selected band of actors. As he plays the role of Jesus, Coulombe’s life experiences transform him into a Christ-figure in the world at large and shape his troupe into a loving community whose future becomes uncertain at the film’s conclusion.  For an in depth discussion of this film, see Giere’s chapter on Dornford-May in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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The film represents a satiric commentary on much of modern – not just Canadian – society, including the very worldview of modernity. The film’s dramatic conflict comes from the subversive nature of the new passion play and its Bultmannian attempt to “demythologize” Jesus, which provokes objections from church leaders and appreciation from critics and attendees. The play rests upon new information about Jesus as a historical figure, shared with Coulombe by a theology professor. It thus unsettles traditional givens within the gospel story. Although the play follows the Stations of the Cross, its exposition sounds like academic rather than devotional discourse: “The story of the Jewish prophet Yeshu Ben Panthera, whom we all call Jesus.” It identifies Jesus as a Jewish prophet, who is the illegitimate son of Panthera (a Roman soldier, according to one ancient tradition). It also questions the veracity of reports pertaining to Jesus’ miracles and resurrection. The controversy occasioned by the passion play ends in injury when police attempt to stop a performance. In the ensuing scuffle, the cross topples over on top of Coulombe causing injuries that ultimately result in the actor’s death. The film ends with a metaphorical resurrection in which his organs are harvested so that the blind may see and the sick may live. Like Life of Brian, however, Arcand’s film is less charitable toward the movement Jesus/Coulombe leaves behind. His troupe of actors is seduced by the film’s Satan-figure into founding an experimental theater company in his memory.

A Jesus Film Based on the Qur’an In recent years, a Jesus film has been produced in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Mesih or Jesus, the Spirit of God (dir. Nader Tabelzadeh, 2007). While all cinematic interpretations of Jesus are mediated through post-biblical reception, this film is distinctive in that it interprets the life and significance of Jesus from an Islamic perspective (Tatum 2009, 237). Its screenplay rests upon the Qur’an and the Gospel of Barnabas, a conflation of the gospels that mentions Muhammad by name and conforms to a Muslim understanding of Christian origins. The title of the film, an expression from the Qur’an, is an honored Muslim designation for Jesus as a blessed prophet in the succession of prophets culminating with Muhammad. This Jesus does possess supernatural powers to heal the sick and raise the dead, but he is not the Son of God nor does he claim to be such. He points people to the Coming One, who will be a son of Ishmael rather than Isaac. Tabelzadeh’s film follows its sources by not affirming that Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected. The film does show Jesus (Ahmad Soleimani-Nia) ascending into heaven before the Roman soldiers take him into custody. Instead, Judas the betrayer experiences transformation into the likeness of Jesus and mistakenly suffers crucifixion and death in Jesus’ place.

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Conclusion Since the first Jesus films in the last decade of the nineteenth century, the tradition of Jesus on film has been approached in the literature in several ways. A common approach has been to consider the Jesus films discussed chronologically. Our approach has been to formulate a typology based on the sources of the screenplays of the films. This typological survey of Jesus films has identified and broadened the range of ways Jesus and the gospel story have been cinematically received and portrayed globally in the modern and post-modern worlds.

Works Cited Baugh, S.J., Lloyd. 1997. Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ-Figures in Film. Kansas City, Mo.: Sheed & Ward. Campbell, Richard H., and Michael R. Pitts. 1981. The Bible on Film: A Checklist, 1897 – 1980. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press. Douglas, Lloyd C. 1999. The Robe [1942]. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin. Eck, Diana. 1998. Darshan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. New York: Columbia University. Emmerich, Anne Catherine. 2003. The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ [1833]. El Sobrante, Calif.: North Bay Books. Friesen, Dwight H. 2008. “Karunamayudu: Seeing Christ Anew in Indian Cinema.” In Images of the Word: Hollywood’s Bible and Beyond. Ed. David Shepherd. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Pp. 165 – 88. Garvey, Michael O. 1990. “What does a man who is also God look like?” National Catholic Reporter (June 29): http://ncronline.org/; accessed November 25, 2014. Kanzantzakis, Nikos. 1998. The Last Temptation of Christ [1955]. Transl. P.A. Bien. New York: Simon & Schuster. Lagerkvist, Pär. 1989. Barabbas [1950]. Transl. Alan Blair. New York: Random House. Reinhartz, Adele. 2007. Jesus of Hollywood. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. —. 2004. “Passion-ate Moments in the Jesus Film Genre.” Journal of Religion and Film 8.1: http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/2004Symposium/Rheinhart.htm; accessed November 25, 2014. Shepherd, David. 2013. The Bible on Silent Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sienkiewicz, Henryk. 1993. Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero [1895]. Transl. W. S. Kuniczak. New York: MacMillian. Stack, Oswald, ed. 1969. Pasolini on Pasolini: Interviews with Oswald Stack. Cinema 1.11. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. Staley, Jeffrey, and Richard Walsh. 2007. Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: A Handbook to Jesus on DVD. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Tatum, W. Barnes, 1999. In Quest of Jesus [1983]. Rev. ed. Nashville: Abingdon Press. —. 2004a. “The Passion in the History of Film.” In Jesus and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Ed. Kathleen E. Corley and Robert L. Webb. New York and London: Continuum. Pp. 140 – 50. —. 2004b. “The Problem of the Cinematic Jesus.” SBL Forum (March): http://sbl-sitesite.org/Ar ticle.aspx?/ArticleID=229; accessed November 25, 2014. —. 2005. “The Novel, the Four Gospels, and the Continuing Historical Quest.” In Scandalizing Jesus: Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ Fifty Years On. Ed. Darren J. N. Middleton. New York and London: Continuum. Pp. 19 – 33.

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—. 2009. Jesus: A Brief History. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley-Blackwell. —. 2013a. Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years and Beyond [1997, 2004]. 3rd ed. Salem, Oreg.: Polebridge Press. —. 2013b. “Jesus of Nazareth” (1977). In Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films. Ed. Adele Reinhartz. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 150 – 55. —. 2013c. “Son of Man’s ‘Son of Man’: Becoming Human and Acting Humanely.” In Son of Man: An African Jesus Film. Edited by Richard Walsh, Jeffrey L. Staley, and Adele Reinhartz. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press. Pp. 90 – 94. Wallace, Lew. 1995. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ [1880]. London: Wordsworth Classics. Zeffirelli, Franco. 1986. The Autobiography of Franco Zeffirelli. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Films Cited Barabbas (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1961, Columbia Pictures, IT/US). Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959, MGM, US). The Bible Collection [Jesus; TV miniseries] (dir. Roger Young, 1999, Lux Vide, CZ/IT/DE/US). Day of Triumph (dir. John T. Coyle and Irving Pichel, 1954, Century Films, US). Ecce Homo [a.k.a. Golgotha; 1937 English dubbed version] (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1935, Ichtys Film, FR). El mártir del Calvario [“The Martyr of Calvary”] (dir. Miguel Morayta, 1952, Oro Films, MX). From the Manger to the Cross [a.k.a. Jesus of Nazareth] (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1912, Kalem, US). Godspell: A Musical Based on the Gospel According to St. Matthew (dir. David Greene, 1973, Columbia Pictures, US). The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1965, United Artists, US). The Höritz Passion Play (prod. William Freeman, 1897, Klaw & Erlanger, US). Il vangelo secondo Matteo [a.k.a. The Gospel According to St. Matthew] (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964, Arco Film, IT/FR). Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1916, Triangle Film Corporation, US). Jesus [a.k.a. The Jesus Film] (dir. Peter Sykes and John Krish, 1979, Jesus Film Project, US). Jesus Christ Superstar (dir. Norman Jewison, 1973, Universal, US). Jésus de Montréal [a.k.a. Jesus of Montreal] (dir. Denys Arcand, 1989, Centre National de la Cinématographie, CA/FR). Jesus of Nazareth (dir. Franco Zeffirelli, 1977, Incorporated Television Company, IT/UK). Karunamayudu [“Man of Compassion,” a.k.a. Daya Sagar or “Ocean of Mercy”] (dir. A. Bheem Singh, 1978, IN). The King of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1927, DeMille Pictures Corporation, US). King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961, MGM, US). The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988, Universal, US/CA). Le passion du Christ [a.k.a. La passion] (dir. Albert Kirchner/Léar, 1897, La Bonne Presse, FR). Life of Brian [a.k.a. Monty Python’s Life of Brian] (dir. Terry Jones, 1979, Handmade Films, UK). Mesih [a.k.a. Jesus, the Spirit of God or The Messiah] (dir. Nader Tabelzadeh, 2007, Abdollah Saeedi, IR). Il messia [“The Messiah”] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1975, Orizzonte 2000, IT/FR). The Miracle Maker (dir. Derek Hayes and Stanislav Sokolov, 2000, BBC, RU/UK). The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004, Icon Productions, US). The Passion Play of Oberammergau (dir. Henry C. Vincent, 1898, Eden Musee, US). Quo Vadis (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1951, MGM, US).

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The Robe (dir. Henry Koster, 1953, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Son of God (dir. Christopher Spencer, 2014, Lightworkers Media, US). Son of Man (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2006, Spier Films, ZA). The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John (dir. Philip Saville, 2003, Visual Bible, CA/UK). The Visual Bible: The Gospel According to Matthew (dir. Regardt van den Bergh, 1993, Visual Bible, ZA).

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Addendum⁹ A Radically Different Jesus Film: The Reception of the Gospel in Su Re Lloyd Baugh The Jesus-film tradition produces films usually based on the texts of the gospels, precise, carefully-structured documents, that they accept as authoritative and then develop further, creating films that tell the story of Jesus, but also evince socio-political and aesthetic influences of the time and place of their production. Giovanni Columbu’s 2012 film Su Re (“The King”), is exceptional in the Jesus-film tradition. In the opening, after the title frame, Columbu edits in a frame that reads “from the gospels of Matthew Mark Luke John,” not the usual “based on the Gospel.” He is announcing a strategy for his film that makes it a radical departure from the usual filmic reception of the gospels. Rather than receiving the gospel as a canonically-approved text, Columbu proposes to “go behind” the canonical gospels, as it were, and to represent the story of Jesus according to the earlier oral tradition from which those gospels later are formed. Su Re is a Passion film, of seventy-eight minutes duration, set in mountainous Sardinia, in a timeless, almost abstract reality. Most of the characters are not named and only gradually identified by their actions and words. Specific places – the palaces of Caiaphas and Pilate – are bare, not clearly identified; the characters are dressed in stylized black garments. Nature is threatening, characterized by stark mountains and dark, menacing clouds. There is no musical accompaniment, and the film is shot with a hand-held camera, giving a nervous, provisional quality to what is being represented. These elements, unusual for a Jesus film, generate a sense of mystery that pervades the narrative. No other Jesus film attempts to deal with the oral tradition, the mysterious period between the real events of the life and death of Jesus and the emergence of the gospel texts, recognized in the second century and that gained authority by the fourth and fifth centuries. Su Re represents episodes of the final hours of Jesus’ life as they might have been handed on orally by members of the primitive Christian community, inspired by power of the Resurrection. In this experimental film, Columbu, assuming the position of members of that early community, transmits the events of the Passion in a disjointed, choppy narrative, marked by random, discontinuous editing rather than the usual linear chronological editing of a Jesus film. He also repeats episodes, usually with different details, suggesting different witnesses recalling the same event or different strands of the

 Many thanks to Lloyd Baugh, who most generously provided an addendum on this important Jesus film, which is available only in the Sardinian language with Italian subtitles.

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oral tradition destined to become different gospels. The editing of the film is also highly elliptical, much more so that the gospels, as it passes very suddenly from one moment to another. Columbu builds into his narrative elements that further underline his representation of the oral tradition. Dialogue units are longer and less precise than they appear in the gospels, evoking the later redaction process, in which the editing and precision will come. The nervous reactions of the disciples when Jesus predicts his betrayal are quite extended, as are the conversations between the priests and the witnesses against Jesus. Events of the Passion are represented at length to be later edited into a more compact unit in the redaction phase, e. g., the extended struggle of Judas after he has betrayed Jesus, and the repeated insistence of the High Priest that none of his assistants claim the blood money Judas returns. Other Passion events are represented, only to be edited out in the final texts: during the climb to Calvary, for example, Columbu includes bickering between the two thieves, and quarrels between the bystanders and the soldiers. Then after Jesus is crucified, Columbu curiously brings a dramatically penitent Peter to Calvary and has him insistently and at length recant his earlier denial of Jesus. Furthermore, in contrast with the gospels, but in syntony with the developing oral tradition, Columbu does not provide his film with a specific, underlying theological structure that, in the canonical gospels, gives coherence and a characteristic thematic thrust to the texts. With one dramatic exception: the person of Jesus. Columbu gives Su Re a surprising biblical structuring element in his portrait of Jesus, in radical contrast with the Jesus figures of all the other gospel films. Columbu’s Jesus is heavy set, with black hair and beard and hirsute body. His rough facial features are equally unusual: a round, brutish face, bulging, strabismic eyes and a jutting lower lip. When he speaks, it is with a raspy voice, neither eloquent nor elegant, and his gestures and movements are awkward, without grace. As announced in the prologue of the film in the authoritative voice-over words of Isaiah, the Jesus of Su Re is based on the description of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh in Isaiah 53. In a sense, we might speak here of Columbu’s reception of the Passion narratives of the gospels or pre-gospels through Isaiah and his prophecy of the Messiah. The direct reference to Isaiah notwithstanding, Columbu gives his portrait of Jesus as Suffering Servant a provisional quality, by seldom photographing him in the center of the frame, often at its edges, slipping in and out of the frame. In this physically-unattractive and visually-elusive Jesus, Su Re not only takes distance from the tradition of tall, stately, and, in recent times, “sexy” Jesus figures, but it also reflects the reticence of the oral tradition and the gospels to provide a physical description of Jesus. Some biblical scholars maintain that, though the early followers of Jesus experience the Resurrection, it may have been some time before they gain a clear grasp of that mysterious “event” and its significance. Columbu reflects that experience of Mystery in his unprecedented evocation of the Resurrection. Beginning with the voice-over words of Isaiah 53: “After his suffering, he will see light,” Colum-

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bu proposes a single shot of sixteen seconds, looking out from the sepulcher: after seventy-eight minutes of dark spaces and dark menacing clouds, the mountainside is bathed in bright morning light; after seventy-eight minutes of musical silence, the air is filled with the clear notes of Arvo Pärt’s musica sacra. As if in fear, three children hurry up the mountainside; as if fascinated by something they have seen, they repeatedly look back. Surely the witnesses to the Resurrection were given some enigmatic glimpse of the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of that “event,” as is attested to in the gospel. Just so, Columbu, in the conclusion of Su Re is suggesting that that enigmatic but glorious experience is part of the oral tradition.

Films Cited Su Re [“The King”] (dir. Giovanni Columbu, 2012, Luches Film, IT).

Catherine O’Brien

26 Women in the Cinematic Gospels

What is in a name? As feminist theologians have pointed out, many of the women in the gospels who played an important role in the mission of Jesus remain anonymous (see, for example, Schüssler Fiorenza, 1994). They are often introduced via their kinships (the mother of Zebedee’s sons or the mother-in-law of Peter, to name but two) or their location (such as the Widow of Nain or the Woman of Bethany). One of the oldest extant biblical films, La vie et passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (dir. Ferdinand Zecca/Lucien Nonguet, 1902– 05; 1907) includes “JESUS AND THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA” and the “RAISING OF THE DAUGHTER OF JAIRUS” amongst its scenes to emphasize the miraculous powers of Jesus. From the earliest days of cinema, these nameless women (admittedly alongside unnamed men) have figured in New Testament screenplays to illustrate the transformative influence of the Savior (Telford, 2000). The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1965) offers an oft-quoted example in which the woman’s identity is famously obscure: Shelley Winters (one of the galaxy of stars in walk-on parts) suddenly emerges from the crowd to exclaim, “I’m cured! I’m cured!” without specifying her ailment. As Jesus replies, “It is your faith that has cured you,” a Bible-schooled spectator would assume that she is the “woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years” (Mark 5:25) but other members of the audience might well be confused by her appearance. In some cases, extra-biblical sources provide names that evidently increase the prominence of the female characters in the narrative. In particular, Pilate’s decisionmaking process takes on a more complex dimension when his spouse, who is traditionally known as Claudia, enters the discussion over the arrest of Jesus. In The King of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1927), Claudia cries out as she sees Jesus being whipped, falls to her knees beside her husband, and tells him of her dream, asking him (via a title card) to have nothing to do with “that just Man (Matt. 27:19).” Claudia is visibly present at the Sermon on the Mount in King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961), and she is later seen crying at the Crucifixion (as she does when Jesus is condemned in DeMille’s earlier film); and Claudia’s dream is given particularly serious consideration in Ecce Homo (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1935, a.k.a. Golgotha) and the BBC production of The Passion (dir. Michael Offer, 2008), where she awakens in terror. Claudia’s views (and her lack of influence) add poignancy to the trial of Jesus; and the sense of trauma is increased in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) when Claudia provides the cloths that are used to soak up the blood that is spilled during the violent scourging at the pillar – a scene inspired by the visions of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich that are related in The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (first published in German in 1833).

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Fig. 50: Claudia assists Mary and Magdalene in The Passion of the Christ (2004)

In the case of Herodias’ daughter—who is named Salome in the historical writings of Flavius Josephus—the complexities of the character continue to exert an attraction. Al Pacino’s efforts to engage with Oscar Wilde’s 1894 play in Salomé (2013) permit Jessica Chastain to follow a narrative arc from purity to necrophilia (Jones 2014) as she kisses the Baptist’s severed head. This female role may have a clearly exploitative element, dating back to the days of silent cinema when Theda Bara in a scanty costume played the titular protagonist in Salomé (dir. J. Gordon Edwards, 1918). In the 1960s, the innocent grace of the young Paola Tedesco as Salome, entertaining her step-father Herod on his birthday in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Il vangelo secondo Matteo (1964, a.k.a. The Gospel According to St. Matthew), contrasted starkly with Brigid Bazlen’s erotic interpretation of the same event in Ray’s King of Kings, which provided evidence for the kind of “pleasurable looking” that cinema is able to satisfy (Mulvey 1975). In Salome (dir. William Dieterle, 1953), which serves as a vehicle for Rita Hayworth to remove the “seven veils” in the eponymous role, the screenplay reaches a peculiar (and unscriptural) compromise: it stresses Salome’s good intentions when she apparently dances with the intention of saving the Baptist rather than demanding his head on a platter. Then there are women whose names are actually recorded by the Evangelists, thereby underlining their significance. Elizabeth and Anna have potential roles in filmic representations of the infancy narratives, although the latter’s appearance in the “Presentation in the Temple” scene is usually overshadowed by Simeon; Susanna, Joanna and (another) Salome are listed amongst the followers of Jesus; and Martha and Mary are his friends. However, in addition to the sister of Lazarus, there are several women who share the name of Mary, including the two most prominent female figures: Mary, the mother of Jesus; and Mary of Magdala, who is often called Mary Magdalene.¹ Cinematic images of Mary are of interest to both scholars of Mariology (the study of the Virgin Mary in theology and cult) and critics of Mariolatry (who claim that Catholic devotion to the mother of Jesus borders on idolatry); and a number of publications have focused purely on her cinematic representation.² At the same time, the contentious identification of Magdalene continues to fascinate, not  For the purposes of clarity and concision, the two women will be referred to individually as Mary and Magdalene throughout this chapter.  See, for example, the works of Duricy (, , ), Malone (), O’Brien (), Roten (), and Zwick ().

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least because she has been given a role in some of Hollywood’s most controversial religious-themed films.

Mary and Magdalene: Parallel Lives The contributions of Mary and Magdalene to the New Testament cinematic narratives fuel feminist arguments (both positively and negatively), while the physical features of the women who interpret the roles are pondered over in discussions about inculturation. The one-time Western bias of envisaging Mary in art as a Caucasian woman with blue eyes was often reflected in Hollywood’s lack of attention to ethnicity (with the selection of the Irish Siobhan McKenna as Mary in Ray’s King of Kings being a notable example). However, there are now films from across the globe – such as Mexico’s El mártir del Calvario (dir. Miguel Morayta, 1952), South Africa’s Son of Man (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2006) and India’s Karunamayudu (dir. A. Bheem Singh, 1978, a.k.a. Dayasagar) – in which actresses from different continents have personified the two Jewish women from Israel. In the twenty-first century, the casting choices have evoked serious commentary about religion, race, and age. A Jewish actress named Maia Morgenstern played Mary in Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ; Jean Claude La Marre’s Color of the Cross (2006) and Dornford-May’s Son of Man generated discussions about the cultural significance of Black Madonnas; and notably younger actresses have begun to play the part of Mary in the Nativity scenes (such as the sixteen-year old Keisha Castle-Hughes in Catherine Hardwicke’s The Nativity Story in 2006).

Fig. 51: Pauline Malefane as Mary in the South African film Son of Man (2006)

An Italian TV production entitled Maria di Nazaret (dir. Giacomo Campiotti, 2012) introduces Mary and Magdalene as neighbors; separates them when Magdalene becomes a courtesan in King Herod’s palace; and then unites the two women as they follow Jesus to Calvary (the latter event being the only one of these plot devices with a biblical foundation). A shorter version for cinema release focuses its attention more consistently on Mary – although this makes Magdalene’s presence in some of the earlier scenes with King Herod unexplained. However, the invented “parallel

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lives” dimension does underpin a common device in New Testament films that operates to contrast the sanctity of Mary with the troubled life of Magdalene, thereby playing liberally with the available scriptural information on the woman from Magdala. The gospels report that she was a woman from whom seven devils had been cast out (Luke 8:1– 2; Mark 16:9), but there is no indication that she led a life of prostitution. It is the sixth-century Pope Gregory who bears much responsibility for causing an identity crisis by amalgamating several biblical characters into one when he proclaimed in a homily: “She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary, we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark. And what did these seven devils signify, if not all the vices” (quoted in Haskins 1993, 93). Taking inspiration from this conflation, many screenwriters have followed a welltrodden artistic path across the centuries in which Magdalene’s character is integrated with the anonymous woman of ill repute (Luke 7:36 – 50) who kneels before Jesus, washes his feet with her tears and dries them with her hair (Reinhartz 2007, 129 – 35). In the silent era La vie et passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ contains a tableau entitled “MARY MAGDALENE AT THE FEET OF JESUS”, in which a young woman with long, loose dark hair carries out this act, while the people surrounding Jesus visibly remonstrate with him. Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings begins with the story of Magdalene as “a beautiful courtesan” who “laughed alike at God and Man.” She is operating within the kind of “house of ill repute” that was intended to awaken the interest of the audience (before the introduction of the Production Code) as a prelude to the more serious biblical fare. Magdalene’s affectionate embrace of a leopard presumably underlines her own feral qualities, while her zebra-drawn carriage adds a touch of exoticism. The script (by Jeanie Macpherson) envisages an unsatisfying relationship with Judas (a theme that will be revisited some decades later in La Marre’s Color of the Cross) that will lead to her introduction to Jesus, whom she regards as a rival for her lover’s affections: “I have blinded more men than He hath ever healed!” Bejewelled, made-up and scantily dressed, she certainly offers a contrast to Mary (introduced by an intertitle as ‘the MOTHER’), who is modestly clothed, working at a loom and accompanied by doves that provide a more peaceful setting than the worrying combination of swans and jungle animals in Magdalene’s Pleasure Palace. Although the first introduction to Magdalene is pure invention, DeMille’s film is one of the few to represent the “casting out of devils” scene (although the film’s devils are clearly identified as the Seven Deadly Sins, while the biblical text is unspecific). Magdalene strides up to Jesus to confront him, falters under his gaze, and raises her arms to hide her face in fear. The title card records Jesus’ words as “Be thou clean! (Matt. 8:3)” and the devils (who are clearly identified as female figures) are removed via double exposure. Magdalene’s first response is to cover her body with her cloak – an action that will be repeated throughout filmic manifestations of Magdalene’s meeting with Jesus so as to associate her with the sins of the flesh. She kneels at the feet of Jesus and kisses the hem of his robe, while Jesus responds

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with a line from the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the pure in heart – for they shall see God! (Matt. 5:8).” The other popular (but also unscriptural) re-working of Magdalene’s character is to identify her as the woman who committed adultery and was on the point of being stoned to death before the intervention of Jesus (John 8:1– 11). This scenario is played out in Ray’s King of Kings and Stevens’s The Greatest Story Ever Told, and it forms one of the flashback sequences in Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. In Son of Man, the updating of the action to twenty-first-century South Africa transforms the stoning scene to a terrifying death by conflagration, as men pour petrol over Magdalene before Jesus intercedes and saves her. There have been attempts to transform Magdalene’s story into the central focus of a cinematic retelling, dating back to the days of silent cinema with a short film released by Kennedy Features entitled Mary Magdalene (dir. Arthur Maude, 1914), which starred Constance Crawley in the titular role (Kinnard/Davis 1992, 31); and Magdalene is befriended by Mary (Malone 2012, 31) in a Mexican film entitled María Magdalena, pecadora de Magdala (dir. Miguel Contreras Torres, 1946). However, her biography is most creatively expanded in Maria Maddalena (dir. Raffaele Mertes/Elisabetta Marchetti, 2000) by Lux Vide for its Close to Jesus series. Maria Grazia Cucinotta plays the titular heroine as a woman rejected by her husband because she is wrongly believed to be barren. A series of travails ensues that involve falling in love with a Roman centurion, pregnancy, abandonment, and violent rape leading to miscarriage. When Magdalene decides to drown herself in the Sea of Galilee in despair, her body is fished out of the water by Peter and Jesus, who happen to be sailing past at the time. After becoming a servant in King Herod’s palace she finds that some of the other maids (with the biblical names of Susanna and Joanna) are followers of John the Baptist and, subsequently, Jesus. After having once used her body to enact revenge on men in general, Magdalene repents of her life, falls at the feet of Jesus, and covers them with her tears. Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth (1977) clearly depicts Magdalene as a prostitute (played by Anne Bancroft in one of the more mature incarnations of the role), who witnesses the miracle of the loaves and fishes (Luke 9:16 – 17) and decides to reform. She enters the house of Simon the Pharisee carrying a jar of ointment, kneels before Jesus, anoints his feet, and wipes them with her hair. The other guests look on with disdain, but Jesus responds compassionately: “Daughter, your sins – and I know that they are many – are forgiven you.” The vision of Magdalene as the repentant sinner evidently contrasts with the image of the mother of Jesus, especially when taking into account the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which states that Mary was preserved immune from the stain of original sin from the moment of her conception. One way to represent the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is to envisage Mary “enveloped from the beginning in the love of God” (Johnson 2003, 103). A number of productions have taken this path and focused on Mary’s early life; and the Italian films Maria, figlia del suo figlio (Fabrizio Costa, 2000, a.k.a. Maria: Daughter of

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Her Son) and Maria di Nazaret draw inspiration from the apocryphal Protevangelium of James, which recounts that Mary was raised in the Jerusalem Temple. However, the majority of the pre-Annunciation narratives begin with the courtship of Mary and Joseph. The Nativity (dir. Bernard L. Kowalski, 1978) and Mary and Joseph: A Story of Faith (dir. Eric Till, 1979) date back to the 1970s, with the latter television movie being particularly intended to attract a younger audience with its “soap opera” atmosphere (Malone 2012, 15); and Catherine Hardwicke embraced the “teenage” motif in The Nativity Story in 2006. It is here that the distinctions between “Catholic” and “Protestant” approaches (which may not necessarily tally with the religious affiliations of the director and screenwriter) become most obvious. Marie de Nazareth (directed by the Protestant Jean Delannoy in 1995) and Maria di Nazaret introduce Mary as a gentle, flawless, and outwardly joyful young woman whose only desire is to serve God in the manner envisaged by the Fathers of the Church (Gambero 1999, 226). Hardwicke’s The Nativity Story (written by the Protestant Mike Rich) presents Mary as a “credible young girl who experiences God in an extraordinary way” (Malone 2012, 138) – but, when that “credibility” was manifested by an occasional outward lack of joy, there was consternation from some Catholic commentators (Geiger 2006). However, Jean-Luc Godard went to far greater extremes in his (undoubtedly sincere) efforts to reflect the difficulties faced by Mary in the light of her miraculous pregnancy in Je vous salue, Marie (1985, a.k.a. Hail Mary) by updating the action to twentieth-century Switzerland. He caused controversy – indeed, he received public criticism from Pope John Paul II (Locke/Warren, 1993) – with a film that depicts Mary writhing around naked and uttering expletives as she comes to terms with her situation. The BBC decided to tackle the Christmas story in 2010 with a four-part adaption entitled The Nativity (dir. Coky Giedroyc). The script was written by Tony Jordan, who first came to prominence for his work on the British television soap opera EastEnders, charting the lives of troubled characters in the fictional location of Walford in London. It was a choice of writer that initially led to bemused consternation in English newspaper previews, with the Independent reviewer intimating that “shock pregnancies [are] as hard to explain in 1BC Nazareth as they are in 21st-century Walford” (Viner 2010). Mary’s predominant reaction to the angelic intervention (fear or joy) is a key to the subsequent development of her character on screen. In the Annunciation scene, Jordan’s script retains the dimension – noted by some feminist exegetes – that Mary is not afraid to question the heavenly messenger about her proposed pregnancy. However, he extends Mary’s short verbal response in Luke’s gospel and gives oral expression to the Evangelist’s observation that Mary is initially “deeply disturbed” by the angel’s greeting, making Mary a complex protagonist, rather than an acquiescent handmaid. After Gabriel tells Mary that her son “will form a bridge between Heaven and earth for all time,” he asks her to close her eyes and “look inside” herself to find the Holy Spirit. Mary’s subsequent cry of emotion, tears, and rapturous smile affirm

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the moment of revelation, while the angel holds Mary’s hand as a visible indication of the synergy between God and the human race. A number of films include Mary’s journey to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth (with memorable representations of this Visitation scene in Jesus of Nazareth and The Nativity Story). She may travel in a caravan or alone (the latter form of journey being a sign of anachronistic independence, which is most obvious in Delannoy’s Marie de Nazareth when she arrives by herself on a donkey). However, an important dimension of female bonding is lost when the episode is omitted, as well as opportunities for a pro-life discussion when Elizabeth’s child leaps “for joy” (Luke 1:44) at Mary’s greeting. Unsurprisingly, the whole version of the Magnificat (Luke 1:46 – 55) is included in Maria di Nazaret; whereas, in Hardwicke’s The Nativity Story, Mary speaks the canticle in voice-over at the end of the film but in a reduced version. The incorporation or cutting (of all or part) of the Magnificat also affects Mary’s significance within the screenplay, particularly as a spokesperson of Liberation Theology (Hamington 1995, 106). Across the decades, Mary’s filmic role has manifested increasing levels of independence, often at apparent odds with the first-century patriarchal society in which she is depicted. In Kevin Connor’s Mary, Mother of Jesus (1999) the young protagonist is not afraid to stand up to the Romans; and, more controversially in Guido Chiesa’s Io sono con te (2010, a.k.a. Let It Be), she “is certainly ‘full of grace,’ but here grace functions within her Jewish community to challenge and change prejudices displayed by Jews and Romans alike” (Johnson/Ottoviani-Jones 2014, 8). The reaction to Mary’s unexpected pregnancy has become a source of narrative tension since the era of silent cinema, when Sidney Olcott captured Joseph’s scowling face in From the Manger to the Cross (1912). However, the extent of Joseph’s onscreen anger has increased in later years, beginning with Zeffirelli’s television production of 1977, in which Joseph verbally repudiates Mary. Subsequent versions of the story (such as Marie de Nazareth; Mary, Mother of Jesus; and Giuseppe di Nazareth, dir. Raffaele Mertes, 2000) have dwelt on Joseph’s furious response when he believes that Mary has been unfaithful, with a physical outburst (at an inanimate object) being followed by happy reconciliation. In the case of The Nativity Story and the BBC production of The Nativity, there is still marital tension during the journey to Bethlehem; and in the latter television series, Joseph is not truly appeased until the moment of Jesus’ birth. Indeed, Tony Jordan adds an additional element to the traditional “no room at the inn” plot by having Mary rejected by Joseph’s family in Bethlehem. While theologians have discussed the possibility of such an event, it has not generally found an outlet in fictional adaptations of the Christmas story. Nevertheless, the fact that Mary was described as a “whore” by Joseph’s relative was one reason for expressions of consternation, with the Daily Express headline reading: “Fury over BBC’s Nativity Insult.” However, a Church of England spokesman reviewed the program as a “gritty interpretation,” while the production was welcomed by Vincent Nichols (then archbishop of Westminster before his elevation to Cardinal), who said while there was “some clear dramatic license” there remained “an

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overall fidelity, not only to the gospel accounts but also to traditional imagery” (in Stephenson, 2010). Most adapters of the Christmas story amalgamate the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke and locate the Nativity in a stable or a cave. The nature of the birth of Jesus is of particular interest to Catholic commentators who are familiar with the theology of in partu virginity that is symbolized by the description of Mary’s unbroken hymen in The Protevangelium of James. However, even in the apocryphal literature, Mary tells Joseph that “the child within me presses me to come forth” (in Elliott 1993, 64) and, since Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth in 1977, Mary’s labor pains have been represented on screen – most extensively in Per amore, solo per amore (dir. Giovanni Veronesi, 1993, a.k.a. For Love, Only for Love) and the BBC’s The Nativity, in which the directors certainly ignore any Catholic sensitivities and depict Mary in searing agony. The presence of a midwife may underline the natural nature of the birth, but in Marie de Nazareth and The Nativity Story Joseph takes on a “new man” role and assists in the delivery himself. Maria di Nazaret – which has proved popular with Catholic commentators – avoids the issue: signs of Mary’s slight discomfort cause Joseph to run for help, and he returns to find his wife serenely holding the baby Jesus in her arms. The question of Mary’s “ever virgin” state is rarely considered on film, with the notable exception of a brief discussion in Maria, figlia del suo figlio, in which Joseph calmly accepts their virginal marriage (which introduced the adjective “Josephite” into the dictionary). Most films avoid any direct reference to the “brothers and sisters” of Jesus (who are considered to be “cousins” in Catholic theology). Color of the Cross takes an unusual approach by including Jesus’ siblings amongst the cast. Mary’s understanding of her son’s mission may be indicated in various ways: when Simeon prophesies that a “sword will pierce” (Luke 2:35) her heart there is a silent response in Jesus of Nazareth and troubled reaction in Marie de Nazareth; and when she returns to find her lost son preaching in the Temple, her serene expression in Emilio Cordero’s Mater Dei (1950) contrasts with her maternal concern in Roger Young’s Jesus (1999). The flight into Egypt has a contemporary significance, given the plight of refugees in so many war-torn lands (a point that has particular resonance in Son of Man when the young children who remain behind are butchered with machetes). Nevertheless, only a small number of films venture into the life of Mary during the “hidden years” in any detail (such as Maria, figlia del suo figlio), as the efforts to depict the childhood of Jesus are fraught with danger. La vida de nuestro Señor Jesucristo (Miguel Zacarias, 1980, a.k.a. The Life of Jesus Christ), Un bambino di nome Gesù (dir. Franco Rossi, 1987, a.k.a. A Child Called Jesus), La sacra famiglia (Raffaele Mertes, 2006, a.k.a. The Holy Family) and Io sono con te are exceptions to the rule, which draw on the apocryphal gospels as well as the screenwriters’ imaginations to evolve their narratives. Several films also develop the adult relationship between Jesus and Mary by having her accompany him as he preaches to the crowds (such as Marie de Nazareth), although there is no biblical foundation for this dimension to the script. Therefore,

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the Wedding at Cana (John 2:1– 11) has particular import for Catholics because of Mary’s perceived intercessionary role, and several films give prominence to her intervention, most notably Jesus (1999) and The Gospel of John (dir. Philip Saville, 2003). As a result, Mary’s absence at the wedding feast in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) is particularly notable. There have also been a number of films in which Mary is the chief protagonist (including Mater Dei, Marie de Nazareth, and Maria di Nazaret) but such efforts to expand her story to fill a full-length feature film usually involve a retelling of the life of Jesus with Mary as a prominent witness—and it is here that she is joined by Magdalene on the road to Calvary, bringing the two Marys side by side.

The First Disciples In many New Testament narratives (in which Magdalene is represented as the “repentant whore”) she has bonded with Mary before the arrest of Jesus. In Ray’s King of Kings, for example, she goes to Mary’s house in a desire to meet the mother of the man who saved her; and when Magdalene identifies herself as “a woman of sin,” Mary replies firmly: “You will share my table.” It is the beginning of a relationship that is played out in a number of films, with the distinction between the two women frequently indicated by age difference and dress (with Mary’s veiled head often contrasting with Magdalene’s long flowing hair). However, while both women may be in the vicinity of the Last Supper, it is rare for them to be seated at the table. Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ breaks one particular prohibition in that respect. Interestingly in Jesus of Nazareth, the treatment of the “mothers and brothers” pericope (Matt. 12:46 – 50; Mark 3:31– 35; Luke 8:19 – 21) adds a new perspective on Magdalene’s status (rather than a rebuff for Mary that some scholars identify in the biblical texts). In a reference to her own understanding of Jesus’ “Who is my mother?” question, Mary explains: “Anyone who obeys our Father in Heaven is his brother, his sister, his mother.” Her subsequent acknowledgement at the Crucifixion that Magdalene is “one of the family” gives the latter a place amongst the disciples. Mary and Magdalene are depicted by the cross in filmic representations of the Crucifixion, even if John’s gospel (which is the only one to specifically acknowledge the presence of Mary) is not the chief focus of the screenplay. In Jesus (Peter Sykes/ John Krish, 1979, which is based on the Gospel of Luke) and The Gospel According to Matthew (dir. Regardt van den Bergh, 1993), Mary is visible amongst other women; and in Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew (in which it is the director’s own mother, Susanna Pasolini, who takes on the role) she is the central figure. In some cases, both Mary and Magdalene are depicted in distress: in DeMille’s The King of Kings, Magdalene literally clings to the cross during the storm when darkness covers the earth, while Mary is supported by the Apostle John; in Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, John takes Mary away from the cross after the “Behold your mother” scene

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(John 19:25 – 27), so that Magdalene remains the female focus when Jesus dies. However, in Rossellini’s Il messia and Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, Magdalene sobs at the crucifixion, while Mary stands stoically upright. In the latter film, she utters the word “Amen” as Jesus dies (Bartunek 2005, 145) to underline her comprehension of her son’s sacrifice (while Peter the Apostle is nowhere to be seen). Mary is subsequently presented in the center of the frame as she holds the dead body of her son, as is the case in Il messia, Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus (1999). While this image does not have a biblical foundation, it is a pose made famous by Michelangelo’s Pietà sculpture, and one that is immediately recognisable across continents beyond the Passion narrative (as indicated by South Korean Kim Ki-duk’s controversial Pietà, 2013). Magdalene’s most significant role is as the witness of the resurrection. She is the first person to speak to Jesus (as recorded in John 20:14– 18), whereas Mary’s presence at the tomb is not clarified by the Evangelists, although there are references to “the other Mary” (Matt. 28:1). Nevertheless, there are a number of films that depict the two women going to the tomb together on Easter morning. In DeMille’s The King of Kings, Jesus actually meets his mother first and she points him towards the distraught Magdalene so that he will go and comfort her; and Mary and Magdalene are present in the room with the disciples, when the resurrected Jesus tells them to go out and preach the gospel. In Rossellini’s Il messia Magdalene finds the tomb empty and sobs, but Mary’s smiling face indicates that she believes her son has risen from the dead. In Jesus (1999) Magdalene meets her Savior in the garden after the resurrection, and she flings her arms around his neck. The “Noli me tangere” verse is rendered as “You must let me go now” (rather than “Touch me not”) which is in keeping with the warmer, tactile depiction of the Messiah in Young’s film. It is also notable that the same film takes an unconventional approach by introducing the unrequited love of another Mary (Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus), who eventually comes to accept that her friend Jesus has an important mission that precludes a romantic attachment. A number of films have depicted a close relationship between Magdalene and Jesus, with the song “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Jesus Christ Superstar (dir. Norman Jewison, 1973) giving famous voice to Magdalene’s dilemma. Investigations into writings beyond the New Testament have provided inspiration for filmmakers, including Denys Arcand (Jésus de Montréal, 1989) and Abel Ferrera (Mary, 2005). Ferrera co-wrote the script for Mary that focuses on an actress (played by Juliette Binoche) who is taking on the cinematic role of Magdalene (for a film within the film called This is My Blood). Her preparation for the part leads her to explore The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, an apocryphal text in which Magdalene enjoys a special status amongst the apostles, to the extent that one of them, named Levi, claims that Jesus “loved her more than us” (in Ehrman 2004, 175). Magdalene’s relationship with Jesus obviously reaches a more controversial apex in the “dream sequence” in The Last Temptation of Christ. Scorsese himself has argued that Jesus is tempted “to get married, make love to his wife and have children

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like an ordinary man” (in Middleton 2005, 157)—although the dream stretches beyond Magdalene’s death to include Jesus “living and fathering children in a relaxed ménage à trois” (Baugh 1997, 68) with the sisters of Lazarus. Evidently, it is in the area of sexuality that the most recent controversies surrounding Magdalene herself have come to the fore, with publications such as The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (Leigh/Baigent/Lincoln 1982) purporting to have uncovered information that reveals that Magdalene married Jesus and gave birth to his child. It is a theory that found a page-turning outlet in Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code (2003) and Ron Howard’s subsequent film adaptation of the same title in 2006. Despite the evident inaccuracies in Brown’s fictional tale, many of which have caused consternation for biblical scholars (see Ehrman 2004), The Da Vinci Code does raise questions about women’s status in the early church. The Miracle Maker (dir. Derek Hayes/Stanislav Sokolov, 2000), the BBC’s The Passion (2008) and The Bible TV mini-series (prod. Mark Burnett/Roma Downey, 2013) are highly unusual in their outward acceptance of Magdalene as a follower of Jesus without focusing on a former life of prostitution or adultery. In the wake of feminist and post-feminist arguments, the restoration of Magdalene to her status as a disciple of Jesus (rather than a reformed prostitute) is one step in the right direction.

Conclusion In an interview published in Christianity Today, the screenwriter of The Passion, Frank Deasy, said, “I’ve tried to find a human truth that feels real and that is not always the same as a theological truth, and so I would hope that people would be open to the fact they are watching a piece of drama rather than a theological treatise” (Christianity Today 2008). Yet it is clear that attempts to transpose the lives of the women of the gospels to the screen – particularly in the case of Mary and Magdalene – reveal the difficulties of marrying theology with artistic inspiration, especially when gender issues are added to the mix. Hollywood’s current enthusiasm for biblical tales (in the hope of replicating Gibson’s financial windfall with The Passion of the Christ) would appear to offer opportunities for creative representations of female biblical characters—although originality risks causing offense (as Godard and Scorsese could testify). Some of the more dynamic approaches to the Bible have come from beyond Los Angeles: the vibrant updating of the biblical narrative by Mark Dornford-May in South Africa; or the episodic structure of the BBC productions of the Nativity and Passion which strive to engage a television audience. However, New Testament cinematic adaptations face the danger of controversy when screenwriters move beyond the safety of Sola Scriptura, and additional questions will always have to be addressed when female figures enter the frame.

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Works Cited Bartunek, John. 2005. Inside the Passion: An Insider’s Look at The Passion of the Christ. West Chester, Pennsylvania: Ascension Press. Baugh, Lloyd. 1997. Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ-Figures in Film. Lanham: Sheed & Ward. Brown, Dan. 2003. The Da Vinci Code. New York: Doubleday. Christianity Today. 2008. “Interview: Frank Deasy, Writer of the Passion.” (February 17): http:// www.christiantoday.com/article/interview.frank.deasy.writer.of.the.passion/17431.htm; accessed February 5, 2015. Duricy, Michael. 2000. “Mary in Film. An Analysis of Cinematic Presentations of the Virgin Mary from 1897 – 1999: A Theological Appraisal of a Socio-Cultural Reality.” Thesis. University of Dayton. —. 2003. “The Life of the Virgin Mary in Film.” Ephemerides Mariologicae Vol. LIII – Fasc. III – IV. Pp. 479 – 88. —. 2011. “Mary in Film.” In New Catholic Encyclopedia Supplement. Ed. Robert L. Fastiggi. Detroit: Gale/Cengage Learning. Pp. 522 – 28. Ehrman, Bart D. 2004. Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code. New York: Oxford University Press. Elliott, J. K. 1993. The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Emmerich, Anne Catherine. 2003. The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ [1833]. El Sobrante, Calif.: North Bay Books. Gambero, Luigi. 1999. Mary and the Fathers of the Church: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. Geiger, Angelo Mary. 2006. “Standing Fast # 1: New Line Cinema’s The Nativity Story and the Virgin Birth.” Air Maria (December 1): http://airmaria.com/2006/12/01/new-line-cinemas-the nativity-story-and-the-virgin-birth/; accessed February 6, 2015. Hamington, Maurice. 1995. Hail Mary? The Struggle for Ultimate Womanhood in Catholicism. New York: Routledge. Haskins, Susan. 1993. Mary Magdalene: Myth and Metaphor. New York: Riverhead Books. Johnson, Elizabeth. 2003. Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints. New York: Continuum. Johnson, Timothy J. and Ottaviani-Jones, Barbara. 2014. “The Virgin Mary on Screen: Mater Dei or Just a Mother in Guido Chiesa’s Io Sono con Te (I Am with You).” Journal of Religion and Film: 18.1: http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol18/iss1/48; accessed February 5, 2015. Jones, Emma. 2014. “Jessica Chastain mulls breakthrough role as Salome.” BBC News (September 23): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-29327057; accessed February 5, 2015. Kinnard, Roy and Tim Davis. 1992. Divine Images: A History of Jesus on the Screen. New York: Citadel. Leigh, Richard, Michael Baigent, and Henry Lincoln. 1982. The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. London: Jonathan Cape. Locke, Maryel and Charles Warren, eds. 1993. Jean-Luc Godard’s Hail Mary: Women and the Sacred in Film. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Malone, Peter. 2012. Mary on Screen. Kensington, N.S.W.: Nelen Yubu Productions. Middleton, Darren J. N., ed. 2005. Scandalizing Jesus: Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ Fifty Years On. New York: Continuum. Mulvey, Laura. 1975. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16.3: 6 – 18. O’Brien, Catherine. 2011. The Celluloid Madonna: From Scripture to Screen. London: New York: Wallflower Press. Reinhartz, Adele. 2007. Jesus of Hollywood. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Roten, Johann. 2001. “Marie dans le Cinéma.” Études Mariales: Bulletin de la Société Française d’Études Mariales 58: 102 – 28. Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. 1994. In Memory of Her (Tenth Anniversary Edition). New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company. Stephenson, David. 2010. “Fury over BBC’s Nativity Insult.” Express (December 19): http://www.ex press.co.uk/news/uk/218290/Fury-over-BBC-s-Nativity-insult; accessed February 5, 2015. Telford, William. R. 2000. “Jesus and Women in Fiction and Film.” In Transformative Encounters: Jesus and Women Re-Viewed. Ed. Inge Rosa Kitzberger. Leiden: Brill. Pp. 353 – 81. Viner, Brian. 2010. “Last Night’s TV – The Nativity, BBC1.” The Independent (December 21): http:// www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/last-nights-tv-the-nativity-bbc1-comer ain-come-shine-itv1-2165446.html; accessed February 5, 2015. Zwick, Reinhold. 1997. “Maria im Film.” In Handbuch der Marienkunde. Ed. Wolfgang Beinert and Heinrich Petri. Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet. Pp. 270 – 317.

Films Cited The Bible (prod. Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, 2013, Lightworkers Media, US/UK). The Bible Collection [Jesus; TV miniseries] (dir. Roger Young, 1999, Lux Vide, CZ/IT/DE/US). Color of the Cross (dir. Jean Claude La Marre, 2006, Nu-Lite Entertainment, US). The Da Vinci Code (dir. Ron Howard, 2006, Columbia Pictures, US/MT/FR/UK). Ecce Homo [a.k.a. Golgotha; 1937 English dubbed version] (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1935, Ichtys Film, FR). El mártir del Calvario [a.k.a. The Martyr of Calvary] (dir. Miguel Morayta, 1952, Oro Films, MX). From the Manger to the Cross [a.k.a. Jesus of Nazareth] (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1912, Kalem, US). Gli amici di Gesú – Giuseppe di Nazareth [a.k.a. Close to (Friends of) Jesus: Joseph of Nazareth; TV miniseries] (dir. Raffaele Mertes, 2000, Lux Vide, IT). Gli amici di Gesú – Maria Magdalena [a.k.a. Close to (Friends of) Jesus: Mary Magdalene; TV miniseries] (dir. Raffaele Mertes and Elisabetta Marchetti, 2000, Lux Vide, IT/DE. The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1965, United Artists, US). Il messia [a.k.a. The Messiah] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1975, Orizzonte 2000, IT/FR). Il vangelo secondo Matteo [a.k.a. The Gospel According to St. Matthew] (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964, Arco Film, IT/FR). Io sono con te [a.k.a. Let It Be] (dir. Guido Chiesa, 2010, Colorado Film Production/Magda Film, IT). Je vous salue, Marie [a.k.a. Hail Mary] (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1985 Sara Films, Pégase Films, JLG Films, FR/CH/UK). Jesus [a.k.a. The Jesus Film] (dir. Peter Sykes and John Krish, 1979, Jesus Film Project, US). Jesus Christ Superstar (dir. Norman Jewison, 1973, Universal, US). Jésus de Montréal [a.k.a. Jesus of Montreal] (dir. Denys Arcand, 1989, Centre National de la Cinématographie, CA/FR). Jesus of Nazareth (dir. Franco Zeffirelli, 1977, Incorporated Television Company, IT/UK). Karunamayudu [“Man of Compassion,” a.k.a. Daya Sagar or “Ocean of Mercy”] (dir. A. Bheem Singh, 1978, IN). The King of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1927, DeMille Pictures Corporation, US). King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961, MGM, US). La sacra famiglia [a.k.a. The Holy Family] (dir. Raffaele Mertes, 2006, Fidia Film/RTI, IT). La vida de nuestro señor Jesucristo [a.k.a. The Life of Jesus Christ] (dir. Miguel Zacarias, 1980, Panorama Films/Zach Motion Pictures Inc., MX).

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La vie et passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ [a.k.a. The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ] (dir. Ferdinand Zecca and Lucien Nonguet, 1902 – 05, 1907, Pathé Frères, FR). The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988, Universal, US/CA). Maria di Nazaret [a.k.a. Mary of Nazareth] (dir. Giacomo Campiotti, 2012, Lux Vide, DE/IT). Maria, figlia del suo figlio [a.k.a. Maria, Daughter of Her Son] (dir. Fabrizio Costa, 2000, Canale 5, IT). María Magdalena, pecadora de Magdala [a.k.a. Mary Magdalene, Sinner of Magdala] (dir. Miguel Contreras Torres, 1946, Hispano Continental Films, MX). Marie de Nazareth [a.k.a. Mary of Nazareth] (dir. Jean Delannoy, 1995, Belvision, FR/BE/MA). Mary (dir. Abel Ferrera, 2005, Wild Bunch, IT/FR/US). Mary and Joseph, A Story of Faith (dir. Eric Till, Lorimar Productions, 1979, CA/DE/IL). Mary, Mother of Jesus (dir. Kevin Connor, 1999, Hallmark Entertainment, US). Mater Dei (dir. Emilio Cordero, 1950, Incar, IT). The Miracle Maker (dir. Derek Hayes and Stanislav Sokolov, 2000, BBC. UK/RU). The Nativity (dir. Bernard L. Kowalski, 1978, Twentieth Century Fox, US). The Nativity (dir. Coky Giedroyc, 2010, Red Planet Pictures, US/CA). The Nativity Story (dir. Catherine Hardwicke, 2006, New Line Cinema, US). The Passion (dir. Michael Offer, 2008, BBC, UK). The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004, Icon Productions, US). Per amore, solo per amore [a.k.a. For Love, Only For Love] (dir. Giovanni Veronesi, 1993, Filmauro, IT). Pietà (dir. Kim Ki-duk, 2013, Good Film, KR). Salomé (dir. J. Gordon Edwards, 1918, Fox Film Corporation, US). Salome (dir. William Dieterle, 1953, Columbia Pictures, US). Salomé (dir. Al Pacino, 2013, Salome Productions, US). Son of Man (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2006, Spier Films, ZA). Un bambino di nome Gesù [a.k.a. A Child Called Jesus] (dir. Franco Rossi, 1987, Reteitalia, IT/DE). The Visual Bible: The Gospel According to Matthew (dir. Regardt van den Bergh, 1993, Visual Bible, ZA). The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John (dir. Philip Saville, 2003, Visual Bible, CA/US).

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27 Judas as Portrayed in Film There is a tension between biblical scholarship and theological interests. This becomes apparent in the figure of Judas Iscariot. Arie W. Zwiep, Dutch New Testament and Hermeneutics scholar notes, “Tell me what you think of Judas, and I will tell you what your exegetical method and your theological convictions are” (Zwiep 2010, 98). When considering the Judas figure in film, one can see his cinematic portrayal differs from the literary portrayals recorded in the Christian gospels.¹ Richard Walsh correctly notes that: While some films vastly improve the Judas story by adding plot connection and amplifying Judas’ character, they testify to the continuing power of Christian discourse. Jesus films retell the gospel, visualise the tradition, modernize Judas, and create new Christian myths. (Walsh 2006, 37)

This essay considers how Judas is portrayed in film and the theological implications of these variations. One approach to studying and measuring change in film is to follow a chronological framework in which films are viewed and studied in the order of their production (Stern 1999, 4, 10). This chapter considers twenty-one films that cover the period from 1902 to 2006. The films are: 1.

La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (dir. Ferdinand Zecca/Lucien Nouguet, 1902– 05, 1907) 2. La vie du Christ [a.k.a La naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ] (dir. Alice Guy, 1906) 3. From the Manger to the Cross (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1912) 4. Christus (dir. Giulio Antamora, 1916) 5. Blade af Satans Bog [a.k.a. Leaves from Satan’s Book] (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1920) 6. The Kings of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1927) 7. Ecce Homo [a.k.a. Golgotha] (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1935) 8. María Magdalena, pecadora de Magdala (dir. Miguel Contreras Torres, 1946) 9. I Beheld His Glory (dir. John T. Coyle, 1952) 10. El martir del Calvario (dir. Miguel Morayta Martinez, 1952) 11. Day of Triumph (dir. John T. Coyle/Irving Pichel, 1954)

 Judas is mentioned in the following gospel passages The call of the disciples: Mark : – a; Matt. : – ; Luke : – ; John : – . Anointing at Bethany: Mark : – ; Matt. : – ; John : – . Judas makes a deal with the Jewish authorities: Mark : – , ; Matt. : – ; Luke : – . The Last Supper: Mark : – ; Matt. : – ; Luke : – ,  – ; John : – . Gethsemane and Jesus’ arrest: Mark : – ; Matt. : – ; Luke : – ; John : – ; : – . Judas returns money and hangs himself: Matt. : – ; Acts : – .

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King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961) Il vangelo secondo Matteo (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964) The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1965) Jesus, nuestro Señor (dir. Miquel Zacarías, 1972) Godspell: A Musical Based on the Gospel According to St. Matthew (dir. David Greene, 1973) Jesus Christ Superstar (dir. Norman Jewison, 1973) Jesus of Nazareth (dir. Franco Zeffirelli, 1977) The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988) Jesus (dir. Roger Young, 1999) Color of the Cross (dir. Jeane-Claude Le Marre, 2006).

I have chosen to focus on one incident in the Judas narrative – the Last Supper – for the following four reasons.² First, the Last Supper is included in all twenty-one films. Second, the Last Supper scene is pivotal to the Passion narrative and is of fundamental importance to Christian theology. Third, this scene is restricted to one location, enabling deeper focus in a mise-en-scène analysis. Fourth, the diverse representations of the Last Supper in these films raise significant theological questions. By analyzing chronologically twenty-one Jesus films dating from 1902 to 2006, it is evident that there has there has been a dramatic shift in focus during the last hundred years in interpreting Judas in film. Generally speaking, two distinct theologies have emerged, ‘rejection’ and ‘acceptance’. The eight films between 1902 and 1946 follow Christianity’s traditional evaluation of Judas as a stereotypical Jewish villain and reveal a theology of rejection. Throughout the history of Christianity, Judas Iscariot has usually been regarded with deep suspicion and loathing. His notoriety began with the gospel writers labeling him as “the one who betrayed Jesus” (Meyer 2007, 1). By the tenth century, Judas had become the “incarnation of evil” (Klauck 1987, 17). The Middle Ages, with its flourishing of creative arts, was a time of morbid fascination for the figure of Judas, especially the horrendous punishment that was meted out to him (Sullivan 1998, 93). Often, Judas’ treachery was taken to symbolize the condemnation accorded to all Jews for their supposed culpability in killing Jesus.³ In silent films, Judas is easily identified by his exaggerated semitic facial features, skin color, sinister actions, and dark clothing. Judas contrasts the other disciples who are pious and of European stock. Rejection of Judas – and the Jews as a whole – is evident in his vilification in the first half-century of Jesus film tradition. However, the ten films from 1961 to 2006 elevate Judas to a freedom fighter, social mouthpiece, martyr, and even a hero: a theology of acceptance becomes the  It should be noted that Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ () is not discussed in this chapter, although it does include an interesting portrayal of Judas, as the film does not meet with the analysis criteria for the Last Supper scene. This film will be addressed briefly in the conclusion of the chapter.  For further discussion of antisemitism in film, see Reinhartz’s chapter in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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norm. In these films, Judas acknowledges Jesus as the Messiah and his actions are seen as fulfilling a predestined role. In the three Jesus films between 1946 and 1961 there was what I label a ‘transition’ period when there is a softening of the vitriol against Judas, though he is still viewed with suspicion. In this essay, the theological implications of these three viewpoints – rejection, transition, and acceptance – are revealed.⁴

Theology of Rejection (1902 – 1946) Five examples of rejection, especially as viewed in the Last Supper scene, have been identified and related to a theology of rejection of Judas.

Rejection of Jesus as Messiah In the early silent film Christus, Jesus enters Jerusalem to shouts of “Hosannah!” Judas, filled with hatred and anger (the audience is not privy to reasons for these emotions), breaks his staff over his knee, symbolically severing his allegiance to Jesus and the Church. He throws the two pieces to the ground and is shocked to see that the pieces land in a cruciform. He deliberately stamps on the pieces to destroy the image. With arms crossed and shoulders slouched, Judas glares defiantly at the camera. Clearly, this film depicts a Judas who rejects Jesus’ Messiahship. The rejection of Jesus as Messiah may be depicted in cinematic versions of the Last Supper in four ways: (1) Judas’ bargaining with the chief priests, (2) his position at the table, (3) his ‘body language’, and (4) the manner in which he exits the supper.

1 Judas’ bargaining with the chief priests Judas’ initial rejection of Jesus is in his making a deal with the chief priests to ‘betray’ Jesus. The gospels are vague and inconsistent regarding the specific motivation for Judas’ actions and why he became involved with the Temple hierarchy. However, in films up to the 1950s his motives are identified as ‘seeking revenge’, ‘looking for financial gain’, ‘personal greed’, and ‘the influence of Satan’. The silent films From the Manger to the Cross and The King of Kings accentuate the motivation of greed – not just of Judas but also of the chief priests. In From the Manger to the Cross, we see the negotiating priest discreetly gesturing with his open hands: his offer is twenty pieces of silver. Judas responds by clenching and opening his hands three times: Judas wants thirty. There is much discussion among the priests. The price must be considered a bargain because the negotiator is also rub Many historical permutations of the Judas story, most especially in literature, are examined at length by Paffenroth (). Also see Walsh ().

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bing his hands together in delight. The price is settled. A very sinister looking Judas rubs his chin, his eyes dart wildly, and he wrings his hands together, expressing both his pleasure and his greed. In DeMille’s The King of Kings we observe Judas and Caiaphas haggling over the fee, their deliberate counting of each coin (apparently neither Judas nor Caiaphas trust one another); and Caiaphas’ satisfaction and delight expressed in the stroking of his long beard and rubbing his hands together. Christus introduces via an intertitle a new motive: “The Hatred of Judas who now sought the opportunity to betray him [Jesus].” Satan also appears before Judas enters the priest’s house and again when he leaves. Satan’s goading and Judas’ hallucination of the coins turning into droplets of blood condemn the latter as evil and reinforce his complicity in the death of Jesus. The inclusion of the devil figure also underpins “the identification of the Jew with the devil—and of the devil with the Jew” (Nicholls 1993, 240). This interaction between Judas and Satan reiterates “the image of the Jews as irredeemably evil: ‘Christ-killers’, ‘children of the devil’, ‘agents of Satan’, ritual murderers, and a menace to Christianity” (Perry/Schweitzer 2008, xviii).

Fig. 52: Satan appears to Judas in Christus (1916)

These three films – From the Manger to the Cross, Christus, and The King of Kings – also include in this one incident the three main characterizations of antisemitism: (1) the accusation of deicide – the belief that Jews rejected and killed the Son of God, (2) “the suspicion of disloyalty” and “treachery,” and (3) “the assumption

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that Jews have a unique, and uniquely evil, relationship to money – that they will sacrifice all other interests in the pursuit of wealth” (Foxman 2010, 153).

2 Judas’ position at the table The early Jesus films were tableau shots. Camera immobility and action within the frame, restricted where Jesus and his disciples sat at the Last Supper table. Seating Judas in front of the table and across from Jesus was a standard position, as in Zecca and Nonguet’s La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, Guy’s La vie du Christ, and Olcott’s From the Manger to the Cross. By having both Judas and Jesus within the frame, the audience could observe their actions and more importantly, their interactions, simultaneously. Their closeness also made possible handing the sop or dipping the bread. Situating Judas in front of the table while the others sit behind it visually expresses Judas’ isolation by setting him apart from the group. The table acts as a barrier to Judas, and implies that Judas is now an ‘outsider’. Positioning Judas in front of the table with his back to Jesus clearly signifies his rejection of his former master.

3 Judas’ body language Body language, particularly in silent films, is an important feature in characterization. Again, in the three earliest films – La vie et la passion de Jésus Christ, La vie du Christ, and From the Manger to the Cross – Judas is easily distinguished from the other eleven disciples by his body language. At the supper, Judas sits with his back to the table placing him in full view of the audience. He appears disinterested or distracted. Whatever the reason, Judas’ body language suggests that he does not want to be there. Not only has he separated himself from the group, he only pretends to eat the bread and drink the wine, which highlights his aversion to share in the supper. It is only when Jesus points to Judas and calls him by name that the latter’s attention is gained. His feigned shock emphasises his duplicity. His grandiose departure reveals Judas’ contempt for Jesus. Judas does sit next to Jesus in Ecce Homo, but, when Jesus begins to speak to him, he quickly turns away and pretends to be in deep conversation with the disciple seated on his other side. Judas’ look of disinterest augments rejection. In The King of Kings, Judas rests his chin in his hands, appears bored, giving the impression that he does not want to be at the supper, and that he is only biding his time to betray Jesus. Similarly, in Dreyer’s Blade af Satans Bog, his slumped demeanor, nervous crumbling of pieces of matzot, and obliviousness to what Jesus is saying suggest that Judas’ thoughts are elsewhere. The most telling example of ‘body language’ indicating rejection of Jesus as Messiah is in Christus. Judas is standing behind Jesus, having taken the bread from him. Jesus reaches out to bless him, but Judas cowers to avoid Jesus’ touch. He is willing

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Fig. 53: Judas, biding his time at the Last Supper in The King of Kings (1927)

to take the bread (though not to eat), yet he refuses this public display of Jesus’ affection. The meaning is clear: Judas – representing the Jews (despite the unacknowledged Jewishness of Jesus and the Eleven) – rejects the person of Jesus and all that he stands for.

4 Judas’ exit from the Last Supper Unlike John’s gospel, the Synoptics do not mention Judas’ departure from the Last Supper. This gives the film director artistic and creative licence. Six of the eight films up to 1946 show Judas leaving the Last Supper. Among these early films,

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only From the Manger to the Cross and María Magdalena, pecadora de Magdala do not show Judas’ departure although it is implied, as he is not present for the distribution of the bread and wine. An extremely dramatic exit is included in Guy’s La vie du Christ where Judas flees in terror after seeing a “suffering servant” vision: a half-naked Jesus wearing a crown of thorns, holding a reed sceptre, and bearing the marks of crucifixion. A dark cloak is draped across his shoulders and three angels surround him. Judas approaches the table as though he wants to speak to Jesus but the apparition is too frightening. He tries to block it out by covering his eyes with his arm, but to no avail. The other disciples, who are not privy to the vision, watch Judas’ odd behavior in bewilderment. A terrified and confused Judas backs away from the table and hurriedly leaves the room. His running away represents Christianity’s traditional (and historically inaccurate) accusation against the Jews as a whole for their refusal to accept Jesus as the hoped-for Messiah. In this film, Judas is depicted as the one who “despised and rejected” God’s chosen servant, Jesus – to whom early Christian interpretation applied the prophet Isaiah’s idea of the ‘suffering servant’ (Isa. 53:4– 9; Matt. 8:17; Acts 8:32– 35; 1 Pet. 2: 22– 25). In contrast to such a dramatic departure, Christus has Judas sneaking out of the room when Jesus elevates the chalice. Not even the extraordinary appearance of a hovering white dove above the chalice halts his departure. We know from the scene following that Judas’ exiting at this point in the Last Supper was to meet with the Sanhedrin. The question is why was Judas present for Jesus’ proclamation “This is my body,” but left before Jesus claimed the wine to be his blood? Perhaps the director used this opportunity, while the disciples and Jesus were focused on the chalice, to enable Judas to leave unnoticed. It seems more likely that the reference to blood would be a reminder that Jesus’ death was caused by Judas’ betrayal. Again, the film condemns Judas as the one who rejected Jesus. A notable feature of Judas’ departure in both Blade af Satans Bog and The King of Kings is the importance placed on Judas closing the door. In both films when Judas departs, he opens the door, looks back at those gathered at the table, and closes the door after him. It would seem that Judas’ closing the door was to prevent the Messiah from entering. Traditionally those celebrating the Passover would symbolically open a door so the prophet Elijah could enter, heralding the advent of the Messiah. As the door was already shut, the director could also be implying that waiting for the Messiah was futile because he has already arrived in the person of Jesus. Judas’ turning to look at Jesus before closing the door, could be reinforcing Judas’ decision to reject Jesus as the Messiah; and thus also bringing to an end his own discipleship.

The Dismissal of Judas at the Institution of the Eucharist The gospels are inconsistent in reporting when or even if Judas leaves the supper. However, Christianity developed “a tradition of Judas’ dismissal at the Last Supper

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when it formalised the institution of the Eucharist in the last years of the second century” (Hein, 1970 – 1971, 228). The implication was that the one who betrayed Jesus could not have participated in the most holy sacrament of the Church. Film depictions have Judas leaving before, during, or after the institution of the Eucharist. In the Last Supper scene, Judas is the one who is rejected. This rejection may be represented by the following motifs: (1) Judas is identified as the one who will betray Jesus, (2) Jesus expels him from the Last Supper, and (3) through the disciples’ responses and reactions.

1 Judas identified as the betrayer The identification of the betrayer takes different forms in Jesus films, and the declaration is made at varying times during the supper. Instead of identifying Judas directly, the gospel writers heightened the tension by having Jesus provide clues to the betrayer’s identity. Film directors also apply the same ploy but they have the advantage of being able to utilize the ‘clues’ provided by all four gospels. Therefore, in film versions of the Last Supper, the following statements identify Jesus’ betrayer: “The one who is eating with me” (Mark 14:18); “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me” (Mark 14:20); “The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me” (Matt. 26:23); “The one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table” (Luke 22:21). The vagueness of the ‘clue’ may well mean that the betrayer might be any of the disciples as each of the ‘clues’ could have been applied to any of them. Regardless of which statement is used to identify Judas, pinpointing this betrayer at the Last Supper “illuminates the abrupt shift from table fellowship to enmity” (Theissen 1991, 168). This animosity is verbalised in Jesus’ following condemnation: “For the Son of Man goes as is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been born” (Mark 14:21; Matt. 26:24). Judas’ role as betrayer is demonized even further by Jesus’ claim, that this person is utterly damned.

2 Judas expelled from the Last Supper The change from fellowship to enmity is apparent in La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ. This silent film had no intertitles and yet the manner in which Jesus glares at Judas, leaves no doubt in the viewers’ minds that Jesus is incensed. What follows is the most dramatic filmic representation of Judas’ expulsion from the supper. Jesus stands, points to Judas, extends his arm, and then points to the door. Judas cannot ignore this command. He reluctantly rises from his seat but then defiantly turns his back on Jesus and leaves the room. Similarly, From the Manger to the Cross has Jesus rising to his feet and staring at Judas. Although there are no words, or exaggerated arm gestures, Judas realises that he is condemned. He stoops to pick up his sandals, with the scene changing just as he is about to leave the room.

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Judas’ shock at being identified as the betrayer is intensified by Jesus’ command to him, “That thou doest, do quickly!” (John 13:27). This command, given in three of the films – Blade af Satans Bog, The King of Kings, and Ecce Homo – is significant in that Judas acts only when instructed to do so by Jesus (Fallon 2005, 243). George Steiner argues that the gospel’s literary accounts of Judas’ speedy departure from the Last Supper and into the night unfortunately “sealed the fate of the Jews in Christian history.” Judas goes into a never-ending night of collective guilt. It is the sober truth to say that his exit is the door to the Shoah. The ‘final solution’ proposed, enacted by National Socialism in this twentieth century is the perfectly logical, axiomatic conclusion to the Judas-identification with the Jew. […] That utter darkness, that night within night, into which Judas is dispatched and commanded to perform ‘quickly’, is already that of the death ovens. Who, precisely, has betrayed whom? (quoted in Cohen 2007, 260)

3 The disciples reject Judas Jesus is not the only one at the Last Supper to reject Judas; the eleven disciples do likewise. This rejection however is not verbal but is expressed in their body language. When Judas exits the room in Blade af Satans Bog, Jesus and all the disciples watch him leave. Some stand on stools to ensure a better view; some crane their necks. Even as Judas turns to close the door behind him, a point-of-view shot shows the disciples still watching him. What is revealing is that not one of the disciples speaks or attempts to prevent Judas from going to betray Jesus. The reason for this could be that they are portrayed as the righteous in contrast to Judas as the sinner. However, Gordon Allport argues that Judas is being set up as a ‘scapegoat’, heaping upon him the disciples’ frustrations and failures: […] prejudice grows out of personal frustration, which in turn generates aggressive feelings. When this aggression cannot be directed against the real cause of the frustration, the aggression is displaced onto relatively defenceless ‘scapegoats.’ This displaced hostility is then rationalized and justified by blaming, projecting, and stereotyping. (Allport 2001, 109 – 11)

In Duvivier’s Ecce Homo, Judas is clearly no longer part of the group: he is an outsider. His rejection at the Last Supper is made more pitiable by his watching the group from outside the supper room. Judas becomes the exemplar for “closed reception” and “worthy reception” and the Christian belief that only the faithful are welcome at Holy Communion. This view had its origin in the first-century Didache, the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles: “[And] let no one eat or drink from your eucharist except those baptised in the name of [the] Lord, for the Lord has likewise said concerning this: ‘Do not give what is holy to the dogs’” (Did. 9.5). Setting apart believers from non-believers came to be known as closed communion with non-believers identified (without concern for political correctness) as:

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[…] heretics, catechumens, those not in fellowship with the church, those who were mentally incompetent, and those under church discipline were dismissed from the sanctuary. The doors were closed, and then, and only then, the Sacrament was celebrated. The call went out to the faithful, ‘The holy things for the holy ones.’ (Taylor 2000)

Judas is portrayed in early Jesus films as a non-believer because he aligned himself with Jewish religious leaders, refused Jesus’ blessing, and betrayed the Messiah.

Judas’ Rejection of Partaking of the Bread and Wine One way in which to convince the viewing audience of Judas’ duplicity and his mockery of ‘Holy Communion’ is to have Judas present during the institution of the Eucharist but not to partake of the meal by choice. This occurs in La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ; La vie du Christ; From the Manger to the Cross; Christus; The Kings of Kings; and María Magdalena, pecadora de Magdala. These films show Judas going to extraordinary means to avoid eating the bread. He craftily places it next to him on the seat (La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ); he slides the bread into his cloak and pretends to eat it when he returns to his place at the table (Christus). He lets the bread slip between his fingers – first having checked that no one is watching him (The King of Kings). He uses similar tactics when he is passed the cup. Judas’ pretense in drinking the wine is deliberate. In La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, Judas reaches across the table to take the cup, holds it to his lips, and then tips the contents on the floor. The audience sees this because Judas is in front of the table, which blocks the view of Jesus and of the disciples. In a pre-Vatican II era when Roman Catholic priests “were required to keep the fingers that touched the host joined (lest a particle drop unnoticed) until they were rinsed after communion” (Martos 2001, 237), Catholic viewers would have considered Judas’ actions sacrilegious. For Protestant viewers, it is at least disrespectful. Judas brings judgment against himself because he receives communion in an ‘unworthy manner’ (1 Cor. 11:27– 29). He does not acknowledge the sacredness of the bread and wine. He came to the Last Supper without ‘true faith’ and with knowledge that he had sinned and that he was going to sin again. In The King of Kings, DeMille juxtaposes the actions of Judas with those of Peter, illustrating the differences between “worthy” and “unworthy reception.” Where Judas reluctantly takes the matzot from Jesus, snaps off a piece and casually passes the remainder on to the disciple next to him, Peter cradles the matzot, then carefully and reverently breaks off a small piece for himself before he gently passes the rest on, keeping his eyes fixed on the bread. Judas chooses not to eat but lets the matzot drop from his fingers and onto his lap. Peter hesitates before piously placing the piece in his mouth. By fixing his gaze on Jesus, Peter seems to have gained an understanding of the significance of eating the bread. When Judas is passed the chalice, panic overcomes him. The chalice in his hand is like a cup of poison and rather

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than drink from it, he rebelliously places it on the table. Peter on the other hand takes hold of the chalice as though it is a precious object, careful not to spill the sacred wine. Again, his gaze is fixed on Jesus. Having drunk from the chalice, Peter holds it close against his breast and then passes it on, ensuring not to spill it. DeMille has transformed onto film the teaching of Saint Augustine that “Peter was the biblical exemplar for the church, while Judas, the betrayer, represented the Jews” (Stammer 2000). Judas’ unworthiness to receive “communion” is confirmed by early Christian theologians. Thus John Chrysostom (347– 407) in his “Homily 82 on Matthew 26:26 – 28” uses the example of “the blindness of the traitor” [Judas] to warn against receiving Christ’s body and blood in an unworthy manner or under the guise of being part of the faithful: Let no one communicate who is not of the disciples. Let no Judas receive, lest he suffer the fate of Judas. This multitude also is Christ’s body. Take heed, therefore, you that ministerest at the mysteries, lest you provoke the Lord, not purging this body. Give not a sword instead of meat.

Chrysostom in this warning removes Judas from the list of the disciples, uses his name metaphorically to describe “traitors,” and considers that Judas is an exemplar of how Christians ought not to act.

Rejection of Judaism As Judas is often perceived symbolically as the representative of Judaism as a whole, it is important to comment on how rejection of Judaism is represented in the Last Supper scenes. Christianity originated in a Jewish environment and inherited many of its liturgical practices from Judaism (Bradshaw 2002, 23). According to the synoptic gospels, the Last Supper was a Jewish Passover or Seder meal. When Christianity reinterprets the Passover meal as a Christian Eucharist, Jesus becomes a pseudoChristian priest and focus is placed on a new Christian covenant. Early filmmakers, in most cases, followed the Christian tradition choosing to ignore that Jesus was Jewish and that the Last Supper was originally a Seder or Passover meal. Jewish Passover meals are family celebrations. In the early Jesus films, only Jesus and his disciples share the meal. The table resembles a Christian altar with its white cloth and focus on bread and cup/chalice. Only the film Ecce Homo follows Jewish Passover tradition by serving a whole roasted lamb for the meal. Because there is no mention in the gospels about the lamb, the focus shifts to Jesus’ own body and blood (Pitre 2011, 48 – 76). Jesus’ actions, notably in Christus and The King of Kings, are similar to those of a priest’s during the consecration of bread and wine in the Mass. The appearance of a white dove at the epiclesis – invoking the Holy Spirit to consecrate the bread and wine – stamps the meal with a Christian imprimatur. The Passover meal traditionally concludes with the singing of a hymn (Matt. 26:30; Mark 14:26) but Blade af Satans Bog is the only early film to include this.

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The Passover celebrates God’s covenant with Abraham, the Exodus from Egypt, and the entry into the promised land of Canaan. The early church adopts the language of ‘New Covenant’ to describe the Last Supper (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25). The King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer translated this as ‘New Testament’. In From the Manger of the Cross and The King of Kings, the term ‘New Testament’ is used. The implication is that Jesus/Christianity supersedes Judaism: an overt rejection of Judaism.

Transition Stage (1950s) The 1950s can be described as a transitional stage where filmmakers began to be more conscious of negative portrayals of Judas and the Jews.⁵ World War II images of the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps and the disturbing reports of genocide against the Jewish race resulted in filmmakers’ reticence in portraying Judas, Jews, and Judaism in a negative light. Simultaneously, biblical scholars began to focus more intentionally on the Jewishness of Jesus and his early followers. Therefore, in this decade, the portrayal of Judas became problematic for film producers. The 1950s Jesus films show considerable evolution of the Judas character. At first, he was almost omitted from the story. In I Beheld His Glory (dir. John T. Coyle, 1952), Judas has a minimal role in this film. He is never called Iscariot and is mentioned only twice. The first reference to him is in the opening scene when Cornelius reports on the welfare of the disciples after Jesus’ crucifixion, “All but one is well: Judas of Kerioth who died by his own hand.” Kerioth, a town in Judah (Jer. 48:24, 41; Amos 2:2), was thought to be Judas’ birthplace (Donahue/Harrington 2002, 125), but audiences could easily have missed the connection between Kerioth and Iscariot. When Judas leaves the supper, Cornelius describes him as “the one who slipped out to betray Jesus.” No motive for the betrayal is given, but, when questioned by those listening to his story as to why “the one” was not stopped, Cornelius explains: Each man loved Jesus so dearly that the very thought of betrayal seemed impossible. Besides the one who went out was so well trusted that he had been chosen as the keeper of their purse and they assumed that he was going to pay for the food they had eaten or to give alms to the poor.

Judas plays such a minor role in the film that the actor is not even credited. He is seen only at the Last Supper and at Gethsemane, where he speaks his only word

 Earlier filmmakers were not oblivious to this problem. Olcott and DeMille, for example, made some alterations to their movies in response to protests by Jewish organizations (Tatum ,  – ). However, both of these films (and most others prior to the s) continue to present Judas and Caiaphas as greedy and unsympathetic characters. Insofar as these characters are often considered representative of Judaism as a whole, these films preserve negative depictions of Judaism. See Reinhartz’s chapter in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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in the film, “Master,” as he identifies Jesus. It is in Jesus’ response that we hear “Judas, is it with a kiss that you betray the Son of Man?” (Luke 22:48). Although Judas plays a small part in the film, his role is highly significant and has enormous theological implications. His role is not that of a sinner but of one who is acting out the task assigned to him by God. He is faithfully fulfilling God’s plan and thus cannot be condemned by his actions. There is little to identify Judas or to distinguish him from the other disciples. By not identifying Judas specifically, it is thus possible for Judas to have been a welcome and active participant of the Lord’s Supper. It is significant that it is only when Jesus declares that the hand of the betrayer is on the table that Judas removes his hands from the table – identifying himself as the betrayer – and rises from his seat. Jesus’ declaration is the signal for Judas to leave the room. It is as if Judas and Jesus had pre-planned the event. Judas had no need to ask if he was the betrayer or feign ignorance. The implication of these omissions or changes to the gospel accounts could be that Judas was not acting alone but with the assent of Jesus. This is reinforced by Jesus’ claim that “the Son of Man is going as it has been determined.” Judas is a mere pawn in a greater theological drama. Judas’ role evolves further in Day of Triumph (dir. John T. Coyle/Irving Pichel, 1954). Again, he is not the villain but a leading member of the Zealots. As the narrative focuses on the forthcoming religious uprising, Judas’ role is significantly larger than that of Jesus. Stereotypical Jewish traits are not evident in Judas’ character. His loyalty to Jesus may have been questionable, but his concern for Jesus’ safety is commendable. Although surrounded by an angry crowd calling for Jesus’ crucifixion, Judas calls for the release of the Nazarene. This act results in a fellow Zealot attacking Judas. Judas in this film represents the vociferous protestor representing innocent victims of oppression in a context of political intrigue. Similarly, in the 1952 film El mártir del Calvario, Judas also plays the part of a Zealot who believes that Jesus is the Messiah come to bring about social revolution to an oppressed people under Roman tyranny. Director Martinez presents a Judas who breaks the stereotypical filmic Judas Iscariot mold: Judas “actually looks the part of a 1950s hero” (Poems 2009). Moreover, he marvels at Jesus’ miracles and listens intently to his teachings. He is Jesus’ avid supporter and confidant and is the first of the disciples to recognise Jesus’ mission. Judas is the only disciple who attends Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin and the only person to defend Jesus’ actions. In these three films of the 1950s, we witness a change in the role and portrayal of Judas. He is no longer the stereotypical greedy villain. Judas is a victim who displays heroic traits. His actions, words, and even his physical appearance and costume support this transition. Filmmakers in the 1950s were attempting to exonerate the disciple who ‘betrayed’ Jesus and who had traditionally been depicted as synonymous with Judaism. However, their enthusiasm to exonerate Judas did not extend to their portrayals of all Jews and Judaism. There still needed to be a villain in the story; film narratives need an antagonist. The role was placed onto the Sanhedrin. This Jewish group be-

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came the collective villains, the ones to blame for the death of Jesus. Although filmmakers of the 1950s were alert to the dangers of antisemitism and, to this end, made dramatic changes to the way in which Judas was portrayed, it appears that they were not prepared to making sweeping changes to the traditional story of Jesus of Nazareth. In this light, the 1950s can be considered a transitional stage.

Theology of Acceptance (1961 – 2006) Jesus films made after the Second World War and post-Holocaust tend to portray Judas, Jews, and Judaism in a more positive light. The public release of documentary footage, following the liberation of Nazi concentration camps in 1945, showed the true barbarism of Adolf Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’. It also dramatically affected how Christians related to their Jewish neighbors and raised questions regarding how Christian antisemitism might have contributed towards the murder of millions of European Jews. In particular, Christian theologians and scholars began to re-examine those gospel ‘texts of terror’ that vilify the Jews. They also reconsidered the role of Judas Iscariot as ‘the betrayer’ or the representative of all Jews tainted with killing the man Christians consider the Son of God. The 1965 Papal Encyclical, Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”) changed the Church’s approach to Jews and Judaism, including repudiating deicide charges against all Jews, and encouraging theological and biblical dialogue between Catholics and Jews. Boggs and Petrie correctly note, “[F]ilm does not create new truths for society for it cannot reshape a society that is not ready for change” (Boggs/Petrie 2008, 516). The Holocaust was that catalyst for change and film followed by amending its portrayal of Judas, Jews, and Judaism in new and enlightened ways. These developments gave rise to a new theology of acceptance that becomes evident in cinematic portrayals of Judas from the 1960s forward. In the ten films in this period (1961– 2006), six expressions of acceptance are identified.

Acceptance of Jesus as Messiah In Nicholas Ray’s 1961 King of Kings, Jesus does not call Judas to follow him. Rather Judas asks to become his disciple after he is stirred by Jesus’ compassion and authoritative nature when dealing with the woman accused of adultery. In George Stevens’s 1965 The Greatest Story Ever Told, Judas is baptized by John in the Jordan River. This unique filmic portrayal presents Judas preparing for the coming of the Messiah by repentance and being baptised (Matt. 3:1– 12; Mark 1:1– 8; Luke 3:1– 20). When Jesus returns to the Jordan, Judas is the first to ask to follow Jesus and is the first person Jesus accepts as his disciple. He is no longer the last disciple to be called. Similarly, in Zacarías’s 1972 Jesús, neustro Señor, Judas actively pursues Jesus and asks to join the other disciples after he hears Jesus speak in the synagogue and declare, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). Recogniz-

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ing Jesus as the Messiah, Judas in Zeffirelli’s 1977 mini-series, Jesus of Nazareth, seeks out Jesus to offer him his services.

Acceptance of Judas, Betrayer and Sinner Jesus’ recognition of Judas’ part in his life is highlighted at the public calling of the disciples from a crowd of followers in Roger Young’s 1999 mini-series, Jesus. Although Jesus knows that Judas will betray him, he publicly shows his acceptance of him. He even commissions Judas as a disciple by kissing Judas on the cheek, thus reversing the kiss of betrayal at Gethsemane. The inference is that if Jesus displays such benevolence towards Judas, then should not we also do the same? Although Christianity espouses Jesus’ message and second great commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39), two thousand years of tradition show that Judas and the Jews had not generally been afforded this love.

Acceptance of Judas’ Presence at the Institution of the Eucharist Six of the ten films from 1961 to 2006 have Judas present throughout the Lord’s Supper: Pasolini’s Il vangelo secondo Matteo; Stevens’s The Greatest Story Ever Told; Jewison’s Jesus Christ Superstar; Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ; Young’s Jesus; and Le Marre’s Color of the Cross. In The Greatest Story Ever Told, Jesus gives Judas the bread and the wine even though he knows that Judas has already been to see Caiaphas. While we can tell from Judas’ body language that he desires to share the bread and the wine, he accepts that he is not worthy to eat and drink. An obedient Judas leaves the Last Supper to do what he has to do – betray Jesus to the Jewish authorities. Jesus validates Judas’ action by announcing, “Now is the Son of Man glorified” (John 13:26 – 30) just before Judas leaves to fulfill God’s plan. Jesus is aware of Judas’ betrayal and puts the process in motion that will lead to his death and glorification. Judas’ presence at the Last Supper was not only a sign of his acceptance: it was a God-given necessity.

Suggestion that Judas was Acting out His Predestined Role That Judas was predestined to betray Jesus is evident in the mini-series Jesus (1999). Although Judas was a stranger to Jesus, when invited to follow him, Jesus called Judas by his name and named his father as well. This event showed Jesus’ determination to carry out God’s will as well as embracing Judas as the one to make that possible.

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Suggestion that Judas is Forgiven It is in the two 1973 Jesus musicals that Judas is portrayed as forgiven for betraying Jesus. In David Greene’s Godspell: A Musical Based on the Gospel According to St. Matthew, instead of Judas kissing Jesus in the Gethsemane scene, Jesus kisses Judas. The reason for this change in roles, according to musical theatre lyricist Stephen Schwartz, is that “Jesus is forgiving Judas in advance for what he is about to do. This forgiveness is the hardest thing of all to bear” (Schwartz 2010). At the end of the film, Judas, along with the other disciples, is seen carrying Jesus’ body through a deserted street of New York. This suggests that Judas is forgiven and restored to the company of the disciples. In Jesus Christ Superstar, the audience is encouraged to sympathize with Judas, who “hated what Jesus had become but still loved him and wanted to help him” (Goodacre 1999). We join with a heavenly choir affirming Judas’ decision to betray Jesus (“Blood Money”) and again when the same choir laments his death (“Judas’ Death”). There is a euphoric atmosphere when Judas reappears – resurrected! – after he has killed himself. The dazzling white jumpsuit with long fringes Judas wears in this scene symbolizes purity and transformation. Hence, Judas carries no guilt for his actions. The long fringes hanging from the sleeves are reminiscent of the fringes or tassels on the Jewish prayer shawl. I would suggest that Judas could now fully celebrate his Jewishness without fear of reprisal because he has been redeemed.

Acceptance of Jewish Religious and Cultural Traditions The Last Supper scenes in post-Holocaust Jesus films attempt to depict a Passover meal as opposed to a Christian mass. There are varying degrees of commitment to this sensitivity towards Judaism. It could simply be Jesus praying in Hebrew the Hamotzi and Kiddush as in Godspell. The table or mat could be set with a Seder dish, with traditional herbs, lamb shank, lettuce and other ingredients as shown in King of Kings and Jesus of Nazareth. The recounting of the story of Moses and the Jewish Exodus could be included at the beginning of the meal as in Color of the Cross. The most inclusive and authentic setting of a Passover meal is depicted in The Last Temptation of Christ. In the preparation for the Passover, we witness the blowing of the shofar, sacrificing of sheep, singing and dancing, and ritualistic bathing by Jesus and the disciples. At the meal, there are very few ‘Eucharistic’ words although inclusion of the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation – the bread and wine changing into the body and blood of Christ – is supported by the appearance of the blood clot when Peter drinks the wine. He lowers the cup but places his fingers in his mouth to remove a clot. An extreme close-up shows him rubbing the clot between his thumb and index finger. He opens his hand revealing a pool of blood in the palm of his hand: a pre-

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cursor to crucifixion wounds. In adhering to Jewish practice, women are also present at the meal.

Conclusion Film has been an important medium in reflecting societal attitudes and beliefs. This is nowhere better seen than in the cinematic evolution of the depiction of Judas in Jesus films. At the beginning of the twentieth century when Jesus films were first screened, Judas was the epitome of evil: the villainous Jew. Filmmakers cast Judas in this way because this was the Judas that audiences recognized and expected! In the following three decades, because of critical biblical study, filmmakers were more circumspect about accepting the alleged historicity of the gospel accounts. They gave Judas a more nuanced and significant role in the narrative. His motive for ‘betrayal’ (if indeed it was such an action) became a sub-plot. By the middle of the twentieth century, filmmakers moved away from typecasting Judas as a villain because of fear of accusations of antisemitism. The Nazi Holocaust influenced how Judaism, Jews, and Judas, were portrayed; and Judas often assumed a smaller role so that filmmakers could focus on the ministry of Jesus. From the 1960s onward Judas became the protagonist whose role in the film was as almost as important as that of Jesus. It is in these films that we begin to see a rehabilitation of the Judas character and a partial restoration of Judaism in the Jesus film tradition. It is important to note that the chronological development of Judas portrayals from rejection to acceptance is not definitive. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, for example, includes a Judas who is both tempted and tormented by Satan. He greedily demands a bribe from the High Priest and the transfer of this blood money is emphasized by slow motion.⁶ Nonetheless, through analyzing twenty-one Jesus (and Judas) films, it can be seen that the portrayals of Judas in film have progressively softened during the last hundred years. Some filmmakers moved away from pious holy-card images and Bible illustrations, and attempted to reconstruct a first-century Jewish-Christian community. An obvious and important question still needs to be answered. “Why has there been such a dramatic shift from sinner to saint in the filmic portrayals of Judas?” My research and findings suggest that the main reason and impetus for the rehabilitation of Judas (and the Jews) in films was the Holocaust. The reasons for changes in Judas portrayals in post-Holocaust films were: (1) sympathy/guilt for the Holocaust, (2) filmmakers’ fear of accusations of antisemitism, (3) heightened sensitivity towards Judaism, and (4) an improved critical understanding of the scriptures. The post-Holocaust camera, or cinema, became one of the main contributors to documenting the history of the destruction of European Jewry (Doneson 2002, 220). More Despite what have been identified as antisemitic aspects of Gibson’s film, his Judas demonstrates anguish and remorse for his actions and evokes sympathy and pathos.

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over, at the same time there emerged a theological response to the Holocaust, which was to be vital in changing attitudes towards Judaism. Indeed as Roman Catholic theologian Johann-Baptist Metz succinctly put it: “Ask yourselves if the theology you are learning is such that it could remain unchanged before and after Auschwitz. If this is the case, be on your guard” (Williamson 1993, 3). This theology was labelled Shoah Theology—“the search for meaning between text and context, between Sinai and Auschwitz” (Moore 2004, 6).

Works Cited Allport, Gordon. 2001. “The Jew as Scapegoat.” In Can It Happen Again? In Chronicles of the Holocaust. Eds. Roselle K. Chartock and Jack Spencer. New York: Black Dog & Levanthal. Pp. 113 – 16. Boggs, Joseph M. and Dennis W. Petrie. 2008. The Art of Watching Films. 7th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Bradshaw, Paul F. 2002. The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy [1992]. 2nd ed. London: SPCK. Cohen, Jeremy. 2007. Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Donahue, John R. and Daniel J. Harrington. 2002. The Gospel of Mark, Sagra Pagina Series. Vol. 2. Collegeville, Minn: The Liturgical Press. Doneson, Judith E. 2002. The Holocaust in American Film [1987]. 2nd ed. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Fallon, Michael. 2005. The Gospel of John: An Introductory Commentary. Kensington: Chevalier Press. Foxman, Abraham H. 2010. Jews and Money. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Goodacre, Mark. 1999. “Do you think you’re what they say you are? Reflections on Jesus Christ Superstar.” Journal of Religion and Film 3.2 (October): http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/je suscss2.htm; accessed December 30, 2014. Hein, Kenneth. 1970-71. “Judas Iscariot: Key to the Last-Supper Narratives?” New Testament Studies 17: 227–32. Klauck, Hans Joseph. 1987. Judas, Ein Jünger des Herm. Frieberg: Herder. Martos, John. 2001. Doors to the Sacred: A Historical Introduction to Sacraments in the Catholic Church [1981]. Rev. ed. Liguori, Mo.: Liguori/Triumph. Meyer, Marvin. 2007. Judas: The Definitive Collection of Gospels and Legends about the Infamous Apostle of Jesus. New York: HarperOne. Moore, James F. 2004. Toward a Dialogical Community: A Post-Shoah Christian Theology. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. Nicholls, William. 1993. Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Paffenroth, Kim. 2001. Judas: Images of the Lost Disciple. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox. Perry, Marvin and Frederick M. Schweitzer, eds. 2008. Antisemitic Myths: A Historical and Contemporary Anthology. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. Pitre, Brant. 2011. Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper. New York: Doubleday. Poems, Lucy. 2009. “Early Mexican Jesus Film.” Customer Reviews (May 22): http://www.amazon. com; accessed December 30, 2014.

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Schwartz, Stephen. 2010. “Godspell Notes for Directors, Music Directors and Musicians, Producers.” (August): http://www.stephenschwartz.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/god spell-notes-for-directors-and-musicians1.pdf; accessed December 30, 2014. Stammer, Larry B. 2000. “New Look at Ancient Betrayer.” Los Angeles Times (April 21): http://ar ticles.latimes.com/2000/apr/21/news/mn-22024; accessed December 30, 2014. Steiner, George. 1996. No Passion Spent: Essays 1978 – 1996. London: Farber and Farber, Ltd. Stern, Richard, Clayton N. Jefford and Guerric Debona. 1999. Savior on the Silver Screen. New York and Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press. Sullivan, Lee R. 1998. “The Hanging of Judas: Medieval Iconography and the German Peasants’ War.” Essays in Medieval Studies 15: http://www.luc.edu/publications/medieval/vol15/15ch9. html; accessed January 14, 2015. Tatum, W. Barnes. 2013. Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years and Beyond [1997, 2004]. 3rd ed. Salem, Oreg.: Polebridge Press. Taylor, Alan. 2000. “Closed Communion—A Door Pushed and Pulled: A brief look at the doctrine of closed communion.” Paper presented at the Texas Confessional Lutherans, Grace Lutheran Church, Brenham, Tex. Theissen, Gerd. 1991. The Gospels in Context: Social and Political History in the Synoptic Tradition. Transl. Linda M. Maloney. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Walsh, Richard. 2006. “The Gospel According to Judas: Myth and Parable.” Biblical Interpretation 14: 37 – 63. —. 2014. Three Versions of Judas. London: Routledge. Williamson, Clark. 1993. A Guest in the House of Israel: Post-Holocaust Church Theology. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press. Zwiep, Arie W. 2010. Christ, the Spirit and the Community of God: Essays on the Acts of the Apostles. Vol. 293. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum NeuenTestament. 2 Reihe Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Films Cited The Bible Collection [Jesus; TV miniseries] (dir. Roger Young, 1999, Lux Vide, CZ/IT/DE/US). Blade af Satans Bog [a.k.a. Leaves from Satan’s Book] (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1920, Nordisk Film, DK). Christus (dir. Giulio Antamora, 1916, Cines, IT). Color of the Cross (dir. Jeane-Claude Le Marre, 2006, Nu-Lite Entertainment, US). Day of Triumph (dir. John T. Coyle and Irving Pichel, 1954, Century Films, US). Ecce Homo [a.k.a. Golgotha; 1937 English dubbed version] (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1935, Ichtys Film, FR). El mártir del Calvario [a.k.a. The Martyr of Calvary] (dir. Miguel Morayta, 1952, Oro Films, MX). From the Manger to the Cross [a.k.a. Jesus of Nazareth] (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1912, Kalem, US). Godspell: A Musical Based on the Gospel According to St. Matthew (dir. David Greene, 1973, Columbia Pictures, US). The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1965, United Artists, US). I Beheld His Glory (dir. John T. Coyle, 1952, Cathedral Films, US). Il vangelo secondo Matteo [a.k.a. The Gospel According to St. Matthew] (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964, Arco Film, IT/FR). Jesus Christ Superstar (dir. Norman Jewison, 1973, Universal, US). Jesus, Nuestro Señor [“Jesus, Our Lord”] (dir. Miquel Zacarías, 1972, Panorama Films, MX). Jesus of Nazareth (dir. Franco Zeffirelli, 1977, Incorporated Television Company, IT/UK).

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The King of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1927, DeMille Pictures Corporation, US). King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961, MGM, US). La vie du Christ [“The Life of Christ”; a.k.a La naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ; “The Birth, Life, and Death of Christ”] (dir. Alice Guy, 1906, Gaumont, FR). La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ [a.k.a. The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ] (dir. Ferdinand Zecca and Lucien Nonguet, 1902 – 05, 1907, Pathé Frères, FR). The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988, Universal, US/CA). Maria Magdalena, pecadora de Magdala [a.k.a. Mary Magdalene, Sinner of Magdala] (dir. Miguel Contreras Torres, 1946, Hispano Continental Films, MX).

Clayton N. Jefford

28 Jews and Judaism in New Testament Films

Cinematic efforts to portray Jews of the New Testament period inevitably reflect two related realities. The first is the brief history of cinema itself, encapsulating only the most recent century of human experience. The second is Christianity’s historically Westward orientation that assumes audiences enculturated with English language and American or European values. Modernity and Western principles thus serve as essential footing for the presentation of a majority of films.¹ Beyond these inevitabilities, one can best consider the role of New Testament Judaism in cinema from the angle of three related considerations: choice of New Testament texts; influence of screenwriter and director; and, circumstances of production. Rooted in contemporary history and perspectives, these elements typically guide decisions about how biblical Jews are depicted.² They offer standards by which Jewish imagery and awareness are shaped, reflecting the values of an industry that necessarily seeks a large viewing audience and worthy profit margin.

Texts of Choice What is patently obvious to serious students of scripture is that those who produce movies related to New Testament topics – primarily in the form of Jesus epics – have little concern for choice of biblical texts beyond scenes and issues expected by viewing audiences. Subsequent to this disinterest, the role of Jews and Judaism becomes muddled at best and irrelevant at worst. Tradition attributes almost all New Testament writings (except Luke and Acts) to Jews. Yet their perspectives vary greatly. The faith of rabbi Paul is unlike Johannine tradition; the perspective of Mark is different from Jude or Revelation. Yet each writer reflects convictions based on Jewish roots, even if those foundations diverge widely. New Testament films take little of this reality into consideration, typically deciding whether “the Jew” is viewed according to other categories: friend or foe. When the classification of friend is chosen, the hero often becomes a foreigner to the audience. This is evident in The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988), whose Jesus is problematic in many respects (e. g., Flowers/Middleton 2005, 149 – 50) – a protagonist prone to change his mind on important points, uncertain, and troubled concerning destiny. This is a choice on behalf of the Gospel of Mark, an awkward narrative for Christians that does not chiefly see Jews as problematic.³ As Jesus

 On this topic generally, see Babington/Evans (,  – ) and Telford (,  – ).  For a discussion of antisemitism in film, see Reinhartz’s chapter in Part II (Pp.  – ).  This point could be debated, but as has been argued elsewhere, Mark’s hero “is clearly a man with inhuman power to save others, but it’s also power to transform through his example of service and

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says to the Syrophoenician (= non-Jewish) woman in Mark, “Let the children [= Jews] be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs [= non-Jews]” (7:27, cf. Matt. 15:26). Further, those responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion are principally allied with Rome and imperial values, not themselves representative of common Jewish views. Subsequently, no aspersion is made against Semitic beliefs, but only against those who resist the appeal of Jesus’ message. While not quite as radical in approach, the earlier production of The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1965) already exposed a similar tendency. Here the hero is “other” in almost every way, portrayed by a blue-eyed Scandinavian (Max von Sydow),⁴ who as Judas attests to Caiaphas when he arranges to betray Jesus, “may be the most kind man I’ve ever known.” Unlike Scorsese’s Markanbased messiah, however, this is a decidedly Johannine savior whose story begins with that gospel’s prologue (“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God”; John 1:1) and whose message incorporates scenes from Matthew and Luke. He looks, talks, and acts like those around him, yet is clearly not as they are. The resulting question is, “Who are they?” They are the Jews of Galilee and Judea, the characters who inhabit various narratives of gospel accounts. But they are never called “Jews” and are rarely referenced at all. Instead, they are the downtrodden, pitiable, oppressed, enslaved, sick, and lame. They are neither Jesus’ opponents nor his supporters. They simply reflect what people imagine themselves to be in a struggling world that seeks salvation: common society. Thus the viewer hears them sing from the Psalms of synagogue worship (often as ethereal voices in the background) and sees them praying for a messiah from God. The problem is that even though their messiah walks among them as “the light,” all they can imagine is that he will be their king. In this respect Stevens captures a distant Christ whose image may be true to the vision of the gospels, but whose subjects (the Jews) stand at a conceptual distance, unable to embrace what he represents. In contrast to films that depict first-century Jews as friends (or at least morally neutral) is the opposite tactic, which casts them as foes or enemies of God’s will. This is in sympathy with gospel perspectives other than Mark, especially John, which defines any opponent as either “the Jews” or “the world.” Representative of this view is the silent classic Intolerance (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1916), whose extensive depiction of ancient Babylon, first-century Palestine, French Huguenots, and contemporary industrial society focuses on those in society whose wealth and power make them blind toward the helpless and needy. Drawing sparsely from scripture, Griffith chooses materials from Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and tax collector

sacrifice.” See Garrett (,  – ). This power is utilized on behalf of Jews, not in opposition to them.  As Bryan Stone (, ) observes: “What is most striking about The Greatest Story Ever Told, however, is how strongly it attempts to assert the deity of Christ with barely a hint of his humanity or Jewish origins….” Here is the classic problem of cinematic depictions of first-century Jews – a refusal to consider them seriously.

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(Luke 18:10 – 14) and the Pharisees’ accusation against Jesus as “gluttonous and a winebibber” (Matt. 11:19), inserting otherwise only a few scenes from John, namely, the wedding at Cana (John 2:1– 10) and the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53 – 8:11). Apart from the vague condemnation of Jesus by Pontius Pilate (“Let Him Be Crucified”), however, scripture is not otherwise employed. Nor are the Jews collectively branded as the intolerant ones but instead it is the Pharisees, whom Griffith early defines as a “learned Jewish party, the name possibly brought into disrepute later by hypocrites among them.” Typical first-century Jews have no real role here and are at best imagined simply as Jesus’ opponents. A clearer example of this approach is found in the film Il vangelo secondo Matteo (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964, a.k.a. The Gospel According to St. Matthew), whose primary narrative is naturally drawn from Matthew itself.⁵ An acknowledged Marxist, Pasolini does not identify Jews as Jesus’ opponents, but rather points toward their leaders – the scribes and Pharisees, Sadducees, and Sanhedrin.⁶ These are identified by tall, ornate hats (a nod toward the industrial regions of northern Italy), and reflect Matthew’s own dissatisfaction with Israel’s governance. The people are in essence neutral in outlook, serving as the tools of their leaders’ resistance as they seek to repress the gospel message and the common worker.⁷ Beyond films that identify Jews as either friend or foe, the decision to include a broad array of gospel materials from a variety of New Testament texts does not necessarily shape a movie’s presentation of Palestinian Judaism from the first century. A case in point is King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961), which employs numerous passages from all four gospels⁸ yet stands oblivious to their implication for the status of Jews. Often Ray circumvents use of the word “Jew,” referring to the general population as “the people,” “Judeans,” or “the Hebrew nation.”⁹ On other occasions they are named specifically. The narrator proclaims, “like sheep from their own green fields, the Jews went to the slaughter” and “the Jew survived by one promise – God would send a messiah to deliver them forth.” At the Jordan River, Herod Antipas complains, “will these Jews never tire of inventing deliverers?” Barabbas observes, “who can free the Jews without spilling blood?” Finally, when asked how many followers Barabbas may have, the Roman soldier Lucius responds, “how many dissat-

 Though influence from John : –  is evident in the anointing at Bethany scene.  Yet it seems true that “Pasolini quite consciously creates a parallel between himself, angry intellectual, cultural and moral prophet, rejected by his own people, and the angry prophetic Jesus he represents in his Gospel”; so Baugh (, ).  Garrett (, ) observes, “Over and over again, Jesus came into conflict with his opponents, the Pharisees, scribes, and Temple leaders (who are sometimes generically called ‘Jews,’ although of course virtually all the characters in the gospel narratives, including Jesus are Jewish).”  See Table  in Stern/Jefford/Debona (,  – ).  E.g., the placard nailed over the head of Jesus on the cross offers the acronym INRI (Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum = “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”), a recognizable Latin phrase that may insure uninitiated English-speaking readers might not specifically identify with the term “Jew” (Iudaeus).

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isfied Jews are there in Jerusalem?” Their place in the narrative ultimately seems neither here nor there.¹⁰ They simply are an ocean of people whose lives are touched by the works and teachings of Jesus as he wades through them on the way to the cross. They could be any people at any time and place from whom a handful of followers respond to the gospel message. They are the predecessors of student protests in the 1960s. They are a type, defined by Ray’s pious view of scripture set within the framework of Roman power in history.¹¹ But they are not seen as individuals, and they are not real. In contrast to this is the film Jesus of Nazareth (dir. Franco Zeffirelli, 1977), originally conceived for a popular television audience and shown through that medium (Stern, et al. 1999, 206 – 207). Zeffirelli’s hero is hardly a foreigner to audiences, seemingly an individual who can be appreciated through a heavy dependence on the Gospel of Luke (though a variety of textual readings from other gospels appear throughout). A consciousness of early Judaism that is unexpected arises here.¹² Hebrew scriptures are continually employed, Jesus and his disciples worship in the synagogue, the shofar is blown, Jewish leaders refuse to enter the home of Pilate during a religious festival, the Last Supper is linked with the Pesah Seder (Telford 2005, 306 – 307), and comments about the Torah governing daily life are constant. Jewish clothing and Palestinian settings are widely incorporated. These ancient Jews seem different, but are comfortable for a viewing audience. Added to this is Zeffirelli’s view of contemporary Judaism, which is decidedly Christian in tone, appealing broadly to general expectations about the coming of the messiah, a sentiment not widely shared by all first-century sects of Jewish theology. Jews are presented from various gospel narratives with Luke as their center, and their image is not threatening to contemporary values. We become educated about customs of the period, if not issues that mattered much to Palestinian Jews themselves.

Directors with a Vision Of primary importance in the presentation of any New Testament film is the conception of the director, in many cases even beyond that of the screenwriter.¹³ As illustrat-

 Telford (, ) correctly notes that “the approach of Ray was simply to omit any public scene in which Jesus is condemned by either the Jewish crowd or the High Priest.”  As noted by Babington/Evans (, ): “rescued from otherness, ancient Judaism also becomes the prototype of the democratic state.” Ray’s framing introduces historical motifs already present in the first-century writings of Flavius Josephus.  Following the comments of Michael Singer, Lloyd Baugh (, ) says “Zeffirelli is the first to place the story of Jesus in an ‘authentic, and historically justifiable, Jewish milieu’.”  One must acknowledge that it is often extremely difficult to assign the authorship of a particular film to a single individual, except perhaps in the case where the director also serves as the producer and/or screenwriter. The specifics of authorial vision (a.k.a. “auteur criticism”) are complex in scope

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ed by Scorsese in The Last Temptation of Christ, one sees many ways in which directors reinterpret the text on which their film is designed, in this case, the 1960 English translation of Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel by the same title. Kazantzakis himself provides little for the imagination in terms of cinematic presentation, offering a treatise on what it might mean to be both fully human and fully divine. Thus Scorsese is forced to provide the narrative (Baugh 2005, 173 – 92), delving into the innermost soul of his main character (Jesus) and those who surround him (the disciples). In some sense Scorsese is sympathetic to the New Testament Jew by never really offering an antithetical image for the viewer to reject. He focuses instead on the inner nature of evil and the vague threat of misunderstanding (the “temptation”) that lies within the human heart. The opponent is not the Jew (contrary to gospel visions) but is, rather, the inner person.¹⁴ A similar situation had already appeared in the vision of The King of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1927), whose narrative is a loose construction of gospel scenes beginning in Mark, borrowing from Matthew and Luke, and ultimately dependent on the high christology of John. Its driving force is Protestant piety; its characters reflect struggle between the evil of wealth and power (Rome, Caiaphas) against the good of sobriety, humility, and divine will (Mary Magdalene, Peter “the Giant Disciple”). But nothing is particularly Jewish here. The opponents of Jesus are Jewish in name only, while he himself identifies the enemy by another Johannine category: “My peace I give unto you. In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer—I have overcome the world” (John 16:33, italics mine). DeMille thus uses the Johannine phrase for outsiders (“the world”) where one might have expected the more likely words “the Jews.” Indeed, the word Jew is almost never used – even where anticipated.¹⁵ So the temple is identified: “The Temple . . . to the Faith of Israel, the dwelling place of Jehovah.” The guards cry out in raucous jest: “Hail, Thou King of Kings.” Caiaphas speaks similarly on two occasions: at the foot of the cross, “If He be king of Israel—let Him now come down from the cross and we will believe Him!” (Matt. 27:42); and during the storm after Jesus expires, “Lord God Jehovah, visit not Thy wrath on Thy people Israel—I alone am guilty!”¹⁶ DeMille’s vision is essentially non-Jewish in character, pitting the more worthy image of good versus evil in the guise of humility and obedience versus wealth and influence. Forty years later, Stevens’ The Greatest Story Ever Told maneuvers around DeMille’s image of good versus evil that is implied by the high priest’s attraction to person-

and beg for explanation with respect to each film considered, though here the matter is simply assumed in the discussion that follows.  As Barnes Tatum observes that the film appears to avoid some of the gospel-based antisemitic tendencies in other Jesus films, though he admits that the hero’s declaration that “God is not an Israelite” by necessity “ironically anticipates the time when Judaism and Christianity go their separate ways.” See Tatum (, ).  The single exception occurs where Pilate asks Jesus: “Art Thou the King of the Jews?”  Again, all italics mine.

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al greed and power. He suggests in its place that Jesus’ death (though the intention of God) is something of a matter of circumstances, with the temple priests caught between the seething revolt of the people and Rome’s need to keep the peace. Mobs reportedly seek Jesus as king (cf. John 6:15), reminiscent of contemporary uprisings by Theudas and Judas the Galilean (see Acts 5:35 – 37). Otherwise, they are never identified as “the problem.” For example, Lazarus warns Jesus that “they will come for you,” but never are “they” identified (the priests? the Romans? the Jews?). And though the Jews are gathered at the tomb of Lazarus, where they are seen as grumblers against Jesus in the Gospel of John, Stevens never offers them as opponents to Jesus’ work. Instead, Stevens sees the Jews as little more than sheep who are easily led and misled throughout their lives. There is no awareness of their first-century persona, despite the fact that they and Jesus constantly quote from scripture. They are those whom Jesus describes in the Matthean beatitudes: poor in spirit, meek, pure in heart, and persecuted (Matt. 5:3 – 12). Stevens is otherwise known for his many cinematic Westerns (evidenced by the scenery of the wild West in which he films this movie as well),¹⁷ and thus the Jews become the good, honest “people of the earth” who simply need a sheriff to lead them to safety in order to become solid, law-abiding citizens of God’s realm.¹⁸ Jesus and his posse of disciples – garbed in virtually monastic fashion – walk among them ready to assume that role. Their goal is to “clean up the town of Jerusalem” and to establish rule among the settlers. Completely distant from Stevens is a French Canadian film that aired a quarter century later under the title Jésus de Montréal (dir. Denys Arcand, 1989). Unfettered by English sensitivities or American values, Arcand’s vision offers a contemporary passion play in light of “new” archaeological and scholarly understandings of Palestine in the time of Jesus. During the course of the play that Arcand’s actors perform, various scenes draw from the gospels (call of apostles; temptation; miracles; passion; etc.). During the progression of the film’s own narrative, sometimes subtle (though often not) allusions reflect parallel events throughout the biblical text (call of apostles; temptation; cleansing of temple; passion; etc.). At first glance any role for Palestinian Jewry is difficult to imagine,¹⁹ since this is no epic demanding stock characters from history. On another level, however, a subtle intrusion of what is anticipated to be Jewish is indeed evident: those who watch the performance of the play substitute for “the Jews” of the gospels who witness the series of events as they unfold.²⁰ The audience (varying by presentation) is essentially a collection of onlookers and gawkers. Some are passionate followers, but most are

 Filmed in Utah in .  Tatum (, ) calls this “the universality of men and how they must learn to live together.”  Arcand is more interested in Jesus as racially mixed, apocalyptic prophet (= Yeshu Ben Panthera) than as savior of the Jews. See Tatum (,  – ).  At the same time, there is something to be said that in Arcand’s vision, “it is possible that Christ is being crucified all over again—this time by the church”; so Stone (, ).

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simply neutral (like the majority of humanity). At the depiction of the crucifixion we are told, “There was probably a crowd, like now. Executions have always been popular.” And later the priest at the shrine identifies their sort: “Have you ever been here on a Sunday when it’s packed? Have you seen the Haitian charladies, the Guatemalan refugees, the elderly and the forsaken? It’s a gathering of universal misery.” In Arcand’s vision these are desperate seekers of deliverance, both in the contemporary church and the ancient synagogue. It is not inconsequential that it is the crowd who, during one last performance, ultimately pushes down the cross that leads to the protagonist’s (Daniel Coulombe) death. Nor is it by accident that it is at a Jewish hospital (after having been rejected at the wealthy Catholic hospital of St. Mark’s) that his brain-dead body is divided for use by others who need its parts. One recalls the Gospel of John here, “for salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22). On the one hand, the passive crowds at the play stand unaware of their role as Jewish spectators within the gospel narratives; on the other, it is the active Jews of contemporary society who spread salvation. Unlike the perspective of Stevens, Arcand no longer sees the common first-century populace as passive sheep waiting to be saved, but more as unwary participants in an ancient drama who lived their lives as people do while at the same time contributing to the formation of Christianity’s original narrative of faith. Arcand need not bother to identify their customs, but only their nature as the desperate, the lost. A more extreme situation appears in the The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004). Gibson brings two driving concerns to the screen: a will to recreate the feel of authentic persecution in first-century Palestine and a desire to interpret the passion through revelations of the eighteenth-century mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich. Intermixed, the resulting view of first-century Jews – themselves carefully guided by the power of Satan – takes little heed of the New Testament’s own vision.²¹ Gibson envisages once more that it is Caiaphas and Jewish leaders, not the common Jews themselves, who are responsible for the cross. They are driven by the ever-present hand of Satan, appearing in various scenes to insure that Jesus comes to his ultimate fate.²² Placing blame on the Jewish leaders reflects similar imagery offered by DeMille and Ray. At the same time, however, this leadership closely reflects the will of the Jews themselves, who jeer at Jesus and throw stones on his way to Golgotha, whose young boys (indicated by the yarmulkes) are accused by Judas Iscariot of being “little Satans” and, taking demonic expressions, chase him outside the city to his shameful

 At the same time, however, one might justifiably argue that the insistence on brutal violence within the narrative is typical of the “long tradition of Western Christianity” that begins in the gospels themselves (see Luke : – ,  – ); so Cargal (,  – ). On the image of sin, death, and Satan generally as backdrop for understanding cinema productions, see Garrett (,  – ). Also consult the collected essays in Corley/Webb ().  Though not Gibson’s point of reference, the role of Satan in inciting Jewish fervor is closely paralleled by the second-century Martyrdom of Polycarp, in which the devil provokes the hatred of the Jews to insist that the Romans execute Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna.

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fate. No accusation against the Jews is more damning than when leveled by the Romans, who, though cruel in every fashion, are not held responsible for the cross. Thus Pilate calls the Jews “filthy rabble,” and the guards who place the crown of thorns on Jesus’ head call him “king of the worms” in reflection of Pilate’s question to Jesus about whether he is “king of the Jews.” Ultimately, Jesus responds that those who have delivered him to Pilate have “the greater sin,” obviously meaning Caiaphas in person, but doubtless indicating the Jews in general. In many respects Gibson stays true to much of the gospel narrative in these accusations, though the ultimate finger is pointed to a cumulative guilt for Judaism seemingly beyond the expectations of the Evangelists, especially in light of their own Jewish background. It is less a matter of what the gospels say and more how they are read by contemporary interpreters. Gibson’s vision is dark and unforgiving as its shadow is cast over first-century Palestine.

Contexts Shape Horizons No director can create a cinematic narrative successfully outside the historical context of his or her own period, and this reality is clearly reflected in the production of biblically based films. It is certainly possible to move from early works to more recent films, finding chronological progression a useful survey of how changing views about contemporary Judaism are reflected in images of New Testament Jews. To return to DeMille, though the director is highly dependent on gospel passages for his evolving tableaus,²³ Jews themselves are never addressed as characters. Apart from the audience’s knowledge of the gospel narrative, one might never suspect that the ancient world of Palestine knew anything of Semitic people or culture. This may have been defined as sensitivity to the times if the film had been produced after the Holocaust. But DeMille works between the World Wars, not yet aware of the horror to come. One might thus suspect a certain naivety on his part, except he appears almost universally to avoid the terms “Jew” and “Judaism” throughout (see above), preferring “Israel” as a more pious designation for those who surround Jesus both as followers and onlookers. “The Jew” is neither friend nor foe for DeMille, but is instead a non-entity. There is no consideration of New Testament Judaism for him. We also have seen above that a tendency to avoid identification of “the Jew” was already evident in the work of D. W. Griffith, who focuses instead on the role of the Pharisees. Though the authors of the New Testament gospels paint this group in an unfavorable light due to their perceived hypocrisy and rejection of Jesus’ authority, Griffith pushes further. He observes that when “these Pharisees pray they demand that all action cease,” and offers a scene (based on the parable of the Pharisee

 In certain respects the scenes that DeMille provides are slow motion renditions of the famous early twentieth-century paintings of Jesus of Nazareth by the ever-popular Warner Sallman, whose works continue to hang in numerous Protestant churches today.

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and tax collector) in which the people who find themselves near a Pharisee when he pauses to pray in the street must themselves stop eating or continue to hold heavy loads at strenuous angles until the pious moment has passed. At the wedding of Cana²⁴ they are further defined with the words, “Meddlers then as now,” and they critique the revelers specifically: “There is too much revelry and pleasure-seeking among the people.” But again, as with DeMille after him and in contrast to the Evangelists, Griffith will not hold the Jews explicitly responsible for the crucifixion. He indicates the guilt of Pilate in the affair, the representative of authority, never mentioning Jews or their role in the trial and execution of Jesus. Much like DeMille, it is not “the Jew” who must be considered but “the Pharisee” and those who are “Pharisaical” in their approach to the needy, both in ancient culture and contemporary society. World War II reshaped cinematic visions of what a Jesus epic should be, producing a curious phenomenon in the production of Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959).²⁵ The subtitle of the film (A Tale of the Christ) clearly indicates that the 1880 post-Civil War novel by Lew Wallace (1880) on which the production is based envisions a world in which there is hope beyond struggle. Wallace’s years as general of Union forces during the American Civil War brought this recognition, while the director Wyler visualizes what this means for Jews after the 1940s who were searching for peace and security while harboring attitudes of resentment and hostility. Wyler incorporates many features from DeMille to depict Wallace’s vision (Roman eagle standards; storm at the crucifixion), and combines them with the background of American western terrain, giving permission for use of that setting in subsequent films by Ray and (especially) Stevens. But he clearly steps beyond DeMille in estimation of the common first-century Jew, choosing a hero whose name suggests “the Jew” (i. e., Judah ben-Hur) and whose fate becomes intertwined with the life of Jesus.²⁶ He installs elements expected of the period (Jewish names, shofar, mezuzahs on doorways, and somewhat anachronistically the star of David as medallion and part of the latticework at Judah’s home). Thus the Jew (= Judah) becomes a potential object of faith and conversion. This hero has status, so power and influence are not problematic; he is pious (offering blessing when he eats), so wealth is not an impediment to salvation. Further, DeMille’s characterization of the high priest as the

 Griffith offers an interesting note here about the use of wine: “The first miracle. The turning of water into wine. Note: —Wine was deemed a fit offering to God; the drinking of it a part of the Jewish religion.” In consideration of the times, this is certainly an apology for why Jesus would have been present where wine was served. If it is likewise a charge against Jewish religious practice, such seems to run counter to Griffith’s approach elsewhere in the film.  This film represents a class of post-war “Christ free” works (i. e., films that do not specifically feature the figure of Jesus in their depictions due to strictures of the Production Code); see Tatum (,  – ).  Though as Babington and Evans (, ) observe, “Jewish heroism . . . is hardly the norm” for Hollywood’s Jesus epics.

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impetus for Jesus’ crucifixion is removed. Indeed, the Sanhedrin appears only as assembled figures at the foot of Jesus’ cross, looking more perplexed than angry. What Wyler provides is a Jewish leader (the richest man in Jerusalem we are told) who affords the seedbed of faith necessary for the kernel of Jesus’ message of peace and love to take hold in the hostile world of Roman (Nazi?) dominance. While the figure of Jesus himself remains opaque – appearing mostly from behind or at a distance, and never is his voice heard – it is his message of hope that affects the lives of Judah and his family, and thus can serve to shape the future of nameless Jewish faces constantly present throughout the movie. While Rome wields its authority and power, those Jews who are believers become fertile soil for days ahead. Beyond war and the sword, Wallace sees within the common person (and Wyler among the rescued Jews) a hope of promise. As Judah says in reference to Jesus’ last words, “‘Father, forgive them, they know not what they do’ [Luke 23:34] …And I felt his voice take the sword out of my hand.” Having been tempted earlier to join the cause of zealot resistance, he ultimately recognizes the power of faith in mercy. Ray’s King of Kings a few years later returns to many of DeMille’s earlier concerns, fingering both Caiaphas and the “scribes and Pharisees” as the enemy of Jesus’ mission, but with no particular emphasis on this tension. Instead, Ray’s concern (somewhat like Wyler) is for the “common person,” anticipating the spirit of the 1960s in which a renewal of the human spirit is encouraged among middle class film viewers. Ray’s star (Jeffrey Hunter) is the good guy antithesis to James Dean, standing as a “rebel with a cause.” Otherwise, Ray (contra Wyler) only needs Jews as background for the storyline, which similarly depicts the gospel message as a proclamation of peace with universal implications. To this end the Jews have no special role in Ray’s depiction. Though he employs numerous gospel texts to embellish the nature of Jesus’ mission and ministry, the Jewishness of those who surround the hero is greatly subdued, finding simple reflection in the fact that the man from Nazareth is commonly identified as “rabbi,” with no special meaning applied to that term beyond its indication of “teacher.” And so that is what Ray’s Jesus is: teacher of the nations. The last film for consideration is one that scholars often dismiss as farcical and fantasy, Monty Python’s Life of Brian (dir. Terry Jones, 1979).²⁷ This is less a depiction of the life of Jesus (who appears only briefly preaching Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount) and more a description of Jewish society under Roman domination during the first century, taking advantage of a less than heroic protagonist (Brian Cohen) whose life (along the lines of Judah ben-Hur) becomes intertwined with that of the ministry of Jesus. As a comedy, one can only expect depictions of Jews to be caricatures at best, and indeed they are. More importantly, however, this is Monty Python’s response to outdated depictions of Jesus as Messiah and typical dismissals of firstcentury Jewry as significant players in the gospel narratives.

 See especially here the analysis of the film by Dyke (,  – ).

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At the same time, though, a variety of gospel scenes receive allusion, including the errant visit of the magi (Matt. 2:9 – 12), Jesus’ preaching of the beatitudes (Matt. 5:3 – 12) and reported healing of a leper (Luke 17:11– 19), advent of messianic pretenders (Matt. 7:15; 24:4– 5), and crucifixion being most prominent among them. Notable in this blend is acknowledgement of the wide variety of Jewish sects and movements in the first century that lie quietly behind the controversies of the New Testament authors themselves. Thus one hears of “the meek” (the am ha’aretz or “people of the land” about whom it is said that “what Jesus plainly fails to appreciate is that it is the meek who are the problem”), the wealthy, the rival resistance groups (= Zealots), the Samaritans, Pharisees, and Sadducees. The internecine squabbling among Jews is patent, including the hasty movement to follow Brian itself, which quickly dissolves into factionalism and inner dispute. Here is a comment about the nature of what Judaism actually was in the first-century, a view that stands with some realism against traditional conceptions of monolithic monotheism and in favor of diverse perspectives among the Jews themselves. As is advocated here, the birth of Christianity was more a skirmish among Jewish perspectives than a battle between Jews and non-Jews.

Conclusions In the final analysis one sees that over the last century a variety of directors have approached Jews and Judaism in the New Testament from diverse perspectives. In general, one finds a tone of European and American values, tempered chiefly by Englishlanguage dominance; more specifically, there are decisions concerning biblical texts, directorial prerogative, and historical milieu. Yet despite these factors, it is quite evident that little of substance is to be found here. This is to say that ultimately a century of Jesus epics offers more accurately a reflection of contemporary prejudices about Judaism than any actual concern for ancient Jewish perspectives. Admittedly, some effort has often been made to incorporate the historical elements of first-century dress and lifestyle that most biblical scholars (and a semi-informed Christian public) might expect as accurate historical portrayals. But beyond this, little of substance is offered beyond an occasional tendency to psychoanalyze the mind of characters from the gospel narratives and the rationale for why they acted or responded in ways that the Evangelists tell us. In due course, one learns little (if anything) about Palestinian Judaism from the cinematic portrayal of New Testament texts, though somewhat more about how those who offer their cinematic portrayals envision the faith and desires of their viewing audiences.

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Works Cited Babington, Bruce, and Peter William Evans. 1993. Biblical Epics: Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Baugh, Lloyd. 1997. Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ-Figures in Film. Kansas City: Sheed and Ward. —. 2005. “Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ: A Critical Reassessment of Its Sources, Its Theological Problems, and Its Impact on the Public.” In Scandalizing Jesus? Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ Fifty Years On. Ed. Darren J. N. Middleton. New York and London: Continnum. Pp. 173 – 92. Cargal, Timothy B. 2007. Hearing a Film, Seeing a Sermon: Preaching and Popular Movies. Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox. Corley, Kathleen E., and Robert L. Webb, eds. 2004. Jesus and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: The Film, the Gospels and the Claims of History. London and New York: Continuum. Dyke, Carl. 2002. “Learning from The Life of Brian: Saviors for Seminars.” In Screening Scripture: Intertextual Connections Between Scripture and Film. Ed. George Aichele and Richard Walsh. Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International. Pp. 229 – 50. Flowers, Elizabeth H., and Darren J. N. Middleton. 2005. “Satan and the Curious: Texas Evangelicals Read The Last Temptation of Christ.” In Scandalizing Jesus? Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ Fifty Years On. Ed. Darren J. N. Middleton. New York and London: Continnum. Pp. 147 – 55. Garrett, Greg. 2007. The Gospel According to Hollywood. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox. Kazantzakis, Nikos. 1960. The Last Temptation of Christ [1953]. Transl. Peter A. Bien. New York: Simon and Schuster. Stern, Richard C., Clayton N. Jefford, and Guerric Debona. 1999. Savior on the Silver Screen. New York and Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press. Stone, Bryan P. 2000. Faith and Film: Theological Themes at the Cinema. St. Louis: Chalice. Tatum, W. Barnes. 2013. Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years and Beyond [1997, 2004]. 3rd ed. Salem, Oreg.: Polebridge Press. Telford, William R. 2005. “‘His blood be upon us, and our children’: The Treatment of Jews and Judaism in the Christ Film.” In Cinéma Divinité: Religion, Theology and the Bible in Film. Ed. Eric S. Christianson, Peter Francis, and William R. Telford. London: SCM. Pp. 266 – 88. Wallace, Lew. 1880. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. New York: Harper and Brothers.

Films Cited Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959, MGM, US). The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1965, United Artists, US). Il vangelo secondo Matteo [a.k.a. The Gospel According to Saint Matthew] (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964, Arco Films, IT/FR). Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1916, Triangle Film Corporation, US). Jésus de Montréal [a.k.a. Jesus of Montreal] (dir. Denys Arcand, 1989, Centre National de la Cinématographie, CA/FR). Jesus of Nazareth (dir. Franco Zeffirelli, 1977, Incorporated Television Company, IT/UK). The King of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1927, DeMille Pictures Corporation, US). King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961, MGM, US).

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The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988, Universal, US/CA). Life of Brian [a.k.a. Monty Python’s Life of Brian] (dir. Terry Jones, 1979, Handmade Films, UK) The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004, Icon Productions, US).

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29 Paul and the Early Church in Film

Cinematically, apostles are important only as Jesus’ successors, so Jesus continues to appear in cameos in their stories, and they speak of and resemble him. Their initial encounter with the sacred Jesus leads to a miraculous call/conversion that puts them, like him, in conflict with their society leading toward martyrdom for the cause/call. Miraculous near escapes postpone this end indefinitely. When their martyrdom comes, it has the aura of (a spiritual, supernatural) triumph. When their stories have their own development, the successors replace Jesus as the new stories’ sacred and moral centers. As in Jesus stories, the good align with the followers of Jesus and the villains perversely oppose them. While the apostolic succession story of Luke-Acts already has much of this structure, films develop it more fully. In the biopic, for example, an early event (the call) gives shape to the whole of the character’s life, which then moves through struggles with society to climax in a public trial or triumph that indicates the hero’s benefits to society (Custen 1992). Biblical epics also share some of this patterning, but they emphasize spectacular arenas and romance. In fact, cinematic period pieces generally tend toward fictional plots and characters. They then place these fictions in carefully researched historical sets and respect the story’s memorable “facts” – the cultural memory or what the audience expects to see (Rosenstone 2006). Fortunately, for cinema, the cultural memory about Jesus’ followers is so thin that cinematic conventions have almost complete sway. Entertainment and modern definitions of (proper) religion are always foremost.¹ This cinematic backdrop is the context for this chapter’s exploration of film’s treatment of Jesus’ early successors. The chapter follows a largely chronological pattern: Jesus, apostles, and later persecutions/triumph. It begins then with intimations of early Christianity in Jesus films and with those film’s depictions of individual apostles. It moves on to cinematic adaptations of the Acts of the Apostles before turning to movies devoted to Paul and other apostles.² It ends with a look at the Christian biblical epics, which cluster for the most part around Nero’s persecutions.³

 On the latter see Babington/Evans (); Forshey (); Reinhartz (,  – ); and Walsh ().  The distinction between films on Acts and films on Paul cannot, of course, be precise as Paul is a major character in Acts, but some films do announce an intention to represent Acts cinematically while others are clear that they are interested in the “lives” of individual apostles like Paul or Peter.  For discussion of imperialism in New Testament films see Punt’s chapter in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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(Early) Christianity in Jesus Films Jesus films always focus on the Christ, not Jesus, so Jesus films are already about Jesus Christ’s followers and, particularly, about “the apostles” or his approved, authoritative followers. Incidents from Jesus’ life are important cinematically then only as they speak to this Christian legacy. In brief, the cinematic Jesus is a Christian story and a story about Christians. Thus, while Jesus’ teaching may offer glimpses into his character, it functions primarily to set out his followers’ “way.” In Godspell: A Musical Based on the Gospel According to St. Matthew (dir. David Greene, 1973), the Jesus troupe even helps enact Jesus’ teaching, and the film ends with them carrying Jesus’ cruciform corpse into the modern city while singing a medley of the two songs that express the Godspell Jesus’ lasting significance: “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord” and “Day by Day.” Son of Man (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2006) ends similarly with a community gathered around Jesus’ cruciform corpse, practicing his (non-violent resistance) teaching.⁴ These examples already point to the cross – the fundamental cultural memory about Jesus and Christianity’s premier icon and the sign of the faith/faithful. The cinematic Jesus must die on the cross – and Christ-figures often do too – because that is the event that has seared the Western imagination. Thus, Son of Man “resurrects” its Jesus – digging up his corpse to display on a cross – so that he may be crucified. Similarly, cinema often follows famous artistic representations to depict this event (as in the montage in the garden scene in Jesus Christ Superstar, dir. Norman Jewison, 1973) or presents the cross as the Christian ritual of Passion Play (ad nauseum) or the Stations of the Cross (e. g., Jésus de Montréal, dir. Denys Arcand, 1989; The Passion of the Christ, dir. Mel Gibson, 2004). Jesus’ cross is ultimately the saving blood, so in BenHur (dir. William Wyler, 1959), Jesus’ blood mingles with water and heals Ben-Hur’s leprous mother and sister by its mere touch. The cinematic Jesus’ miracles are also about his followers. Thus, Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings (1927) opens with the (report of the) healing of the lame, soonto-be evangelist Mark and the exorcism of Mary Magdalene. Even DeMille’s audience is “healed,” or, at least, first sees Jesus through the eyes of a healed blind girl. The Miracle Maker (dir. Derek W. Hayes/Stanislav Sokolov, 2000) focalizes its story similarly through the resurrected Tamar. In Roger Young’s Jesus (1999), miracles found the faith as they lead the disciples to follow Jesus: the water into wine (Andrew and John), a miraculous catch of fish (Peter and James), and the healing of a lame boy (Thomas). The resurrection appearances are, of course, the faith’s foundational miracle. Accordingly, The Kings of Kings raises Jesus so that he towers over a modern city. In a less certain age, The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1965) transforms

 On the cinematic representation of Jesus’ teaching, see Walsh (,  – ).

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this towering sky-Christ into an artistic rendition in the apse of a Byzantine church. Even Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings (1961), which is notably chary with miracles, has Jesus’ shadow linger over and empower his followers’ apostolic mission. As noted above, this monumental depiction of the hero as cultural benefactor is the modus operandi of cinematic period pieces (Rosenstone 2006). The great man/ woman of the past is important only as they impact the present. As such films generally respect the cultural memory, the cinematic Christ must be a religious, not a military or political figure, and must have redemptive effects through some combination of death, miracle, and resurrection. Any of these can be emphasized and anything, except for the (modernly conceived) religious aura and the cruciform death, can be omitted. Beyond this point, fictionalizing is de rigueur.

Individual Apostles in Jesus Films Much of this fictionalizing involves the stories around the cinematic Christ, who functions more as a talisman than as a human character (Walsh 2003, 29 – 39). The Christ is known almost wholly through his effects upon others, who align with him and prosper or oppose him and perish. The successful “surrounding lives” remain in the cultural memory in the biopic’s simple pattern: the miraculous call, which forever transforms and shapes the life; the lonely struggle thereafter with the larger culture; and the public vindication in some sort of trial (Custen 1992). The lives of Jesus’ apostles and other followers (e. g., converted Roman soldiers) have this shape when they become the protagonists of their own films. In Jesus films, however, the apostles are mere “sidebar” stories reflecting and illuminating the Christ’s sacred power. Thus, the focus is primarily on the apostles/followers’ miraculous call (often a healing) and, with the apostles specifically, on their authorization by the resurrected Christ. Beyond that, the apostles are merely memorable epithets: Zealot, tax collector, betrayer, denier, doubter, redeemed prostitute, and so forth.⁵ Incidentally, this tendency means that Jesus is not the only undeveloped character in Jesus films. Among Jesus films, Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth (1977) gives the most screen time to these epithets. The movie starts the followers’ story with the miraculous catch of fish, but the apostles – except for John, who is the man of the spirit from the beginning – need further training. Thomas doubts miracles from the beginning (e. g., the raising of Jairus’ daughter), but learns to credit the supernatural. Judas and Simon the Zealot leave their associations with rebellion for Jesus’ spiritual message. Mary Magdalene, depicted initially as the “suspicious,” sinful woman of Luke 7:30 – 51, becomes a witness of the passion and apostle to the apostles. Matthew leaves tax collecting to host Jesus and his disciples in his home. And, in that delight Except for the “redeemed prostitute,” which is from much later church tradition, the epithets tend to come from the gospels.

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ful supper scene, Jesus establishes apostolic harmony by reconciling the sulking, drunken fisherman Peter with this tax collector by telling the parable of the prodigal son. Film often pairs Peter and Judas (Telford 2005, 214– 35). In Jesus of Nazareth, Judas never learns Jesus’ way of the heart. He aspires instead for a political solution to the rule of Israel and is ultimately left behind as the movie traces the transition from Jewish messianism to the spiritual kingdom (i. e., the apostolic church of the resurrection faith). Peter is the foundation of this trajectory. He is the rock, the one left holding the keys to the kingdom, the leader of the apostolic church of the resurrection. At the end, he believes without even seeing (taking the role of the beloved disciple in John 20:8). With one inspired cut, the movie contrasts these two different stories/fates as it “morphs” from Peter running through darkened streets after his denial to Judas running similarly after his betrayal. Judas goes on to hang himself and be damned. Peter goes on to resurrection faith and apostolic commission. This cut concisely demonstrates the “two-ways” stories of the lives surrounding the cinematic Christ. While less expansive, other Jesus films also follow the rule of the epithet. Simon is a Zealot. Judas is the betrayer. Matthew is the tax collector. Thomas doubts. Magdalene has a shady past. Peter is confessor and denier. John is young, effeminate, and spiritual. Further, Christian theological themes always overwhelm character. It is confession, doubt, denial, betrayal, and forgiveness that are important. Finally, because of the structural importance of the “call” and Jesus’ role as talisman, dramatic transformations are the norm. The miraculous catch of fish often begins the assembly of the Twelve (La vie et passion de Notre Seigneur Jesus Christ, dir. Ferdinand Zecca/Lucien Nonguet, 1902– 05; The Jesus Film, dir. John Krish /Peter Sykes, 1979; Jesus; The Miracle Maker). Matthew shifts from tax collector to follower (The Greatest Story Ever Told; The Jesus Film; Jesus; The Miracle Maker) and sometimes even evangelist (The King of Kings). Thomas leaves doubt behind (Jesus; The Miracle Maker). The most common conversion, however, is that of Mary Magdalene, whether (1) as a demoniac exorcised (The King of Kings; The Miracle Maker), (2) as a prostitute turned chaste (The King of Kings; Jesus; The Last Temptation of Christ, dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988), (3) as the sinful woman of Luke 7 who comes to faithful service (La vie et passion de Notre Seigneur Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ Superstar; Jesus of Nazareth; The Jesus Film; The Miracle Maker), and/or as (4) the woman taken in adultery in John 8:1-11 saved (King of Kings; The Greatest Story Ever Told; The Last Temptation of Christ; The Passion of the Christ). The disciples/apostles appear as a group in every film.⁶ Their call, even if it is just a listing of the apostolic band, and their presence at resurrection appearances configure them as Jesus’ successors. John, Thomas, and Peter appear often, but

 Son of Man transforms some of the Twelve into women. Some films make Mary Magdalene so prominent that she is also a member of the inner band of disciples.

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the followers with the most screen focus are Judas, Mary Magdalene, and the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary appears prominently because of the infancy stories and because of her roles as intercessor and co-sufferer/co-redeemer in the Roman Catholic tradition.⁷ She plays a prominent role in leading others to Jesus in The King of Kings, King of Kings, Jesus, and The Passion of the Christ. In Jesus, she forcefully directs Jesus himself toward and in his ministry. She is ubiquitous on the cinematic Via Dolorosa, at the cross, and at the tomb, but Il vangelo secondo Matteo (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1965) and The Passion of the Christ emphasize her role as co-redeemer more than most. Finally, Jesus and Son of Man make her into Jesus’ successor as the leader of the apostolic community. As noted above, Mary Magdalene figures prominently because of the drama of her traditional conversion account. The “sexy” Magdalene is particularly important in The King of Kings, Jesus Christ Superstar, and The Last Temptation of Christ. ⁸ Mary Magdalene is also important in film because of her role as a witness of the empty tomb and/or the resurrected Christ. Even if the language is not always used or the scene developed, she is “apostle to the apostles” in The King of Kings, King of Kings, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus, and The Miracle Maker. That she is a leader of the community is suggested most strongly in Jesus (and The Da Vinci Code, dir. Ron Howard, 2006). As the disciple who betrayed Jesus, Judas is the story’s dark side.⁹ Traditional presentations follow the gospels and associate him with Caiaphas and/or other Jewish religious leaders (The King of Kings; Il vangelo secondo Matteo; Jesus of Nazareth; Son of Man) and/or Satan (The King of Kings; The Greatest Story Ever Told; The Jesus Film; Jesus; The Passion of the Christ; The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John, dir. Peter Saville, 2003). Here, Judas represents the fate of the outsider (and he is the only follower to die in Jesus films). More sympathetic treatments reflect on the grace and forgiveness necessary for any to be “inside” (Judas, dir. Charles Robert Carner, US, 2004; Gli amici di Gesù – Giuda, dir. Raffaele Mertes/Elisabetta Marchetti, 2001, a.k.a. Close to Jesus: Judas), provide more understandable human motivations for him (King of Kings; The Last Temptation of Christ), or raise questions about the value of the tradition itself (Jesus Christ Superstar). Almost always, Judas remains a person that viewers do not want to be: greedy, dupe, non-spiritual, or possessed by forces larger than himself. Cinematic depictions of Judas exorcise these audience fears and leave them in more blissful places.¹⁰

 For further discussion of cinematic depictions of Mary and Magdalene, see O’Brien’s chapter in Part II (Pp.  – ).  Film does not always follow the tradition that Mary Magdalene is a redeemed prostitute. For more discussion of the cinematic variety on this point, see Reinhartz (,  – ) and Staley/Walsh (, ).  See also Hebron’s analysis of the cinematic Judas in Part II (Pp.  – ).  See Walsh ( and ).

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The Acts of the Apostles While hardly as popular as Jesus films, cinematic adaptations of Acts do exist. They tend to be extremely literal visualizations of the text for Protestant Evangelical use or television movies made for airing during holy days. The Living Bible: The Acts of the Apostles (prod. Broadman Films, 1957) is an example of the former. It deviates from the text of Acts in order to create more martyrs for the faith (the widows of Acts 6 are so because of persecutions; the martyrdom of Stephen is repeated with more detail during Paul’s conversion), to focus on a substitutionary understanding of the cross (citing more material from Isa. 53), and to call the audience to join in evangelistic or missionary work.¹¹ The end of the movie also adds readings from Paul’s letters. The Visual Bible: Acts (dir. Regardt van den Bergh, 1994) is similar. Despite this series’ commitment to adhere verbatim to the words of scripture, this installment departs from the New International Version’s translation of Acts in order to emphasize the text’s apostolic authority. Thus, the movie opens with a dramatic scene on board a ship in a stormy sea in which Luke, the Gentile physician and friend of Paul (as a narrator describes him), tends to an injured girl. Luke then begins reading his Acts and, consequently, narrating the film. On occasion, the movie cuts to Luke telling the story to various listeners on the boat. These cuts do not cohere, as one might expect, with the “we” passages in Acts. They do break the tedium of following the text literally and they do bring the text’s authority to the screen. To that same end, the movie’s epilogue pictures Luke leaving the boat and embracing Paul (the text’s true authority). As with other Visual Bible offerings, the choice of whether to have the narrator or some character speak certain words and the use of camera, light, editing, and music freely interpret the text. Thus, Luke is far more important in this movie than he is in the book of Acts, where he never appears unless it is anonymously in the famous “we” passages. Further, while all the apostles in Acts are male, the film’s camera lingers on women’s faces, making them more prominent among the apostles than the text does. As in The Living Bible version of Acts, the special effects are poor, but the movie lingers leisurely on the miracles and even adds miracles (e. g., in the account of Paul’s two years in Rome). Roberto Rossellini’s five-part Italian television miniseries, Atti degli apostoli (1969, “Acts of the Apostles”), is quite different.¹² The movie belongs to Rossellini’s “historical” period and has a documentary or even an Italian neo-realist aura. The first episode provides a “tour” of Jerusalem for a Roman official and the audience. Throughout, the movie eschews spectacle for the intimate. There are few crowd scenes. Miracles are reported, rather than shown, or even omitted (e. g., on Paul’s sea-voyage to Rome). Instead, the movie focuses on intimate conversations. As one

 See the helpful summary of the movie’s contents by Page ().  See also Page’s analysis of this and other Rossellini films in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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critic observes, the apostles seem Franciscans “gossip[ing] the gospel” (Reed 2007) The movie does not overwhelm. It invites a conversation (Gallagher 2004). The 1981 television miniseries Peter and Paul (dir. Robert Day) is more standard fare. Peter and Paul (Anthony Hopkins) begin as opponents with the latter persecuting the faith, but Paul converts and begins to preach.¹³ Peter doubts the authenticity of his former enemy at first, but they eventually agree to joint missionary endeavors, albeit in different areas. Eight years later, after Peter escapes from prison, Barnabas and Paul arrive in Jerusalem with famine relief. After a Jerusalem Council (which uses material from both Acts 15 and Gal. 2) Peter and Paul go to Antioch. When other Jews arrive, Peter withdraws from the Antiochian Gentiles, and Paul angrily confronts him (Gal. 2:11– 14). Depictions of this confrontation are rare in film, but it provides the drama behind Paul’s continuing missionary activity. After Paul’s arrest in Rome, Peter and Paul reconcile and both become martyrs for the faith. As Paul dies first, Peter bookends and authorizes Paul, even though Paul receives more attention in the movie. The six-part British and Italian television miniseries A.D. (dir. Stuart Cooper, 1985) embraces the patterns of the biblical epic as it focuses on the conversions and romances of fictional characters.¹⁴ The fiction’s backdrop has two parts: 1) various political machinations in the lives of Caesars from Tiberius through Nero; and 2) the miracles and martyrdoms of Paul and Peter (the appearance on the Road to Emmaus also occurs, Luke 24:13-25). Incidentally, the movie also invests more of its storyline in Aquila and Priscilla’s conversion and subsequent leadership in early Christianity than Acts does. The film also introduces several fictional characters, namely: Caleb, Corinna, Sarah, and Julius Valerius (a Roman centurion). Caleb escapes crucifixion as a Zealot, searches for his kidnapped/enslaved sisters in Rome, becomes a gladiator, participates in palace coups, marries a gladiatrix (Corinna), and, with her, tries to save Christian children condemned to death in the arena by Nero. Taking an orphan from Linus (Peter’s successor), he and his family go back to Jerusalem. Portentously, they name the child Joshua. Julius Valerius is this movie’s version of the cinematically common Roman soldier who converts to Christianity (because of the time he spends with Paul as his escort to Rome) and who ultimately leaves Rome behind because of his disgust with Nero’s persecutions. He marries Sarah, Caleb’s surviving sister, who also converts to Christianity. While Paul and Peter appear in the miniseries, the story focuses on the romantic duos and children imperiled by Nero’s madness. The names and details change in other movies, but this same “persecution” story dominates the Christian biblical epics.

 The audience sees the effects of Paul’s visionary experience but not the vision.  The movie completes the miniseries trilogy including Moses the Lawgiver (dir. Gianfranco De Bosio, ) and Jesus of Nazareth ().

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The Apostle Paul Paul dominates Acts movies.¹⁵ While Acts itself emphasizes Paul, others factors probably influence the cinema’s focus on this character as well. For instance, within cultural memory, Paul founds (Gentile) Christianity.¹⁶ Paul is presented in biblical texts as the apostle to the Gentiles, and Christians seldom consider their tradition “Jewish,” except as a past to be left behind.¹⁷ Most importantly, Paul has the most dramatic and therefore cinematically appealing story in Acts, the Damascus road experience (Acts 9:1– 19).¹⁸ Paul’s life receives its own biblical-epic-like treatment in Roger Young’s San Paolo (2000, a.k.a. Paul the Apostle). While set primarily in Jerusalem and Paul’s mission field, rather than in Rome, the story is still about political in-fighting and Christian suffering. Extending Acts, the television movie invents Reuben, who wishes to succeed Caiaphas as high priest and, accordingly, leads the crusade against Christian blasphemers. Reuben recruits Saul to the cause. When Paul converts and takes up the Christian mission, Reuben tries to hunt him down.¹⁹ Paul (and Peter) escapes Reuben’s traps repeatedly, often with the help of Reuben’s wife Dinah, another invented character. During Paul’s last visit to Jerusalem, Reuben organizes ruffians to attack Paul (cf. Acts 23:12– 15); but Romans save Paul, kill Reuben, and send Paul to Rome, where he preaches to “the world” about Christ. Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote a script for a Saint Paul, which would have been a dramatically different film. Abandoning historical realism, Pasolini sets his Paul story in the modern West: Rome is New York, capital of American imperialism. Jerusalem, cultural seat occupied by the Romans, seat also of intellectual conformity, is Paris under the German heel. The small, nascent Christian community is represented by the Resistance, while the Pharisees are the Pétainists. Paul is French, from a comfortable bourgeois background, a collaborator, hunting members of the Resistance.

 See also Life of St. Paul (dir. Norman Walker, ); and Life of St. Paul Series (dir. John T. Coyle, ).  This tone dominates Paul the Emissary (dir. Robert Marcarelli, ).  The Acts films contain antisemitic elements. E.g., The Visual Bible adds a replay of various Jewish atrocities as Paul pronounces his final “curse” upon them (Acts : – ). The visuals are hardly necessary and are certainly not “in” Acts. For further discussion of antisemitism in Bible films see Reinhartz’s essay in Part II (Pp. -).  Film presents Paul’s “call” as a conversion to Christianity (from Judaism and the law). The “new perspective” on Paul (as a Jew) has not had much impact upon film. See, however, the attempt to find a Jewish Paul in non-biblical films in Walsh (,  – ).  One might see Reuben as an incarnation of the pattern of deadly Jewish opposition that often follows Paul’s initial preaching in a synagogue in Acts (see, e. g., : – ; : – ,  – ; :, ; :, ).

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Damascus is the Barcelona of Franco’s Spain. The fascist Paul goes on a mission to see supporters of Franco. On the road to Barcelona, traveling through southwestern France, he has an illumination. He joins the camp of the antifascist Resistance. We, then, follow him as he travels around preaching resistance, in Italy, in Spain, in Germany. Athens, the Athens of the sophists who refused to listen to Paul, is represented by contemporary Rome, by those petty Italian intellectuals and critics whom Paul detested. Finally, Paul goes to New York, where he is betrayed, arrested, and executed in sordid circumstances.²⁰

This Paul, like Pasolini’s Jesus in Il vangelo secondo Matteo, is a revolutionary acting on behalf of the lower classes. Like Jesus, his death comes because of a betrayal. More importantly, priest and church have betrayed his revolutionary message – with Luke, the author of Acts, as the primary culprit. Saul/Paul is himself the culprit in a cameo role in Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. Saul (Harry Dean Stanton) is the leader of a Zealot band that sends Judas (Harvey Keitel) to kill Jesus because, as a cross-maker, he is regarded as a collaborator with the Romans. Later, Saul demands to know why Judas has not yet killed Jesus, and then murders Lazarus to remove the evidence of Jesus’ greatest miracle. Finally, Saul appears during Jesus’ final fantasy of a non-messianic life. To Jesus’ surprise, Saul preaches about the dying-rising Christ on the basis of his Damascus road experience. When Jesus calls him a liar, Saul replies that the resurrected Christ is the only hope for suffering people. Jesus is not convinced.²¹ Intriguingly, even if it could not have happened, the Damascus road experience still remains the crucial moment. Like the cross in cinematic representations of Jesus, the conversion is that which cannot be omitted in a Paul film. The Paul-figure protagonist of Robert Duvall’s The Apostle (1997) is a more sympathetic figure.²² Like Saul/Paul, Sonny grows up in the bosom of a religious tradition, though it is Pentecostalism, not first-century Judaism. Sonny is zealous for this tradition, travels in support of his faith, and becomes quite successful (cf. Phil. 3:4– 6). A significant crisis changes everything, although for Sonny it is the loss of his family and his murder of his wife’s lover, not a hierophany (cf. Acts 7– 9). In flight, Sonny has a crossroads experience, which leads to a time of prayer and fasting at a black man’s fishing camp (Ananias?) that ends with his baptism of himself as the Apostle E. F. After this religious rebirth, the Apostle E. F. travels “in the service of the Lord.” Like Paul, he frequently seeks spiritual guidance regarding the exact direction that he should go and supports himself by manual labor. With the help of an older minister (Barnabas?), he founds an integrated church among the poor and socially disadvantaged (Gentiles?). He also has a large radio ministry, which includes (psycho From Badiou (,  – ), who offers a fuller synopsis. For an English translation of the script, see Pasolini ().  In Kazantzakis’s novel, upon which the film is based, Paul brings Jesus to understand that his death is the only way to redeem the world. See Kazantzakis (, ).  See Reinhartz (,  – ) and Walsh (,  – ).

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somatic) healing miracles. While he does not write pastoral letters, he leaves his Bible, other possessions, and appointed ministers to his church (cf. Acts 20:18 – 35 as well as Paul’s letters). In the film’s last scene, the imprisoned Apostle preaches his gospel “without hindrance” (Acts 28:31). While the structure of Acts remains visible, the Paul-figure approach frees this film from slavish devotion to the tradition. The Apostle E. F. is not Saint Paul, but a realistic, human figure. The film’s quite sympathetic portrayal of him, however, also refuses cynicism in order to imagine a salutary place in modernity for religion.

Other Apostles Peter is the forerunner of the Roman Catholic Church in Jesus of Nazareth. In The Jesus Film, he is a prototype of an evangelical Christian (Staley/Walsh 2007, 94). The latter film rearranges Luke, its purported “source,” to focus on Peter’s move from Jesus’ initial preaching (Luke 4:1– 30; 18:10 – 14) to the miraculous call (5:1– 11) so that Peter “converts” after having heard “the word.” The repentant apostle praying for forgiveness after his denial (not merely weeping as in Luke 22:62) also creates a “properly evangelical” character. Peter, of course, also plays a role in any Acts film (see above). Like Peter and Paul and A.D., San Pietro (dir. Giulio Base, 2005, “Imperium: Saint Peter”) uses material from Acts and utilizes the Nero setting.²³ The movie’s structure presents Peter (Omar Sharif) as a second Jesus or as Jesus’ true successor by opening with Jesus’ crucifixion and ending with that of the apostle. Peter’s humble wish – to be crucified upside-down to distinguish himself from his superior Lord – only connects him more completely with Christ. A Roman onlooker succinctly notes, “All of Rome has changed because of you.” As in the biblical epics generally, the martyrs triumph over Nero and convert representatives of Rome. In another similarity with the epics, the movie adds fictional plot lines including gladiators, political intrigue, romance, and conversions. The gospel story of Peter’s denial, reinforced by the “Quo Vadis” legend, makes this apostle emblematic of divine forgiveness. As the leading apostle, he is also the teacher. Thus, in The Power of the Resurrection (dir. Harold Schuster, 1958), the apostle comforts a frightened young Christian in prison by rehearsing his own need for forgiveness and by recalling events from the passion to Pentecost in order to emphasize the transforming “power” of the resurrection (as does Acts).²⁴ In Barabbas (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1961), an imprisoned Peter has much less success instructing Barabbas, who has been arrested while starting fires to usher in the kingdom, about

 The movie for Italian television followed Imperium: Augustus (dir. Roger Young, ) and Imperium: Nero (dir. Paul Marcus, ).  I, Paul (dir. Domenic A. Arbusto, ) has a similar prison setting, but is a more obvious “succession” story, as Paul instructs Timothy.

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Jesus’ love and forgiveness. In Apostle Peter and the Last Supper (dir. Gabriel Sacloff, 2012), another imprisoned Peter (Robert Loggia) has more success rehearsing the gospel/early church story for his two jailers. Other apostles make cameo appearances in these movies, particularly doubting Thomas, but more and more movies about individual apostles have recently become available. This surge reflects straight-to-DVD offerings for religious niche markets, productions for Italian (and then international) television (for holy days and for nationalistic interest),²⁵ and “collections” or miniseries for cable television. Gli amici di Gesù, a four DVD-set (a.k.a. Close to Jesus or Friends of Jesus, 2001), directed by Raffaele Mertes for Italian television and also now packaged as part of TNT’s The Bible Collection series, is typical. The Friends of Jesus series includes episodes devoted to Thomas, Judas, Mary Magdalene, and Joseph. The three apostolic movies are closely connected because they feature many of the same actors playing the same characters. The movies invent stories to explain how the traditional epithets – doubter, betrayer, redeemed prostitute – came to be. Thomas, for example, doubts because he has been led on a long, dangerous, duplicitous quest for Jesus’ body. Judas becomes a traitor not only to force Jesus to usher in the kingdom, but also to save wealthy Jerusalem families, including his own, from imprisonment/death. Mary becomes a prostitute because her husband and then her aristocratic lover have “turned her out,” the latter because she refused to betray John the Baptist to the authorities. These fictional backgrounds help create motivations psychologically credible to modern audiences. The Bible Collection series also includes San Giovanni – L’apocalisse (dir. Mertes, 2002, a.k.a. The Apocalypse).²⁶ The movie reveals how John’s visions arose from his experiences of persecution. Narrowly escaping the slaughter of a village, John (Richard Harris) becomes a scribe under another name in a mine/prison. There, he has various visions (from Revelation) during the film’s subsequent action (e. g., Jesus among the candlesticks; heavenly throne; sealed scroll; seven seals; seven trumpets; new heaven and earth). John sends out written reports of these visions piecemeal under an assumed name. His hidden identity helps to explain how he could publish such anti-Roman material and survive. Another storyline provides the romantic interest typical of biblical epics. A young Christian Irene searches for John, hoping he can reinvigorate the lagging Christian community of Asia Minor. Her lover, Valerius, is a Roman spy also looking for John. After entering prison in this endeavor, his long association with John leads to Valerius’ conversion. The movie ends with the release of all the prisoners after Domitian’s death and with the two young lovers’ embrace. The second half of the television miniseries The Bible, produced by Roma Downey and Mark Burnett and aired on cable television’s History Channel in March 2013,

 The similar offerings of British television have received less international marketing.  The TNT series is better known for its Hebrew Bible/Old Testament episodes. It includes Young’s Jesus and Paul the Apostle, both also made for Italian television.

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focuses on the gospels, and the very last episode traces the impact of the resurrection. A mere listing of the episode’s primary incidents reads like a “shortlist” of cinema’s basic apostolic scenes: the resurrection appearance to Mary Magdalene, the commissioning of the apostles, Pentecost, Paul’s conversion, martyrs, and (John’s) apocalypse. These choices are also in keeping with the series’ emphasis on the miraculous (which predictably chooses the “miraculous catch” call of the disciples) and on the evangelistic call to choose “for” or “against” Jesus.²⁷

The Biblical Epics: Rome Becomes Christian In the Christian biblical epics, the apostles become Jesus’ true cinematic successors as they, in their turn, are reduced to mere cameos or talismans engendering fictional conversion stories (see above, A.D., Saint Paul, Imperium: Saint Peter, the Close to Jesus series, and The Apocalypse). Romantic love is more important in these films and motivates conversion as much or more often than apostolic example/rhetoric. The arena is the spectacular center of these Christian epics (as demonstrated by films like Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, 2000, which abandons the early Christian subplot), most of which are set during Nero’s persecution of the Christians. This Rome provides a suitably evil villain and titillating decadence, which is soon to be replaced by (moral) Christianity. Romance and Christianity combine harmoniously so that omnia vincit amor. Among the Christian epics, the “franchise” films Ben-Hur and Quo Vadis (and its twin The Sign of the Cross, dir. DeMille, 1932) dominate cinema. Ben-Hur has been made repeatedly since Lew Wallace published the novel in 1880 (a play beginning in 1899 and running for twenty years; and various, mostly American, films),²⁸ but as the novel’s subtitle indicates the story is about Christ’s saving power, not about the lives of apostles. Several Jesus incidents appear in the 1925 film (Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, dir. Fred Niblo), but the famous 1959 film (Ben-Hur, dir. William Wyler) offers Jesus only in cameo. His hand offers an enslaved Ben-Hur a cup of water and his blood flows from the cross to heal Ben-Hur’s mother and sister. They are healed on the Via Dolorosa in the novel and in the 1925 film. While the chariot race (and the naval battle) dominates the films, common biblical epic themes permeate the story: 1) democracy and religion triumph over empire and hubris (in the person of Messala); 2) Christian love and forgiveness completes the morality of Judaism (in Ben-Hur’s character arc); and 3) the revenge plot (beloved of cinema) is undone by love and forgiveness (Thomas 2006). Thus, Ben-Hur says in the 1959 film that Jesus said “forgive” on the cross and took the sword out of my hand. In con-

 As I write this chapter, the airing of a sequel miniseries, A.D. The Bible Continues (prod. Burnett/ Downey), is scheduled for April  on the NBC network.  Individual titles are listed at the end of this chapter.

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trast to the Judas of Jesus films and particularly that of the 1961 King of Kings, one might say, from a Christian perspective of course, that this “Judah gets it right.” The “Quo Vadis” legend comes from the second-century Acts of Peter. In it, Peter leaves Rome to escape persecution and meets Christ coming into the city. When Peter asks him where he is going (“Quo vadis?”), Christ replies that he is going to be crucified again. Peter then returns to face his own crucifixion. The Polish author Henry Sienkiewicz turned this tradition into a novel, Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero, in 1895. A play (1900) and repeated film adaptations followed.²⁹ The novel’s subtitle tells the tale. The Peter legend is largely a pretext to display the spectacle of Nero’s decadent Rome, its fiery catastrophe, and the horrific persecution of the Christians. In fact, Scodel and Bettenworth claim that Nero is the “star” of the productions made after 1925 (Scodel/Bettenworth 2009, 34). The film’s central romance involves the arrogant Marcus Vinicius, a Roman patrician, and the Christian hostage, Lygia. As Marcus pursues Lygia, he and the audience learn about Christianity from authorities no less than Peter and Paul. The 1985 movie also features Mark recording Peter’s memoirs. To “baptize” the titillation offered the audience by the Neronian spectacle, the 1951 film (Quo Vadis, dir. Mervyn LeRoy) opens with narration identifying Nero (Peter Ustinov) as the antichrist. The voiceover narration also refers to the crucifixion of Jesus and the future triumph of Christianity in order to describe its story as about that “immortal conflict” (between Rome and Christianity). When Nero (influenced by his wife, Poppaea) blames the Christians for the burning of Rome, Marcus and Lygia are imprisoned along with Peter, who in keeping with the tradition has returned to Rome to face his fate.³⁰ He marries them. After Peter’s crucifixion, the Christians are sentenced to death in the arena. Lygia’s Herculean bodyguard, however, saves her from certain death, with an assist from Marcus. Marcus chooses love over Empire and inspires the crowd to revolt with news of the approach of Galba’s forces. Nero commits suicide, and the romantic couple leaves Rome passing Peter’s flowering staff in the road. A voice, accompanied by light, says: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Love – romantic and Christian – has conquered decadent Rome, with a little help from massive bodyguards, Roman soldiers, and crafty advisors.³¹ The story of Wilson Barrett’s 1896 play, The Sign of the Cross, is almost the same. Another Roman, Marcus, falls in love with another Christian girl, Mercia, in Nero’s

 These titles are listed in at the end of this chapter. The  version (Quo Vadis? dir. Enrico Guazzoni, ) is sometimes called cinema’s first blockbuster. It is said to have motivated D. W. Griffith to produce the first U.S. biblical epic Judith of Bethulia (). For a discussion of the film adaptations of Quo Vadis, see Scodel/Bettenworth ().  This paragraph describes the  version, which is the only one to show the martyrdom of Peter. For more details on Peter and Paul in the films, see Scodel/Bettenworth (,  – ).  This discussion gives no attention to Petronius, the sympathetic portrayal of whom Scodel and Bettenworth say distinguishes Quo Vadis films from other Christian epics. See Scodel/Bettenworth (,  – ).

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Rome with the villainous Tigellinus and Poppea manipulating matters. In 1932, DeMille turned the play into the finale of his early biblical trilogy (following The Ten Commandments, 1923; and The King of Kings, 1927). The film’s opening sequence says it all: a star/cross of light is gradually superimposed over a Roman eagle. Despite Nero and Marcus’ claims about Christianity’s imminent demise, Christianity and its cross triumphs, as they always do in the biblical epics.³² The triumph here, however, is somewhat muted. In fact, Bosley Crowther nicely describes this film as the “left-handed version” of LeRoy’s 1951 Quo Vadis (Crowther 1951). As Christians are hunted down and arrested for burning Rome, the playboy Marcus, lover of Poppaea, falls for Mercia. To please her, he releases Titus, who preaches a kingdom not of this world, from prison. When an arrested Christian betrays the Christian meeting place, Roman soldiers kill many Christians, including Titus who was preaching about God’s love while holding a cross, and arrest others, including Mercia. Arriving too late to help, Marcus looks, with some puzzlement, at the cross. He turns to debauchery to drown his sorrows, until soldiers march singing Christians, including Merica, by his house en route to prison and the arena. Haunted by cross shadows, Marcus soon joins Mercia in prison. Finally, he goes with her to the arena, although for love of her, not the Christian God. When the doors close behind them, a cross of light appears on the door. The cross and Christianity visually triumph, but Marcus and Rome remain unconverted. The better-known The Robe (dir. Henry Koster, 1953) ends similarly with the aristocratic Roman duo, Marcellus and Diana, marching to death for Christianity. This time, he is the Christian by dint of his service at Christ’s crucifixion, the influence of his freed slave Demetrius, the talismanic effects of Christ’s robe, and Peter’s mentoring. Peter teaches Marcellus specifically about Christ’s ability to forgive Peter for his denials and even those who crucified him. Peter also miraculously restores Demetrius to health when Roman physicians cannot. In the climax, Diana goes to death with Marcellus for love of him, not the Christian God, leaving the robe behind for Peter. The “Hallelujah Chorus” marks the romantic duo and Christianity’s “triumph.” Interestingly, the film abandons a setting in Nero’s Rome for the time of the equally villainous Caligula.

 The  Barabbas (dir. Richard Fleischer) may be an exception. In a Spartacus-like scene, Christians die on crosses in an eclipse having been accused of burning Rome. Barabbas is among them and his final words end the film: “Darkness…I give myself up into your keeping.” Some read this as Barabbas’ conversion to Christianity and, thus, another Christianity-triumphs-over-violence film. Darkness may, however, not be a description of the scene, but Barabbas’ name for the God or “curse” that has followed him since Jesus’ crucifixion, which also transpired in an eclipse. For this reading, see Walsh . At the very least, this film’s cross-to-cross shape differs markedly from that of San Pietro. Agora (dir. Alejandro Amenábar, ) is a clearer exception to the moraltriumph-of-Christianity story as Christians are not the victims, but part of the dogmatic politics and fanatical mob that martyrs Hypatia, free-thinking philosopher and scientist, in fifth-century Alexandria.

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In The Robe’s sequel, Demetrius and the Gladiators (dir. Delmar Daves, 1954), Peter gives the robe to Demetrius, placing him in charge of Roman Christianity in his absence. When Caligula arrests Demetrius in his search for the magical robe, Demetrius is sent to the gladiatorial arena. Soon thereafter Demetrius loses his faith when an attack by Roman soldiers leaves his girlfriend, Lucia, comatose. He publicly denies his faith, enters a life of debauchery with Messalina, and publicly rejects Peter’s wise counsel. Searching for the robe for Caligula, Demetrius meets Peter again and sees the comatose Lucia, whom he had thought dead. When Demetrius asks for a miracle for her, Peter challenges him to ask for it himself. In the climax, Demetrius prays for forgiveness and Lucia recovers claiming that she, like Demetrius, had been in darkness. Peter then sends Demetrius to Caligula with the robe in order to save other Christians’ lives. Sentenced to the arena again, Demetrius escapes when the Praetorian Guard assassinates Caligula and installs a more tolerant Claudius on the throne. The film ends after Claudius sends Demetrius back to Peter with the robe, telling him that Christians have nothing to fear as long as they do not act against the Empire. While not detailing Rome’s conversion, the sequel “gets” The Robe “right” by detailing the arrival of religious tolerance and modernly conceived (private, non-political) religion. In the process, Demetrius becomes a new Peter, who also lost his faith and recovered it.

Conclusion: Omnia Vincit Amor In these films, Jesus’ followers echo Jesus. This mimesis is as true of the converted Roman slaves, soldiers, and aristocrats as it is of the earliest apostles, although later figures, like Demetrius, may seem to imitate an apostle like Peter more closely than Jesus. All these successors (particularly Peter) repeat Jesus’ teaching of love and forgiveness and are faithful to his cause unto death. This pattern comes not only from Luke-Acts but also from the cinematic biopic in which lives are shaped by a call, a struggle against society, and a public trial epitomizing the protagonist’s triumph and bestowal of benefits upon society. The protagonist then is the center of cinema’s simplistic ethical dualism in which the good align with the protagonist and the villains oppose him/her. Other than this “echo” of Jesus and biopic pattern, culture and film remember Jesus’ followers according to epithets: doubter; betrayer; denier; redeemed prostitute; and so forth. These epithets condense important theological lessons about faith (loyalty), love, and forgiveness. Consequentially, Jesus is not the only undeveloped character in films about early Christianity. In every case, theology is more important than story; Christ more important than Jesus; Gospel than gospels; dramatic conversion more important than realistic character development; apostles than humans; and, the victory of the cause more important than any martyr. Of course, cinematic pat-

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terns are more important than theology – or, more accurately, cinematic, nationalistic theologies are more important than traditional Christian theologies.³³ Other than the individual conversions that they inspire, the heroes’ triumph over society is symbolic. While there are crosses of light and “Hallelujah Choruses,” their stories end at the cross or in the arena. What Scodel and Bettenworth say of Quo Vadis is true of all these films: the cinematic story of the martyrs simply ignores the centuries before Christianity becomes dominant in the Roman Empire (Scodel/ Bettenworth 2009, 25). The martyrs are already triumphant. They are also passive. They are victims borne along by providence, by the tide of (the) history (the audience already knows). The story is inherently marvelous and supernatural. As providence’s spokespersons they speak of love and forgiveness, omnia vincit amor. In fact, love conquers in manifold ways as Jesus’ call to love morphs into cinematic romances. Cinema cares little whether the protagonist goes to his/her death for love of Christ or love of the romantic other. These films’ relationships with the biblical stories they reprise are complicated. Like Acts, many of them end with Christians witnessing in Rome, while under some duress from the Empire. Romance is thin on the ground in the gospels and Acts, but love is everywhere because the biblical texts assert (in various forms) the ultimate victory of (divine) love. Miraculous providence is also de rigueur in the biblical texts as it is in these cinematic offerings. Of course, the monumental history of cinema installs a different (modern, cultural) audience as “the end of history.” Finally, as the precursors of these films, the gospels and Acts seem to conform rather nicely to the biopic pattern of call, struggle, and (symbolic) triumph. But, perhaps this conformity should trouble rather than comfort. Once again, what Scodel and Bettenworth say of Quo Vadis may be true of all these films: cinema’s impact on “history” is so great that it may be impossible to imagine anything other than persecutions and (Roman) decadence leading to anything other than the inevitable triumph of Christianity – and, more importantly, the triumph of the viewing audience (Scodel/Bettenworth 2009, 7, 221– 22). Omnia vincit theologica. But what theology? Is it worth remembering that among all these films, only Peter and Paul recall the conflict in Antioch? Such conflicts and uncertainties vanish in the divine/cinematic triumph of monumental history. In that disappearance, critical history, diversity, and the human also fade away—in these films and in the biblical texts, which they render precursors.

Works Cited Babington, Bruce and Evans, Peter Williams. 1993. Biblical Epics: Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

 For discussion, see Babington/Evans (); Forshey (); and Walsh ().

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Badiou, Alain. 2003. Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. Transl. Ray Brassier. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Crowther, Bosley. 1951. “Review of Quo Vadis?” The New York Times (November 9): http://www.ny times.com/movie/review?res=9900EFD8113EE73BBC4153DFB767838 A649EDE; accessed May 30, 2014. Custen, George F. 1992. Bio/Pics: How Hollywood Constructed Public History. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Forshey, Gerald E. 1992. American Religious and Biblical Spectaculars. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. Gallagher, Tag. 2004. “Making Reality.” Senses of Cinema 32 (July): http://sensesofcinema.com/ 2004/feature-articles/rossellini_television/, accessed May 30, 2014. Kazantzakis, Nikos. 1960. The Last Temptation of Christ [1953]. Transl. P.A. Bien. New York: Simon and Schuster. Page, Matthew. 2006. “Acts of the Apostles (1957 – Living Bible).” Bible Films Blog (November 2): http://biblefilms.blogspot.com/2006/11/acts-of-apostles-1957-living-bible.html; accessed May 30, 2014. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. 2014. Saint Paul. Intro. and transl. Elizabeth A. Castelli. London: Verso Books. Reed, Ron. 2007. “Acts of the Apostles.” Soul Food Movies. http://soulfoodmovies.blogspot.com/ 2007/07/acts-of-apostles-rossellini.html; accessed March 2, 2015. Reinhartz, Adele. 2003. Scripture on the Silver Screen. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. —. 2007. Jesus of Hollywood. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. —. 2013. Bible and Cinema: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Rosenstone, Robert A. 2006. History on Film/Film on History. Harlow, England: Pearson. Scodel, Ruth and Anja Bettenworth. 2009. Whither Quo Vadis? Sienkiewicz’s Novel in Film and Television. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Sienkiewicz, Henryk. 1993. Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero [1895]. Transl. W.S. Kuniczak. New York: MacMillian. Staley, Jeffrey L. and Richard Walsh. 2007. Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: A Handbook to Jesus on DVD. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Telford, William R. 2005. “The Two Faces of Betrayal: the Characterization of Peter and Judas in the Biblical Epic or Christ Film.” In Cinéma Divinté: Religion, Theology and the Bible in Film. Eds. Eric S. Christianson, Peter Francis, and William R. Telford. London: SCM. Pp. 214 – 35. Thomas, Gordon. 2006. “Getting it Right the Second Time: Adapting Ben-Hur for the Screen.” Bright Lights Film Journal 52 (May): http://brightlightsfilm.com/52/benhur.php#.Uvz_d2JdXSk; accessed May 30, 2014. Wallace, Lew. 1880. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. New York: Harper & Brothers. Walsh, Richard. 2003. Reading the Gospels in the Dark: Portrayals of Jesus in Film. Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International. —. 2005. Finding St. Paul in Film. Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International. —. 2006. “The Gospel According to Judas: Myth and Parable.” Biblical Interpretation 14.1 – 2: 37 – 53. —. 2008. “Barabbas: The Cross that Damns.” In Images of the Word: Hollywood’s Bible and Beyond. Ed. David Shepherd. Semeia Studies 54. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Pp. 113 – 29. —. 2010. Three Versions of Judas. London: Equinox. —. 2013. “The Cinematic Construction of Early Modern Religions.” Reformation 18.1 (December): 134 – 47.

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Films Cited A.D. (dir. Stuart Cooper, 1985, Vincenzo Labella, IT/FR/US). Agora (dir. Alejandro Amenábar, 2009, Mod Producciones, ES). The Apostle (dir. Robert Duvall. 1997, Butcher’s Run Films, US). Apostle Peter and the Last Supper (dir. Gabriel Sacloff, 2012, Pure Flix Entertainment, US). Atti degli apostoli [a.k.a. Acts of the Apostles] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1969, Orizzonte 2000, IT/ES/FR/DE/TN). Barabbas (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1961, Columbia Pictures, IT/US). Ben Hur (dir. Sidney Olcott, Harry T. Morey, and Frank Rose, 1907, Kalem, US). Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (dir. Fred Niblo, 1925, MGM, US). Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959, MGM, US). Ben Hur (dir. Bill Kowalchuk, 2003, Agamemnon Films, US/CA). Ben Hur (dir. Steve Shill, 2010, Akkord Film Produktion GmbH, UK/DE/ES/CA). The Bible (prod. Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, 2013, Lightworkers Media, US/UK). The Bible Collection [Jesus; TV miniseries] (dir. Roger Young, 1999, Lux Vide, CZ/IT/DE/US). —. [San Giovanni – L’apocalisse; a.k.a. The Apocalypse; TV miniseries] (dir. Raffaele Mertes, 2002, Lux Vide, IT/FR/DE/UK). —. [San Paolo; a.k.a. Paul the Apostle; TV miniseries] (dir. Roger Young, 2000, Lux Vide, IT/CZ/DE). The Da Vinci Code (dir. Ron Howard, 2006, Columbia Pictures, US/MT/FR/UK). Demetrius and the Gladiators (dir. Delmar Daves, 1954, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Gladiator (dir. Ridley Scott, 2000, DreamWorks, US/UK). Gli amici di Gesú – Giuda [a.k.a. Close to (Friends of) Jesus: Judas; TV miniseries] (dir. Raffaele Mertes and Elisabetta Marchetti, 2001, Lux Vide, IT). Gli amici di Gesú – Maria Magdalena [a.k.a. Close to (Friends of) Jesus: Mary Magdalene; TV miniseries] (dir. Raffaele Mertes and Elisabetta Marchetti, 2000, Lux Vide, IT/DE). Gli amici di Gesú – Tommaso [a.k.a. Close to (Friends of) Jesus: Thomas; TV miniseries] (dir. Raffaele Mertes and Elisabetta Marchetti, 2001, Lux Vide, IT). Godspell: A Musical Based on the Gospel According to St. Matthew (dir. David Greene, 1973, Columbia Pictures, US). The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1965, United Artists, US). I, Paul (dir. Domenic A. Arbusto, 1980, Leodus and Arbusto, US). Il vangelo secondo Matteo [a.k.a. The Gospel According to St. Matthew] (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964, Arco Film, IT/FR). Imperium [Augustus] (dir. Roger Young, 2003, Lux Vide, DE/IT/ES/AT/FR/UK). —. [Nerone; a.k.a. Nero] (dir. Paul Marcus, 2004, Lux Vide, IT/ES/UK). —. [San Pietro; a.k.a. Saint Peter] (dir. Giulio Base, 2005, Lux Vide, IT). Jesus [a.k.a. The Jesus Film] (dir. Peter Sykes and John Krish, 1979, Jesus Film Project, US). Jesus Christ Superstar (dir. Norman Jewison, 1973, Universal, US). Jésus de Montréal [a.k.a. Jesus of Montreal] (dir. Denys Arcand, 1989, Centre National de la Cinématographie, CA/FR). Jesus of Nazareth (dir. Franco Zeffirelli, 1977, Incorporated Television Company, IT/UK). Judas (dir. Charles Robert Carner, 2004, Fatima Productions, US). Judith of Bethulia (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1914, Biograph, US). The King of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1927, DeMille Pictures Corporation, US). King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961, MGM, US). La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ [a.k.a. The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ] (dir. Ferdinand Zecca and Lucien Nonguet, 1902 – 05, 1907, Pathé Frères, FR).

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Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988, Universal, US/CA). of St. Paul (dir. Norman Walker, 1938, G.H.W. Productions, UK). of St. Paul Series (dir. John T. Coyle, 1949, Cathedral Films, US). Living Bible Collection [The Acts of the Apostles; a.k.a. The Book of Acts Series; video] (dir. Eddie Dew, 1957, Broadman Films, US). The Miracle Maker (dir. Derek Hayes and Stanislav Sokolov, 2000, BBC, RU/UK). Moses the Lawgiver (dir. Gianfranco De Bosio, 1974, Associated Television, UK/IT). The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004, Icon Productions, US). Paul the Emissary [a.k.a. The Emissary: A Biblical Epic] (dir. Robert Marcarelli, 1997, TBN Films, US). Peter and Paul (dir. Robert Day, 1981, Universal TV, US). The Power of the Resurrection (dir. Harold Schuster, 1958, Family Films, US). Quo Vadis? (dir. Ferdinand Zecca and Lucien Nonguet, 1902, Pathé Frères, FR). Quo Vadis? (dir. Enrico Guazzoni, 1913, Cines, IT). Quo Vadis? (dir. Gabriellino D’Annunzio and Georg Jacoby, 1925, Unione Cinematografic Italiana, IT). Quo Vadis (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1951, MGM, US). Quo Vadis? (dir. Franco Rossi, 1985, Rai 1, IT/FR/ES/CH/UK/DE). Quo Vadis (dir. Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 2001, Chronos Film, PL/US). The Robe (dir. Henry Koster, 1953, Twentieth Century Fox, US). The Sign of the Cross (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1932, Paramount, US). Son of Man (dir. Mark Dornford-May. 2006, Spier Films, ZA). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1923, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, US). The Visual Bible: Acts (dir. Regardt van den Bergh, 1994, Visual Bible, US). The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John (dir. Philip Saville, 2003, Visual Bible, CA/UK).

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30 Mythic Relevance of Revelation in Film The last act is bloody, however wonderful the rest of the play. At the end, earth is thrown on the head, and that is the last of it. (Pascal, 1995, 59)

According to Neil Gerlach, the book of Revelation has become a pivotal part of American culture.¹ Drawing on The American Monomyth by Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence (1977), Gerlach traces the origins of this connection back to the original Puritan understanding of the United States as the ordained “city on the hill,” responding to deviation from Puritan theology with eschatological warning, transformed and secularized, but still prevalent following the Enlightenment (Gerlach 2011, 1031– 32). In this context, Revelation provides America with a triumphal, militant national self-understanding—the United States becomes the militant messiah, the rider on the white horse, who appears from the outside to set the world right and then returns to its own shores. In this sense, biblical prophecy is embedded in American culture and as Paul Boyer points out in his detailed analysis of religious apocalypticism in America history, popularizers of apocalyptic prophecy have played an important role in shaping American understanding of the world, especially since World War II. (Gerlach 2011, 1033)

According to this assertion, not only the Bible, but more specifically Revelation, has been interwoven into the American monomyth – “the manifestation of the values of the civil religion in popular culture” (Gerlach 2011, 1032) – informing the national determination of identity. The American monomyth centers on the idea of a faltering community from which a savior emerges to correct and redeem. Unlike the more common cultural monomyth in which a hero leaves a community to journey in a supernatural world and as a result “grows up in the face of external threats” (Gerlach 2011, 1032) and only after returning home to be reincorporated into the community, the hero of the American monomyth does not return to the community, but rather acts as a redemptive force on behalf of the community. In order for the American monomyth to be reinforced, a work must first create or reveal the world to be a hellscape. This could be a force from within the community or an evil from without, often portrayed in one or few individuals. In films that draw on imagery, words, themes, and/or events from Revelation, the biblical references act to create and/or reveal a hellscape on earth, reinforcing the existence and power of supernatural evil, particularly from a Christian context.

 For a more general exploration of apocalyptic films with biblical resonance see Pippin’s chapter in Part I (Pp.  – ). The present chapter deals with films directly indebted to the book of Revelation.

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Types of Revelation References Generally speaking, films that invoke Revelation tend to use the book in one of two ways: either they attempt to map the events predicted literally (e. g., Left Behind: The Movie, dir. Vic Sarin, 2000; The Late Great Planet Earth, dir. Robert Amram/Rolf Forsberg, 1979; or The Seventh Sign, dir. Carl Schultz, 1988) or they make reference to themes (the Antichrist – Rosemary’s Baby, dir. Roman Polanski, 1968; Anitichrist, dir. Lars von Trier, 2009), quotes (Ghostbusters, dir. Ivan Reitman, 1984; Det sjunde inseglet, dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1957, a.k.a. The Seventh Seal; Inland Empire, dir. David Lynch, 2006), and/or images (the whore of Babylon – Metropolis, dir. Fritz Lang, 1927) from Revelation.

Fig. 54: The whore of Babylon in Metropolis (1927)

Some of the films have very little to do with the actual events, words, functions, or themes from Revelation, for example, the sub-genre of Antichrist films is not directly related to Revelation as the book does not explicitly name an antichrist; however, tradition has interpreted the beast and the false prophet in Revelation 13 as characterizations of the Antichrist. The title of the film The Devil Incarnate (dir. L. Gustavo Cooper, 2013) means to invoke an apocalyptic connection to Revelation through reception of Antichrist figures from the book, yet the plot is actually about a fourteenth-century Romanian folktale referred to as Copiii Pierdere (HorrorBug Blog, 2012). This film is not actually about the Antichrist, nor is it about Revelation, yet it means to draw on a cultural fear of the Antichrist in terms of the hellish aspects of Revelation as a thematic self-promotion of the film, drawing audiences that appreciate the sub-genre of Antichrist films. Most of these films, even those that claim to interpret Revelation according to contemporary signs, take widespread interpretive liberties. Films such as The Omen (dir. Richard Donner, 1976), which Brent Zacky, director of The Omen Legacy (2001) claims to be “ripped from the pages of the Bible” (Cowan, 2009, 414), and films such as The Exorcist (dir. William Friedkin, 1973), which do not directly draw on Revelation or other eschatological texts, rely on common conventions that allow them to be grouped together as narratively similar. From

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this context, the creators can take advantage of the assumptions brought to the theater by the audience: The Exorcist draws on knowledge the audience has about the nature of Catholicism and the definition it provides of Satan. Therefore, whether or not explicitly mentioned, the demon possessing Regan becomes the Satan of the Christian Bible. (Wyman 2009, 305)

Following films such as Rosemary’s Baby, which does draw on themes within Revelation, filmmakers like William Friedkin (The Exorcist) could rely on the audience to enter the theater with an expectation of eschatological dread without actually having to focus on apocalyptic books like Revelation. In his introduction to the re-mastered version of The Exorcist, Friedkin informs the audience: “I think that most people take out of The Exorcist what they bring to it. If you believe that the world is a dark and evil place, then The Exorcist will reinforce that. But if you believe that there is a force for good that combats and eventually triumphs over evil, then you will be taking out of the film what we tried to put into it.” Friedkin admits that he personally places this cinematic work symbolically in a greater apocalyptic tradition and expects at least a portion of his audience to do the same. A popular trope among films claiming that contemporary events align with Revelation is to interpret the beast from the sea (Rev. 13:1) as political alliances creating a peaceful, totalitarian, world power, especially in Europe. In the midst of the Cold War, Hal Lindsey popularized this view, seeing the creation of the European Common Market as a sign that the events of Revelation were beginning to unfold (Walliss 2010, 95). Three years later, The Omen screenwriter, David Seltzer, composed a poem, delivered by Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), stealthily written it as if it is quoted from Revelation: “When the Jews return to Zion and a comet rips the sky and the Holy Roman Empire rises, then you and I must die. From the Eternal Sea, He rises, creating armies on either shore, turning man against his brother till man exists no more.” The Book of Revelation predicted it all.

Following suit, Reitman’s 1984 film, Ghostbusters, iconically misquoted Revelation 6:12, even adding extra words: Dr. Ray Stantz (Dan Akroyd): I remember Revelations [sic] 7:12, “And I looked, and he opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake. And the sun became as black as sack cloth, and the moon became as blood…” Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson): “…and the seas boiled and the skies fell.” Dr. Stantz: Judgment Day. Zeddemore: Judgment Day.

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In Inland Empire, director David Lynch makes subtle use of the apocalyptic themes of Revelation, quoting Matthew 13:41– 42 (“The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sins and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”) – which aligns with Revelation 9:1– 2 (“And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft.”). The character Susan Blue (Laura Dern), during an interrogation of sorts, recounts a story told to her by a former lover: There was a chemical factory in this town, and he’d tell me it was putting so much shit in the air you couldn’t think straight. It got to a lot of the people. There was a lot of crazy shit going on there. People having weird dreams, seeing things that wasn’t there. This one time, this one little girl. She was staring off at something one time. Starts screaming. The people hanging round come to her and ask what’s wrong, and uh, she says she sees the end of the world. All fire and smoke and blood running. You know, like they say, the wailing and the gnashing of the teeth.

In this moment of Inland Empire, Lynch set up a hellish apocalyptic world for his audience, invoking biblical apocalyptic notions to reveal a hell-on-earth. In this appropriation of Revelation’s themes, the world all around is revealed as a hellscape; whereas, in films such as End of Days (dir. Peter Hyams, 1999), evil is infiltrating the world. Certainly there is evil already present in End of Days. After all, Jericho Cane (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has lost his entire family, who were murdered by corrupt cops. The world is still under God’s rule, however, still under the rule of overall good; but the Devil (Gabriel Byrne) is trying to change that. Using Revelation as a suggestive roadmap, but relying more heavily on apocalyptic traditions of the medieval period, the film explains that every millennium the Devil has the opportunity to take the world from God. The film re-interprets certain traditions; for example, it suggests that the number of the beast, widely thought to be 666, should actually be inverted to 999, effectively re-imagining its significance as any year ending in 999. On years ending in 999, Satan has the opportunity to impregnate a pre-ordained human woman – in this case Christine York (Robin Tunney) – spawning the Antichrist and ushering in his kingdom. End of Days makes use of familiar cultural motifs of Revelation in an “attempt to dramatize biblical apocalyptic texts by placing them in contemporary contexts, a strategy to make the particular eschatological vision relevant to a modern audience” (Ostwalt, 2009, 378), and in doing so they reestablish the intended horror and fear for a modern audience.²

 See also, in Part I, the Beavis’s discussion of the Bible in horror films (Pp.  – ) and Malone’s discussion of Satan’s depiction in cinema (Pp.  – ).

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In Conversation with Christianity Understandably, many of the films that make reference to Revelation in one way or another, intend to inspire conversation about Christianity. Films such as The Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind trilogy, based on the first three of sixteen novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (1995 – 2007), attempt to interpret the hellscape of contemporary events in the context of Revelation as a warning for Christians to better their lives and for non-Christians to convert. At the beginning of Left Behind: The Movie (dir. Vic Sarin, 2000), the first of the trilogy, a number of people, including all the children of the world disappear. Eventually, the characters ‘left behind’ discover that this was the rapture and only the most innocent Christian believers were taken; now the rest, unrepentant believers, and non-believers are left to suffer the events of Revelation until the final judgment. The moral of the story, articulated by the journalist, Buck Williams (Kirk Cameron), is to be prepared for the apocalypse by converting to Christianity and leading a perfectly Christian life: “How do you describe both the beginning and an end? We should have known better, but we didn’t. What does it matter if we think we know? In the end, there’s no denying the truth.” It is too late for the characters of the film, but it is not too late for the audience. “We should have known better” and now the audience has the chance to know better since they have been shown the future in the film. Based on Hal Lindsey’s book of the same title (1970), the 1979 film The Late Great Planet Earth was released as a documentary narrated by Orson Welles and intended by creator, Hal Lindsey, to portray a truthful, realistic interpretation of the signs of the apocalypse according to Revelation in the modern world. Both this film and Left Behind: The Movie were intended to show that supernatural evil is real and is culminating in the decisive moment of eschatological judgment, as predicted in Revelation and revealed in our current time. In other words, you think it’s bad now, just wait to see the hell that is to come. As film scholar John Walliss puts it: “Rapture films seek to educate their viewer in the specifics of a premillennial/Dispensationalist understanding of apocalyptic texts in an entertaining manner and encourage those who have not yet done so to undergo a born again experience” (Walliss 2010, 92). The initiative to use the medium of film for conversion was an official tactic of Christian groups as early as 1926 when a Literary Digest article stated that “the Motion Picture either can be made of assistance to the Church, as a vehicle for religious, educational and diversionary propaganda, or it may be left as an opposing weapon for satanic mischief” (Lindvall 2009, 126). Thus, these films belong to a wider history and span many film genres. From the perspective of conversion films reflecting on Revelation, the depiction of the human situation on earth plays on the fear caused by revealing the evil already on earth and proposing that this evil will only increase, transforming the earth into a hellscape. These films attempt to incite fear in order to reform Christians and convert non-Christians.

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Fig. 55: Painting the “Dance of Death” in a cathedral in The Seventh Seal (1957)

On the other hand, Bergman’s The Seventh Seal critiques the Catholic Church’s use of fear mongering as a conversion tactic. Set in the medieval period, the protagonist of the film is Antonius Block (Max von Sydow), a knight returning home from the Crusades. He is met by Death (Bengt Ekerot), but bides his time by challenging Death to a chess game, in order to complete his journey home so he can see his wife once more. He returns from the horrors of war to the horrors of the Bubonic Plague. Surrounded by death and pessimism, he witnesses the mistreatment of actors, traveling religious mendicants performing self-flagellation in reverence of God’s wrath, and a woman blamed for the Plague and burned at the stake. He interprets these horrors in terms of the opening of the seventh seal – “When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour” (Rev. 8:1). Antonius Block sees the actions of those around in terms of the realization that God is present to these horrors, but remains silent. This prompts him to ask: Is it so terribly inconceivable to comprehend God with one’s senses? Why does He hide in a cloud of half-promises and unseen miracles? How can we believe in the faithful when we lack faith? What will happen to us who want to believe, but cannot? What about those who neither want to nor can believe? Why can’t I kill God in me? Why does He live on in me in a humiliating way – despite my wanting to evict Him from my heart? Why is He, despite all, a mocking reality I can’t be rid of?

Hell for Block is silence from God. Block’s world is filled with violence, hatred, and natural disaster, all relatable evils; but the worst evil is to believe in God without any answer from God: “Faith is a torment. It is like loving someone who is out there in the darkness, but never appears, no matter how loudly you call.” This film was created a little over ten years after the end of World War II. Those that survived the war, both military and civilians, lived with daily reminders of the horror of that conflict – including lost family members, mangled bodies, bomb-crumbled buildings, and poverty; and, although the Cold War was not yet in full swing, tensions were rising. Although sometimes used in films lacking direct theological association to Christianity, “John’s Book of Revelation may have indirectly influenced the way that some processed the new horrors of war through their immersion in Western culture and their

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awareness of an inclination toward doomsday” (Rehill 2010, 162). From this perspective, The Seventh Seal, explicitly in conversation with both theology and Western culture, becomes a critique of modern organized Christianity, despite being set in the medieval period. In the film, the Church’s response to the evils of Block’s world is to inspire conversion and contrition through fear. Unlike Left Behind: The Movie and The Late Great Planet Earth, The Seventh Seal, critiques the tactic of fear mongering. While traveling home with Antonius Block, his squire, Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand) enters the vestibule of a church and engages with the painter charged to decorate the entrance: Jöns: What is this supposed to represent? Painter: The Dance of Death Jöns: And that one is Death? Painter: Yes, he dances off with all of them. Jöns: Why do you paint such nonsense? Painter: I thought it would serve to remind people that they must die. Jöns: Well, it’s not going to make them feel any happier. Painter: Why should one always make people happy? It might not be a bad idea to scare them a little once in a while. Jöns: Then they’ll close their eyes and refuse to look at your painting. Painter: Oh, they’ll look. A skull is almost more interesting than a naked woman. Jöns: If you do scare them… Painter: They’ll think. Jöns: And if they think… Painter: They’ll become still more scared. Jöns: And then they’ll run right into the arms of the priests.

In The Seventh Seal, it is not only the actual evils of the world and God’s silence that create the hellscape of earth, but also the fear mongering tactics of the Church that uses modes of potential beauty, entertainment, and recovery – the painting and the spectacle of the mendicants interrupting the actor’s performance – as ways to convert and correct Christians.

Nature: Good or Evil? Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009) and Richard Donner’s The Omen (1976) express different understandings of the agency of evil from the standpoint of nature, meaning anything not made by humans that is living and not a human. In The Omen, nature is involved in the battle between good and evil. It seems that Satan holds the power to manipulate Rottweilers – both the pet of the Antichrist’s caretaker, Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw), and dogs at the cemetery guarding the graves of the mother of the Antichrist and the murdered baby of the adopted Antichrist’s parents – and the power to impregnate a jackal with a human child, the Antichrist. Despite evil’s control over these specific elements of nature, nature itself recognizes Damian (Harvey Stephens), the Antichrist, as evil. On an outing at the zoo,

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the animals are keenly aware and violently off-put by Damian; the giraffes run in fear and the baboons attack the family’s car. As Father Brennan’s demise draws closer, the wind picks up ominously, as if to warn him of the coming danger. Satan is not yet in full control of nature, even if certain dog breeds (at least one popularly considered vicious) are targeted and thus, nature overall is still considered good, part of God’s creation. Similarly, nature acts as a force of salvation in The Seventh Seal. Throughout Bergman’s film, Antonius Block runs from death. The hellscape of this film is formed by his memory of the Crusades, the devastation of the Bubonic plague, and the trauma created by fear mongering within the church. Nearing the end of the film, nature acts as a dividing agent, saving those that are to live (a pair of traveling actors and their child, allegorically represented as the holy family) from those that are condemned. A violent storm comes upon all the travelers and while the family of actors cannot navigate the storm in their large caravan and must stop for safety, the others press forward to the castle and their death. The next morning, as the storm clears, the family of actors spies their former fellow travelers dancing with Death on a far hill. The forceful tempest arose from nature to separate those damned to Death’s dance from those spared, seemingly a happenstance of divine, protective will. From the perspective of the characters in the film Antichrist, nature is evil. The film’s biblical Eve-figure, called “She” (Charlotte Gainsbourg), proclaims her understanding that “Nature is Satan’s church.” Later, the biblical Adam-figure, called “He” (Willem Dafoe), is confronted by a ghostly fox articulating his biggest fear, “Chaos reigns.” His fear spawns from his occupation as a therapist of sorts; if chaos reigns, then there is little to no purpose in trying to decipher a logical reasoning behind anything. He and She understand Nature as a macro-model of the micro-model of a human; what applies to Nature, also applies to human individuals. Nature in the film is both the “greenery outside,” and, as He puts it, “I’m nature of all human beings.” Their logical conclusion follows that if nature is evil, then “human nature is evil.” This message becomes skewed throughout the film, playing out the theme of the sinful female as She surmises, “women do not control their own bodies, Nature does.” From the perspective of these two characters, nature is evil and, thus, all being is evil – but this is not the only perspective of the film. Von Trier elaborates the trope that nature is evil throughout the entire film and then suggests the opposite. Antichrist ends as He slowly makes his way toward civilization, but while still in the “greenery” nature, He comes across women walking and clothed in sunlight, depicted as saints or martyrs.³ The only clear reference within this film to Revelation is its title, and even the title is interpretively rather than literally related to Revelation, yet that one reference helps to inform the audience of the main couple’s experience: that

 I wish to thank John Matthew Allison and Nathan Jumper for the fruitful conversation on January , .

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nature is chaos, not reason. In this context, good is order and logic and thus when He and She realize that nature is actually chaotic, the opposite of order, then nature becomes the embodiment of evil, the opposite of good. Von Trier exploits this horrific realization throughout the majority of the film and then tantalizingly reverses the sentiment in its last few seconds. Perhaps, nature is not evil after all.

Martyrdom In Revelation the opening of the fifth seal commemorates the sacrifice of “those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne” (Rev. 6:9). These martyrs cry out to God for vengeance and they are comforted and laid to peacefully rest “until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been” (6:11). In the Revelation’s finale, the martyrs “came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years” (20:4). The account is particularly concerned with those that have had to sacrifice their lives prematurely for the sake of witnessing, and films that reference Revelation often incorporate martyrdom as a prominent theme. In This Is the End (dir. Evan Goldberg/ Seth Rogan, 2013), the four remaining actors not raptured, destroyed, or banished from the original group of apocalyptic remainders, discover that becoming a martyr for your friends pardons you of your sins and allows you to be raptured as well. Screaming obscenities to lure a demon from his friends, Craig Robinson (himself) is surrounded by a blue light and lifted into Heaven. Realizing this is their chance, the remaining three friends attempt to martyr themselves in order to escape the hellscape on earth. Although, This Is the End depicts a literalistic view of martyrdom, the trope in other films takes on a more messianic consideration. In Carl Schultz’s film The Seventh Sign the Lamb of God returns to condemn the world, not to save it, aligning more readily with Christ’s role in Revelation 5:6 than with John 3:17. In The Seventh Sign, the hall of souls is empty. Known also as the Guf or the “Treasury of Souls in Paradise,” the hall of souls is a depiction in Jewish myth of the origin of each individual’s soul, sprouting from blossoms of the Tree of Life “which ripen, and then fall from the tree into the Guf” (Schwartz 2004, 165). Abby Quinn (Demi Moore) is to birth the first child born without a soul – an interpretation of the opening of the seventh seal and the resulting silence of Heaven (Rev. 8:1) – and, once this seal is broken, there is no reversing the fate of the world. After befriending Abby, David Bannon (Jürgen Pronchnow), also the reincarnate Jesus Christ, reveals that to save the world one of the seven seals must be prevented from opening and that it would take a great act of hope. The first four seals in Revelation are Pestilence/Plague, War, Famine, and Death (Rev. 6:1– 8) – represented in the film through a number of natural (snow in the Negev Desert, water turning to blood, sea creatures scalding), political (war), and social (increase of violence such as theft, rape, gang shootings, etc.) tragedies. These seals are too large for Abby to prevent. In Revelation, when the

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fifth seal is opened, the martyrs are commended and each given “a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been” (Rev. 6:11) – interpreted in the context of the film as the death of the last martyr. Although Abby identified the last martyr – a boy with down syndrome on death row for murdering his incestuous parents – she is unable to stop his execution, and, thus, the sixth seal is broken: “there was a great earthquake, and the sun became as black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood” (6:12). Abby and her child represent the seventh seal; Heaven is silent because the Guf is empty and her son will be born without a soul. The story is further complicated by visions Abby experiences of Jesus’ trial, in which a first-century woman, looking suspiciously like Abby Quinn, is asked if she would die for Jesus; she refuses. The film culminates in the moment that Abby gives birth to a boy, the first without a soul, and the question is repeated: “Will you die for him?” This time she agrees, culminating in a salvific act of hope as David Bannon comforts Abby: “The Hall of Souls is full again. It was you, Abby. Just the one person with hope enough for the whole world.” Significantly, Christ is no longer the savior of the world in this film. Christ came to judge the world’s sins, not to save the world from its sins. It is Abby, a regular human woman, who becomes the messiah of the world with her act of sacrificial hope and martyrdom. This extreme humanization of the Christ-figure in apocalyptic film is a prominent reappropriation of the martyrs’ role in Revelation 20. It is familiar to many from the cult classic The Exorcist, in which Father Karras (Jason Miller) desperately screams to the demon (maybe the Devil, although it remains ambiguous) inside Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair): “You son of a bitch! Take me! Come into me! God damn you! Take me! Take me!” And as the demon moves inside him, he throws himself out of the window and down the steep stairwell to his death and the vanquishing of the demon. This tactic is a far cry from the original attempt to compel the demon to extricate the girl via the power of the Catholic Church and of Christ in the iconic phrase popularized by this film: “The power of Christ compels you.” It is not the power of Christ that ultimately saves Regan, but rather the pleading of the humanly flawed priest and his final act of suicide.

Fig. 56: The martyrdom of Jericho Cane in End of Days (1999)

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Similarly, Peter Hyams’ film End of Days continues the trope. In this film, Jericho Cane vanquishes Satan by committing suicide. Cane is a depressed borderline addict, who does not have faith and seemingly lacks a moral code. “Cane is presented as Christ-like because he is not only sacrificing himself for the sake of humanity, but also refusing to give in to the temptations of the Devil” (Wyman 2009, 307). Suffering from the murder of his family and the loss of his job, Cane is not the typical Christlike figure, yet he is a fairly typical hero-figure within the American monomyth. He has been ostracized from the general American community, no longer participating in the American dream of wealth and family. He putters and drinks his way through his security job and is apathetic to issues of right and wrong. It takes an encounter with Satan for Cane to finally pick a moral side, choosing to save Christine (Satan’s intended bride and mother of the Antichrist) rather than the power and restoration offered by Satan. In one final attempt to impregnate Christine, Satan possesses Cane in order to use his body, but Cane resists by throwing himself on the sword of a statue of the angel Michael. In his final sacrificial act, Cane manages to save the entire world from Satan’s rule. The Lamb of God is absent from this film so it is up to Jericho Cane, a name implying both the curse and protection of Cain (Gen. 4:11– 16) as well as a Christ-figure (with the initials J. C.), to deliver humanity with his martyrdom.

Reinforcing Confidence in Anthropocentricity The American monomyth reveals that eschatological anxiety is built into the American subconscious. So, why is there appeal in watching films about the potential non-existence of the world, humanity, or worse, the United States? People who identify with the community of the American monomyth hope for the salvation of this community. As discussed before, the Puritan-tradition interwoven into the American monomyth views the community as sinful and in need of a savior, usually from outside of the community. But what began as a religious movement secularized. Through the separation of church and state and the onset of the Enlightenment, America’s sense of mission transformed into a secular one. Progress was to be a product of human effort and intellect to produce a posthistorical utopia; apocalypticism did not disappear, but turned nationalistic—more than ever, American seemed the culmination of history. (Gerlach 2011, 1032)

Although the supernatural is still present in pop culture, there is a decrease in its prevalence as it cannot be understood in terms of reason. The monomyth remained, but as it evolved, so too did the concept of the messiah. The confidence of outside intervention from a divine source changed into the confidence in the one hero, a human ‘Other’ – one from within the community, who possesses one or more flaws and eventually has the power to redeem the community. Frequently, the flaw is a lack of faith in Christianity. In Stigmata (dir. Rupert Wainwright, 1999) the atheist Frankie Paige (Patricia Arquette) is possessed by a dead priest, who had died while translating a world-changing document. In The Seventh Sign, Abby Quinn describes

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her lack of faith to David Bannon at the supper table, yet she is ultimately the one with enough faith to redeem the entire world. Because of her death, humanity can rest assured in the confidence of an apocalypse thwarted by none other than a human. These films are obviously not devoid of supernatural elements; and, even more so, they challenge the lack of faith in divinity, especially for the sake of technology. In End of Days, Jericho Cane makes it very clear to Father Kovak (Rod Steiger) where he stands in terms of religion: Father Kovak: Do you believe in God? Jericho Cane: Maybe once, not anymore. Father Kovak: What happened? Jericho Cane: We had a difference of opinion. I thought my wife and daughter should live. He felt otherwise.

Cane’s reluctance to believe in God does not stop him from becoming the messianic redeemer of the world. He vows to keep Christine safe from Satan, yet not with his faith, but with his gun: “Between your faith and my Glock nine millimeter, I’ll take the Glock.” The use of violence by many of these human messiahs seems antithetical to the Jesus Christ of the Gospels; however, in films relating to Revelation, “these heroes may be saviours precisely because they mete out judgment and destruction” (McEver, 2009, 274) as did the Jesus Christ of Revelation. Ultimately, Cane puts down the Glock and defeats Satan with his faith, not his gun. During the final battle, Cane and Christina take refuge in a church. While waiting for Satan’s attack, Cane whispers a prayer, “Please God, help me. Give me strength.” In Fritz Lang’s early twentieth-century film, Metropolis (1927), the community is saved by a devout, saintly woman, Maria (Brigitte Helm) and a converted aristocrat, Freder (Gustav Fröhlich). In this circumstance, the greed and wealth of the community have brought about its own demise. The upper city has been corrupted by the Whore of Babylon (Rev. 17 and 18), who is really the Machine Man made to look like Maria by C.A. Rotwang, ‘The Inventor’ (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), as a ploy to incite riots among the workers of the lower city and mislead the inhabitants of the upper city into sin. This community requires salvation from the corruption of the industrial society in which materialism and power work to dehumanize the majority of the community for the sake of a small number of elites. In this film, it is the machines themselves that are martyred for the sake of the community. Through the process of secularization, these films propose that salvation will come from a human (or machine) messiah rather than a divine messiah, yet all of these films clearly work within a belief system that still incorporates (despite their reluctance to embrace) the supernatural. In the case of most of the films related to Revelation, “the persistence of supernatural beings as a source of evil on film is astonishing in a culture that has ostensibly embraced a scientific and materialistic worldview” (Stone 2009, 316). The narrative space for the fantastical within the medium of film provides a socially ordained and approved format for discussing the ex-

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istence of the supernatural. Filmmakers have the freedom to explore imagined worlds, but also experiences of this world that are considered abnormal, including the films based on real stories such as The Exorcist. However much we may want to believe we live in more sophisticated, more enlightened times, that science has replaced our need for God as a candle in the dark, the unseen order remains a cultural fixture. […] The important concept here is yearning. That is, not only do we continue to believe in the unseen order – in supernatural phenomena, in counterintuitive agencies such as gods and demons – but we retain an equally strong inclination to believe, an equally powerful desire that these things be true. (Cowan 2009, 414)

Jericho Cane may be the world’s savior, but he longs for help from God; he even prays for it. It is never revealed to the audience whether God actually helps Cane or whether his strength comes from within himself; but the implication, either way, is that humanity has the power stop the apocalypse, even if that power is invisibly given by God. Film becomes a venue to discuss the themes of the supernatural and how it affects humanity without the constraints of proof needed by modern science. As the fear of the supernatural is not fully extracted from cultural expression, the American monomyth in these films supplants the depiction of a perfect, transcendent messiah with a flawed, human messiah. Humanity will no longer wait on a silent Heaven to avert the apocalypse if it takes matters into its own hands by elevating a truly flawed ‘Other’ of the community as a messianic sacrifice for the restoration of the community. Although in the medium of television rather than film, the series Supernatural (created by Eric Kripke, 2005-present) typifies this trope very clearly. After a season of build-up to the apocalypse, brought about dramatically via liberal interpretations of events from Revelation and other apocalyptic texts, season five begins with Lucifer’s ascendance to earth and the beginning of the battle of Armageddon between Heaven and Hell. One of the two protagonists of the series, Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles), takes his stance in Episode 1 of Season 5: Screw the angels and the demons and their crap apocalypse. Hell, they want to fight a war, they can find their own planet. This one’s ours, and I say they get the hell off it. We take ‘em all on. We kill the devil. Hell, we even kill [Archangel] Michael if we have to, but we do it our own damn selves.

Dean speaks for “we,” meaning most directly the three supernatural hunters in the scene, but more broadly the people of the world. The rhetoric from this scene mimics the political rhetoric of American politics and, concomitantly, the American monomyth as epitomized in the “War Message” of George W. Bush: We will meet that threat now with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines […] My fellow citizens, the dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others. And we will prevail. (March 19, 2003)

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As in End of Days, The Seventh Sign, The Seventh Seal, Metropolis, and even Late Great Planet Earth, the threat feels present and real and Heaven’s response is viewed as non-existent or confusingly enigmatic. This divine silence seems to warrant a need for humanity, led by a flawed human ‘Other’, to actively participate in the triumph over Satan.

Conclusion For all of these films that draw thematically from Revelation, the inlet into scripture depends on popular fears associated with this biblical book. These films have unique purposes in depicting a hellscape by drawing on the audience’s communal expectations relating to Revelation, but the use of the hellscape can be boiled down to four broad categories: conversion, a jarring from reality, sensationalism, or an exercise in hope. Most of these films seek to tap into multiple uses of the hellscape. Films such as Left Behind: The Movie employ fear mongering aimed at converting the audience to a certain interpretation of Christianity, while films such as The Seventh Seal seek to make the audience uncomfortable by disrupting that perception. Von Trier’s Antichrist fills in the hellscape with disturbing suggestions of images of a reality of humiliation, panic, and dismemberment, finally twisting the audience’s hellish expectations at the final moment. The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby are well known for their groundbreaking sensationalist images and themes, criticized by some as a ploy to draw in crowds with voyeurism and praised by others for the ethical and spiritual questions posed in their brazen depictions. The common thread in films that draw thematically from Revelation is that they are all using the text to create or reveal a hellscape on earth. In general, these films rely more readily on culturally biased perceptions of Revelation than measured, scholarly analysis of the book. Finally, Revelation has been used within the framework of the American monomyth, permanently anxious about the perceived reality of the encroaching end, but adjusting in an exercise of hope and confidence in humanity and more specifically, America.

Works Cited Bush, George W. 2003. “War Message.” Washington, D.C. (March 19): http://www.presidentialrhe toric.com/speeches/03.19.03.html; accessed February 13, 2015. Cowan, Douglas E. 2009. “Horror and the Demonic.” In The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film. Ed. John Lyden. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 403 – 19. Gerlach, Neil. 2011. “The Antichrist as Anti-Monomyth: The Omen Films as Social Critique.” Journal of Popular Culture 44.5: 1027 – 46. HorrorBug. 2012. “Copiii Pierdere (Lost Children) – 2013.” (October 31): http://horrorbug.com/mov ies/copiii-pierdere-lost-children-2013/; accessed February 13. 2015. Jewett, Robert, and John Shelton Lawrence. 1977. The American Monomyth. Norwell, Mass.: Anchor Press.

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LaHaye, Tim, and Jerry B. Jenkins, 2014 The Left Behind Collection [1995 – 2007]. Carol Strem: Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers. Lindsey, Hal. 1970. The Late Great Planet Earth. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan. Lindvall, Terry. 2009. “Christian Movies.” In The Continuum Companion to Religion and Film. Ed. William L. Blizek. London and New York: Continuum. Pp. 125 – 36. McEver, Matthew. 2009. “The Saviour Figure.” In The Continuum Companion to Religion and Film. Ed. William L. Blizek. London and New York: Continuum. Pp. 270 – 80. Ostwalt, Conrad. 2009. “Apocalyptic.” In The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film. Ed. John Lyden. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 368 – 83. Pascal, Blaise. 1995. Pensées and Other Writings. Translated by Honor Levi. New York; Oxford University Press. Rehill, Annie. 2010. The Apocalypse is Everywhere: A Popular History of America’s Favorite Nightmare. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger. Schwartz, Howard. 2004. Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Stone, Bryan. 2009. “Evil on Film.” In The Continuum Companion to Religion and Film. Ed. William L. Blizek. London and New York: Continuum. Pp. 310 – 21. Walliss, John. 2010. “Celling the End Times: The Contours of Contemporary Rapture Films.” Reel Revelations: Apocalypse and Film. Ed. John Walliss and Lee Quinby. Sheffield; Sheffield Phoenix Press. Pp. 91 – 111. Wyman, Kelly J. 2009. “Satan in the Movies.” In The Continuum Companion to Religion and Film. Ed. William L. Blizek. London and New York: Continuum. Pp. 300 – 09.

Films Cited Antichrist (dir. Lars von Trier, 2009, Zentropia Entertainments, DK/DE/FR/SE/IT/PL). Det sjunde inseglet [a.k.a. The Seventh Seal] (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1957, Svensk, SE). The Devil Incarnate [a.k.a. Copii: The 1st Entry] (dir. L. Gustavo Cooper, 2013, Raven Banner, US). End of Days (dir. Peter Hyams, 1999, Beacon Communications, US). The Exorcist (dir. William Friedkin, 1973, Warner Brothers, US). Ghostbusters (dir. Ivan Reitman, 1984, Black Rhino Productions, US). Inland Empire (dir. David Lynch, 2006, StudioCanal, FR/FI/US). The Late Great Planet Earth (dir. Robert Amram and Rolf Forsberg, 1979, Amran, US). Left Behind [a.k.a. Left Behind: The Movie] (dir. Vic Sarin, 2000, Cloud Ten Pictures, CA). Metropolis (dir. Fritz Lang, 1927, Universum Film, DE). The Omen (dir. Richard Donner, 1976, Twentieth Century Fox, US/UK). The Omen Legacy (dir. Brent Zacky, 2001, American Movie Classics, US). Rosemary’s Baby (dir. Roman Polanski, 1968, William Castle Productions, US). The Seventh Sign (dir. Carl Schultz, 1988, Tristar Pictures, US). Stigmata (dir. Rupert Wainwright, 1999, MGM, US). Supernatural [“Sympathy for the Devil,” season 5, episode 1] (dir. Robert Singer, 2013, Warner Brothers, US).

V Cinemas and Auteurs

Richard Walsh

31 David Wark Griffith: Filming the Bible as the U.S. Story

Early cinema’s moving pictures provided a shock akin to that of the recently invented roller coaster. It was a “cinema of attractions,” not narrative development (Gunning 1986, 114– 33). D. W. Griffith (January 22, 1875 – July 23, 1948) played a leading role in creating narrative film’s visual syntax, developing the moving camera and editing as narrative techniques during his years at Biograph (1908 – 13).¹ In that time, he (and his cameraman Billy Bitzer) produced hundreds of one-reel films.² Griffith learned to move away from the long shot, which imitated the perspective of a theater spectator. He moved the camera back to suggest a far larger “world,” to follow action (e. g., mounting it on a train), and forward to draw attention to something or to a character to show the character’s reactions, emotions, or thoughts. In After Many Years (1908), for example, Griffith moves the camera forward toward a brooding wife awaiting her husband’s return and then cuts immediately to show the object of her thoughts, her husband on a deserted island. Previously, cinema had used double-exposure dream balloons to show a character’s inner thoughts. When the Biograph management complained that no one would be able to follow this editing, Griffith defended himself by claiming that Charles Dickens told stories in the same way.³ In A Corner in Wheat (1909), Griffith crosscuts between the greedy wheat speculator and the poor in a bread line to demonize the former and to create empathy with the latter. He also crosscuts to create tension and suspense and then relieve it in increasingly frenetic last-minute rescues. Oft-cited examples include The Lonely Villa (1909), in which Griffith crosscuts between the burglars who threaten a family and the husband’s race home to save them, and The Lonedale Operator (1911), in which Griffith crosscuts between robbers who threaten a girl in a train station, who telegraphs her father and sweetheart for help, and their race in a train (with a camera mounted on the train) to rescue her. Incidentally, this film also has a famous close-up of a wrench, which the threatened girl pretends is a gun. While chase scenes were cinematic staples and Griffith a master of tempo (Eisenstein 1949, 235), Griffith also wanted to establish cinema as an art form, so he filmed a number of literary classics (like After Many Years, a version of Tennyson’s “Enoch Arden”).⁴ His narrative desires, as well as the success of foreign spectacles, pushed Griffith to bigger stories, to two-reel films (like Massacre [1912], which Jacobs calls the

 Edwin S. Porter is an important precursor. The Great Train Robbery () was the filmmakers’ editing “Bible,” until Griffith’s advances. See Jacobs (,  – ).  See Jacobs (,  – ,  – ,  – ) and Gunning ().  For a comparison of Griffith’s editing and Dickens’ literary style, see Eisenstein (,  – ).  Tennyson (). Griffith seems to have carried his artistic desires over from his less successful career in the theater into his movies.

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first American spectacle [Jacobs 1967, 114]) and then to the four-reel Judith of Bethulia (made in 1913, but released in 1914). Judith stands at the origins of the American religious spectacle.⁵ It includes huge sets (the walls of Bethulia and Holofernes’ tent, which is large enough for a bevy of dancing girls) and mass battle scenes (Holofernes’ men attack the well outside the city and then the city walls). Griffith humanizes this story with close-ups of the fighting and of individuals (e. g., repeated shots of a young woman with a starving baby) and by cutting to stories of young lovers (Naomi and Nathan, who do not appear in the apocryphal book of Judith), put in peril by the larger forces. Holofernes, his dancing girls, and his authoritarian rule provide the exotic spectacle and orientalism endemic to the biblical spectacle. Holofernes’ tyranny, as well as the plight of the young lovers and the starving people of Bethulia, justifies the (righteous) violence to come. Judith is the heroine demanded by the spectacle’s “great (wo)man” view of history.⁶ After the prayers necessary for the religious hero, she leaves her starving people and goes to Holofernes’ tent risking her life and (more significantly for the film) her honor “to do a thing which shall go through all generations” (cf. Judith 8:32). The subsequent seduction titillates almost as much as Holofernes’ beheading. Despite being enamored of Holofernes, a temptation the biblical Judith does not face, Griffith’s Judith chooses duty and people over her own feelings. In this film, action, romance, and the “Other” are far more important than “religion.” Thus, the film does not include the book of Judith’s central motif, the notion that Israel is invincible because of God’s protection unless she sins (see, e. g., Judith 5; 8; 11), nor the book’s focus on the importance of temple worship (see, e. g., Judith 4; 15 – 16). Seen in hindsight, these foci make Judith a prototypical biblical epic. Griffith’s two great films, The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916), simply refine the spectacle’s motifs and techniques. Twelve reels in length and with an enormous two-dollar admission charge, The Birth of a Nation made more money than any film until Victor Flemming’s Gone with the Wind (1939). It also brought the middle classes to film and established film as art. Critics still praise its choreography and the editing of the massive battle scenes. Again, Griffith humanizes the epic by focusing on the romantic relationships that develop between the Northern (Austin) Stoneman and Southern (Doctor) Cameron family. In the battle scenes, depicted in bloody red tint, Griffith highlights war’s horror by focusing on the death of two Cameron sons and one Stoneman son. After Lincoln’s assassination, vengeful Northerners ruthlessly subject the South to reconstruction. In this second act, the film’s vile racism and its biblical allusions

 See Williams (,  – ). Also see the discussion of this film by Shepherd in Part I (Pp.  – ).  Despite their epic scale, American spectacles almost always center on the hero(ine) who changes the course of events and thus history (rather than on some impersonal historical forces). Consider, e. g., the heroic treatment of Moses in cinema. This treatment differs from the biblical focus on divine sovereignty as history’s determinative agent.

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come to the fore.⁷ The white South becomes the despoiled, innocent sufferer (or threatened family) that is the leitmotif of Griffith films – and of biblical texts like the gospels.⁸ In fact, like that of Christ, the South’s suffering is meaningful, redemptive, and creative. The title that opens the film’s second act makes this unmistakable: “The agony which the South endured that a nation might be born.” In contrast, the film depicts Reconstruction era blacks as children (or subhuman beasts) unfit for self-rule and as dupes of self-serving Northerners like Austin Stoneman.⁹ White fears about miscegenation dominate the plot and lead ultimately to the creation of the salvific, Christ-figured KKK.¹⁰ Stoneman’s mulatto protégé Silas Lynch repeatedly ogles Elsie Stoneman and ultimately seeks to marry her. When Flora Cameron leaps to her death rather than submit to the amorous pursuit of the freedman Gus, the KKK retaliates by murdering Gus. A conflict between the KKK and the black militia ensues. The KKK is born in Flora’s blood, when Ben Cameron brandishes a fiery cross and then quenches its flame in her blood. The ritualistic scene completes the South’s martyrdom. As the South becomes a suffering Christ-figure, it paves the way for and justifies the violence forthcoming in the depiction of the KKK as a conquering triumphant Christ.¹¹ Bathed in innocent blood, the cross-bearing KKK rides to two deliverances (accompanied musically by “The Ride of the Valkyrie”) – saving Elsie from Lynch’s lechery and then the remnants of the Cameron family, Phil Stoneman, and two former Union soldiers from certain death at the hands of the attacking black militia. In typical fashion, Griffith crosscuts rapidly between those in danger and those who ride to save them to create suspense. The deliverances lead to a victorious KKK parade, carefully monitored (whites only) elections, and the double honeymoon of Margaret Cameron and Phil Stoneman and Elsie Stoneman and Ben Cameron. The U.S. is born as a white paradise. For Gilles Deleuze, Griffith films provide the first examples of the story that U.S. cinema has since ceaselessly repeated: the story of “the birth of a nation-civilization.” In a sense, the story is already present in the small community that defends

 Act two depends most heavily upon Thomas Dixon’s racist novel The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (). This novel was based on Dixon’s earlier play. Griffith’s film was originally entitled The Clansman. Griffith learned his romanticized view of the victimized South from his father, who served as a colonel in the Confederate army.  The theme appears in Griffith’s first film, The Adventures of Dollee ().  Stoneman seems a fictionalized version of Thaddeus Stevens. The contrast between Griffith’s Stoneman and Spielberg’s Stevens (Lincoln, ) illustrates how significantly U.S. attitudes toward race have shifted. See also, in this volume, Burnette-Bletsch’s discussion of race, the Bible, and film in Part II (Pp.  – ).  Reportedly, KKK recruiters still use the film to evangelize for their cause. See, for example http:// kkk.org/klan-culture/the-birth-of-a-nation; accessed June , . An earlier Griffith film (The Rose of Kentucky, ) does depict the KKK as villains.  Compare the similar development from martyr to conqueror in the Markan “Son of Man” sayings (Mark :, ; :; : – ; : – ; :).

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itself against the greedy, foreign empire in Judith of Bethulia. The story is analogous to U.S. myths of its revolutionary origins that still play a significant role in U.S. national identity.¹² The Birth of a Nation simply writes “the North” in as the imperial threat and “the South” as the “real” U.S. For Deleuze, U.S. cinema repeatedly rediscovers the U.S., judging history to see what brings forth degradation and what the new (i. e., the U.S.), to see what “great (wo)man” will arise to respond to historical crises. In U.S. cinema’s typically “monumental” view of history, everything noble and heroic – even the biblical Israel (e. g., in Judith of Bethulia) and the victorious suffering of Christ (e. g., in The Birth of a Nation) – prefigures the U.S. The use of explicit (Judith of Bethulia) or implicit biblical precursors (The Birth of a Nation) to tell this story helps hallow the U.S. The analogical character of Intolerance simply raises these “ethical,” “monumental,” and apocalyptic notions about history to the surface (Deleuze 1997, 31, 141– 51). As the U.S. is the end of history, no substantive critique of it is possible. For Sergei Eisenstein, while Griffith’s crosscutting displays the disparity between the rich and the poor, he offers no revolutionary solution. He simply looks forward to some hypothetical reconciliation (Eisenstein 1949, 234– 45). Not incidentally, then, both of Griffith’s great films end with apocalyptic codas that reflect the passivity of deus ex machina deliverances and the conservative social dreams of apocalypse. Such apocalypses redeem only the few who heed the “great (wo)man’s” visions. While these elements are typical of biblical apocalyptic, Griffith’s codas also prefigure the increasingly apocalyptic nature of film and of popular religiosity in the U.S. in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.¹³ The Birth of a Nation’s coda, like its treatment of the KKK, also participates in the sanctifying of (necessary) violence. The violence is “righteous” because it leads to the fulfillment of the dreams of the favored (U.S.) few. The violence, however, renders the claims that both The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance oppose war (and empire) rather hollow.¹⁴ Griffith responded to the many critics of The Birth of a Nation with a pamphlet that compared the censorship of (his) movies to the intolerance that led, among

 For Griffith’s own “progressive,” pro-individual, anti-imperial views, see Drew (,  – ). If one sees the family as the microcosm of the nation, the pattern already appears in The Adventures of Dollee ().  See Walsh (forthcoming-b).  The coda reverses the pattern of the Markan Son of Man sayings as well as that of Revelation, which moves from a martyr (the slain lamb of Rev. ) to a warrior’s conquest (that lamb’s judgments and the militant rider on a white horse in Rev. : – ). In contrast, The Birth of a Nation’s apocalypse shows a gigantic, red-tinted war god giving way to an equally gigantic Prince of Peace. But, the war god may also be a kind of Christ-figure. After all, he presides over a field of worshippers to his right and a host of slain to his left (compare Matt. : – ). If so, this quick transition may be the most concise depiction of the violent, conquering Christ so common in U.S. media. It takes a violent Christ to arrive at Griffith’s (and that of U.S. cinema generally) peaceable kingdom. One should not forget, however, the similar trajectories in biblical apocalyptic. See Walsh (forthcoming-a).

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other things, to the crucifixion of Christ.¹⁵ Here, Griffith and his movies become virtual Christ-figures. Griffith also expanded his next film, The Mother and the Law (Intolerance’s modern story), into another massive spectacle assailing war—and intolerance. The resulting Intolerance (1916), styled a drama of comparisons about love’s struggles through the ages, crosscuts repeatedly between four stories (all tinted differently): 1) The Mother and the Law, a romance about a modern couple – the Boy and the Dear One – who suffer because of the reforms of the “Uplifters” (tinted amber); 2) fragments of the gospel story,¹⁶ focusing on Jesus as a victim of (the Pharisee’s) intolerance (tinted blue); 3) the Medici massacre of the Huguenots (tinted sepia); and 4) The Fall of Babylon to Cyrus because of treasonous priests of Bel (tinted gray-green).¹⁷ Griffith humanizes the epic scale of Babylon’s destruction and the Huguenot massacre by focusing respectively on the unhappy romances and fates of the (Babylonian) Mountain Girl and (Huguenot) Brown Eyes. The modern story is simply the near-tragic romance of the Boy and the Dear One. As the film opens, Griffith crosscuts between these stories to create the film’s ethical Manichaeism. Moments into the film, he cuts from the modern Uplifters’ reforms to certain hypocrites among the Pharisees who insist that the people stop work while they pray. A cut back to the modern story shows reforms putting the people out of work. Much later, after depicting the story of the woman taken in adultery, Griffith cuts back to the modern story to the arrest of prostitutes with a title asking how one will find this Christly example followed today. Such cuts align the modern Uplifters and ancient Pharisees as villains oppressing the people. Similar cuts depict the Medici and the priests of Bel as villains and (the Huguenot) Brown Eyes and (the Babylonian) Mountain Girl, Belshazzar, and Princess Beloved as innocent victims, like the film’s Christ.¹⁸ The Babylonian spectacle provides the film’s “heart.” Part one ends with Belshazzar’s successful repulsion of Cyrus’ first attack. The epic siege of the massive walls far surpasses that in Judith of Bethulia. Moments into the second act, an orgy begins celebrating the Babylonian victory and ultimately including Belshazzar’s

 Griffith ().  Griffith’s Jesus story builds on the harmonizing notion that the four canonical gospels are versions of one gospel story. That is, Griffith selects passages from various gospels for his Jesus story without attending to the gospels’ literary and theological differences. Most Jesus movies are versions of this gospel story. The fragments of this story in Intolerance include the hypocritical prayer of the Pharisees (compare Luke : – ); the wedding at Cana (John : – ), with later accusations that Jesus is a winebibber and glutton (compare Matt. :); the woman taken in adultery (John : – :): Jesus among the children (compare Mark :); Jesus’ sentencing; the Via Dolorosa; Golgotha’s three crosses from afar; and a final, cloudy, heavenly cross.  The first and last have titles because they were released in  as independent features.  See Walsh (forthcoming-b). While the Boy is the film’s most developed Christ-figure, Belshazzar also has Christ tinges. His new religion of love falls afoul of the jealousy of older priests who betray him to a conquering empire. Further, cuts parallel his last meal with both the Boy’s communion and Jesus’ cross.

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plans to marry Ishtar’s priestess, Princess Beloved. The orgy continues until the climactic fall of the city. Meanwhile, the jealous priests of Bel betray the city to Cyrus. Accordingly, the film’s depiction of Babylon’s fall differs from its biblical precursors,¹⁹ but the story thereby also fits into Griffith’s “intolerance versus love” pattern. Griffith’s Babylon also provides a memorable spectacle that hallows the art of film itself, particularly as the Babylonian set has become iconic of Hollywood.²⁰ Babylon’s fall is part of the film’s dramatic climax in which Griffith cuts more and more rapidly between his four stories. Griffith offers three last-minute rescues, adorned by glimpses of Jesus’ passion: Prosper Latour races through Paris in a futile attempt to save his Huguenot fiancée, Brown Eyes, and her family from the massacre; the Mountain Girl, who has learned of the priests’ betrayal, races the Persian army back to Babylon to warn Belshazzar too late; and friends of the innocent Boy, who has been wrongly condemned for murder, obtain for him a last-minute pardon. Only the modern story ends happily, restoring the Boy and the Dear One’s threatened family. The other stories provide tragic relief. The glimpses of Jesus’ passion Christfigure the innocent Boy and all the film’s innocent sufferers as the film cuts from the Boy’s condemnation to Jesus’ Via Dolorosa and from Calvary’s three crosses to the Boy’s gallows (attended by three hangmen).²¹ An apocalyptic coda signals the end of war and injustice, but the film’s last shot is of a mother rocking a cradle attended by the three fates.²² That shot also opens the film and appears almost thirty times (most frequently in the race to the climax). It is the film’s chief metaphor.²³ A title card taken from Walt Whitman’s “Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking” sometimes attends it. Whitman’s poem, like the film, hallows the art that sings for lost love in the face of death. Thus, the cradle image serves to sanctify the family (always hallowed by Griffith films) and the art of film (yet again). Thus, in the rapid-fire climax, it is Griffith’s film—or the Boy’s salvation and his family’s restoration, not Jesus’ cross—that leads to the peaceable kingdom.²⁴ For Eisenstein, Griffith’s films incarnate two aspects of the early twentieth-century U.S. On one hand, his rapid crosscutting reflects industrial (and cinematic) development. On the other, his close-ups and themes celebrate the family and smalltown U.S. (Eisenstein 1949, 196 – 200). The latter declares the Victorian sentiments that Griffith shares with Dickens (Eisenstein 1949, 206 – 34). Even his greatest films  Biblically, Babylon’s fall is a divine judgment. There are, however, exotic, erotic elements in Babylon’s biblical depictions, not unlike Griffith’s orgy (see, e. g., Dan. ; Rev. ), and in both depictions such excess leads to the fall. See Runions ().  See Walsh (forthcoming-a).  See ibid.  In personal correspondence, Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch has suggested that this image may also suggest the Madonna and child. During the Boy’s trial, the Dear One wears a hooded cloak making her resemble images of the Stabat Mater.  Eisenstein criticizes the image for being too representational and, therefore, the film for failing to rise to an idea. See Eisenstein (, ,  – ).  A cloudy cross is visible in this coda.

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are moralistic melodramas. While Griffith’s heyday continued through Broken Blossoms (1919), a tragic interracial love story, and Way Down East (1920), his inability to adapt his (family values?) sensibility to post-War culture meant his gradual loss of prestige (Jacobs 1967, 96, 384– 94). While not a success in its own day, Intolerance is now generally considered his best film.²⁵ Today, it seems a forerunner of (the recent spate of) hyper-link films (e. g., Babel, Alejandro Gonzáles Iñarritu, 2006; or Cloud Atlas, Tom Twyker/Wachowski Siblings, 2012). Griffith is a cinematic forerunner in a number of areas. He led the way in developing film’s narrative grammar (primarily with editing). He stands near the origins of the (biblical) spectacle. He is one of the first to tell U.S. film’s constantly reprised story of the birth of America and one of the first to use a biblical story (in Judith of Bethulia) as a precursor for this U.S. story. Even if his Victorian sentiments seem dated today, mainstream Hollywood film still provides a version of (his bourgeois) family values. His apocalyptic codas foreshadow the conservative, imperial dreams of twentieth and twenty-first-century U.S. film. Finally, although it may be of interest only to biblical film scholars, Griffith’s deployment of Jesus in Intolerance (and in The Birth of a Nation) prefigures the common cinematic use of Jesus to this day as talisman and Christ-figure. Jesus appears in film as a garnish for another story. He is there to Christ-figure other characters and ideologies. He is a talisman bringing mysterious powers to hallow contemporary realities, like the family and film.²⁶

Works Cited Deleuze, Gilles. 1997. Cinema 1: The Movement Image. Transl. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dixon, Thomas. 1905. The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan. http://docsouth. unc.edu/southlit/dixonclan/; accessed June 5, 2014. Drew, W. M. 1986. D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance: Its Genesis and Its Vision. Jefferson N.C.: McFarland and Co. Eisenstein, Sergei. 1949. “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today.” In Film Form: Essays in Film Theory. Transl. Jay Leyda. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Pp. 195 – 255. Griffith, David Wark. 1967. The Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America [1915]. Hollywood: Larry Edmunds Bookshop. Gunning, Tom. 1986. “The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectator, and the Avant-Garde.” Wide Angle 8: 114 – 33. Gunning, Tom. 1994. D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph. Urbana and Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

 E.g., The Birth of a Nation appeared on the American Film Institute’s  list of one hundred best American films. Intolerance did not, but it was on the  list, while The Birth of a Nation no longer appears.  See Walsh (forthcoming-a).

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Jacobs, Lewis. 1967. The Rise of the American Film: A Critical History [1939]. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. Runions, Erin. 2010. “Tolerating Babel: The Bible, Film, and the Family in U.S. Politics.” Religious Studies and Theology 29.2: 143 – 69. Tennyson, Alfred. 1864. “Enoch Arden.” Classic Literature. http://classiclit.about.com/library/bletexts/atennyson/bl-aten-enoch.htm; accessed June 5, 2014. Walsh, Richard. Forthcoming-a. “Griffith’s Talismanic Jesus.” In The Silents of Jesus in the Early Cinema. Ed. David Shepherd. London: Routledge. Walsh, Richard. Forthcoming-b. “On the Harmony of the Asocial Gospel: Intolerance’s Crosscut Stories.” In Now Showing: Film Analysis in Biblical Studies. Eds. Caroline Vander Stichele and Laura Copier. Atlanta: SBL Press. Williams, Martin. 1980. Griffith: First Artist of the Movies. New York: Oxford University Press.

Films Cited The Adventures of Dollee (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1908, American Mutoscope/Biograph, US). After Many Years (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1908, American Mutoscope/Biograph, US). Babel (dir. Alejandro Gonzáles Iñarritu, 2006, Paramount, FR/MX/US). The Birth of a Nation (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1915, David W. Griffith Corp., US). Broken Blossoms [a.k.a. The Yellow Man and the Girl] (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1919, D. W. Griffith Productions, US). Cloud Atlas (dir. Tom Twyker and the Wachowski Siblings, 2012, Cloud Atlas Productions, DE/US/HK/SG). A Corner in Wheat (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1909, Biograph, US). The Great Train Robbery (dir. Edwin R. Porter, 1903, Edison, US). Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1916, Triangle Film Corporation, US). Judith of Bethulia (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1914, Biograph, US). Lincoln (dir. Steven Spielberg, 2012, DreamWorks, US). The Lonedale Operator (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1911, Biograph, US). The Lonely Villa (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1909, Biograph, US). The Massacre (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1912, Biograph, US). The Rose of Kentucky (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1911, Biograph, US). Way Down East (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1920, D. W. Griffith Productions, US).

Carol A. Hebron

32 Alice Guy Blaché and Gene Gauntier: Bringing New Perspectives to Film One can approach the work of a woman in three different ways. One is to ignore her gender and to assess her work in the same manner as that of a man. A second approach is to focus on what are thought to be peculiarly ‘feminine’ qualities in her work, while a third looks for aspects of her craft that suggest a broadly ‘feminist’ approach (Dyer 1982, 2227). This essay examines the work of two women who had significant roles in the advancement of filmmaking in the silent era (ca. 1895 – 1929):¹ Alice Guy Blaché (July 1, 1873 – March 24, 1968) and Gene Gauntier (May 17, 1885 – Dec. 18, 1966). The essay includes brief descriptions of the contexts in which Blaché and Gauntier worked as filmmakers, their contributions to the film industry, a synopsis of their most successful ‘Jesus’ films, and an analysis of the role of women within these films.

Alice Guy Blaché (July 1, 1873 – March 24, 1968) Context of Reception Alice Guy was born in Paris in 1873 as the youngest of five children. She was raised in a middle-class family and had a strict Roman Catholic upbringing. Guy described her six years of schooling at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Viry as “years of imprisonment”, and in latter life regarded herself more of a “cultural Catholic than a truly pious one.”² Nevertheless, she would become one of the first filmmakers (one of the only female filmmakers) to take up the story of Jesus as her subject. In 1905, under the pressures of the Dreyfus Affair, the three French socialist parties merged into a unified parliamentary party. This new political party aimed to transform a capitalist society into a collectivist or communist society (Thomson 1982, 398 – 400). Irrespective of their differences, political parties of both left and center shared an anti-clericalism that fuelled a steady “de-sacralization of French society” (Abel 1998, 3). The same year saw the separation of the Church from the State in France: Roman Catholicism was no longer considered the official religion. The Church’s influence diminished with the laicisation of schools and hospitals, clergy were subjected to military service, and religious congregations dispersed. These changes impacted on much of French culture, especially the cinema. One change

 See also Shepherd’s overarching discussion of the Bible and silent film in Part I (Pp.  – ) and Shepherd ().  These biographical details are derived from McMahan (, xix – xxiv, ).

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was “inadvertently undermining the ‘woman by the hearth’ ideal…to encouraging the energetic, independent figure of the ‘new woman’” (Abel 1998, 7). Alice Guy Blaché, was not only a ‘new woman’ herself; she used her films to promote this ideal. In 1894, having gained experience as a typist and stenographer, she was hired by Léon Gaumont who had formed his own film company. Two years later she wrote, produced, and directed her first film, La fée aux choux (The Cabbage Fairy). In 1897, Guy was made head of film production and held this position until 1906. She spent some years in the United States, with her husband (Gaumont manager Herbert Blaché, whom she divorced in 1918), and their two children, where she continued to make films. In 1911, Guy became the first woman to build her own motion picture studio, the Solax Company. Her roles included president and business manager, managing construction of the studio, supervising production, writing scripts, and directing films (Robinson 1996, 153). The arrival of ‘talking films’ in 1929 ended Guy’s film career and she turned to writing children’s stories, novelizations of films for women’s magazines, and her autobiography. On March 24, 1968, Guy died in a nursing home in New Jersey. She was 95.

Contribution to the Film Industry Alice Guy was a founding figure of both the French and American film industries. At the age of 23 she became the world’s first female film director. Alice Guy describes her first efforts: A backdrop painted by a fan-painter (and fantasist) from the neighbourhood made a vague décor, with rows of wooden cabbages cut out by a carpenter, costumes rented here and there around the Porte Saint-Martin. As actors: my friends, a screaming baby, an anxious mother leaping to and fro into the camera focus, and my first film La fée aux choux (The Cabbage Fairy) was born. (quoted in Slide 1996, 28)

Guy is credited with directing 438 films between 1896 and 1920. Her camera work was innovative and experimental. She was one of the first directors to use deep-focus photography where the entire image (foreground, mid-ground, and background) is in sharp focus. She designed her 1906 film La vie du Christ (“The Life of Christ”) to emphasise the use of deep focus and to fill the frame with movement along diagonal lines (McMahan 2002, 104– 5). The latter adds to drama and action by providing an easy path for the eye to follow to the main subject, while deep focus achieves a more accurate representation of space. Guy was possibly the first director to use facial close-ups and reaction shots to heighten dramatic effects (Foster 1998, 7). To enrich her films and effects, Guy incorporated hand-tinting and trick photography such as fade-outs, double exposures, and running film backwards (Slide 1996, 29 – 31). She was able to draw sensitive performances from her cast simply by hanging signs reading “Be Natural” around the studio (Jones 2010).

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A “pioneer of early narrative development” (McMahan 2002, 42), Guy tackled many different genres, including fantasy films, fairy-tales, comedies, westerns, and horror films. Guy also introduced another genre, which McMahan dubs as “the miracle film.” At the center of the narrative in this genre was a miracle, which was in keeping with Catholic faith or folklore (McMahan 2002, 98). Guy’s contribution to the film industry also includes experimentation with sound technology. Using a Gaumont invention, the Chronophone, which synchronized the filmed image with sound recorded on a wax cylinder, she made more than 100 synchronized sound films, “long before sound became standard in cinema” (Jones 2010). The French government recognized Guy’s contribution to film by awarding her the Legion of Honour in 1953. In an age where filmmaking was (and largely still is) a male domain, Alice Guy was often asked why she chose a “so unfeminine career.” Guy claimed that it was her destiny and that she “merely followed a Will” whose name she did not know (Slide 1996, 1).

La vie du Christ (1906) The 1906 Gaumont production of La vie du Christ is five reels, 640 meters in length, runs for thirty-three minutes, and includes twenty-five distinct tableaux. Guy’s Passion narrative differs in many significant ways from the “established genre of Passion plays” (Abel 1998, 5). Where Guy uses painted tableaux – a staple for Passion plays – she also uses location scenes, which include the Samaritan woman at the well, Gethsemane, and the Via Dolorosa scenes. These outdoor scenes draw the audience into the experience rather than treating them as onlookers of a staged performance. To distinguish each scene, brief intertitles introduce the next tableau and the end of the scene fades to black. Guy succeeds in creating a credible representation of the life of Christ by her use of authentic props, locations, and a cast that included 300 extras (Slide 1986, 45). She drew on all four gospels for the narrative, thus representing the “harmonizing trajectory of the Jesus film tradition” (Tatum 2013, 25). She also referred to the watercolors of the Tissot Illustrated Bible (1904), which she regarded as “ideal documentation for décors, costumes, and even local customs” (Slide 1986, 45). La vie du Christ reasserted Christian values and principles and promoted the teaching of Catholic doctrine. An example of this is the unique inclusion of the “Suffering Servant” vision during the Last Supper. McMahan describes this as “a masterful expression of Judas’ dilemma: to not betray Jesus and therefore prevent salvation for the rest of humanity, or to betray him, let Jesus save the world, but be damned himself” (McMahan 2002, 103). Given the tension between the French State and the Church, I would argue that Guy also uses the vision to symbolise the consequence of the Separation of the State and Church Law in 1906. Judas represents

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the State’s betrayal of the French people, while the “Suffering Servant” symbolises the Roman Catholic Church. Guy’s respect for and awareness of the responsibility of filming the life of Christ, are evident in the manner in which she handles the subject matter: with “paralyzed reverence” (Owen 2010). Another cultural influence on Guy’s film was the gathering momentum of the French feminist movement, which may be seen in her treatment of the film’s female characters.

The Role of Women in Guy’s Jesus Film The principle distinction is the film’s “unique combination of realist and melodramatic elements, or what might be called ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ discourses” (Abel 1998, 166). Abel adds that Guy’s “insistence on privileging women in relation to Jesus” brings a new dimension to the portrayal of the Passion narrative that had not been evident in earlier Jesus films.

Fig. 57: Veronica displays her veil in Guy’s La vie du Christ (1906)

By including the Stations of the Cross, Guy was able to highlight the presence of Mary the mother of Jesus, weeping women, and the iconic Veronica with her veil. In place of Simon of Cyrene helping Jesus in carrying the cross, Guy has six women coming to Jesus’ aid. The attendance of a large group of women around the foot of the cross implies their faithfulness to Jesus in contrast to the male disciples’ absence and lack of fidelity. Although the gospels differ in the number of women who return to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body, Guy draws on Luke’s account: “Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them” (Luke

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24:1– 5).³ Guy has eight women return to Jesus’ tomb. Mary Magdalene does not enter the tomb, but walks left and out of frame leaving her actions open to various interpretations. Was Mary following the angel’s instruction, “Go quickly and tell his disciples” (Matt. 28:7)? Or was Guy setting the scene where Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene (John 20:11– 18)? We do not know the answer. However, the implication is quite profound and anticipates feminist theologians’ insistence almost a century later that Mary Magdalene was the first to see the risen Christ.⁴ Was Alice Guy a feminist? Viewing the film through a post-modern reconstruction lens suggests that she was. That she was a female filmmaker in a male domain adds weight to the suggestion. Foster contends some critics “unfairly dismissed” the innovative director as “a non-feminist” (Foster 1998, 15). Yet other critics argue that Guy’s portrayal of women in the film La vie du Christ, their conspicuous presence in miracle scenes, and the prominent characterisations of Jesus’ mother and Mary Magdalene were intended “to propagate traditional family values and social mores” (Horak 2010). Guy labors the point to distraction by including women and children in nearly every scene. One questions the value of having children witness the flogging of Jesus, walking with Jesus along the Via Dolorosa, and being present when Jesus is nailed to the cross. Could Guy’s inclusion of children be her interpretation of the blood curse, “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matt. 27:25)? Foster offers an uncomplicated reason: the women and children encourage viewer identification with the film and opening up the film to a wider viewing audience (Foster 1998, 7). Likewise, Abel posits that the emphasis on women “raises questions about what audience was expected for [the film’s] exhibition” (Abel 1998, 166). Whether Guy was a feminist or not did not detract from her artistic genius. It simply influenced the ways in which she filmed the Jesus story. The film became a huge success – a nickelodeon spectacular and a “credible precursor of the studio blockbuster” (Hoberman 2009).

Gene Gauntier (May 17, 1885 – December 18, 1966) Context of Reception Women played a major role in the burgeoning silent film industry. In the United States women were laboratory workers, film cutters, location scouts, stuntwomen, production-managers, projectionists, wardrobe designers and seamstresses, hair-

 Matthew cites “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary” (Matt. :). Mark names “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, and Salome” (Mark :), while John mentions only Mary Magdalene (John :).  For example, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (, ), feminist theologian, argues that as Mary Magdalene not only discovers the empty tomb, but is also the first to receive a resurrection appearance, in a “double sense she becomes the apostola apostolorum, the apostle to the apostles.”

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dressers, scriptwriters, camerawomen, producers, directors, and heads of film companies (Wanamaker 1982, 2221). One remarkable woman of the early American film industry was Gene Gauntier. Born Genevieve Gauntier Ligget in Kansas City, Missouri on May 17, 1885, little is recorded of her early life. She changed her name to Gene Gauntier when she began her entertainment career as a stage actress. In 1906, she moved to New York where she was persuaded by friend and director, Sidney Olcott to begin acting in films. Gauntier was reluctant to enter the “moving pictures” because she “looked on them with contempt” and thought that her “prestige would be lowered” if she worked in them (Gauntier 1928a, 7). Her first acting role was in The Paymaster (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1906). Her small part was to fling herself into a Connecticut river. Although hers was not a glamorous introduction to film, Gauntier’s willingness to try anything and her bravado for the good of the shot set the benchmark for her work ethic. Gauntier’s opportunity to write scenarios came about when Frank Marion – one of the three founders of the Kalem Company – stopped writing and asked her to “try her hand at it.” Gauntier claims that her first effort, a crude scenario for a melodrama, entitled Why Girls Leave Home, was, in her own words, “hopeless” and not used. Her next scenario attempt, Tom Sawyer (dir. Unknown, 1907), was, according to Gauntier, “pretty dreadful but it was what Marion and Olcott wanted” (Gauntier 1928a, 183). It became the first of over three hundred films in which she wrote, produced, or sold. During 1907– 1912, Gauntier was the preeminent figure at the Kalem Film Manufacturing Company. She was referred to as the ‘Kalem Girl’ – a forerunner of the emerging star system – resulting in increased sales of film copies and admission tickets (Kobal 1981, 2061). In Gauntier’s third year in the movies, the Kalem troupe sailed to Ireland to film and in 1911, the troupe travelled to Egypt with the intention of making travel pictures wherever the ship berthed. It was during this trip that From the Manger to the Cross (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1912) was made – America’s earliest attempt at a biographical Jesus film. Gauntier wrote the scenario for the film and played the role of Mary.⁵ In the following year, she opened the Gene Gauntier Theatre in her hometown of Kansas City and left Kalem to form the Gene Gauntier Feature Players Company. Although the company “created popular films and plenty of good publicity,” by the winter of 1913 – 14, production had “trailed off” (Maher 2006, 72). She retired from films in 1920 and, like Alice Guy, wrote her memoir and two novels. Gene Gauntier died on December 18, 1966 in Cuernavaca, Mexico. She was 81.

 During the filming of From the Manger to the Cross, Gauntier married Jack Clark who played the role of John, the beloved disciple. The marriage ended in divorce six years later. They had no children.

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Contribution to the Film Industry In her memoir, Gauntier writes: It was in June 1906, that I literally jumped into the moving pictures. And from that day to this [1928] I have been connected with them as actress, scenario writer, producer and critic. In these different capacities, I watched the very birth-pangs of the industry. I helped to develop and guide it. I cried and laughed over it, and was part of it as it was part of me. (Gauntier 1928a, 7)

Gauntier appeared in 108 films. She has a number of ‘firsts’ to her credit: the first film about the American Civil War ever produced (The Days of ’61, 1908); the first film shot on location outside of the United States (The Lad From Old Ireland, 1910); and the first feature-length treatment of the of the life of Christ. When director Sidney Olcott threatened to resign in 1911, Frank Marion asked Gauntier to take over the management and direction of Olcott’s company. Gauntier declined the request, knowing what was involved and required in directing films. She believed that no woman had enough physical strength to survive the work (Gauntier 1929, 20). She did, however, direct a short film, The Grandmother (1909), for the Biograph Company. Gauntier’s creative flair is best seen in her script writing. She wrote 74 films. Lewis Jacobs explains, “Since there were still no copyright laws affecting the screen, these actors-authors helped themselves to poems, short stories, current plays, and classics, which they condensed and translated into simple plots for the screen” (Jacobs, 1968, 61– 2). However, Gauntier’s screenplay for the film Ben Hur (dir. Sidney Olcott, et al. 1907) was to change how writers appropriated literature, and therefore film history. Ben Hur, a Kalem film of 1000 feet, sixteen scenes and fifteen minutes duration, “brought to a climax the copyright issue, which had been rumbling and grumbling in the background of studios for some time” (Gauntier 1928a, 186). In a test case, Harper and Brothers, and the General Lew Wallace Estate sued the Kalem Company, the Motion Picture Patents Company, and the screenwriter for infringement of copyright. After a lengthy court battle, the verdict was handed down for Harper and against the film people. It cost both Kalem and the Patents Company $25,000 each. The question of copyright law was settled.

From the Manger to the Cross (1912) A film showing Gauntier’s versatility is the 1912 Jesus biopic, From the Manger to the Cross in which she is “star, assistant director, editor, and writer of scenarios” (Gauntier, 1829, 20). This film is important for two reasons. It is the first Jesus film shot on location as the title card informs: “Scenes filmed at JERUSALEM, BETHLEHEM and other authentic locations in PALESTINE.” Without the confines of stage sets, Olcott had the freedom to add “plenty of action and movement” (Jacobs 1968, 122). From

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the Manger to the Cross was also the first American film about Jesus to achieve enormous success not only in America but also in the United Kingdom and Europe (Lang 2007, 47). Box-office popularity was in part a response to the authentic location shots (Baugh 1997, 10). Cinema audiences were taken on a virtual tour of places previously seen only in print. The inclusion of intertitles narrated the events. The size of the cast – forty-two actors for the principal roles and hundreds of locals as extras – added to the film’s interest. Like Alice Guy, Gene Gauntier drew inspiration for the sets, furnishings, and costumes from Tissot’s Illustrated Bible, which the latter referred to as “the last word in manners, customs and costumes in Palestine” (Gauntier 1929, 20). With many of the film’s scenes replicating Tissot’s illustrations, Gauntier was literally bringing to life the Jesus story that was most familiar to American audiences. For the narrative, Gauntier drew from all four gospels. The concept of filming the life of Jesus came to Gauntier while in Egypt during her recovery from sunstroke. She recalls her exclamation: “We’re going to make the life of Jesus of Nazareth. We’ll go to Cairo first and take [or film] the flight into Egypt at the Pyramids, then to Jerusalem” (Gauntier 1929, 21). The script was to be titled Jesus of Nazareth but as this name could not be copyrighted, she was “compelled” to change it to From the Manger to the Cross (Gauntier 1929, 98). Gauntier had definite ideas about how the story of Jesus was to be portrayed. Her enthusiasm and determination was such that she ignored Frank Marion’s injunction that there was to be no visual representation of the Christ (Jacobs, 1968, 123). There was pressure for the inclusion of a resurrection scene, but Gauntier “withstood all efforts brought to bear” claiming that the story is about “the Man of Nazareth” – a story from his birth to death (Gauntier 1929, 98). Jesus’ resurrection was beyond the scope of the story Gauntier wanted to communicate. Barnes Tatum is correct in noting that the film “has very little evidence” identifying Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God (Tatum 2013, 29). It was Gauntier’s aim “to show as little of the supernatural as possible” so the focus would remain on the humanity, and, not the divinity of Jesus (Gauntier 1929, 98). One can only surmise that Gauntier’s decision to focus on Jesus’ humanity was to keep in line with Frank Marion’s original injunction of filming a travelogue of the Holy Land. The Jesus story provided Gauntier with an itinerary. Three ‘faith’ traditions (Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Judaism⁶) are taken into consideration in this film. Opinions vary as to the make-up of the targeted audiences. Richard Walsh suggests that the film emerged from a “Protestant American culture” influenced by “tradition” and “reluctance to portray religion in film” (Walsh 2003, 4– 7). However, Herbert Reynolds opines that From the Manger to the

 Pamela Grace (, ) argues that Olcott “showed an unusual sensibility […] avoiding the most anti-Semitic moments that sometimes appear on screen.” This sensitivity also can be afforded to Gauntier as she wrote the screenplay.

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Cross was made “with an eye to exclusively Catholic audiences” (Reynolds 1992, 276). A number of scenes support this claim particularly in the Last Supper episode where many actions derive from distinctively Catholic liturgical practices.⁷ To cater to both Protestant and Catholic audiences, the film was distributed in two versions – one with and one without the scene of the miracle of Veronica’s veil. No amount of sensitivity was enough to curb public criticism. Robert Henderson-Bland, the Jesus character in the film, recalls: No film that was ever made called forth such a storm of protests, as did the announcement of “From the Manger to the Cross.” Criticism, like an avalanche literally poured down upon it from every quarter of the globe. The newspapers were full of it; the public talked of it; the clergy raved about the blasphemy of it. (Henderson-Bland 1939, 70)

The disparaging response to the film in England was so damning that it is said to be “directly responsible for the establishment of film censorship in that country” (Jacobs 1968, 124). The main objection was the inappropriateness of showing a full figure of Jesus on the screen. There was little in the film that warranted accusations of ‘blasphemy’. Perhaps the main reason why clergy were incensed was that the Jesus story had been taken out of the church – God’s house and place of worship – and into cinemas, which were considered places of ill repute. Nevertheless, with a reported budget of US$100,000, From the Manger to the Cross was a huge success, drawing thirty times the cost of its production and making millionaires of the studio executives (Wanamaker 1981, 2033). The film was re-issued in 1916 as Jesus of Nazareth with the addition of a resurrection scene. In 1932, the film was re-issued again including sound.

The Role of Women in Gauntier’s Jesus Film Gauntier’s screenplay promotes and develops the roles of women in From the Manger to the Cross. Gauntier plays Mary, the mother of Jesus, and expands the role by introducing different dimensions to the mother-son relationship. Mary becomes a doting mother of the infant Jesus, a “tender teacher” to an attentive young son, an anxious parent to a youthful Jesus ‘lost’ in Jerusalem, and an apprehensive mother who knows that her adolescent son, doing household chores, is marked for greater things. “Jesus is every mother’s dream child: intelligent, attentive, obedient, and helpful” (Reinhartz 2007, 73). The character Mary Magdalene (Alice Hollister) is not the stereotypical courtesan/prostitute or the woman who has seven evil spirits exorcised. Rather, Gauntier’s  In the foot-washing scene only one foot is placed in the bowl, a practice that is carried out at the Maundy Thursday service. Catholic tradition is augmented further at the First Communion with Jesus distributing bread and wine in a priestly manner and the disciples kneeling, head bowed, and hands clasped in silent prayer.

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Fig. 58: Mary dotes on young Jesus in From the Manger to the Cross (1912)

Mary Magdalene is identified with Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus. Gauntier recalls “a rigid cross-examination” she had with five Vatican clergymen in Jerusalem where she declares, “Do you know that Mary the sister of Lazarus, and Mary the sinner who washed [Jesus’] feet with her tears and dried them with her hair, were one and the same person?” Asked where she got her authority, Gauntier replied, “I gave it.” Her authority was confirmed by the priest with his response, “That is correct but not one in a thousand knows that fact” (Gauntier 1929, 98). Mary’s loose flowing hair and often-uncovered head identify and separate her from the other women. Gauntier notes, “Women of her character were compelled to wear their hair down, and a scarlet headdress. After her repentance she continued to wear it down as a penance” (Gauntier 1929, 98). Mary Magdalene plays a significant role in that she is included among the disciples. Gauntier’s inclusion of the banter between Jesus, Mary, and Martha (Luke 10:38 – 42) highlights Martha’s role as cook and Mary’s status as a faithful follower. She is next to Jesus at a number of the healings and at the raising of Lazarus. Gauntier also breaks from tradition and has Mary Magdalene present at the distribution of the bread and wine at the Last Supper.⁸

 The audience reads the intertitle “The First Communion. And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it. Luke XXII.”. Gauntier reproduces another Tissot illustration, The Communion of the Apostles but with a significant omission. Where Judas is present in the Tissot drawing, he is absent in the film’s scene. Perhaps there was concern of offending audiences by having the ‘sinner’ Judas partaking in communion. However, included in the scene is a female figure, also prominent in the Tissot illustration. The assumption is that the figure is Mary Magdalene. She crouches at the extreme right of the

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A commendable quality to this film is that the screenplay portrays women in a positive light. Tatum notes that the absence of “the negative roles of ‘seducer’ and ‘harlot’,” as well as the absence of Salome and the adulterous woman, probably reflects the perspective of the screenwriter herself (Tatum 2013, 26). The positive portrayal of women also influences the depiction of the Jesus figure. What we see is a very human and approachable Jesus, who apparently counts a woman among his closest followers.

Conclusion Alice Guy and Gene Gauntier made valuable contributions to early filmmaking and to the cinematic Jesus tradition. Both were able to bring a new dimension and different perspective to the Jesus biopic. Apart from their filmic innovations, a notable achievement is how both Guy and Gauntier develop the roles of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene,⁹ as well as include women and children in scenes that are usually conspicuously male dominated in artistic and filmic portrayals. Women have an integral part in the Jesus story. The “privileging of women” in both La vie du Christ and From the Manger to the Cross, is not a gender specific approach, nor it is necessarily a feminist approach. But, by promoting the roles of women, Guy and Gauntier are able to present a Jesus who is accessible, inclusive, and credible.

Works Cited Abel, Richard. 1998. The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema, 1896 – 1914 [1994]. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Baugh, Lloyd. 1997. Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ-Figures in Film. Franklin, Wis.: Sheed & Ward. Dyer, Richard. 1982. “A Woman’s View.” The Movie: The Illustrated History of the Cinema 112: 2227 – 29. Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler. 1994. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins [1983]. Tenth anniversary edition. New York: Crossroad. Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey. 1998. “Performity and Gender in Alice Guy’s La vie du Christ.” Film Criticism 23.1 (Sept l): 6 – 17. Gauntier, Gene. 1928a. “Blazing the Trail.” Women’s Home Companion. Ed. Gertrude B. Lane. 55.10 (October): 7 – 8, 181 – 84, 186. Gauntier, Gene. 1928b. “Blazing the Trail.” Women’s Home Companion. Ed. Gertrude B. Lane. 55.11 (December): 15 – 16, 132, 134.

frame. It is highly likely that the audience would not notice her because Jesus is the focus of the shot. The disciples are kneeling, some with their hands clasped in prayer, others with their heads covered.  For further discussion cinematic depictions of women in the gospels, see O’Brien’s chapter in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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Gauntier, Gene. 1929. “Blazing the Trail.” Women’s Home Companion. Ed. Gertrude B. Lane. 56.1 (February): 20 – 1, 92, 94, 97 – 8. Grace, Pamela. 2009. The Religious Film. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Henderson-Bland, R. 1939. Actor-Soldier-Poet. London: Heath Cranton. Hoberman, J. 2009. “First Lady of Film Alice Guy Blanché at the Whitney.” Village Voice (November 3): http://www.villagevoice.com/2009- 11 - 03/film/first-lady-of-film-alice-guy-blanche-eacuteat-the-whitney/; accessed March 4, 2015. Horak, Jan-Christopher. 2010. “Review of Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer, Joan Simon, ed. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. 2009.” Screening the Past. http://tlweb.latrobe.edu.au/humanities/screeningth epast/27/alice-guy-blache-cinema-pioneer.html; accessed February 18, 2014. Jacobs, Lewis. 1968. The Rise of the American Film: A Critical History. New York: Teachers College Press. Jones, Kirsten. M. 2010. “A Ground-breaker In So Many Ways.” The Wall Street Journal (January 5): http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703683804574533640278494508; accessed March 2, 2015. Kobal, John. 1981. “The Stars Shine Bright.” The Movie: The Illustrated History of the Cinema 104: 2061 – 64. Lang, J. Stephen. 2007. The Bible on the Big Screen: A Guide From Silent Films to Today’s Movies. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books. Maher, Karen Ward. 2006. Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood. Baltimore, Md.: The John Hopkins University Press. McMahan, Alison. 2002. Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group. Owen, Raymond. 2010. “Gaumont Treasures.” Raymond Owen. http://www.raymondowen.com/ 2010/01/gaumont-treasures-alice-guy/; accessed March 2, 2015. Reinhartz, Adele. 2007. Jesus of Hollywood. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reynolds, Herbert. 1992. “From the Palette to the Screen: The Tissot Bible as Source-book for From the Manger to the Cross.” In An Invention of the Devil? Religion and the Early Cinema: Une Invention du Diable? Cinéma des Premiers et Religion. Eds. Roland Cosandey, Andre Gaudreault and Tom Gunning. Sainte Foy, Canada: Les Presses de l’Université Laval. Pp. 275 – 310. Robinson, David. 1996. From Peep Show to Palace: The Birth of American Film. New York: Columbia University Press. Shepherd, David J. 2016. “La naissance, vie et passion du Christ (Gaumont, 1906): The Gospel according to Alice Guy.” In The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897 – 1927). Ed. D. J. Shepherd. New York: Routledge, 2016. Slide, Anthony, ed. 1996. The Memoirs of Alice Guy Blaché. Transl. Roberta and Simone Blaché. London and Lanham, Md.: The Scarecrow Press. Tatum, W. Barnes. 2013. Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years and Beyond [1997, 2004]. 3rd ed. Salem, Oreg.: Polebridge Press. Thomson, David. 1982. Europe Since Napoleon. Hammondsworth: Penguin Books. Walsh, Richard. 2003. Reading the Gospels in the Dark: Portrayals of Jesus in Film. Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International. Wanamaker, Marc. 1982. “Women Making Movies.” The Movie: The Illustrated History of the Cinema 112: 2221 – 23. Wanamaker, Marc. 1981. “The Kalem Trailblazers.” The Movie: The Illustrated History of the Cinema 102: 2032 – 33.

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Films Cited Ben Hur (dir. Sidney Olcott, Harry T. Morey, and Frank Rose, 1907, Kalem, US). The Days of ‘61 (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1908, Kalem, US). From the Manger to the Cross [a.k.a. Jesus of Nazareth] (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1912, Kalem, US). The Grandmother (dir. Gene Gauntier, 1909, Biograph, US). La fée aux choux [a.k.a. The Cabbage Fairy] (dir. Alice Guy, 1896, Gaumont, FR). La vie du Christ [“The Life of Christ”; a.k.a La naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ; “The Birth, Life, and Death of Christ”] (dir. Alice Guy, 1906, Gaumont, FR). The Lad From Old Ireland (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1910, Kalem, US). The Paymaster (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1906, American Mutoscope & Biograph, US). Tom Sawyer (dir. Unknown, 1907, Kalem, US). Why Girls Leave Home (dir. Unknown, 1907, Kalem, US).

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33 Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates: Emergent History and a Gospel of Middle‐Class Liberation

This chapter will consider biblical and theological themes in Oscar Micheaux’s earliest extant film, Within Our Gates (1920). Now widely regarded as one of the most successful commercial filmmakers in cinematic history, Micheaux (1884– 1951) was an African-American novelist and filmmaker whose literary works sometimes served as the basis of his film adaptations. He began his work as a filmmaker in 1918 with the production of his first film The Homesteader, though the print has since been lost. These two films were released within five years after the appearance of D. W. Griffith’s magisterial and yet disturbingly racist cinematic production The Birth of a Nation (1915). Within Our Gates was crafted partly with an eye toward challenging the racist propaganda of The Birth on its own cinematic terms,¹ and yet Micheaux’s film was rather more than a cinematic critique of Griffith. A theological reading of this film, sensitive to its appropriation of biblical texts and images, draws attention to Micheaux’s broader socio-political vision of class uplift. Thomas Cripps once remarked that “religious themes and their variants constitute the most self-contained sub-genre of black film” (Cripps 1978, 12). Cripps’s words engendered new and important insights on politics, gender, and sexuality in race movies – that subset of American films produced for black audiences – yet somewhat less attention has been paid to the role of religion in these same films (Weisenfeld 2001, 728). This lack of attention is unjustified because the function of the church, the character and actions of its ministers, and the quality and content of its theologies were important issues to the makers of race films. Micheaux put forward a particularly scathing indictment of black religious leadership in Within Our Gates. Critical of what he regarded as an overly emotional approach to worship in some black churches, Micheaux was critical of how the Bible was often misused in the service of decidedly un-Christian ends by manipulative black clergy members, whose emotional rhetoric made black congregations more susceptible to oppressive social arrangements. Rather than launching a cinematic attack on religion qua religion, however, his proposed solution was a more sedate and rationale religiosity grounded in knowledge of the Bible (Weisenfeld, 2007, 133 – 4). As is the case in Within Our Gates, these issues were not always foregrounded, nor did they need to be. Individuals in these communities shared a common knowledge of Christian scripture and recognized the various functions it served in communal life. This allowed Micheaux to subtly weave his religious concerns into his cinematic representations of  The relationship between the young Micheaux and Griffith will not be addressed extensively in this chapter. For more on this, see chapter  of Green ().

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the fabric of mundane social life and, in so doing, simultaneously reveal and critique the character and quality of religious commitments. Micheaux’s treatment of theological themes was subsumed into his larger concern regarding issues of class and social mobility. He ultimately wanted African Americans to attain and maintain a middle-class social and economic life, and his means to this end was by crafting films that could serve as a mimetic medium for inculcating racial uplift in his viewers. Micheaux’s project of class uplift has faced criticism on several fronts. On the one hand, critics have accused him of avoiding the deeper issues of racism that created the need for uplift in the first place. On the other hand, critics have maligned him for assimilating to a bourgeois cultural whiteness that seems to require black disloyalty.² It is true that Micheaux’s vision of uplift had to deal with the problem that W. E. B. Du Bois termed “double consciousness” – the challenge of overcoming the feeling of disconnection between two distinct cultures and maintaining a multi-faceted conception of the self.³ This was something with which Micheaux himself would struggle, and he uses some of his characters to explore this tension. Regardless of what one thinks of the nature and ultimate success of Micheaux’s project of class uplift, its importance cannot be ignored. Micheaux would relentlessly pursue this utopian vision for the duration of his career. Throughout his cinematic oeuvre, Micheaux envisions Christian practice as both an oppressive and liberative social force. Christianity was oppressive whenever it posed a hindrance to social goods, like economic development and education; it was liberative whenever it placed a prophetic emphasis on fairness, social mobility, and the importance of individual character.

 Micheaux was an advocate of Booker T. Washington. Washington served, for Micheaux, as an exemplar of the liberated black person. Yet Washington is only one possibility of what liberation might look like. To gain a sense of the conflict surrounding Micheaux’s vision of racial uplift, contrast Washington and Du Bois’s distinct visions of what black liberation entailed. See Young (). Also see a later scholar’s engagement with Young’s analysis in chapter  of Green ().  This term originated in an article by W. E. B. Du Bois in the Atlantic Monthly entitled “Strivings of the Negro People.” It was later republished in Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, originally published in . He describes double consciousness as follows: “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife – this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He wouldn’t bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.”

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It will be beneficial to give consideration to certain biographical details of Micheaux’s early life before proceeding with an analysis of his film. Doing so will place Micheaux’s convictions regarding class uplift and his tension-laden relation to religious commitments in context. Details of Micheaux’s early life are culled extensively from his first published novel entitled The Conquest (1913). Although this work is fictionalized, extensive outside documentation has been recovered which has served to corroborate many of the details of the work. For this reason, it is a valuable and reliable resource regarding the biographical and historical details of Micheaux’s early career.

Biographical Background Micheaux was the fifth of thirteen children. Born into a farming family near the Ohio River in Southern Illinois, he showed a natural entrepreneurial aptitude even as a young boy, often taking initiative to sell his family’s produce in the nearby town of Metropolis. He came to resent black ministers because he felt that they monopolized his mother’s time and always received the best cuts of meat at Sunday dinners, a complaint that found its way into his novels (Micheaux 1917, chap. 3). As one might suspect, his relationship with the local church was not untroubled, one might even call it tumultuous. It seems the contempt went both ways – some elders considered Micheaux “worldly, a free thinker, and a dangerous associate for young Christian folks.” By the age of sixteen, he was “fairly disgusted with it all and took no pains to keep his disgust concealed” (Micheaux 1994, 17). A primary reason for Micheaux’s disdain of institutionalized Christianity was his conviction that it stunted the development of black communities by valorizing their status as victims and deterring African Americans from pursuing social and economic uplift.⁴ As a young man, Micheaux traveled to Chicago and, after obtaining various parttime jobs in stockyards, steel-mills, and farmlands, he eventually landed a job as a porter on a Pullman railroad car. As a porter Micheaux traveled the country and began to weave a social network comprised of western landowners and eastern businessmen. These connections, combined with his diligent financial management, enabled Micheaux to purchase a homestead on the newly opened Rosebud Indian Reservation in southern Dakota (Micheaux 1994, 48 – 51).

 Micheaux remarks: “Another thing that added to my unpopularity, perhaps, was my persistent declarations that there were not enough competent colored people to grasp the many opportunities that present themselves, and that if white people could possess such nice homes, wealth and luxuries, so in time, could the colored people. ‘You’re a fool,’ I would be told, and then would follow a lecture describing the time-worn long and cruel slavery, and after the emancipation, the prejudice and hatred of the white race, whose chief object was to prevent the progress and betterment of the negro. This excuse for the negro’s lack of ambition was constantly dinned into my ears from the Kagle corner to the minister in the pulpit, and I became so tired of it…” Micheaux (, ).

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Micheaux eventually developed a romantic interest in a young white woman, who was the daughter of a neighboring widower farmer in South Dakota. As their romantic relationship developed, Micheaux struggled with a fear of rejecting his African American heritage.⁵ Micheaux eventually broke off their relationship and began to seek an African-American spouse. After several failed courting attempts, he married the daughter of a ranking elder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a well-known figure in the black community in Chicago. Considering Micheaux’s early-developed disdain for ministers and his father-in-law’s substantive character flaws – Micheaux described him as a poor listener, vain, ignorant, hypocritical, and egotistical – it is no surprise that they got along quite poorly. This conflict ultimately led to the deterioration of his marriage. Concurrently, Micheaux was struggling with debt incurred due to a drought that had driven most of the settlers off of the land. This had made it difficult for him to keep his agrarian empire of four (or five) different homesteads profitable. Eventually his farms did fail and, at the suggestion of some of his friends, he began to write. He successfully published several novels: The Conquest, The Forged Note, and The Homesteader. Micheaux’s failed farming attempt led to his career as a novelist and his film career emerged as a result of the success of his writing (Green 2004, 21). There was perhaps no better time for Micheaux to begin to write about his life as a black entrepreneur. Griffith’s film The Birth, based on Thomas Dixon’s white-supremacist propaganda, had become the first American blockbuster. Its success had brought the national African-American community together in protest. Numerous black film companies were formed in an attempt to rebut Griffith’s racist portrayal. One of the more successful of these, Lincoln Motion Picture Company, approached Micheaux with an offer to buy the rights to his novel, The Homesteader. Although the deal eventually fell through, Micheaux realized the possibility for a profitable business venture. He followed his entrepreneurial acumen and formed his own film company. This marked the beginning of what would become a most successful career in feature-filmmaking.

Class Uplift as Eschatology The Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch theorized that utopian consciousness is marked by the anticipation of something better beyond the present life. His approach conceptualizes the political dimension of utopian thinking – a forward-looking aspect of the revolutionary process without which people would not be able to imagine themselves out of their circumstances (Bloch 1986, 14). The utopian consciousness makes possible the capacity for self-determination, which includes the ability to choose how one responds to practical questions. Practical questions have varying scopes of application; the truly self-determinative person will be capable of asking  This fear of forgetting and the importance of memory play important roles in Within the Gates.

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such questions in the most fundamental sense possible. This means asking not “What shall I do under the circumstances,” but rather, “What shall I do about the circumstances?” (Tugendhat 1986). By representing possibilities for uplift, Micheaux’s motion pictures became tools for mimesis which fostered a greater capacity for this kind of fundamental self-determination. Believing that anything was possible for the black race through education and application, Micheaux once remarked, “One of the greatest tasks of my life has been to convince a certain class of my racial acquaintances that a colored man can be anything” (Micheaux 1994, 145). This comment encapsulates his vision of class uplift. This comment encapsulates his vision of a class uplift that included within it the need for a more inclusive politic, such as is envisioned in the film Within Our Gates. Within Our Gates tells the story of an African-American woman from the South, Sylvia Landry. In the beginning of the film, Sylvia visits her cousin Alma in the North, where there is less racial prejudice than in her home town of Piney Woods in the deep South, and is anxiously awaiting the return of her fiancé, Conrad, from World War I. Alma secretly loves Conrad and tricks Sylvia into a compromising situation, which Conrad sees when he returns. He becomes angry and ends their relationship. Disheartened, Sylvia returns to her hometown of Piney Woods in order to help Reverend Wilson Jacobs, who is running a school for young blacks. Sylvia learns that, unless the school can raise $5,000 in order to supplement the $1.49 per child per year that the state supplies, the school will close. Determined to help, Sylvia goes up North again to try to raise the money. She has little success, although she meets a kind man, Dr. Vivian, who shows interest in her. Then through a fortuitous happenstance, Sylvia meets philanthropist Mrs. Elena Warwick, a white woman who is sympathetic to Sylvia’s quest. Mrs. Warwick promises to donate the $5,000 to the school. Her bigoted southern friend, Mrs. Stratton, tries to talk her out of the donation, and Mrs. Warwick becomes so incensed at her friend’s suggestion that she raises the amount to $50,000. Elated, Sylvia returns to Piney Woods. In the meantime, Dr. Vivian has fallen in love with Sylvia and goes to her cousin Alma to try to find her. There, he learns the shocking details of her past, including her rape and the lynching of her family. White supremacy and the aggressive exclusivity it entailed was far from dead, and one of the characteristics of Within the Gates is the way in which Micheaux worked to deconstruct this racist politic through thematic subversions of Griffith’s films. For instance, the title of Within Our Gates is taken from the opening epigraph of Griffith’s The Romance of Happy Valley (1919): Harm not the stranger Within your gates, Lest you yourself be hurt.

This epigraph echoes the biblical mandate to care for the stranger (cf. Deut. 10:19; 14:21; Lev. 19:33; Rom. 13:10; 3 John 1:5). One particularly rich instance of this is

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found in Leviticus 19:33. It reads: “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt….” The Torah, and the Bible generally, emphasize the duty to treat resident foreigners with the same justness that one would treat a citizen. The importance of caring for strangers would have resonated strongly with the national memory of the Israelites, who had sojourned in Egypt. Therefore, of all peoples, Israel would have been able to empathize with the plight of the displaced alien. Oppression of the alien most likely referred to economic exploitation, the deprivation of property, or denial of legal rights. As such, the mandate to care for the stranger extended particularly to those who suffered from lack of legal redress, such as the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner (Levine, 1989, 136). The hypocrisy Griffith demonstrated by recording such inclusive sentiments toward strangers while also recommending the deportation of all African Americans in the coda of The Birth was obvious to Micheaux. The title for Within Our Gates was chosen only a few months after the release of Griffith’s The Birth in order to disrupt what he rightly saw as Griffith’s cinematic religious double-speak and exclusive politic. Moreover, this profoundly democratic hope entails a disruption of power dynamics – both of the American racist idealism of Micheaux’s day and the Roman imperialism in Jesus’ day.

Sylvia’s Emergent History Another implication of Micheaux’s commitment to class uplift, which emerges in Within the Gates, is his resistance to a conception of the self that delimited its capacity for transformation. For him, people were capable of moving within and beyond dominant socio-cultural norms and thus could resist a strict determinism that would otherwise be imposed by hegemonic structures. Characters like Sylvia, Reverend Wilson, and Dr. Vivian had creative capacity to imagine what things could be, not merely what they were or had been. Anthropologist Laurence Ralph has termed this way of imagining “emergent history” – a lived convergence of time in which the past is congealed into present realities in such a way as to allow people to move beyond their prior injuries. Injuries are those encumbrances that follow people through life, weighing them down and affecting their future prospects (Ralph 2014, 5, 16). An emergent history is comprised of a past open to reinterpretation, a future open to creation, and a present to improvisation. In this dynamic temporality lay the possibility that the true self may be multiple or yet-to-be-created. The sexual assault and consequent transformation of Sylvia is the key moment of this dynamic in Within Our Gates. This scene is renowned for Micheaux’s skillful editing, in which he interpolates cuts of Sylvia’s rape with moments of the lynching of Sylvia’s parents. The rhythmic juxtaposition of the two scenes functions as a commentary on the ways in which Af-

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rican-American bodies were consumed by white racism as well as a response to Griffith’s well-known scene in The Birth, in which a white woman named Flora throws herself off a cliff to avoid being raped by a black man. Micheaux presents a racial inversion of Griffith’s representation by depicting the rape of Sylvia, a black woman, by a white man named Gridlestone. The central moment of the rape scene is the extreme closeup, which shows Gridlestone’s hand reaching for Sylvia’s breast. Gridlestone quickly pulls away in horror and dismay when he sees a scar on Sylvia’s chest, which the intertitle tells us “… saved her because, once it was revealed, Gridlestone knew that Sylvia was his daughter…” Gridlestone’s face cringes in dismay, as he realizes he has sexually molested his own daughter. Importantly, Micheaux portrays these scenes occurring in the past. This temporal lens gives the viewer a clue regarding their function in the narrative – they are past memories whose power extends into the present. Micheaux’s primary concern is the possibility for moving beyond past injury and present psychologically stunting views of the self. Cutting back to the present, Micheaux shows Sylvia garnering the courage to reveal the truths of her past to Dr. Vivian. In a profound moment of acceptance, he encourages Sylvia to “Be proud of our country, always! In spite of your misfortunes, you will always be a patriot – and a tender wife. I love you!” Here is Micheaux’s cinematic representation of what Ralph refers to as emergent history: the past has been congealed into the realities of the present in such a way as to allow Sylvia to move into something new despite her old injuries. This is another point at which Micheaux’s film intersects with the theological. The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are both forms of emergent history, in which the people of God are recounting their stories in order to move through and beyond their injuries into a new creative space – that of eschatological redemption. Sylvia’s marriage to Dr. Vivian is implied in the final scene. Placing them in the center of the cinematic frame, Micheaux images them as a happy bourgeois couple, facing the camera and affectionately intertwined. Cinematically, this shot could be part of a Griffith film.

Fig. 59: Sylvie’s marriage to Dr. Vivian in Within Our Gates (1920)

Yet there are tropes that surround Griffith’s desirable female marriage partner that are lacking in Micheaux’s, and this reveals the differences in their respective visions

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of redemption. On the one hand, the female in Griffith’s world is constructed so as to be put on display. Her purity is absolutely essential and the violation of it must be avenged. Moreover, she is a woman under patriarchy – the male gaze. This means that she serves as the object of desire and centers the storytelling as such (Green 2000, 6). On the other hand, Sylvia represents a woman who is not dependent on men and not racially or sexually pure. Micheaux’s viewers would have recognized that these markers of impurity would have caused Sylvia to be considered a social pariah. Heterosexual union formed the foundation of spiritual happiness, material wealth, and social standing in Micheaux’s vision. Hence Sylvia’s marriage is important because it is a symbol of redemption, fulfillment, and newness. This was achievable for her only once she learned to articulate and then move beyond her own historical injuries – those self-images that were constructed in identification with the dominant social ideals. This is a very different type from a redemptive notion of overcoming than is seen in Griffith’s films, which calls for a restoration of the threatened but still unsullied feminine absolutes (Green 2000, 22). For Micheaux, women who had been impugned were able to find a new beginning. Sylvia’s marital identification and historical rebirth occurred not by avoiding impurity, but by accepting the barriers of her sexual and racial impurity and her costly traumatic personal history. This acceptance heralds a new and uncertain freedom that is both personal and social. It is, first of all, the personal freedom to accept and be settled in the multiplicity of the self. Second, it is a social freedom that allows for an uninhibited mutuality and the possibility for marital relationships to serve as the prototype for a new socio-cultural order. Feminist activist and author bell hooks has commented how scenes like this one are examples of Micheaux’s ability to create a cinematic space where those who were considered outsiders could be encountered in ways that were humanizing, and those who were normed by the dominant political and social structures could be seen without these approving cultural lenses (hooks 1991, 356). In accord with hooks’s insight, Within Our Gates can be read as a cinematic comment on the openness of the future and the past to those who had been most damaged by racism and sexism – AfricanAmerican women. The dynamism of past and present mean that those who criticize Micheaux for not accurately portraying the racial problems of his day are missing the point. Micheaux is not concerned to accurately portray racial problems, if by this we mean apart from a redemptive eschatological vision. He is crafting his films as emergent history, which is to say that he is constructing his own reality in the face of oppressive historical myths, empirical political realities, and psychologically stunting views of the self. He is preaching a gospel of middle-class liberation.

Redemptive Christian Praxis Judith Weisenfeld has noted that mainstream Hollywood films tended to relate religion to people of color in order to mark them as simpler, more primitive, and often as

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feminized in relation to whites (Hudnut-Beumler/Sack 2001). Black films try to overcome this stereotype by representing a wide range of religious perspectives. Unsurprisingly, then, many of these same films contain a strong critique of the black church, which is sometimes accomplished by ridiculing ministers. Within Our Gates pits two pivotal characters against one another. The first, Reverend Wilson Jacobs, has founded a school in the South and is trying to raise money for Piney Woods School. Michaeux sets him against Old Ned, an illiterate preacher who, in spite of his illiteracy, is able to extract a great deal of money from the congregation through sensational rhetorical manipulation. While jumping, pointing, and shouting, Old Ned preaches, “Behold, I see that black people will be the first and will be the last. While the white folk, with all their schooling, all their wealth, all their sins, will all fall into the everlasting inferno! While our race, lacking these vices and whose sounds are most pure, most all will ascend to Heaven! Hallelujah!” Micheaux is especially critical of the institutionalized church when it uses religious fervor to distract the attention of African Americans away from the more significant issue of education. Micheaux positions Old Ned against the more sedate, rational, and educated character of Reverend Jacobs. The way in which Micheaux defines these characters against one another suggests a critique of the ways in which ministers mobilized people in the black community. In the case of Reverend Jacobs, it is implied that the church is a good for the uplift of the community when it supports education. This socially aware consciousness is reflected in the character of Reverend Jacob’s speech. He simultaneously supports the goal of class uplift while condemning forms of religiosity (e. g. Old Ned’s Christianity) that would prevent it when he says, “It is my duty and the duty of each member of our race to help destroy ignorance and superstition…May God be with us” (emphasis mine). This is an important socio-political critique because the church was a tool for creating social cohesion in black communities in the early part of the century. Du Bois portrayed the pastor as a “leader, a politician, an orator, a ‘boss,’ an intriguer, an idealist” (Du Bois 1969, 211). Likewise, bell hooks observed that the church served as a refuge for women, where their dignity and respect could be maintained. She remarks: Despite the sexism of the black church, it was also a place where many black women found they could drop the mask that was worn all day at Miss Anne’s house. […] Church was a place you could be and say, ‘Father I stretch my hands to thee,’ and you could let go. In a sense you could drop the layers of daily existence and get to the core of yourself. (hooks/West 1991, 79)

Micheaux’s portrayal of Old Ned includes a scene that infuses a sense of the multiplicity of selves and the possibility for self-determinative transformation. After Preacher Ned has agreed to prop up the white supremacist structure with his pseudo-Christian rhetoric, Micheaux shows him leaving the room and his face cringes in anger and disdain. The intertitle alerts the viewer to Ned’s inner thoughts: “Again I’ve sold my birthright. All for a miserable ‘mess of pottage’ [cf. Gen. 25:29 – 34]. Ne-

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groes and whites – all are equal. As for me, miserable sinner, Hell is my destiny.” In this explicit reference to Genesis 25:29 – 34, Old Ned functions as Esau. He has sold his birthright, which is to say his dignity, by supporting the social oppression of his people, for what amounts to nothing more than a minuscule amount of economic stability given to him by those with true power. Although Old Ned functions as a mouthpiece of the white hegemonic political structure, this has not occluded his perception of what is actually true about himself, his people, and their oppression. His anger is the seed of possible resistance, which, in spite of his corruption by power and money, could blossom into a renewed and redemptive self-consciousness. The liberation Sylvia experiences in her marriage to Dr. Vivian is also a possibility for Old Ned.

Fig. 60: Old Ned regrets selling his birthright for a “mess of pottage” in Within Our Gates (1920)

In contrast, Reverend Jacobs is portrayed as a morally upright and well-educated man, described in glowing terms as an “apostle of education for the black race.” The fundamental difference from Old Ned is that Jacobs is working toward the uplift of his people. Since Old Ned equates himself with Esau, Jacobs’s name could be a veiled reference to the biblical character Jacob in Genesis 25. Micheaux draws a contrast between Reverend Jacobs (Jacob) and Old Ned (Esau), perhaps to pose the question of which man could best lead their community into a new and liberated sociality. Micheaux’s answer seems to be, unequivocally, Reverend Jacobs. Two things are noteworthy in what one presumes is Micheaux’s vision of a true Christian. First, Piney Woods garners the support of Mrs. Warwick, a wealthy white woman. The implication is that the practice of true Christianity has the capacity overcome the racial divide between oppressed African Americans and sympathetic white Americans. This reading is supported by an earlier scene in which Micheaux zooms in on a newspaper that Dr. Vivian is reading. It says: “The Negro is a human being. His nature is not different from other human nature. Thus, we must recognize his rights as a human being. Such is the teaching of Christianity.” For Micheaux, true Christianity is a belief that engenders right praxis, which centers around the incalculable dignity of the person and the creative capacity of the self to improve through education.

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Micheaux’s strength as a filmmaker lay in his ability to artistically navigate dominant cultural and political forces. This is exemplified especially in the ways he used theological themes in order to reveal and critique mechanisms of social oppression. He hoped that Christianity might be one way in which his people could create a future in spite of their histories, and Micheaux envisioned this liberation in the form of middle-class economic freedom and psychological healing.

Works Cited Bloch, Ernst. 1986. The Principle of Hope [1959]. Vol. 1. Transl. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Cripps, Thomas. 1978. Black Film as Genre. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1969. The Souls of Black Folk [1903]. New York: Signet Classics. Green, J. Ronald. 2000. Straight Lick: The Cinema of Oscar Micheaux. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. —. 2004. With a Crooked Stick – The Films of Oscar Micheaux. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. hooks, bell. 1991. “Micheaux: Celebrating Blackness.” Black American Literature Forum 25.2 (Summer): 351 – 60. — and Cornel West. 1991. Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life. Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press. Hudnut-Beumler, James, and Daniel Sack. 2001. “Religion in American Film: An Interview with Judith Weisenfeld.” Material History of American Religion Project. http://www.materialreligion. org/journal/film.html#black; accessed April 2, 2015. Levine, Baruch A., 1989. The JPS Torah Commentary: Leviticus. Philadelphia, New York, Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication Society. Micheaux, Oscar. 1994. The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer [1913]. Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press. —. 1915. The Forged Note: A Romance of the Darker Races. Lincoln, Nebr: Western Book Supply Company. —. 1917. The Homesteader: A Novel. Lincoln, Nebr.: Western Book Supply Company. Ralph, Laurence. 2014. Renegade Dreams: Living Through Injury in Gangland Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tugendhat, Ernst. 1986. Self Consciousness and Self-Determination. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Weisenfeld, Judith. 2007. Hollywood Be Thy Name: African American Religion in American Film, 1929 – 1949. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. —. 1996. “For Rent, ‘Cabin in the Sky’: Race, Religion, and Representational Quagmires in American Film.” In Biblical Glamour and Hollywood Glitz. Ed. Alice Bach. Semeia 74. Atlanta: SBL Press. Pp. 147 – 66. —. 2001. “For the Cause of Mankind: The Bible, Racial Uplift, and Early Race Movies.” In African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Structures. Ed. Vincent L. Wimbush. London and New York: Continuum. Pp. 728 – 42. Young, Joseph A. 1989. Black Novelist as White Racist: The Myth of Black Inferiority in the Novels of Oscar Micheaux. New York: Praeger.

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Films Cited The Birth of a Nation (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1915, David W. Griffith Corporation, US). The Homesteader (dir. Oscar Micheaux, 1919, Micheaux Book & Film Company, US). The Romance of Happy Valley (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1919, D. W. Griffith Productions, US). Within Our Gates (dir. Oscar Micheaux, 1920, Micheaux Book & Film Company, US).

Anton Karl Kozlovic

34 Cecil B. DeMille: Hollywood’s Lay Preacher DeMille’s Movie Ministry

Legendary producer-director of over seventy feature films, Cecil Blount DeMille (1881– 1959), was a seminal cofounder of Hollywood, a progenitor of Paramount Pictures, and the American doyen of epic biblical cinema (Birchard 2004; Eyman 2010; Presley/Vieira 2014), or as Aubrey Malone cheekily put it: “In the beginning was the epic, and the epic was with DeMille and the epic was DeMille” (cf. John 1:1).¹ Nowadays, his professional reputation is coupled with “the near impossibility of mentioning his name without the epithet ‘master of the biblical epic’ attached to it” (Apostolos-Cappadona 2010, 450). His four indelible classics, The Ten Commandments (1923), The King of Kings (1927), Samson and Delilah (1949) and The Ten Commandments (1956) are watershed films that earned numerous religious accolades (Essoe/Lee 1970, 245 – 247), and prompted one anonymous church leader to proudly proclaim: “The first century had its Apostle Paul, the thirteenth century had St. Francis, the sixteenth had Martin Luther and the twentieth has Cecil B. DeMille” (Manfull 1970, 357). This Hollywood lay preacher had “the soul of a hell-scouring evangelist, a kind of celluloid Jimmy Swaggart” (Basquette 1990, 125) who did “with a camera lens what the on-screen Elmer Gantry does on stage: offer a bold, bombastic, and sometimes gaudy presentation of religious ‘history’ for the paying masses” (Robertson 2002, 238). And yet DeMille is much more than a gaudy religious showman (Louvish 2008). Classicist Jon Solomon considers his destruction of Dagon’s temple in Samson and Delilah and his parting of the Red Sea in his second The Ten Commandments to be “the most representative and iconographical Old Testament depictions of the twentieth century” (Solomon 2001, 175). Scripture scholar J. Cheryl Exum considers Samson and Delilah to be “a masterpiece of biblical film making” (Exum 2002, 225), whilst her peer, David Jasper, argues that in “the Hollywood tradition of Old Testament epics […] the cinema has occasionally contributed in a significant way to the history of biblical interpretations, perhaps unwittingly and most notably in the figure of Cecil B. De Mille in films like Samson and Delilah (1949) and The Ten Commandments (1956)” (Jasper 1999, 51). However, his biblical biopics are not unwittingly done, but rather, carefully crafted constructions underpinned by a lifetime of filmmaking prowess, adroit marketing,

 See Malone (, ). The Authorized King James Version of the Bible is used throughout as it was DeMille’s personal favorite (Higashi , ).

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and deep religious reflection as “DeMille the Thirteenth Apostle” (Koury 1959, 316). As his prologue to The King of Kings declares: “He, Himself [Jesus of Nazareth], commanded that His message be carried to the utter-most parts of the earth [Mark 16:15]. May this portrayal play a reverent part in the spirit of that great command.” Shortly before DeMille’s death, when asked how well he knew the Bible, he answers: “Not nearly as well as I should like to, but I’ve studied it for seventy years” (DeMille 1958, 5), elsewhere he claims: “my ministry was making religious movies and getting more people to read the Bible than anyone else ever has” (Orrison 1999, 108).

Celluloid Sex, Sin and Salvation DeMille was not a regular church-goer, but profoundly religious with a strong seekerstyle fascination with other faiths, but who nevertheless confessed: “I am an Episcopalian” (DeMille/Hayne 1960, 274). His father, Henry Churchill DeMille, was an Episcopalian lay minister who regaled Cecil (and William, his older brother) with regular Bible readings that molded his mind and fueled his passion for biblical epics (DeMille/Hayne 1960, 274), whilst his mother, Matilda Beatrice “Bebe” DeMille (née Samuel), was an English Sephardic Jew. DeMille acknowledges being a “half-Jew” (Carr 2003, 190) and, according to Judaism’s matrilineal descent rules, he was considered Jewish by his fellow moguls who dominated Hollywood. According to biographer, Charles Higham: DeMille, so far from being a cynic, was a devout believer in the Bible who saw himself in a missionary role, making the Scriptures attractive and fascinating to the masses in an age of increasing materialism and heathenism. A deeply committed Episcopalian, he literally accepted every word of the Bible without question. (Higham 1973, ix–x)

He certainly merged faith with film work during production of his silent The Ten Commandments and The King of Kings when he gave Bibles to every staff member and urged them to read it daily. During his Jesus biopic he also conducted regular Bible lessons and spent several hours lecturing religious clerics about the gospels from an on-set pulpit (Higham 1973, 111– 112, 160, 167). As the sometimes perceived messianic mystic, Jiddu Krishnamurti, humorously mused following a publicity shot with DeMille and H. B. Warner (playing Christ): “I thought three Saviors on the same lot was perhaps a little too much” (Kobler 1977, 229). DeMille commissioned many biblical scripts (Birchard 2004, Appendix C), which were not realized due to financiers’ unwillingness to invest in (presumably boring) beard-and-bathrobe tales, fluctuating film fashions, or the fear that censors, church groups, and women’s organizations might initiate boycotts and damage profits. But when his Bible projects were green-lighted, especially during cultural climates that DeMille and others felt needed morality tales, he astutely marketed them as creative fusions of sex, sin, and salvation to ensure both pitching and box-office success. For example, The Ten Commandments (1923) dramatically conveyed the consequences of

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human choice amidst salacious cause célèbre scandals involving Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s rape and manslaughter trial, the unsolved murder of William Desmond Taylor, the drug addiction death of Wallace Reid, and numerous lesser contretemps that threatened Hollywood’s very existence (Anger 1981). For Samson and Delilah, DeMille pitches: “We’ll sell it as a story of faith, the story of the power of prayer. That’s for the censors and the women’s organizations. For the public it’s the hottest love story of all time” (Koury 1959, 206). Not surprisingly, DeMille designs his biblical fare to simultaneously teach moral lessons, placate censors, and entice audiences with promises of sex-and-sin to maximize Paramount’s profits and ensure his own professional survival. As his adversarial niece, Agnes de Mille concedes: “He kept sex, sadism, patriotism, real estate, religion and public relations dancing in midair like jugglers’ balls for fifty years” (de Mille 1973, 5). Consequently, DeMille’s biblical epics were lauded as either pinnacles of film faith suitable for children and believers, or derided as salacious Hollywood debauchery (but tame by today’s sexual standards). DeMille also infuses his non-biblical films with scriptural references and iconic Christian symbols. For example, in his western, Rose of the Rancho (1914), Padre Antonio (James Neill) strategically wears, and ritually handles, a large dangling cross; in his historical biopic, Joan the Woman (1917), Joan of Arc (Geraldine Farrar) burns at the stake praying to a prominent Christian cross. In his WWI drama, The Little American (1917), an intertitle stating “The Valley of the Shadow of Death” (Ps. 23:4) precedes Angela Moore (Mary Pickford) and Karl von Austreim (Jack Holt) resting beneath a huge damaged crucifix inside a bombed church. Angela adopts a despairing Virgin Mary pose (lowered body, arms and head) and Karl adopts a crucified Christ pose (laying upon a rough wooden cross, head turned, arms splayed, knee bent). Furthermore, Angela is visually located midway between a figure of Jesus statue and a human Jesus-figure, thus linking the two physically, thematically and symbolically. In his custodial drama, The Godless Girl (1929), Judy Craig (Lina Basquette) prints “Kill the Bible” flyers and lands in reform school wherein she describes the Good Book as “popular fiction” and contemptuously tosses it onto the floor. After she miraculously survives a devastating fire in which a crossshaped mark is burned into her palm, she becomes a believer. This most sacred Christian symbol features more prominently in DeMille’s Roman-Christian epic, The Sign of the Cross (1932), and in his compressed historical reconstruction of medieval religious wars, The Crusades (1935), wherein the cross itself is a film focus, object, and character. In his World War II biopic, The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944), Corydon M. Wassell (Gary Cooper) was an Arkansas medical doctor with a cross-shaped advertising shingle, and as a medical missionary in Java, he wears numerous Red Cross symbols, encounters the same throughout his military travels, and subsequently earns the Navy Cross for heroically saving several sick seamen. Interestingly, he encounters a huge Buddha statue in the jungle and petitions him for help, which manifests and results in heart-felt thanks from the ecumenicallyminded doctor (a.k.a. DeMille).

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DeMille’s Four Biblical Biopics: Text and Subtext DeMille’s depictions of Moses, Jesus, Samson, and Delilah are pinnacles of filmmaking mastery; and yet he was accused of being “a thoroughly pedestrian director” (Jacobs 1992, 180). Frequently overlooked by critics, scholars, and the public alike was DeMille’s skill at engineering (and interweaving) numerous covert biblical subtexts within his overt biblical (and non-biblical) films, as follows.

The Ten Commandments (1923): Silent Sacredness and Sinfulness Although marketed as a two-part “Prologue” and “Story,” structurally speaking, the film is an uneven triptych showcasing: ancient Egypt/the Old Testament featuring a biblical Moses, modern-day (1920s) America featuring a subtextual Christfigure, and first-century Israel/the New Testament featuring a biblical Jesus.

1. Part I: The Old Testament Story of Moses and the Exodus The prologue intertitle to Part I states: “Our modern world defined God as a ‘religious complex’ and laughed at the Ten Commandments as OLD FASHIONED” then links it to the bitterness of “World War” and extolls the society-saving value of “the LAW” before launching into its Old Testament tale. Numerous intertitles throughout contain truncated King James Bible quotations to scripturally justify on-screen events; thereby imbuing the film (and DeMille) with an aura of holy authority. Part I proper starts by showcasing the Israelites suffering under cruel Egyptian bondage (Exod. 1:13 – 14), then Moses the Lawgiver (Theodore Roberts) and Aaron confront Pharaoh seeking to free their people after the ninth plague was unleashed. Pharaoh refuses and increases the Israelite workload (Exod. 5:8 – 9), whereupon Moses warns of the death of the first-born and departs (Exod. 12:29). God unleashes the devastating tenth plague (Exod. 12:29 – 30), which kills Pharaoh’s son. Moses returns and demands freedom (Exod. 12:12), Pharaoh relents (Exod. 12:31– 32), Moses leaves, and the heart-broken Pharaoh beseeches his Egyptian god for help (unsuccessfully). The departing Israelites despoil the Egyptians (Exod. 12:41– 36) then Moses leads the dramatic Exodus. A now vengeful Pharaoh and his charioteers pursue the departing Israelites to the Red Sea (Exod. 14:7), which panics the Israelites (Exod. 14:10) and emboldens the dissenting Dathan, the Discontented. Moses calms them down (Exod. 15 – 16), God’s pillar of fire protects them (Exod. 14:19 – 20), and the Red Sea is dramatically divided (Exod. 14:21) in a silent masterpiece of special effects wizardry. The fleeing Israelites cross over (Exod. 14:22) and the Egyptians pursue (Exod. 14:23), but God saves his chosen people (Exod. 14:13) by collapsing the Red

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Sea and drowning the pursuing Egyptians to personally ensure Israelite salvation (Exod. 15:2).

Fig. 61: Moses and the tablets of the law in The Ten Commandments (1923)

While camped at Mount Sinai, Moses spends forty days and nights high upon the mountain (Exod. 19:1– 2; 24:18), which was like a devouring fire (Exod. 20:18; 24:17), “And he [God, then] gave unto Moses, two tables of testimony, tables of stone – written with the finger of God. (Exodus 31:18).” His Laws are emblazoned (in English) across the sky in cloud-like lettering, and after receiving the first two commandments, Moses starts chiseling these sacred words onto a God-lighted mountain face in single-letter Hebrew script (right column first, then left). The remaining eight commandments are similarly received and recorded in between repeated cutaways to Golden Calf construction, idol worshiping, and riotous behavior below (Exod. 32:1). When Moses finishes chiseling these scriptures in stone, God’s lightening-like fingers cut his laws from the mountain face and turn them into a detachable, onepiece stone tablet with two mirror dome sides containing five commandments each (i. e., a proto-Bible), and then informs Moses of the corruption of his people. Their riotousness intensifies as Miriam leads the idol worshipping but subsequently develops leprous hands. When Moses returns, he is beseeched (Exod. 32:25), becomes outraged (Deut. 9:7), and angrily casts off the mountain the stone-inscribed Laws, which shatter (Exod. 32:19). Miriam then shows Moses her leprous hands and asks to be cleansed. Moses grabs her arm, releases it (whilst Miriam beseeches the heavens) and summons divine lightening that hits the Golden Calf and collapses its supporting perch. Panic ensues (Num. 16:34– 45) and more lightening rains down killing transgressors. Miriam survives and praises the heavens (presumably cleansed) as Part I slowly dissolves into Part II.

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2. Part II: Carpenter John McTavish as a Christ-figure and Stone Tablet Iconography It is modern-day (1920s) America, and we discover Mrs. Martha McTavish (Edythe Chapman) at home reading aloud Exodus from her large Bible before her two sons, John (Richard Dix) and Dan (Rod La Rocque); the scene is a reflection of Cecil and William’s home-based religious instruction. Martha finishes reading with: “— and there fell of the Children of Israel that day, about three thousand men. (Exodus 32:28).” DeMille intends Part II to demonstrate the modern moral consequences of ignoring “The Law” enunciated in Part I by contrasting the behavior of the upstanding John with his corrupt brother, Dan. Overtly, John is a “boss-carpenter” building a Church, but DeMille covertly crafts him as a Christ-figure; which Dan symbolically reinforces by twisting a large metal ring and placing it behind John’s head forming a de facto halo – a signature sign of the Divine. Furthermore, references to John’s mundane “carpenter” function are repeated throughout the film; but most notably by Martha who clasps her Bible and says: “Dear John – some mighty fine men have been carpenters!” referring to Jesus’ earthly trade (Mark 6:3). Like Jesus, John loves God, firmly follows the Ten Commandments, acts as a peacemaker, is straightforward, and eager to do the right thing. He is physically gentle but morally strong, and is the only family member with a thoughtful, balanced view of religion (unlike his atheist brother and religiously rigid mother).

Fig. 62: John’s halo in The Ten Commandments (1923)

Quoting scripture as de facto moral guidance features prominently, but notably via Martha’s lovingly framed hallway sign: “Thou Shalt Not Steal” (Exod. 20:15). Dan grabs it and hands it over to the (hunger-induced) thieving waif, Mary Leigh (Leatrice Joy), to cheekily chastise her, but Mary does not believe in “these Commandment things” and finds Elinor Glyn a lot more interesting (i. e., the pioneer of mass-market erotic fiction for women who coined “It” as a euphemism for sex appeal). When Mary

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carelessly re-positions the sign, back-to-front and hanging crookedly, John quickly rights it out of aesthetic, religious, and filial respect for his mother. However, he left it sitting slightly tilted which symbolically indicates his less-than-rigid fundamentalism compared to his religiously overbearing mother. This biblical decency lesson plays out in dramatic fashion throughout the rest of DeMille’s morality tale about greed, theft, corruption, bribery, adultery, disease, murder, death, repentance, cleansing, redemption, and Mary’s reconciliation with both John and Jesus at film’s end. Stone tablet iconography also features prominently throughout the film. For example, when Martha visits the Church under-construction and examines a prominent tablet-shaped wall feature (without writing). Secondly, after Dan’s defectively built church collapses killing Martha, he saw briefly “Thou shalt not steal” superimposed upon his compromised wall tablet as a stark psychological reminder of his transgressions. And thirdly, after he escapes the police in a speed boat (appropriately) named “Defiance,” Dan dies when washed onto rocky cliffs with stone tablet imagery (without writing) superimposed upon it. His desolate death is followed by the intertitle: “‘For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ (Matthew 16:26).”

3. Part III: A New Testament Jesus Near the end of Part II, mimicking his mother, John reads aloud the story of Jesus and the leper (Mark 1:40 – 42) from his huge office Bible to emotionally bolster a dejected, outcast Mary “branded” with leprosy, an infection she believes she caught from her husband’s dalliance with his Eurasian mistress, Sally Lung, an escapee from the Leper Island of Molokai. DeMille visualizes this Bible story on-screen via an New Testament flashback to first-century Israel, wherein Jesus cures a leprous woman, The Outcast, thereby paralleling the Moses and Miriam leprosy incident in Part I. Following Jesus’ on-screen cleansing, modern-day Mary is subsequently cured of her leprosy (psychological affliction?), and is grateful to John, the film’s putative Christ-figure. So she gently puts her head onto his lap and he places his hand upon her head in a traditional Jesus-like blessing (and just as Jesus does to the spirit-cleansed Mary Magdalene in The King of Kings) as they talk about the power of the Light, itself a Christian metaphor for God/divinity. Like Jesus (the ancient carpenter and healer), John (the modern-day “boss-carpenter”) has a curative effect upon Mary (his modern-day sinner). This action buttresses John-as-Christ-figure and subtly converts the entire film into predominantly Christian (not Jewish) promotional material with a subtle note of religious triumphalism and supersessionism. As Jared Gardner argues, when the film returns “to biblical history, it is not to Moses but to Christ […] Thus, in conventional Christian terms, the new testament [sic] displaces and resolves the unfulfilled type of the old [testament]” (Gardner 2000, 383). “Thus we see why DeMille ends the story of Moses not

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with the founding of Israel, but instead with the scene of shame and destruction, in order to pass on to modern America […] the status of the ‘Chosen people.’ Christ and America thus provide the resolution to the narrative DeMille breaks off in the prologue” (Gardner 2000, 385).

The King of Kings (1927): Epic Piousness When Famous Players-Lasky (later, Paramount Pictures) cancelled DeMille’s contract, he founded DeMille Studio with the financial help of Christian backer, Jeremiah Milbank, who was excited by DeMille’s forthcoming Jesus biopic (DeMille/ Hayne 1960, 245). This situation gave DeMille greater freedom to express his Christian commitments, plus the financial impetus not to fail at the box-office. This in turn prompted his crowd-pleasing formula of sex, sin and salvation alongside scripture-quoting intertitles for reasons of biblical authenticity and religious solemnity.

1. Jesus Christ: Silent Superstar Following a light-streaked intertitle: “I am come a light into the world – that whosoever believeth in me shall not abide in darkness [John 12:46],” DeMille’s screen slowly reveals the bearded, beatific face of Jesus (H. B. Warner), wise and kind, through the just-healed-eyes of a blind young girl. DeMille forces his audience to gaze upon Jesus’ effulgent countenance whilst he gazes back compassionately, father to child, teacher to pupil, actor to audience that forges an intimate on-screen, off-screen bond. DeMille brilliantly eschews the convention of portraying Jesus via back shots, distance shots, or character reaction shots, whilst skillfully balancing dramatic showmanship with divine reverence that becomes “as close as some people have ever come to a religious experience” (DeBona 2000, 61). The key events of Jesus’ earthly ministry from his preaching activities to his crucifixion are recounted with extensive use of intertitle explanations and scripturequoting; especially the more publicly recognizable verses such as: “‘Render, therefore, unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s – and unto God, the things that are God’s!’ Matt. 22:21.” “‘Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not – for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven!’ Mark 10:14.” “‘He that is without sin among you – let him first cast a stone at her’ John 8:7.” “Get thee behind me, Satan! It is written: ‘Thou shalt worship the Lord, thy God – and Him only shall thou serve’ Luke 4:8.” “‘Father, forgive them – for they know not what they do!’ Luke 23:34.” DeMille-the-true-believer also includes incidents not traditionally highlighted in Jesus films, notably, the miraculous finding of money-on-demand in a randomly caught fish’s mouth (Matt. 17:24– 27), for which he subsequently endured chastisement for this “absurdly literal interpretation” (Burnett/Martell 1932, 107). Or Christ’s love of children (Mark 10:13 – 16) that included the (non-scriptural) repairing of a

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child’s broken doll, but which nonetheless spiritually resonated with God’s interventionist mending of human souls, alongside DeMille’s artistic emphasis upon Jesus’ dual nature: majestic and humble, heavenly and earthly, miraculous and mundane.

2. Mary Magdalene as a Visual Mary-the-Mother DeMille’s beautiful courtesan, Mary of Magdala (Jacqueline Logan), lives in a palatial palace of sin surrounded by oiled young flesh and exotic pets; however, following Jesus’ expulsion of her “‘seven deadly sins!’ (Luke 8:2),” she becomes Mary-the-passionate-penitent, an archetypal good girl and cultural icon of religious conversion. DeMille signals her transformation by rearranging her cloak into a nun-ish robe that imitates Mary-the-Mother (Dorothy Cumming) in her stereotypically modest clothing and headdress. It was an early form of spiritual power dressing that associated the newly found piousness of Mary Magdalene with the already established piousness of the Virgin Mary. Thereafter, Magdalene gives up her opulent lifestyle, whoring profession, and lascivious fashion sense to love Jesus with a fearful reverence. Indeed, her reverential persona takes up more screen time than her “Harlot of Magdala” persona, and includes a key scene not based upon the Gospels, namely when she vigorously pleads with the “Crucify Him!” crowd (cf. John 19:6) to release Jesus.

Fig. 63: Magdalene’s seven sins in The King of Kings (1927)

Frequently unappreciated is that DeMille made two “true believer” statements whilst portraying Magdalene. Firstly, DeMille visually verifies Jesus’ divinity by actually showing the expelled “evil spirits…seven devils” (Luke 8:2), and not just referring to them, which is more typical in Jesus films. Neither does DeMille leave open the possibility of a non-supernatural explanation, such as Magdalene being in a symbolic state of disorder, or having an epileptic fit, or exhibiting serious psychological problems. Instead, he confirms that Jesus has spiritual power over real supernatural

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evil, in addition to being able to cure traditional psychological and medical problems (Matt. 4:24). Secondly, DeMille demonstrates Jesus’ sinner-saving power by transforming the impure, pagan and promiscuous Magdalene into a cleansed, wholesome woman full of purity, piety, and chastity. If she could change, so could anyone, thereby proving the Christian hope of salvation for all sinners. DeMille similarly encodes this Christian belief via his costuming design that initially features Magdalene’s exposed flesh (and haughty expressions) which subsequently transforms into robed modesty (and facial reverence) befitting Magdalene-the-good-girl. This is a blatant enactment of the Whore/Virgin dichotomy wherein DeMille problematically equates female sexuality with sin (as does much of Christianity).

Samson and Delilah (1949): Sinfulness, Sexiness, and Sacred Subtexts Popularly perceived as a heroic holy-man (Heb. 11:32), Samson is actually a biblical bad-boy who fails as a religionist, military leader, and pious role-model when he unwisely pursues three amatory adventures with scandalous women, namely: the unnamed Philistine woman from Timnath (Judg. 14:1– 3), the Gaza prostitute (Judg. 16:1), and the ethnically-unspecified Delilah of Sorek (Judg. 16:4). However, DeMille-the-pop-culture-professional succumbs to public expectations and crafts his Samson as a loveable rogue and ancient resistance fighter battling Philistine Gestapo. Played brilliantly by Victor Mature, DeMille’s Samson is an extraordinary strongman, but not the sharpest tool in the Israelite shed. DeMille further ameliorates the scriptural Samson’s many negatives by crafting him as a Christ-figure, identified by a John-the-Baptist-figure, namely the old Story Teller (Francis J. McDonald), in addition to also shaping Samson as a Moses-figure, and crafting his Delilah (Hedy Lamarr) as a Whore-of-Babylon-figure for deeper biblical effect.

1. Samson as a Christ-figure This DeMillean act of inter-testament artistry conceives of a covert Jesus (the ultimate Christian hero) within an overt Samson saga that did not unduly upset his Jewish viewers, backers or bosses. Not only did DeMille tap into a long-held theological tradition linking Samson with Jesus (Crenshaw 2005, 139 – 140), but, structurally speaking, their holy stories are similar. For example, both men are understood as divinelychosen deliverers (i. e., freeing Israelites – Judg. 13:5; saving humanity – Luke 4:16 – 21), both are betrayed by intimates (i. e., Timnath bride – Judg. 14:17 and Delilah – Judg. 16:18 – 21; Judas – Luke 22:2– 6), both are imprisoned by an occupying force (i. e., Philistines – Judg. 15:13 – 14, 16:20 – 21; Romans – Matt. 27:2), both die violently (i. e., crushed – Judg. 16:30; crucified – Matt. 27:27– 50), both do so willingly (i. e.,

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Judg. 16:28 – 30; Luke 23:46), and both sacrifices earned valuable boons (i. e., Philistine freedom – Judg. 16:30; freedom from sin – Heb. 2:14– 17).

Fig. 64: Samson holding a lamb in Samson and Delilah (1949)

Although there is no biblical indication that Samson was a shepherd, nor any pastoral imagery within Judges 13 – 16, DeMille repeatedly emphasizes Samson’s shepherd occupation via his mother, Hazelelponit, Ahtur, a Philistine wedding guest, the Saran of Gaza, a Philistine prince, and even by Samson himself. DeMille also deliberately inserts sheep and shepherd scenes throughout the film to subtly underpin Samson’s Christic construction by imitating iconography associated with Jesus-thegood-shepherd (John 10:11). DeMille has his Samson-as-Christ-figure gently pick up a young white lamb from his mother’s rustic kitchen pen, hold it in his arms, and lovingly feed it water from his fingertips. This was DeMille’s visual short-hand to indicate, via a living prop, Samson’s sacrificial holiness using Jesus’ most famous animal calling card. Later, Samson gently returns the lamb saying: “Run along or your mother will be tanning your hide too,” which subtly broaches the lamb’s future death as dinner, and subtextually resonates with Jesus’ future death as the sacrificial lambof-God whose own hide would be staked out during crucifixion.

2. The Old Story Teller as a John-the-Baptist-figure The old Story Teller plies his trade before Danite children in the Zorah village. There is no scriptural basis for this DeMillean character in Judges 13 – 16, but DeMille deliberately adds it to have a John-the-Baptist-figure point out his Christ-figure construction of Samson in traditional prophetic fashion. After all, the biblical Baptist is a prophet of God (Mark 11:32) whose function is to prepare the way for the Lord (Mark 1:2– 3) and, in due course, he identifies Jesus during a watery rite of immersion (Mark 1:9 – 11).

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Not surprisingly, DeMille’s Story Teller engages in his rhetorical business near Zorah’s water-well, and possesses the countenance of a wildfire-prophet akin to the biblical Baptist’s holy wild man reputation (Mark 1:6). Like the Baptist, the Story Teller foretells of a liberator-to-come by warning Philistine soldiers that “the power of the Lord is in Samson’s arm…and one day you shall feel it.” Thus, he overtly acts as a prophetic herald for Samson-the-strongman whilst covertly acting as a Johnthe-Baptist-figure heralding (Mark 1:3) DeMille’s Samson-as-a-Christ-figure. Furthermore, the biblical Baptist is silenced by beheading at King Herod’s order (Mark 6:16 – 28), whilst DeMille’s Story Teller is silenced when his head was viciously pushed into the mud by brutish Philistine soldiers. John the Baptist performs baptisms (Matt. 3:1, 5 – 6) in the River Jordan, whilst DeMille’s Story Teller works near a public water-well next to a serpentine-shaped drain half-filled with non-flowing water that slowly twists through the village streetscape. Upon closer inspection, this drain looks like a mini-river system, a DeMillean visual prop to subtextually suggest the River Jordan, that famous waterway bordering the promised land. So when Philistine soldiers march over that small drain it indicates Philistine oppression of Samson’s homeland, and subtextually suggests Roman oppression of the Baptist’s homeland, which both the Story Teller and the Baptist respectively oppose.

3. Samson as a Moses-figure DeMille creates yet another subtextual overlay by also crafting Samson as a Mosesfigure (the ultimate Jewish hero). Scripturally speaking, both men exhibit murderous rage (Judg. 14:19; Exod. 2:11– 12), both are divinely-appointed deliverers (Judg. 13:5; Exod. 3:1– 15), both are fugitives from authority (Judg. 15:3 – 8; Exod. 2:15), but despite their extraordinary efforts, both are denied further life and then die (Judg. 16:30; Deut. 34:4– 5) to achieve reprieve from foreign oppression for both their respective peoples. At the Zorah water-well, DeMille’s Story Teller briefly recounts the Exodus story to the (literal) children of Israel who are suffering under cruel Philistine domination (paralleling the suffering of Moses’ people under cruel Egyptian domination). The Story Teller explicitly identifies the Philistine Saran of Gaza as a latter-day Pharaoh, and later implies that Samson is the present-day equivalent of Moses-the-Deliverer. Mentioning Moses whilst filming the Samson saga is theologically odd because they are scripturally distant stories, but it is politically understandable because the Exodus story is full of freedom-flavored liberation politics that suits DeMille’s arch-conservatism and crafting of Samson as a Danite freedom fighter. DeMille adds a potent political layering to his religious film to support Samson’s warring against the Philistines utilizing a subtextual Moses-figure. Furthermore, DeMille enhances Samson’s holiness yet again by crafting Delilah, his femme fatale nemesis, as a Whore-of-Babylon-figure to accentuate their moral distance.

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4. Delilah as a Whore-of-Babylon-figure There is no scriptural evidence of Delilah’s social status, but she is often depicted as sexually salacious, so DeMille models her character upon Babylon’s “great whore” (Rev. 17:1). DeMille’s Samson calls his Delilah, played brilliantly by Hedy Lamarr, “the great courtesan of Gaza,” one of “the fleshpots of my enemies” who cavorts with the Saran of Gaza just like “the great whore…with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication” (Rev. 17:1– 2). This kingly Philistine lord passionately confesses: “I’ve known the ways of many women…who fill the veins with fire…but only one Delilah,” which suggests both his connoisseur familiarity with carnality and Delilah’s sexual excellence. Her sensuous skill is reinforced by Delilah’s passionate admission to her romantic rival, Miriam (Olive Deering): “I love him [Samson] as a man of flesh and blood,” which titillates the audiences’ erotic imagination, but keeps the story well within Hollywood’s censorial limits. DeMille further reinforces the whore theme when Delilah says to the Philistine lords: “There isn’t a man in the world who will not share his secret with some woman” to which one lord knowingly retorts: “Most of us have shared our gold with a woman” (implying prostitute payments), whereupon Delilah smiles knowingly and playfully hits him with her red fan (the traditional prostitute color and erotic accoutrement).

Fig. 65: Seductive Delilah in Samson and Delilah (1949)

When Samson first encounters Delilah at what would become their oasis love-nest, he comments: “The oldest trick in the world…a silk trap…baited by a woman,” which resonates with the euphemistic description of prostitution as “the oldest profession in the world.” To which Delilah smugly retorts: “Do you know a better bait Samson? Men always respond.” This comment is paired with her now horizontal body position, prominently displayed back and rump, and her follow-up enticement routines,

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which include the delicate fingering of a fur rug (suggestive of animal sexuality), and later, her invitingly splayed legs full of submissive sexual promise. DeMille is again equating sin with female sexuality. Overall, DeMille transforms the scripture’s phantasmagorical dimensions into a plausible storyline that converts this divinely-chosen biblical bad-boy into a dramatic hero and a loveable saint, a laughable fool and a brave warrior, an impulsive leader and a calculating sacrificial servant. Whilst simultaneously filling the film with elements of comedy and pathos, sexuality and saintliness, faith and fun that believers and non-believers, men and women, children and adults could all selectively embrace.

The Ten Commandments (1956): DeMille’s Magnum Opus This second Moses biopic was DeMille’s last directorial effort and is not a remake of his silent classic. It has no modern-day morality tale or NT flashback; instead, it is a more fully realized rendition of this foundational sacred story that ranges from Moses as an infant refugee to Egyptian prince, from outlaw murderer to holy lawgiver, and with even more spectacular special effects, costuming and scenery. Instead of Theodore Roberts’s wildfire Moses, Charlton Heston’s Moses is more statesman-like, a warrior-king who heroically fulfills his suffering servant role. In addition to DeMille demonstrating more of Moses’ mystical abilities, God’s deadly plagues, and backstories of his relatives, friends, and enemies, DeMille enhances Moses’ holiness even further by subtextually coloring him as a Christ-figure in the savior-as-liberator mode (cf. John 5:46 – 47). These biblical verses linking Moses with Jesus were well known by DeMille, his scriptwriters and researchers (Lasky 1973, 261), and were scripturally astute for being akin to the Gospel of Matthew’s usage of Moses imagery to color Jesus as a savior-as-liberator.

1. Moses as a Christ-figure DeMille deftly constructs Moses’ christological resonance in the following five-fold manner. Firstly, Pharaoh Rameses I orders the death of “every newborn, Hebrew, man-child” (Exod. 1:16, 22) in Goshen at Egypt’s Eastern gate because an “evil star” identified by court astrologers proclaims the birth of a Deliverer who will lead the Hebrews out of bondage. DeMille’s “evil star” is critically important because no star is mentioned in Exodus 1, but it is highly reminiscent of the “star in the east” (Matt. 2:2) that signifies the birth of the “King of the Jews” (Matt. 2:2) and prompts Herod’s order to kill male babies in Bethlehem (Matt. 2:16). Secondly, when Moses murders the Egyptian master-builder, Baka (Vincent Price), and confesses his true Hebrew identity to the Hebrew slave, Joshua (John Derek), the latter cries out: “You are the chosen one!” and later, “You will deliver us.” For Christian viewers, these claims resonate with New Testament phrases

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such as “Jesus is the Messiah” (John 20:31), “his [God’s] chosen one!” (Luke 23:35) who would “set us free” (Gal. 1:4). Here DeMille’s Joshua functions subtextually as a John-the-Baptist-figure to identify Moses-as-a-Christ-figure. Thirdly, when Moses-as-Egyptian-prince meets his Hebrew birth mother, Yochabel, she reverently says: “God of our fathers, who has appointed an end to the bondage of Israel, blessed am I among all mothers in the land, for my eyes have beheld thy Deliverer.” This DeMillean beatitude that mentions “Deliver” and “blessed” echoes Rameses I’s court astrologers, plus the “blessed” claims of the Virgin Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46 – 55), Elizabeth (Luke 1:42), and the angel Gabriel (Luke 1:28). Here DeMille’s Yochabel functions subtextually as a Virgin Mary-figure to identify Mosesas-a-Christ-figure. Fourthly, Moses-as-Egyptian-prince works incognito as a Hebrew slave in the muddy brick pits wherein he adopts a Pieta pose to comfort an old dying slave, Simon, who sincerely wishes: “that before death closed my eyes, I might behold the Deliverer who will lead all men to freedom.” Only the biblically-savvy audience recognizes Moses-the-Deliverer-in-training. Here Simon functions subtextually as Simeon to whom the Holy Spirit revealed: “he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah” (Luke 2:26) to buttress Moses-as-a-Christ-figure and further deepen DeMille’s OT/NT parallelism.

Fig. 66: Moses holds the dying Simon in The Ten Commandments (1956)

Fifthly, the role of Simon was originally assigned to the aging film star, H. B. Warner, DeMille’s Jesus in The King of Kings, but because he was physically very frail, Warner was reassigned to play the frail Amminadab carried by Mered (Donald Curtis) in a Pieta-like Christic pose. DeMille cunningly employs Curtis, a real-world ministerin-training, to carry a famous former Jesus nearing his own real-world death that subtextually resonates as a crucified Christ, accompanied by a motherly Bithiah, an Egyptian princess who rejects her pagan past and willingly converts to Moses’ Hebraic faith, future, and fortunes. DeMille ends his sacred story with Moses (of the undimmed eyes and white coiffured hair) watching the Children of Israel (carrying the Ark of the Covenant contain-

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ing The Law) walk towards the River Jordan and the Promised Land. Moses appoints Joshua (John Derek) his successor and gives his “five books” to Eleazar to place in the Ark of the Covenant alongside the restored Ten Commandments tablets. Loyal wife Sephora calls Moses “God’s torch that lights the way to freedom” prior to Moses meeting his heavenly fate and delivering his final parting words, namely: “Go – proclaim liberty throughout all the lands, unto all the inhabitants thereof.” With this subtextual proto-christic command (cf. Mark 16:15), overt Old Testament topic, Americana theme, and Moses’ Statue of Liberty symbolism, DeMille creatively fuses politics, piety, and patriotism, and ends up saying just as much about midtwentieth-century America as he did about Ancient Egypt or Hebrew history.

Conclusion DeMille’s biblical cinema dramatically weaves sacred storylines (canonical and extra-canonical with scriptural extrapolations) utilizing carefully crafted (textual and subtextual) characters to manufacture phenomenally successful popular entertainment, but which is still thick with religious meaning for those who have the eyes to see and the ears to hear (Ezek. 44:5; Matt. 13:15). DeMille deserves his religious accolades, biblical hosannas, and master-of-the-epic tags for repeatedly achieving these desirable outcomes; let alone successfully surviving cutthroat Hollywood for decades. His passion for projecting sacred scripture onto the silver screen (when allowed) fulfilled his deeply-felt Hollywood lay preacher aspirations, powerfully molded modern readers’ understanding of Holy Writ, and established film genre benchmarks that rivals still fail to emulate today. Indeed, his biblical imagery is so influential that over-half-a-century-later, Susan Cohen candidly confesses: “When it comes to Moses, there’s no need for imagination. Hollywood gave me Moses in the form of Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. There is no other Moses. When I hear the name Moses, I see Heston […] I have fully accepted and internalized director Cecil B. DeMille’s image of Moses” (Cohen 2013). One imagines that the mediasavvy multitudes would agree, whether past, present or well into the foreseeable future.

Works Cited Anger, Kenneth. 1981. Hollywood Babylon. New York: Bell Publishing. Apostolos-Cappadona, Diane. 2010. “Iconography.” In The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film. Ed. John Lyden. London: Routledge. Pp. 440 – 64. Basquette, Lina. 1990. Lina: DeMille’s Godless Girl. Fairfax, Va.: Denlinger’s Publishers. Birchard, Robert S. 2004. Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky.

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Burnett, R. G., and E. D. Martell. 1932. The Devil’s Camera: Menace of a Film-ridden World. London: Epworth Press. Carr, Steven A. 2003. Hollywood and Anti-Semitism: A Cultural History up to World War II. New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press. Cohen, Susan. 2013. “Can Russell Crowe do for Noah what Charlton Heston did for Moses?” Tablet Magazine (January 4): http://www.jewcy.com/jewish-religion-and-beliefs/can-russellcrowe-dofor-noah-what-charlton-heston-did-for-moses; accessed March 3, 2015. Crenshaw, James L. 2005. Samson: A Secret Betrayed, a Vow Ignored. Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf & Stock. DeBona, Guerric. 2000. “The American Cinema’s Challenge to Adult Faith Formation.” The Living Light: An Interdisciplinary Review of Catholic Religious Education, Catechesis, and Pastoral Ministry 37.1: 53 – 63. de Mille, Agnes. Speak to Me, Dance with Me. Boston: Little, Brown, 1973. DeMille, Cecil B. 1958. “Cecil B. DeMille—Student Editors’ Interview, New York, Reel 1, p. 5.” DeMille Archive (February 21): Brigham Young University. DeMille, Cecil B., and Donald Hayne, ed. 1960. The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille. London: W. H. Allen. Essoe, Gabe, and Raymond Lee, eds. 1970. DeMille: The Man and His Pictures. New York: Castle Books. Exum, J. Cheryl. 2002. “Lethal Woman 2: Reflections on Delilah and Her Incarnation as Liz Hurley.” In Borders, Boundaries and the Bible. Ed. Martin O’Kane. London: Sheffield Academic Press. Pp. 254 – 73. Eyman, Scott. 2010. Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille. New York: Simon & Schuster. Gardner, Jared. 2000. “Covered Wagons and Decalogues: Paramount’s Myths of Origins.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 13.2: 361 – 89. Higashi, Sumiko. 1994. Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture: The Silent Era. Berkeley: University of California Press. Higham, Charles. 1973. Cecil B. DeMille. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Jacobs, Diane. 1992. Christmas in July: The Life and Art of Preston Sturges. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jasper, David. 1999. “Literary Readings of the Bible: Trends in Modern Criticism.” In The Bible and Literature: A Reader. Ed. David Jasper, Stephen Prickett and Andrew Hass. Oxford: Blackwell. Pp. 44 – 64. Kobler, John. 1977. Damned in Paradise: The Life of John Barrymore. New York: Atheneum. Koury, Phil A. 1959. Yes, Mr. DeMille. New York: Putnam. Lasky Jr., Jesse L. 1973. Whatever Happened to Hollywood? London: W. H. Allen. Louvish, Simon. 2008. Cecil B. DeMille: A Life in Art. New York: Thomas Dunne Books and St. Martin’s Press. Malone, Aubrey. 2010. Sacred Profanity: Spirituality at the Movies. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger. Manfull, Helen, ed. 1970. Additional Dialogue: Letters of Dalton Trumbo, 1942 – 1962. New York: Evans. Orrison, Katherine. 1999. Written in Stone: Making Cecil B. DeMille’s Epic, The Ten Commandments. Lanham: Vestal Press. Presley, Cecilia de Mille, and Mark A. Vieira. 2014. Cecil B. DeMille: The Art of the Hollywood Epic. Philadelphia: Running Press. Robertson, C. K. 2002. “Ministers in the Movies.” In Religion as Entertainment. Ed. C. K. Robertson. New York: Peter Lang. Pp. 221 – 42. Solomon, Jon. 2001. The Ancient World in the Cinema [1978]. Rev. ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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Films Cited The Crusades (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1935, Paramount, US). The Godless Girl (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1929, DeMille Pictures, US). Joan the Woman (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1917, Cardinal Film, US). The King of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1927, DeMille Pictures, US). The Little American (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1917, Mary Pickford Company, US). Rose of the Rancho (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1914, Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, US). Samson and Delilah (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1949, Paramount, US). The Sign of the Cross (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1932, Paramount, US). The Story of Dr. Wassell (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1944, Paramount, US). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1923, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, US). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956, Paramount, US).

Caroline Vander Stichele

35 Reframing Jesus: Dreyer’s Lifelong Passion The Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889 – 1968) is probably best known for his silent film La passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1927, a.k.a. The Passion of Joan of Arc) which is commonly regarded to be a ‘classic’, even though very few people may actually have seen it. Even fewer people, film scholars and biblical scholars alike, are aware of the fact that Dreyer had in mind devoting a feature film to Jesus. It was a lifelong project that unfortunately never materialized beyond the film script, mostly because he never found the necessary means to finance it. That project may, in and of itself, already be enough reason to devote a chapter to Dreyer in this volume, but there are other reasons to do so as well. One additional reason is that Dreyer’s work spans a transitional period in film history, from silent to sound films. His first film, Praesidenten (a.k.a. The President), dates from 1919, his last one, Gertrud, from 1964. Since Dreyer is best known for The Passion of Joan of Arc, he is mostly associated with silent cinema, but that covers only part of his career as filmmaker. A second reason to pay attention here to Dreyer is because of his approach to cinema. A third, more specific reason, involves the recurring biblical elements in several of his films. A fourth reason, is that his work represents a ‘minority’ tradition, both culturally and linguistically, since most of his work was originally written and spoken in Danish. In what follows I will first introduce Dreyer and his approach to cinema. Next, I focus on three of his films in which biblical themes appear. The first one is entitled Blade af Satans Bog (1919, a.k.a. Leaves from Satan’s Book) and dates from his silent film period. The second film is Ordet (1954, “The Word”), which is a sound film, and the third, his unrealized film Jesus of Nazareth (1950). Since I have already discussed Leaves from Satan’s Book and Jesus of Nazareth in more detail elsewhere,¹ I pay special attention here to Ordet, a film that has clear links with both.

Dreyer and His Approach to Cinema Dreyer was born in Copenhagen (Denmark) and spent most of his time living and working in that city. He started his career as a journalist for several Danish newspapers. Among the subjects he discussed were aviation, theater, and film. He was known for his sharp pen and sometimes relentless criticism. In 1912, he also started working for the Nordisk Film Kompagni, Denmark’s first film studio, writing titles and scripts for films, as well as evaluating submitted film scripts. After a few years he switched to film editing, until in 1918 he got the chance to direct a film him See further Vander Stichele ( and forthcoming).

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self. That signaled the start of his career as film director. In total he made fourteen feature films and a number of short films. His most successful film was Ordet, for which he received the Golden Lion award in 1955.² Dreyer’s initial perception was that a film director was the interpreter of someone else’s work, more specifically, the manuscript, which forms the content of the film. In 1922 he notes: “the director’s task is to submit to the writer whose cause he is serving. If the director is a personality, we’ll certainly catch sight of him behind his work.”³ Dreyer himself, indeed, made use of other people’s work for his films, the only exception being his Jesus film, for which he wrote the manuscript himself. Together with his film oeuvre, it is part of his legacy to future generations and, as such, deserves more attention than it has received thus far. However, Dreyer’s insistence on the director as interpreter does not imply that in his view the director is unimportant. In his later writings, Dreyer insists that the director plays a crucial role in making a film a piece of art. It is the director who “inspired by the writer’s material, in a convincing way gives it life in artistic images […] It is he who stamps the film with this inexplicable something that is called style.”⁴ It is through this style that “he infuses the work with a soul – and that is what makes it art. It is for him to give the film a face – namely his own.”⁵ In order to detect Dreyer’s stamp on the work he used we therefore have to pay special attention to the way he visualizes it. Dreyer did not stick to one particular style in his films though. Rather, he chose a style in function of the film he was making. Nevertheless, some of Dreyer’s films display elements of what Paul Schrader calls a “transcendental style”. Characteristic for this style is that it “seeks to maximize the mystery of existence; it eschews all conventional interpretations of reality: realism, naturalism, psychologism, romanticism, expressionism, impressionism, and, finally, rationalism” (Schrader 1988, 10). Although Dreyer used this style in some of his work, notably in La passion de Jeanne d’Arc, Vredens dag (1943, a.k.a. Day of Wrath) and Ordet, in Schrader’s opinion, he did not use it to the same extent as the Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu and the French director Robert Bresson did. Apart from issues of style, an important clue for understanding Dreyer’s work is perhaps the one he himself disclosed: “I have always been against intolerance wherever I met it; national, political, religious or in everyday life, and I have always been fighting it whenever I was able to because intolerance in general is accompanied by stupidity and brutality. If you watch my films closely, you will discover that the action

 For a short overview of his career, see Schepelern (,  – ). More information can be found on the website devoted to Dreyer, at: http://english.carlthdreyer.dk/ (accessed April , ).  Skoller (, ). This comment appears in Dreyer’s essay entitled “New Ideas About the Film: Benjamin Christensen and His Ideas ().”  Skoller (, ). This quotation appears in Dreyer’s  essay entitled “Imagination and Color.”  Skoller (, ). This quotation appears in a  essay entitled “A Little on Film Style.”

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mostly takes place on a background of intolerance.”⁶ That is indeed also the case with the films under discussion here.

Blade af Satans Bog (1920) After finishing Praesidenten, Dreyer started a more ambitious project with his second film entitled Blade af Satans Bog, based on a script written by the Danish writer Edgar Høyer. Dreyer was also inspired by D. W. Griffith’s film Intolerance (1916), although not so much by its spectacular scenes as by the more intimate ones, and he also greatly admired Griffith’s use of close-ups (Drum/Drum 2000, 59). As in Griffith’s film, Blade presents four episodes from history, including scenes from the life and, especially, passion of Jesus. However, unlike Intolerance the episodes in Blade are shown in chronological order, starting with the episode about Jesus.⁷ In Griffith’s film, the issue of intolerance is the overarching theme that knits the four episodes together. Although this theme also plays a role in Dreyer’s Blade, what the four stories that Dreyer combines have in common is that in each Satan appears in human disguise to tempt people to do evil. The reason for Satan’s interventions is explained at the beginning of the film. Satan has been punished by God for being disobedient and is now banished to the earth, where he is to tempt people to act against God’s will. If someone gives in to temptation, Satan’s doom will be prolonged for one hundred years, but, for every person that resists him, Satan’s punishment will be diminished by one thousand years. The four episodes that follow show Satan’s efforts to tempt people. In the first episode, Satan appears as a Pharisee, who convinces Judas that he should betray Jesus, and he is indeed successful in doing so. The second episode plays in the sixteenth century during the Spanish Inquisition. Here Satan is the Grand Inquisitor who orders a monk, called Don Fernandez, to arrest Don Gomez and his daughter, Isabella, for heresy. Don Fernandez gives in, but he rapes Isabella because she refuses to give in to his advances. The third episode takes place during the French revolution. Satan takes the form of a revolutionary who convinces the servant Joseph to betray his former mistress and her daughter, Geneviève, because the latter refuses to marry him. In the fourth episode, situated in the spring of 1918, he reappears in Finland during the war between Russia and Finland in the form of a Russian monk, Ivan, who supports the local Red forces. Ivan convinces Rautaniemi to betray Siri and her husband, who support the nationalist White forces. When they both refuse to cooperate with the Reds, Ivan threatens to kill their children, but rather than giving in, Siri stabs herself with a knife. Her heroic deed results

 Quote from Dreyer, personal letter, December ; see Drum/Drum (, ).  Griffith’s Intolerance starts in the present day and works the other episodes into it. He also includes an episode that precedes the life of Jesus related to the Babylonian empire. For a discussion of the way the four stories are combined in Intolerance, see Walsh, (forthcoming).

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in Satan being relieved of a thousand years, but nevertheless he still has to continue his evil work on earth. Of interest to us here is the first episode, which deals with the Passion narrative. This episode reproduces parts from the biblical Passion stories, but adds a new element in order to make a connection with the larger theme of Blade, insofar as Satan takes the form of a Pharisee and, as such, negotiates with Judas. The following scenes from the Passion accounts appear: the anointment, the Last Supper, the events in the garden of Gethsemane, and the arrest of Jesus. Although all four gospels are used, the Gospel of John serves as the main source in the scenes with Judas. Thus, the one who criticizes the woman for spending the ointment is identified as Judas (John 12:5) and at the Passover meal Jesus hands the bread to Judas, telling him “That thou doest, do quickly” (John 13:26 – 27).⁸ It is also the Gospel of John that associates Judas most explicitly with the devil (John 13:2, 27). The identification of Satan with a Pharisee, however, is new. It is also highly problematic, because it reproduces the vilification of the Pharisees, of Judas, and by extension of the Jews, that became so dominant in Christian tradition.⁹ In my view, this problem is compounded by the fact that Dreyer chose Jacob Texière, a Jewish actor to play the role of Judas, while the other main Jewish characters were played by a Danish (Helge Nissen as Satan) and a Norwegian actor (Halvard Hoff as Jesus). As a result, the stereotyping of Judas as a Jew is strengthened.¹⁰ In other respects as well Dreyer’s interpretation of the Passion narrative is visually traditional. This is notably the case with the character of Jesus. The way he is represented has strong iconographical overtones. He is also set apart from the other characters by the solemn way in which he moves, as well as by the slow gestures that he makes.¹¹ In retrospect, Dreyer was not happy with the first episode of this film. He distanced himself from it later, not because of the criticism it received from conservative circles who considered it blasphemy to represent Jesus on screen, but because he was dissatisfied with the way he had represented Jesus, calling it “a bad tailor’s dummy of a Christ.”¹² His own dissatisfaction may well have been the incentive to come up with a different portrayal of Jesus in the Jesus film he envisioned making.

 This text is displayed on the intertitle.  For a discussion of antisemitism in Bible films, see Reinhartz’s chapter in Part II (Pp.  – ).  For a discussion of the ways Judas has been interpreted and represented in the course of history, see Paffenroth (). Also see Hebron’s chapter on the cinematic Judas in Part II (Pp.  – ).  The way Dreyer reproduces visual traditions is most apparent in the Last Supper scene, which is clearly modeled on Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous fresco in the Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan. Cf. Vander Stichele (, ).  Translated quote from National Tidende, February , . See Drum/Drum (, ).

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Fig. 67: Iconographic depiction of Jesus in Blade af Satans Bog (1919)

Ordet (1955) As with his previous films, Ordet is based on an existing manuscript, in this case a play with the same name by the Danish playwright, Kaj Munk (1898 – 1944). Munk was a Lutheran pastor and a member of the Danish resistance during the Second World War. He was liquidated by the Nazis. This tragic fate turned him into a national hero (Drum/Drum 2000, 221– 22). The story of Ordet is set at the coast of Jutland, at a farm called Borgensgaard, where the widower, Morten Borgen, lives with his three grown sons. Mikkel is the eldest son and married with Inger. They have two little girls, and Inger is pregnant with a third child, to be born soon. Johannes is the second son. He was studying theology but has lost his mind and thinks he is Jesus Christ. The third son is Anders. He has fallen in love with Anne, the daughter of Peter, the tailor. Anders asks Peter if he can marry Anne, but Peter refuses because they do not share the same faith, insofar as he and Morten have different views on Christianity. Morten is a representative of the Grundtvigian approach to faith in the Danish Lutheran Church, while Peter represents the Inner Mission.¹³ The difference between the two, as Morten puts it in the film, is that “you [Peter] believe Christianity is being mournful and torturing yourself, I believe Christianity means the enhancement of life. My faith makes me rejoice in life, your faith merely makes you long for death.” Morton takes it ill that Peter rejects his son and decides to go see him together with Anders. While they are gone, Inger goes into labor. The doctor arrives and no-

 The first approach was introduced in the nineteenth century by bishop N. F. S. Grundtvig ( – ) in response to the Inner Mission. Grundtvig and his followers favored a more life-embracing, emotional approach to faith than the more conservative and strict Inner Mission, whose members typically gather in someone’s home, as is also the case in Ordet. Cf. Drum/Drum (, ).

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tices that the child is in the wrong position. He sacrifices the child to save Inger’s life, but nevertheless, when he has left she dies. Johannes claims that she is not dead, but sleeps. He wants to wake her up, but collapses. The next day Johannes is gone and they search for him in vain. On the day of the funeral, Johannes returns and confirms that he has recovered from his insanity. However, Inger’s eldest daughter, Maren, asks him if he will bring her mother back to life, as he had promised earlier. He asks her if she believes that he can do so and she answers yes. Johannes goes to the coffin and addresses Inger, saying: “Inger, in the name of Jesus Christ I say unto thee: arise.” Her hands unfold and she opens her eyes.¹⁴ Although Dreyer adopted the story from Munk’s play, he made some substantial changes. First of all, he shortened the dialogues considerably to the bare essentials, keeping only one third of the original dialogues (Skoller 1973, 164). Second, the madness of Johannes only receives a religious explanation, while Munk adds another reason: Johannes has lost his fiancée in an accident (Drouzy 1982, 372 n.3; Wahl 2012, 101). Third, and most important, in Munk’s play the suggestion is that Inger was erroneously declared dead by the coroner, while her death is a fact in Dreyer’s version (Drum/Drum 2000, 224; Drouzy 1982, 372 n.4). The result of these changes is that the dialogues are in line with the visuals, which are equally sober; that the sole reason for Johannes’s madness is religiously motivated; and that the miracle of Inger’s return to life is ‘real’. How that is possible, is not explained in the film. In this sense, there is no closure. It is left to the viewer to interpret this ‘fact’, although, as we will see, Dreyer carefully prepares the viewer. The character with the most biblical overtones in the film is no doubt Johannes. In what follows, I first discuss his role in the narrative and then the way Dreyer has portrayed him. Johannes is introduced at the very beginning of the film. He has disappeared from his bedroom, which alarms the rest of the family, who goes looking for him. They find Johannes preaching on a dune to an imaginary audience, that they cannot see: Woe you hypocrites… and you… and you… and you… Woe unto you for your faithlessness. Woe unto you, because you do not believe in me, the risen Christ, who has come to you at the bidding of Him, who made the Heavens and the Earth. Verily I say unto you: Judgment Day is near. God has called me to be His prophet before His face. Woe unto ye of little faith, for only they who have faith shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.

Thus, already from the beginning, we understand that Johannes believes himself to be the Risen Christ. Why that is the case, is revealed to us through the other members of his family. Johannes has gone mad, after being encouraged by Morten, his father, to study theology. Morten had hoped that Johannes would become a reformer of Christianity, but instead he became the tragic burden of the whole family. He lives in another world that the rest of his family does not comprehend. His speech is

 For a detailed analysis of the film, see Bordwell (,  – ).

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Fig. 68: Johannes preaches on the hillside in Ordet (1955)

full of biblical quotations. At one point in the film, he enters the room and lights two candles. His father asks him why he does that and Johannes replies: “I am the light of the World, but the darkness knoweth it not. I came into my own and my own received me not.” (cf. John 3:19) Later, after Inger has died, he disappears and leaves behind a note, saying: “Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me. Where I go, ye cannot come” (John 13:33). Apart from his religious language, Johannes also sees things that the others do not. When Inger is in labor, he asks his father: “Did you not see him, the Lord? The man with the hourglass and the scythe. He went with the child… Look. Can you see him? There he is.” He is, however, dismissed by his father. The only one who seems to take him serious is his little niece, Maren. While Inger is still in labor, she asks him if her mother is going to die soon. He replies: Johannes: Do you want her to? Maren: Yes, because you’ll raise her from the dead. Johannes: I dare say it will come to nothing. Maren: Why? Johannes: The others won’t let me. Maren: But what about mummy, then? Johannes: Your mummy will go to heaven.

It is also Maren, who reminds Johannes at the funeral that he would bring her back to life again. Although Johannes has recovered his sanity at that point, he takes her request seriously: “Do you believe I can do it?” “Yes, uncle.” He replies: “Thy faith is great, it shall be done according to thy will” (cf. Matt. 15:28). This answer seems to suggest that he has lapsed back into his madness, but he adds: “Look at your mother. When I speak the name of Jesus, she will rise.” The fact that he refers to Jesus, makes

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clear that he no longer identifies himself with Jesus, but wants to invoke him, which indeed he does with the words “Inger, in the name of Jesus Christ, I say unto thee: arise.” Johannes’s condition is further emphasized by the way in which Dreyer presents him. Apart from what he says, Johannes is deliberately set apart from the other characters by the emphatic way in which he speaks in his deranged state of mind (Drum/ Drum 2000, 238). This different mode of speech is even apparent for viewers who do not understand Danish. Another way in which Dreyer emphasizes Johannes’s state of mind is through the use of light. In most scenes, Johannes is quite literally left ‘in the dark’ in comparison with the other characters. In the final sequence, however, he becomes gradually ‘enlightened’ (Drum/Drum 2000, 236). The Jesus-like character of Johannes is also visualized by the coat he is wearing. As Wahl explains, the collar was “turned up in a special way, as Christ’s cloak, to frame his face” (Wahl 2012, 51). The fact that Johannes appears without his coat in the final sequence at the funeral, therefore, is telling. It signals his return to sanity. Throughout most of the film, Johannes himself is impotent, because he is no longer in touch with reality. “John’s straightforward pronouncements, his inexpressive face, his overwhelming religious obsession, his inability to function in a pragmatic world, all mark him as a product of disparity” (Schrader 1988, 134). As a result, he cannot bring about any change, although he blames the others for not being able to do so, saying: “And in His own country He did not many mighty works because of their unbelief” (cf. Mark 6:5 – 6). At the other end of the spectrum stands Inger, who is a true believer and mediator among the other characters. She is the only one who believes that Johannes may be closer to God than they are. She is also the one who negotiates and tries to bring the other members of the family together, but she only succeeds in doing so when she is dead. Morten and Peter give up their antagonism, and Anders and Anne can marry each other; Johannes is sane again, and Mikkel, her husband who was an atheist, becomes a believer. In dying and rising she realizes what she could not do when still alive. The miracle of her resurrection has been carefully prepared throughout the film. At several instances, the characters discuss the possibility of miracles happening. Referring to Johannes, Morten is quite emphatically blaming himself for his lack of faith: “If I’d prayed with faith, a miracle would have happened. But I prayed because I thought it was worth trying. If a father can’t pray with faith for his child, miracles do not happen.” Inger replies: “Well, I think that many tiny miracles occur all around us.” In the pastor’s opinion miracles no longer happen. In principle they are possible, but God does not break his own laws. The doctor in turn represents the scientific position and only believes in the miracles his science has taught him. Apart from Inger, the other persons who believe in miracles are her daughter, Maren, and Peter, who believes the world is full of miracles and that the Lord is a God of miracles. However, it is Maren’s faith that Johannes can bring her mother back to life, that proves to be most powerful. As Bordwell notes, “the problematic Johannes is re-

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placed by a much more conventional figure of unity: the pure, faithful child” (Bordwell, 1981, 148). It is highly significant that the film does not end with Inger’s death, but with a celebration of life, symbolized by the passionate kiss of Inger and Mikkel. As such the miracle points beyond itself. It signals a return to sanity in the case of Johannes and a return to life for Inger. According to Schrader, this end shows Dreyer’s ambivalence, in that it evokes the divine, but ends up affirming the human. As a result, Dreyer does not achieve stasis, which, according to Schrader, is the defining element of transcendental style (Schrader 1988, 120), because stasis is the frozen image, which points beyond itself. “It establishes an image of a second reality which can stand beside the ordinary reality; it represents the Wholly Other” (Schrader 1988, 49). Dreyer does prepare his audience for such an experience: “they must get into a religious mood, be entangled into an atmosphere of religious mysticism.” They must be made “to believe that they see a divine act, so that they walk away, silent and moved” (Wahl 2012, 101– 102). However, after the miracle, the stasis is quite literally undone, as symbolized by Anders who walks to the clock hanging on the wall, which Mikkel had stopped when Inger had died, and starts it up again. Then Mikkel tells Inger: “Now life is beginning for us.” To which Inger replies: “Life… yes… life.” If Schrader sees in the end of Ordet a failure to achieve stasis, Carney understands it as a refusal to oppose the spiritual and the physical, the spirit and the flesh. In his view, the character who embodies the unity between both is Inger, whose love and care reaches out to those around her (Carney 1989, 251). However, it is her death that finally unites them. As a result, the film “tips at the end in favor of transcendental spirit” (Carney 1989, 261). In my opinion, this would indeed have been the case if the film indeed ended with Inger’s death, but it moves beyond that to affirm the union between spirit and flesh in her resurrection. Finally, when one compares the figure of Johannes in Ordet with that of Jesus in Blade af Satans Bog, the following observations can be made. On the one hand, the visual representation of Johannes shows clear similarities with that of Jesus. They move in the same slow and solemn way. They make the same gestures [see figures 67 and 68]. They both embody a Jesus who does not belong to this world. Insofar as Johannes believes that he is Jesus, he revives a mental image from the past, the way he thinks that Jesus must have been like. In this sense, Dreyer’s Johannes reproduces Dreyer’s earlier Jesus. On the other hand, Johannes also anticipates Jesus of Nazareth, because Ordet was an experiment in view of the Jesus film that Dreyer envisioned making (Wahl 2012, 64; Drouzy 1982, 334). More specifically, he saw Ordet as an opportunity to find out if he could make a miracle believable on screen (Drum/ Drum 2000, 223). As such Ordet is also pointing forward to a more ambitious project that sadly enough never materialized on screen.

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Jesus of Nazareth (1950) By the time Ordet came out, Dreyer had already written a manuscript for his Jesus film. It was a dream that he cherished, but it never came true because he did not find the financial means for it. The Jesus that he imagined for this film was radically different from Blade af Satans Bog (and, in a way, also from Ordet). If Jesus’ divinity was stressed in Blade, it was his humanity that was foregrounded in Jesus of Nazareth. Several events that took place after he made Blade played an important role in that. The first was related to a film that he made a few years later, entitled Die Gezeichneten (1921, “The Stigmatized,” a.k.a. Love One Another) about a Russian pogrom that took place at the beginning of the twentieth century. Dreyer shot that film in Berlin, where he worked with Jewish refugees from Russia. The confrontation with the experience of antisemitism made a lasting impression on him (Drum/Drum 2000, 91; Wahl 2012, 67). A second and more decisive event was the occupation of Denmark by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. In an essay entitled “Who Crucified Jesus?” (1951) he notes, “it struck me that such a situation as we Danes were in was similar to that of the Jews in Judea in the days of the Roman Empire. The hatred we felt towards the Nazis, the Jews must have felt toward the Romans” (Dreyer 1972, 41). That experience clearly informed his understanding of the situation in which Jesus found himself and the reason why he was eliminated by the Romans. Dreyer’s perception was also highly influenced by the work of two Jewish scholars about Jesus. One was Joseph Klausner (1928), who portrays Jesus first and foremost as a Jew in the context of the Judaism of that time. The other was Solomon Zeitlin, whose book Who Crucified Jesus? came out shortly after World War II (1947). Dreyer relied on Zeitlin for his perception of the different groups that opposed the Romans and for his reconstruction of Jesus’ trial and execution by the Romans. He also agreed with Zeitlin “that Jesus was handed over to the Romans as a political criminal who had committed an offense against the Roman state by aspiring to become king of the Jews” (Dreyer 1972, 45). Seeing the fact that he was increasingly concerned about Christian antisemitism and that he relied on Jewish scholars to correct that, it comes as no surprise that Dreyer wanted to portray Jesus as a Jew, played by a Jew, in the film that he envisioned making. During the shooting of Ordet, he told Wahl: “The Life of Jesus will be made in Palestine in the Hebrew language […] a narrator will be used to lead into the episodes. Yet once the familiar scenes begin, only Hebrew will be heard in order to give the feeling this is a document—not so much a ‘re-creation’ as a record” (Wahl 2012, 66). Dreyer wanted to counter Christian antisemitism, but he also wanted his Jesus to be a fully human being with a divine calling. In his view, Jesus gradually comes to believe that he may be the Messiah, but also that he may have to suffer, something his disciples have a hard time accepting. As in Blade, Judas appears as a disciple with conflicting feelings about Jesus, whom he ends up “betraying.” Different from

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Blade, however, is that he does so because he believes that God will rescue Jesus from the cross. This is a more positive picture than the one we get from Judas in Blade, but it is nevertheless equally tragic. As Wahl observes: “Thirty-five years earlier, in Leaves from Satan’s Book, Dreyer had treated Judas as a kind of Brutus figure, a tool of the high priest Caiphas, who was a direct ally to the Romans and to Pontius Pilate in particular. Herr Dreyer’s basic view on the matter hadn’t changed.” (2012, 67) Dreyer envisioned his film to end with the death of Jesus, nailed to the cross as a political rebel, with the final words of the narrator: “Jesus dies, but in death he accomplished what he had begun in life. His body was killed, but his spirit lived. His immortal sayings brought humanity all over the world the good tidings of love and charity foretold by the Jewish prophets of old.” Unlike Ordet, no resurrection followed.

To Conclude Throughout his career, Dreyer kept reflecting on the character of Jesus, be it directly as in Blade af Satans Bog and Jesus of Nazareth or indirectly as in Ordet. It is unfortunate that all we are left with is the manuscript of the Jesus film he had in mind making, but at least it offers us a glimpse of what he had in store. It also documents the process that he went through as he reframed Jesus from a devotional image of the past (as in Blade and Ordet) to an image for the present and the future (as envisioned in Jesus of Nazareth). An even more important legacy, however, is his conviction that in order to counter Christian antisemitism one has to start with re-visioning Jesus.

Works Cited Bordwell, David. 1981. The Films of Carl-Theodor Dreyer. Berkeley: University of California Press. Carney, Raymond. 1989. Speaking the Language of Desire: The Films of Carl Dreyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dreyer, Carl Theodor. 1972. Jesus. New York: Dial Press. Drouzy, Maurice. 1982. Carl Th. Dreyer né Nilsson. Paris: Cerf. Drum, Jean and Dale D. Drum. 2000. My Only Great Passion. The Life and Films of Carl Th. Dreyer. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Klausner, Joseph. 1928. Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times and Teaching. Transl. Herbert Danby. London: Allen & Unwin. Paffenroth, Kim. 2001. Judas: Images of the Lost Disciple. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Schepelern, Peter. 2004. “Postwar Scandinavian Cinema.” In European Cinema. Ed. Elizabeth Ezra. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 139 – 56. Schrader, Paul. 1988. Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer [1972]. Reprint. New York: Da Capo. Skoller, Donald, ed. 1973. Dreyer in Double Reflection: Carl Dreyer’s Writings on Film. New York: Da Capo.

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Vander Stichele, Caroline. 2013. “Silent Saviours: representations of Jesus’ Passion in early cinema.” In The Ancient World in Silent Cinema. Ed. Pantelis Michelakis and Maria Wyke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 169 – 88. Vander Stichele, Caroline. Forthcoming. “A Jewish Jesus? Leaves from Satan’s Book (1921) and Dreyer’s Unrealized Jesus of Nazareth (1950).” In The Silent Jesus: The Lives and Passions of Christ in the Early Cinema. Ed. David Shepherd. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wahl, Jan. 2012. Carl Theodor Dreyer and Ordet: My Summer with the Danish Filmmaker. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Walsh, Richard. Forthcoming. “On the Harmony of the (Asocial) Gospel: Intolerance’s Crosscut Stories.” In Now Showing: Film Analysis in Biblical Studies. Ed. Caroline Vander Stichele and Laura Copier. Atlanta: SBL Press. Zeitlin, Solomon. 1947. Who Crucified Jesus? New York: Harper.

Films Cited Blade af Satans Bog [a.k.a. Leaves from Satan’s Book] (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1919, Nordisk Films, DK). Die Gezeichneten [“The Stigmatized,” a.k.a. Love One Another] (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1921, Primusfilm, DE). Gertrud (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964, Palladium, DK). Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1916, Triangle Film Corporation, US). La passion de Jeanne d’Arc [a.k.a. The Passion of Joan of Arc] (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1927, Société générale des films, FR). Ordet [“The Word”] (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1954, Palladium, DK). Praesidenten (a.k.a. The President) (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1919, Nordisk Films, DK). Vredens dag [a.k.a. Day of Wrath] (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943, Palladium, DK).

J. Sage Elwell

36 Luis Buñuel: Atheist by the Grace of God Luis Buñuel (1900 – 1983) once quipped in an interview, “Thank God I’m still an atheist” (Manceaux 1960, 41). Not surprisingly, Buñuel’s directorial ouvre constitutes one of the most protracted, reflective, and complex critiques of religion and bourgeois morality in cinematic history. The following details this complex, often conflicted, personal and directorial relationship with religion, Catholicism, and the Bible. Buñuel was born in 1900 in Calanda, Spain, a village where, as he describes it, the religious zeal of “the Middle Ages lasted until World War I” (Buñuel 1983, 8). Buñuel was born into an upper-middle class patrician family, and when they moved seventy miles north to Saragossa, the family’s wealth secured their social standing among the bourgeoisie. At six years old Buñuel attended the College of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart before transferring to the Jesuit Colegio del Salvador the next year. He spent the next seven years under the strict tutelage of the Jesuits before transferring to the local high school where he encountered the works of Marx, Spencer, Rousseau, and Darwin for the first time. It was during this period that Buñuel began to actively reject both the Church and the bourgeois society in which he had been raised, thereby forecasting the twin critiques that would define his directorial career. This chapter explores Spanish director Luis Buñuel’s cinematic critique of the Bible and biblical motifs as instantiated in the Catholic Church and bourgeoisie society. Divided into two sections, biography and filmography, this chapter begins with an introductory account of Buñuel’s complicated personal relationship with the Bible, the Church, and the bourgeoisie. The second section turns to Buñuel’s films in an exploration of how his complicated, and often contrary, attitude toward the Bible and its motifs is evidenced in his work as a director, attending primarily – though not exclusively – to the following films: L’âge d’or (1930, a.k.a. The Golden Age), Nazarín (1959), Viridiana (1961), Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972, a. k.a. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), Simón del desierto (1965, a.k.a. Simon of the Desert), and La Voie lactée (1969, a.k.a. The Milky Way).

Biography Buñuel’s treatment of the Bible and biblical motifs in his films was heavily influenced by his own experiences with the Catholic Church. Although his family moved away from Calanda when Buñuel was only four months old, he regularly returned to the village for many years and its religious atmosphere played a formative role in his maturation. In his autobiography he writes that, “As in the Middle Ages, death had weight in Calanda; omnipresent, it was an integral part of our lives. The

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same was true of faith. Deeply imbued with Catholicism, we never had a moment’s doubt about these universal truths” (Buñuel 1983, 12). Thus from an early age, death and religion were intimately linked for Buñuel, a union that would recur in his directorial vision. Additionally, during this period Buñuel’s adolescent sexuality was awakened amidst this environment of death and religion. Surrounded by the oppressive weight of faith and mortality and always under the watchful eye of his Jesuit teachers, Buñuel’s sexual curiosity was at once eager and frustrated – a theme most explicitly presented in his final film, Cet obscur objet du désir (1977, a.k.a. That Obscure Object of Desire). Again, in his autobiography Buñuel explains that “Given this heavy dosage of death and religion, it stood to reason that our joie de vivre was stronger than most. Pleasures so long desired only increased in intensity because we so rarely managed to satisfy them. Despite our sincere religious faith, nothing could assuage our impatient sexual curiosity and our erotic obsessions” (Buñuel 1983, 14). Together then, sex, death, and religion would become the thematic three-legged stool of Buñuel’s directorial vision as he set about cinematically critiquing his bourgeois Catholic upbringing. Even before Buñuel left the Jesuit Colegio del Salvador for the local public high school in Saragossa, he had already begun to question his faith. He writes, “I was about fourteen when I began to have doubts about this warm, protective religion” (Buñuel 1983, 29). However, his initial concerns were largely pragmatic, rather than theological or philosophical. Regarding the final resurrection, for instance, he “used to wonder where all those billions and billons of cadavers could possibly be; and if there was such a thing as a Last Judgment, then what good was the judgment that was supposed to come right after death and which, theoretically, was rumored to be irrevocable?” (Buñuel 1983, 29). When he transferred to the local high school, these doubts were thrown into full relief under the light of thinkers like Rousseau, Marx, and Darwin. Buñuel explains that, “Reading Darwin’s The Origin of the Species was so dazzling that I lost what little faith I had left (at the same time that I lost my virginity, which went to a brothel in Saragossa)” (Buñuel 1983, 30). In 1917, Buñuel left Saragossa for Madrid to study at the Residencia de Estudiantes. There he met Salvador Dalí, Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, and other artists and political activists who would influence his artistic and ideological vision. In Madrid, Buñuel was involved with a Spanish avant-garde group called Ultra, a precursor to surrealism with similar sympathies for the irrational, chance, the unconscious, and social progress agendas leaning toward anarchism. Importantly, this was at a time when the Catholic Church, which already exercised tremendous socio-political influence in Spain, amassed even greater power when General Miguel Primo de Rivera became dictator under the banner “Country, Religion, Monarchy.” Buñuel’s association with young writers, artists, and activists who had (or were in the process of) formalizing their own creative and political agendas contra Church and State pushed Buñuel to do the same. For instance, while reflecting on the assassination of an archbishop, Buñuel wrote:

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[W]e heard that the anarchists, led by Ascaso and Durutti, had assassinated Soldevilla Romero, the archbishop of Saragossa, an odious character who was thoroughly detested by everyone, including my uncle the canon. That evening at the Residencia, we drank to the damnation of his soul. (Buñuel 1983, 55)

Thus, it was while in Madrid that Buñuel’s hostility toward the Catholic Church and what he saw as its unholy alliance with the cultural politics of the bourgeoisie took on a more consolidated and systematic form. In 1925, Buñuel left Madrid for Paris where he quickly fell in with the thriving Parisian community of artists. It was at this time that he directed his first plays and frequented the movies, sometimes seeing as many as three films a day. Buñuel’s experience directing plays and his exposure to the cinema, especially the films of Fritz Lang, convinced him that he wanted to make movies. To get into the movie business, he enrolled in an acting class led by Jean Epstein and volunteered to work for him, pleading to Epstein, “I can’t do much, but you don’t have to pay me. Just let me sweep the floor, run errands – whatever you want, I don’t care!” (Buñuel 1983, 88). To his surprise, Epstein agreed. However, after only two movies, Buñuel and Epstein had a falling out. Tellingly, Epstein’s parting words to Buñuel were, “You be careful…I see surrealistic tendencies in you. If you want my advice, you’ll stay away from them” (Buñuel 1983, 90). Buñuel did not stay away from those surrealistic tendencies, and, in 1929, he and Salvador Dalí collaborated to create the surrealist film icon, Un chien andalou (1928, “An Andalusian Dog”). This was also Buñuel’s cinematic directorial debut. Un chien anadalou was inspired by two dreams – one from Buñuel about a cloud slicing the moon in half “like a razor blade slicing through an eye” (Buñuel 1983, 103) and one from Dalí about a hand crawling with ants. Just over twenty minutes long, the short film is a surrealist adventure into the illogic of the unconscious. While writing the script Dalí and Buñuel followed only one rule, “No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted. We had to open all doors to the irrational and keep only those images that surprised us, without trying to explain why” (Buñuel 1983, 104). The film was first screened at the Studio des Ursulines. Man Ray and Louis Aragon agreed to include the film in a program they were organizing and in turn spoke highly of the film to the Montparnasse surrealist group. Buñuel was then invited to meet the group at the café Cyrano where he was introduced to André Breton, Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Paul Eluard, Tristan Tzara, Maxime Alexandre, Yves Tanguy, René Margritte, René Char, and Pierre Unik. They all attended the film’s premier, and Buñuel was welcomed into the surrealist fold. Surrealism, with its resistance to authority and conventional values and its promotion of the unconscious and the irrational, became the conceptual and aesthetic lens though which Buñuel’s rejection of the Church and the bourgeoisie was projected. He explains that, “most surrealists came from good families; as in my case, they were bourgeois revolting against the bourgeoisie. But we all felt a certain destructive

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impulse, a feeling that for me has been even stronger than the creative urge” (Buñuel 1983, 107). Thus in his films, Buñuel’s childhood experiences with the Church, the Bible, and the common morality they promoted, were all filtered through this destructive impulse. And to appreciate Buñuel’s treatment of the Bible and the Church that claimed it, it is necessary to first appreciate his childhood immersion in religion and bourgeois society, his youthful rejection of both, and his subsequent embrace of the uniquely surrealist critique of them. As he writes: And yet my three-year sojourn in the exalted – and yes, chaotic – ranks of the [surrealist] movement changed my life. I treasure that access to the depths of the self which I so yearned for, that call to the irrational, to the impulses that spring from the dark side of the soul. It was the surrealists who first launched this appeal with a sustained force and courage, with insolence and playfulness and an obstinate dedication to fight everything repressive in the conventional wisdom. (Buñuel 1983, 123)

Filmography Buñuel’s first film after Un chien andalou was L’âge d’or (1930), which offers a surrealist critique of the hypocrisy of bourgeois morality and the Catholic Church that promotes and supports this hypocrisy. The film is a black comedy composed of a series of vignettes connected through dreamlike associations organized around the theme of sexual desire thwarted by the masochistic, religiously-inspired morality of the bourgeoisie. The Bible and biblical motifs appear in the film primarily in the form of mocking critiques of Church representatives and more explicitly, in the closing scene, which features a Jesus-like character at a de Sade inspired orgy. The film presents the Church and the bourgeoisie in alignment against natural human instincts in the name of a hypocritical moral system that preserves an elite minority at the expense of an ailing majority. The montage of vignettes features representatives of the Church amid a parade of bourgeois dignitaries, who, as they march across a rocky island, stop to salute a cadre of skeletons dressed in the vestments of Archbishops. In another scene a Bishop is thrown out of a window along with a burning tree and a wooden giraffe. Meanwhile, at a dinner party for wellto-do society elites, members of the clergy play with the orchestra as two lovers sneak off to the garden for an ill-fated tryst that ends with the woman (Lya Lys) fellating the toe of a statue of Venus before returning to her conventional family. The final scene of the film is introduced with the title “120 Days of Depraved Acts”, a reference to Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom (1785). The scene begins when the Duke of Blangis (Lionel Salem) emerges from his castle, presumably after 120 days of depraved acts, looking very much like the iconographic figure of Jesus with shoulder length hair and beard and wearing a white robe. A woman, wounded and in pain, crawls out of the castle door and pleads to the Christ-figure for help. The Duke turns and retrieves her and assists her back into the castle where we hear her final scream. Rather than helping her, he has murdered her. As Gwynne Edwards ob-

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serves, “The sentimentality frequently associated with images of Christ is ruthlessly stripped away. The hands extended towards the individual in need of help are seen to be those of a murderer” (Edwards 2005, 124). Attention to moral hypocrisy and the inversion of the Christ-figure also appear in Buñuel’s 1972 film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. In the film an indigent old man, dying in a barn, asks a Bishop (Julien Bertheau) for his final absolution, confessing that in his youth he murdered a married couple and that he kept their photograph near his bed. Glancing at the photo, the Bishop recognizes the couple as his own mother and father. He nonetheless absolves the old man in the name of Jesus Christ and by his authority. However, he then shoots the man in the head with a shotgun. Again, the Buñuel relishes the reversal – inverting the image of Christ and his representatives by transforming their compassion into (or perhaps revealing it as) brutality. In his film Nazarín, which won the Grand Prix International at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, Buñuel similarly confounds Christ and his representatives. The film relates the story of a Catholic priest, Father Nazarín (Francisco Rabal), who is stripped of his official religious authority and, like Christ, wanders the countryside preaching and performing miracles before he is arrested and thrown in jail. Buñuel uses the sincere, if confused, Christ-character of Nazarín to reveal the duplicity and hypocrisy of those claiming to represent Christ on earth while equally casting doubt on Nazarín’s own character. In an interview with The New Yorker Buñuel explained, “I am very fond of the priest in Nazarín, which I made in 1958 […] It is left open to you to decide whether this unfrocked priest, with his disastrous struggles to deal with venality and suspicion, is meant to seem a good and simple Christian struggling with the Devil or a self-deceiving man gulled by an inadequate system” (Gilliatt 1977, 53). Thus even this seemingly sympathetic Christ-figure is quite possibly nothing more than a deluded man duped by a bourgeois moral order founded on the corrupt values of a Church that would excommunicate its own messiah. When Andara (Rita Macedo), a prostitute, is injured in a fight she turns to Nazarín for help. Although a priest, he feels it is duty as a man of God to help her. As such, he tends to her injury, and, when she collapses from the pain, he takes her to his bed to rest. Thus, whereas the Christ-figure in L’âge d’or murders an injured woman seeking his assistance, Nazarín offers Andara the aid and comfort she requires. However, true to Buñuel’s ruthless vision of humanity’s baser instincts, despite Nazarín’s kindness, Andara steals from him and sets fire to his room. And ultimately Nazarín is defrocked, mocked, imprisoned, and abused for trying to help those in need. Thus Buñuel inverts the savagery by making the Christ-figure the victim instead of the perpetrator of brutality. Yet in both instances Buñuel suggests that “just as the creatures of nature are ruled by their instincts and also exposed to the savagery of others, so are human beings ultimately helpless to control their lives in what is a world without plan or purpose” (Edwards 2005, 133). For Buñuel, Nazarín is an accurate reflection of the biblical Christ. He is a man punished by a savage

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and hypocritical society for upholding the very values that acceptable society and the Catholic Church falsely claim to embrace. This theme is repeated in Viridiana (1961) when the title character (Silvia Pinal), a young novice preparing to take her vows, instead leaves the Church and sets out to feed and educate the poor and downtrodden on her own only to have the very people she intended to help, deceive her and destroy the home she provided for them. Like Nazarín, Viridiana’s seemingly sincere efforts to fulfill the biblical injunction to assist the poor and the lame are more fully realized outside of the Church and yet ultimately undone by a flawed and brutal humanity. In the penultimate scene, Buñuel recreates a debauched version of the Last Supper. Viridiana, having sheltered beggars, thieves, the blind, and the ill in one of the buildings on her deceased uncle’s estate, leaves to take a little girl to the dentist. While away, the destitute she sought to help throw a lavish dinner party, greedily eating and drinking their absent host’s food and wine. Gathered around a long table, Buñuel positions the guests according to da Vinci’s Last Supper, tellingly, with the blind beggar Don Amalio (Jose Calvo) in the position of Jesus. Fueled by alcohol, dirty miscreant Enedina (Lola Gaos) lifts her skirt over her head to take a “photograph” of the unholy diners with her nakedness serving as the camera. The group then falls into further debauchery as the beggars drink and dance. Donning the wedding veil of Viridiana’s uncle’s deceased wife, Paco (Luis Heredia) then tries to rape Enedina. Finally, Don Amalio smashes the entire table setting and dinnerware with his cane. And when Viridiana returns to the house one of the beggars tries to rape her – all this while the music of Handel’s Messiah fills the room.

Fig. 69: An unholy Last Supper in Viridiana (1961)

The biblical tale of the Last Supper is in part a story of betrayal revealed. In like manner, Buñuel offers an unholy Last Supper that is itself a betrayal. The film concludes as Viridiana, who earlier threw a crown of thorns into a fire to symbolically dissociate herself from the Church, joins in a card game with two men, “which effectively points to a ménage à trois” (Edwards 2005, 141) as the two men engage the fallen novitiate in an otherwise elicit game of chance while the record player taps out a jazz beat to the words “Shake your cares away.” Just as Viridiana was betrayed by those she

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sought to help, she in turn betrays the faith that deluded her into believing in humanity’s better nature. Viridiana concludes that, in a world such as ours, neither faith in God nor in humanity is justified. In Simon of the Desert (1965) Buñuel again addresses the absurdity of a faith that refuses to acknowledge the truth of the human condition. Simon (Claudio Brook), an ascetic monk who has lived atop a column in the desert for six years, six months, and six weeks (666, cf. Rev. 13:18), devotes his life to prayer, fasting, and the avoidance of all temptation. However, Buñuel reveals that Simon is just as subject to temptation as the bourgeoisie he critiques and attempts to escape. When an attractive peasant woman passes a group of monks at the foot of the column, Simon reprimands Daniel, a monk, for looking upon her by paraphrasing Proverbs 6:25, “Do not look upon any woman. Neither let her take you with her eyelids.” Here, Simon’s own fleshly desires are revealed, as his rebuke of the monk is equally an acknowledgement of his own impulse to gaze at her beauty. Later, a coquettish young girl (Silvia Pinal) provocatively dressed in a sailor-suit costume appears singing an out-of-tune nursery rhyme. Sitting on a rock beneath the column, she crosses her legs to reveal black thigh-high stockings and the sensual flesh of her upper-thigh before undoing her blouse to reveal her breasts. She immediately then appears beside Simon on the column, caressing his beard and putting her tongue next to his mouth. She disappears from the column when Simon calls upon Christ and is transformed into a naked old woman carrying a broom running into the desert. Here Buñuel draws on the history of the Christian tradition in depicting Satan as a woman. As Edwards observes, “This episode has much to do, of course, with the traditional representation in Christian literature of woman as Satan, as temptress, as the cause, through Eve, of man’s fall from paradise. It was the view of woman that Buñuel would have acquired at the Colegio del Salvador…” (Edwards 2005, 126). As the film concludes we see the fourth-century ascetic transported to a modern night club listening to a band called “The Sinners,” again with Satan in the figure of a young woman who invites him to dance. Simon, his long beard now trimmed and his ratty robe traded for modern fashion, refuses her invitation and claims he will return to his column. However, Satan tells him he cannot return because someone has already taken his place, and, in refusing her offer, he has refused “the last dance.” In pursuing the life of faith, Simon missed his opportunity to truly live. Thus, Buñuel shows us that ours is a world where the devil better understands the plight of human frailty than a falsely pious ascetic. Moreover, the devil is no devil at all. The devil is merely all that is truly human but has been erroneously recast as evil in the eyes of the religious. Indeed, true evil is the denial of the truly human in the name of religion. In The Milky Way (1969) Buñuel turns his critical eye from the absurdity of religious asceticism to the absurdity of Church dogma. As the opening sequence of the film explains, its title refers to the star that once guided Christian pilgrims to the tomb of St. James at Compostela in northern Spain. In the film two modern travelers,

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Fig. 70: Simon tries to escape temptation in Simon of the Desert (1965)

Pierre (Paul Frankeur) and Jean (Laurent Terzieff), embark on the pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago and along the way, traveling through both time and space, encounter the sundry heresies and orthodox correctives that comprise Church history and doctrine. The film is built around six episodes, each dealing with a different theological question and corresponding heresy. The six themes include the Eucharist, the origin of evil, the nature of Christ, the Trinity, free will, and the Immaculate Conception. Speaking to his research for the film, Buñuel explained that, “Everything in The Milky Way is based on authentic historical documents […] We [Jean-Claude Carrière and Buñuel] did a great deal of research […] We spent days discussing the Holy Trinity, the dual nature of Christ, and the mysteries of the Virgin Mary […]” (Buñuel 1983, 244). As such, Buñuel intended to expose the absurdity of the Church precisely by presenting the farce of its actual history and Orthodoxy. In a classic Buñuelian inversion, the film begins when the two travelers meet God dressed in devil-red-and-black, while later in the film, the devil appears with a white robe and beard. (Interestingly, one of the early scenes finds Jesus preparing to shave until Mary tells him he looks much better with a beard.) When the travelers ask God for money, he responds to the first traveler, paraphrasing Matthew 13:12, that because he has no money, he shall have none, and because the second traveler has some, to him a great deal more will be given. Before departing, God advises the travelers, “Go, and take you a whore and have children with the whore. Thou shalt name the first, ‘Ye Are Not My People.’ And the second, ‘No More Mercy’” (cf. Hos. 1:1– 9). These seeming absurdities thus initiate Buñuel’s inquiry into Church doctrine. The first episode is set in the restaurant-bar of an inn as a priest and a policeman discuss the nature of the Eucharist. The policeman refuses to accept that the body of Christ can be in a piece of bread. Countering with the orthodox view, the priest explains that the body of Christ is not in the bread, but rather is itself the bread. In an effort to clarify, the innkeeper suggests that the body of Christ is the bread in the same way that the hare is the pate. Pierre, in turn, asks of the priest what happens to the body of Christ once it enters the digestive tract. For this, Pierre and Jean

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are kicked out of the inn, but shortly thereafter, two male orderlies come to collect the priest who had escaped from an asylum. Regarding this scene, Edwards notes that, “Buñuel implies that there is little difference between a priest and a lunatic, between the Church and a madhouse” (Edwards 2005, 128). In light of his experience as a child educated in a Catholic school, Buñuel’s critique of the Church and its apologetics is not surprising. In his autobiography, he recalls, “Basically, the Jesuits used many of the same pedagogical techniques that had governed scholastic argumentation in the Middle Ages. The desafío, for instance. If I were so inspired, I could challenge any one of my classmates to a debate on any of the daily lessons” (Buñuel 1983, 28). Indeed, The Milky Way is a cinematic version of just such moments in both Buñuel’s personal history and the history of the Church. As the two pilgrims continue on their way, they encounter Priscillian and his sect engaging in an outdoor ritual orgy, an imaginary execution of the Pope (played by Buñuel himself), Jansenists crucifying a nun, a maître d’ arguing theology with the wait-staff of a high-end restaurant, the exhumation and burning of the corpse of a heretical bishop, an appearance of the Virgin Mary and a miraculous rosary, and Christ teaching his disciples in the first and twentieth centuries. Each episode portrays an actual case of heresy regarding the five aforementioned theological topics. Characters from the maître d’ to two eighteenth-century noblemen engaged in a fencing duel, address such topics as how Jesus can be entirely human and entirely divine at the same time, how Mary could have been a perpetual virgin, and how humans could have freewill if God is omniscient. In each case, a heretical view is countered by an orthodox view and the presentation of both is based on actual Church records. The result is a comical critique of the Church as Buñuel reveals how some of the more ridiculous antics and perspectives in Church history became dogma. When the two men finally arrive at Santiago de Compostela, a prostitute informs them that the bones in the tomb are those of the fourth-century heretic Priscillian and not those of St. James. For centuries, pilgrims traveling to venerate the bones of the great Saint have been worshiping the relics of a heretic. And in fulfillment of the prophecy at the beginning of the film, the two men have sex with the prostitute and will name their children “You Are Not My People” and “No More Mercy,” pointing “to a God who has abandoned mankind, as well as a God who shows no mercy” (Edwards 2005, 128). This sentiment is reinforced in the film’s final scene, which shows Jesus announcing to his disciples, “I did not come to this world to bring peace, but the sword” (Matt. 10:34; Luke 12:51).

Conclusions For Buñuel, the Bible and the Church – its history and doctrines – were the root of a stultifying bourgeois social and moral order that needed to be rebelled against and overthrown. As a director he dramatized this call through both mockery and reflec-

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tive critique. Only the most obvious examples have been presented here, however his opposition to religion generally and the Catholic Church in particular runs throughout his ouvre. Films such Robinson Crusoe (1954), El angel exterminador (1962, a.k.a. The Exterminating Angel), and Cet obscur objet du désir each in their way express Buñuel’s disapproval of the inhibiting mores of Christianity and Christian culture. However, Buñuel’s attitude toward religion, Christianity, and the Bible is not entirely one-dimensional. It was in 1960 that he famously remarked, “Thank God I’m still an atheist.” Yet seventeen years later he amended his original comment, observing, “I am not a Christian, but I am not an atheist, either…I am weary of hearing that accidental old aphorism of mine ‘I’m still an atheist, thank God.’ It’s out-worn. Dead leaves” (Gilliatt 1977, 54). As these contrasting remarks illustrate, Buñuel’s attitude toward religion was complex, if largely critical, and this complex critique permeates his films. However, as critical as Buñuel was of religion and the Catholic Church, he nonetheless recalled his childhood in Catholic school fondly, writing that, “Despite the discipline, the silence, and the cold, I have fond memoires of the Colegio del Salvador” (Buñuel 1983, 29). Thus, in appraising Buñuel’s cinematic treatment of religion, the Bible and biblical motifs, it is prudent to recall that, as with his criticisms of the bourgeoisie, his critiques were largely those of an insider.

Works Cited Buñuel, Luis. 1983. My Last Sigh. Translated by Abigail Israel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Edwards, Gwynne. 2005. A Companion to Luis Buñuel. Suffolk, UK: Tamesis. Gilliatt, Penelope. [December 5, 1977]. “Long Live the Living.” The New Yorker: 53 – 72. Manceaux, Michèle. [May 12, 1960]. “Luis Buñuel: athée grâce à dieu”. L’Express: 41 – 43.

Films Cited Cet obscur objet du désir [a.k.a. That Obscure Object of Desire]. (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1977, Greenwich Film Productions, FR/ES). El angel exterminador [a.k.a. The Exterminating Angel]. (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1962, Producciones Gustavo Alatriste, MX). L’âge d’or [“The Golden Age”] (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1930, Vicomte de Noailles, FR). La voie lactée [a.k.a. The Milky Way]. (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1969, Fraia Film, FR/IT). Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie [a.k.a. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie] (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1972, Greenwich Film Productions, FR). Nazarín (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1959, Producciones Barbachano Ponce, MX). Robinson Crusoe (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1954, Producciones Tepeyac, MX). Simón del desierto [a.k.a. Simon of the Desert]. (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1965, STPC, MX). Un chien andalou [“An Andalusian Dog”] (dir. Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, 1928. Privately financed, FR). Viridiana (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1961, Unión Industial Cinematográfica, ES/MX).

Sara Anson Vaux

37 Robert Bresson: Biblical Resonance from a Christian Atheist

Biblical references, omnipresent and yet hidden in the films of French director Robert Bresson (ca. 1901– 1999), range from direct quotations in Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (1956, a.k.a. A Man Escaped) and Journal d’un curé de compagne (1951, a.k.a. Diary of a Country Priest); to partial representations of the Mass in Diary and Au hasard Balthazar (1966); to metaphorical markers in Mouchette (1967); to a daring plunge into the intractability of evil and the absurdity of radical forgiveness in L’argent (1983). Foolish the critic who denied the elusive filmmaker scriptural knowledge with a filmography that included so many ways to recount the book of Genesis, the subject of a movie he longed to make and did make, though obliquely cast, in Balthazar. The braying of a donkey in counterpoint with Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata no. 20 underscores the whole of human existence: “The world in an hour and a half,” as Jean-Luc Godard once wrote in Cahiers du cinema (cited in Criterion Edition notes, James Quandt). Did Bresson operate from a spiritual core or a deeply pessimistic worldview, or did he simply continually and mysteriously traffic among multiple worlds? He was reared a French Catholic. Did he lose his faith, or did he increasingly capture a more profound vision of evil’s power? Critics teeter among multiple responses: e. g., transcendental or spiritual (Paul Schrader, Joseph Cunneen); materiality of the Bressonian world (Jonathan Rosenbaum); or paradoxical (André Bazin, Kent Jones, Jean-Louis Provoyeur). Certainly characters’ quests for spiritual meaning exist within fully realized material worlds: villages, Parisian high society, criminal subcultures, and prisons. Early in his career, his film narratives drive toward the transformation of an outcast: murderer, prostitute, peasant priest, Gestapo prisoner, thief, or rebel. Commonplace events seem designed to be read introspectively and retrospectively as providential and salvific, and rescue appears foreordained, as though a higher force controlled characters’ destinies. Yet no reference, however obviously biblical (e. g., Jesus’ “new life” in Escaped; St. Paul’s “grace” in Diary), escapes untouched by the contradictions that inhabit each text, their elusiveness aided by structural antiphony (oppositions) and a shifting audio-visual style that leaves depth of field and causality far behind. For instance, the bleak terrain upon which human beings seek meaning in Bresson’s films includes the malaise of the convent in Les anges du péché (1943, a.k.a. Angels of Sin), its conversion scene marred by sentimentality, and the unrelieved battles with the devil, suicide, female treachery, the Virgin Mary, joy, and grace in Diary. La femme douce (1972, a.k.a. A Gentle Woman) subverts a linear salvation narrative

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with a circular structure that begins with a floating scarf and an open window, the beauty of its amorphous death image captured in Michael Haneke’s 2012 Amour. Bresson’s final movie, L’argent, tumbles in a series of unbearably unjust events from the passing of a forged banknote to the destruction of an innocent man. Along the way, it seizes upon the beauty of the natural world even as the images of things – trucks, doors, prison dining halls – vibrate with geometrical precision and saturated color. Diary yields to a spare aesthetic that concentrates suffering within a flattened image, affect-free speech, and heightened ambient sound. Narrative logic disappears as ellipses and blackened screens channel the spiritual malaise of Jesus in the Gethsemane garden (Luke 22:39 – 46; Matt. 26:36 – 46) or Jonah in the fish’s belly (Jonah 4: 9 – 11). Yet despite the development of a spare and disorienting style, Bresson’s early films can be read as bursting with the reversals akin to the Magnificat (Luke 1:46 – 55) and Beatitudes (Matt. 5:1– 12) – a reversal of power structure: the meek inherit the earth. But in later films, biblical allusions displace the lively conversion scene in Diary with empty rituals, as in Le diable probablement (1977, The Devil, Probably), where the Last Supper only yields a meaningless self-sacrifice rather than salvation for the central character. Carnival, which temporarily offers possibility for restoration and joy, becomes the site of suffering in Mouchette. Suspended over the abyss of fear and desire, Bresson’s characters experience palpable horror in tension with rescue’s promise. Further, outward forms of religious practice disappear into the recesses of his flat, darkened screens. With L’argent, Bresson turns a pietistic Tolstoy tale, “The Forged Coupon” (1912), into a Dostoevskyan tragedy. Its protagonist Yvon loses his wife, child, and honor in a cascade of events suffused with an irony suitable to machinations of a Euripidean deity. Yet in a reversal worthy of Crime and Punishment, Yvon internalizes the biblical injunction of his rescuer/victim, an unnamed woman, that if she were God, she would forgive everyone. Like the heroine of Mouchette and Charles in The Devil, Probably, Yvon cries out in the wilderness (Isa. 40:3; Matt. 3:3; John 1:23). Bleak and despairing despite its lush surface beauty, the film ends in Kierkegaardian paradox with the possibility of the young man’s redemption against all odds. For a generously imagined deity sees (or may see) all, forgives (or may forgive) all, and redeems (or may redeem) even murderers with blood on their hands. Although none of Bresson’s films escape contradiction, paradox, and ecstasy, five in particular bear marks of biblical reflection encapsuled within defiant and seductive visual and sonic puzzles. These I explore below.

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Diary of a Country Priest (1951) Bresson’s third full-length feature, Diary, joined a line of popular priest movies such as Going My Way (dir. Leo McCarey, 1944) and The Bells of St. Mary’s (dir. Leo McCarey, 1945). But this was no uplifting genre ditty. The film opens with a series of troubling and confusing shots. An image of a stained “Cahier” (diary) flashes on the screen after credits, followed by a road sign, its cross-like configuration juxtaposed for a full five seconds against a young man’s thin, sweaty, distressed face. He passes through a gate with a chateau beyond as (in a separate shot) a man and woman embrace in the foreground. They appear to see him, turn their backs, and move away. An image of a dilapidated cottage calls forth on the voiceover: “My parish. My first parish.”¹ Throughout the film, the young man stumbles through a life that cruelly frustrates his desire to imitate Jesus’ ministry. Incident after painful incident (a quibble over the cost of funeral candles; the disdain of parishioners; the failure of his plans to save local boys and girls from poverty and ignorance) erode his optimism and his faith. The heavenly bread and wine of communion fail to nourish, much less to comfort, its participants. Representations of the Mass take place in an almost empty building, the only celebrant a woman whom he discovers has sent him hate mail. His secular support and even his own body betray him. Dr. Delbende, the village physician, reveals he is dying from stomach cancer, “the victim of those who drank before you were born.” A dramatic wine spill on the floor of his miserable kitchen presages his later exsanguination during a vision of the Virgin Mary, and Delbende, friend, physician, and advocate of reason and perseverance in the face of an absent God, kills himself. Bresson’s unsettling film technique – “cinematography is a writing with images in movement and with sounds,” he called it in his aphoristic Notes on the Cinematographer (Bresson 1997, 16) – emphasizes the intractable opposition of a spiritual ideal and the brutal reality of human life. The bleak blacks and greys of the opening sequence yield to increasingly bare settings and maddeningly incomplete scenes from the priest’s daily life. Shots of the diary and the persistent voiceover sometimes contradict what we see on screen. The actors (whom Bresson called his “models”) often turn their backs or look at the ground. In a central sequence near the beginning of the film, a group of girls (ages 7 or 8) crowd into a room for catechism, their backs filling the frame. The camera stays on the empty door for a full five seconds before moving into the priest’s questions and the girls’ faulty answers about the institution of communion. When he calls on Seraphita, in whom (the voiceover tells us) he invests great hope, he smiles for the first of only two times in the film. The camera frames her a bit off cen-

 I use here and elsewhere in my discussion of Bresson’s films the English subtitles provided by Criterion.

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ter, her eyes upon him as she delivers an impassioned answer. From the priest’s tender eyes, the viewer expects a wonder-filled awakening to the love of God. Instead, the girl slyly counters his inquiry about her spiritual life with sexual innuendo: “You have such beautiful blue eyes.” Parish disengagement and hatred continue along multiple registers. Seraphita taunts him; the Count’s daughter Chantal hates and fears him as the “Devil”; the governess pens hate letters; and the Countess, for whom the priest is an avatar of a God who stole her baby son, dismisses him with contempt. Yet somehow out of his own blackness the young man reaches for heaven, a narrative movement that blunts the film’s pessimism about the effectiveness of church, pastor, or scripture to nourish either individual lives or the social order. As the gardener rakes outside the Countess’s window and the spiteful Chantal eavesdrops, the priest confronts the imperious and grieving older woman: “He is love itself. You must open your heart, face to face with God.” The camera closes in on his face as he reaches into his own despair to release her through scripture and prayer: “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done” (Matt. 6:10). As she kneels, he blesses her with the sign of the cross. The encounter with the biblical text through an innocent’s love, not the husks of discarded belief, cleanses her, even as the priest himself rejoices at his own “miracle of empty hands.” Later, as the young man shelters from a storm, the camera moves in on his face and he cries out: “Nothing will tear me from the place chosen for me from all eternity, that I am a prisoner of the Holy Agony.” A distant shot now captures him as he leaves a poor cottage, faint. Framed by the overhanging branches of an ancient poplar tree, he staggers and falls, his black cape flowing. He exclaims into the darkness: “I saw her. It was the face of a child.” The sequence combines the raw physicality of the priest’s crisis (blood, delirium, face in the mud) with a spiritual vision: the Virgin Mary, seen with eyes open to the transcendent. The film’s final sequences cement the inseparable if problematic connection between the physical and spiritual arenas. The priest’s lifeblood has been spilled for the life of the world, a scriptural constant that plays out in the movie through unbearable physical suffering that heals others. He seeks out a former seminary friend for shelter and blessing but finds instead his friend’s mistress, unnamed, with workhardened hands, as if the Virgin herself had stepped into the garret. She has broken the imprisoning rules of dead ritual (marriage) to care for her beloved, who for intellectual pride has abandoned his vocation. In unadorned language, eye-to-eye with the dying man, she asserts the primacy of love and forgiveness over empty law and death. All is grace, with the world embraced equally and mysteriously by hazard and divine blessing.

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A Man Escaped (1956) A prisoner stands with his back toward the screen, hands cuffed. His hunched shoulders betray pain and despair. Faceless guards propel him toward a doorway. The camera travels across the doorsill and swoops down as ready hands reach into a box of poles. The torture of Lt. Fontaine, the prisoner, marks him as a man of sorrows. In Christian liturgy, Christ’s suffering was prefigured in texts such as “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering . . .” (Isa. 53:2). From the blood on his forehead to the bloody stripes on his back visible in the frequent back-facing shots in his cell, Fontaine also stands in for the nameless priest of Diary, whose bloody mouth presaged his death. The camera shifts to reveal an almost unrecognizable lump of human flesh thrown onto a prison cot. Screen minutes earlier, the man had stretched out his hands, shaded and lit in the manner of El Greco – hands raised in prayer, prepared to revolt against the system that dehumanized him, at the ready to fight, dig, or inch toward freedom. Before ninety minutes have passed, spectators find themselves not only imprisoned and released as he is but also poised between the two worlds the sequences represent: the spiritual and the arena where death rules supreme. The ominous presence of evil exists in opposition to hands as instruments of the divine will. The film’s sounds, sights, biblical allusions, and tight construction edge the spectator toward a rescue that seems hard-won yet inevitable. Lt. Fontaine seems to exist under divine protection, yet in Bresson’s dialectical structure, the film preserves the full tension of divine and demonic forces throughout. As in Diary, questions puncture every element that might validate the memoir upon which the film was based – whether Fontaine’s life was predestined for the rescue we witness on screen or whether the tale has only been shaped by the survivor (and France) to seem so. But Fontaine (who represents the man whose story this is, who did indeed escape) interprets every event, person, and object to serve a higher purpose. He marvels at the appearance of a spoon needed for his escape and a Bible; who could explain the miraculous appearance of Terry, a mysterious prisoner who possesses freedom of movement, knowledge of the prison, access to a pencil and to the women’s building, and has a daughter on the outside who can post Fontaine’s letters? The 19-year-old imprisoned next to Fontaine’s first cell teaches him to open his cuffs with a safety pin. A box of new clothes arrives just when he needs additional material to construct his ropes. Even the lice-infested prisoner Jost, whom he marks for death, becomes a gift – for without a partner in his escape, he could not have scaled the final wall. Lt. Fontaine exists simultaneously within the baroque structure of Montluc Prison, displayed in an opening shot (divine history signaled by the fragments of Mozart’s C minor Mass) and the historical trauma of the war and Occupation that lay

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a mere ten years behind the memoirs and twelve years behind this movie. “Escape” for the French spectator meant escape from the bondage of Occupation, bound for sacrifice to war, as Isaac was bound for sacrifice to God (Gen. 22:9). The Mass structures all the events, visible (torture, humiliation) and invisible (off-screen beatings, torture, deaths, the war and Occupation), to serve an ultimate script. We are born again in Christ, living or dead, and all things work together for good, for according to this view, they exist within the interpretive framework of Christ’s coming to redeem history. Gifts and furtive exchanges of words season the film’s movement toward deliverance. Gathered periodically around a water trough in abbreviated communion, Fontaine’s constant friend the pastor gives him a written passage from John (3:1– 21) on “new life,” which anchors its theological interpretation firmly in the death/life dialectic cherished by Fyodor Dostoevsky in the inscription to The Brothers Karamazov (1880). In this most direct reference to the power of scripture, the camera focuses upon Fontaine’s uplifted and surprised face as he pronounces, “New life?” The pastor’s voice bridges over into the next shot, as he says, “The Christ.” Rather than returning to a close-up of the face of either man, the camera travels down the pastor’s arm to show him reaching into his pocket and pauses momentarily as a small piece of paper is passed from the hand of one man to the other. The image holds, and Fontaine’s face is now superimposed as he reads the passage from John to his cell neighbor, Blanchet. “Unless a man be born again […]” (John 3:3). The beautiful hands bathed in light in the film’s opening sequence have become two pairs of hands passing strength to each other. The image prefigures the escape of two prisoners who climb over the prison walls and disappear in a mist toward freedom.

Au hasard Balthazar (1966) Balthazar begins in darkness, strange commencement for an art form that takes its life from the play of light and shadow upon a white surface. Suddenly a donkey’s braying fills the sonic space reserved in American blockbusters for explosions or romantic ballads. Schubert – a snippet, only – unexpectedly punctuates the sound track. Au hasard Balthazar, seventh of Bresson’s thirteen full-length films, shifts toward quintessential cinematic biblical texts, Genesis and Revelation, where unmotivated evil invades characters’ desperate lives. Its bursts of unforgettable images mirror biblical drama – creation, fall, suffering love, death, resurrection, and redemption: Balthazar’s kingly baptism, moonlit hands, a dying child’s sobbing face, and the little donkey’s death on a mountaintop surrounded by sheep. Liturgical rhythm governs Balthazar, though its forms appear fleetingly – for instance, fragments of the Mass, baptism, consecration, a deathbed blessing, a procession of sacred relics. Balthazar, beaten and starved, bears the evil of his village, a

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microcosm of the world, while young Marie, his Doppelgänger, innocent yet complicit in her moral collapse, neither redeems nor is redeemed even though she resonates throughout the film with Balthazar, “a saint.” At birth, the movie implies, humans step through the gate of paradise into a world of ethical choice between liberating love and despairing hate, as with Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:23). Although the film resonates with Christological references, it taps into broader religious thought about the healing, restorative nature of sacrifice – the death or exile of the king as necessary to the health of the community. As with Diary, Balthazar’s torture and exsanguination recall Jesus’ life-blood shed to redeem the world. For Balthazar the donkey witnesses the entire range of the seven deadly sins. The number seven peppers the text, as does the memory that Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey. Bread and symbols of bread pass from person to person: bread from the bakery is transported to villagers on Balthazar’s back by the devil figure Gérard; wheat and other grains fuel the grain merchant’s (inhuman) fortune; items of exchange proliferate: money, Balthazar himself, and Marie’s body. Balthazar’s shifting positions in the text play off of representations of bread. He transitions in the film from plaything to beast of burden, who plows, delivers bread, carts tourists, performs in the circus, and carries the blessed church relics. At the end, he transports smugglers’ goods. Early in the film, Bresson signals alternate interpretations of “bread” in a complex series of shots housed in the cathedral, a massive structure constructed by bread-money. Marie faces the altar, head covered. Suddenly, she glances upwards at the gloriously sung sounds of César Franck’s 1872 setting of Panis Angelicus. A countershot reveals the heavenly voice to be that of the film’s death dealer, Gérard. She stands below; he hovers in the balcony, his return glance summoning her toward destruction. Bresson aborts the hymn after the first line. But its text lingers, a counter to the film’s headlong rush toward death. Panis angelicus, fit panis hominum! Das panis hominum figuris terminum. O res mirabilis! Manducat Dominum Pauper, servus et humilis.

The Bread of Heaven has become the bread of all persons! O miraculous reality! The body of God will nourish even the poorest, the most humble of servants.²

 In personal communication, Cambridge University Linguistics professor Bert Vaux offers the following fine-tuning on the hymn’s translation. “Manducat means ‘he/she/it chews/eats’–the Latin verb manducare is the source of French manger ‘eat’, dominum is the accusative singular of dominus ‘lord’, so it should be the object of the eating. Pauper, servus, and humilis are all in the nominative singular case, so they should be the subjects of the verb. But if they’re all collectively the subject of the verb, then the verb should be in the plural rather than the singular. My best guess would be that it means ‘the poor [person], servile and humble, eats the Lord’.

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Balthazar’s blood spills onto the earth and replenishes it. The word on the street may belong to the grain merchant, but in this film, it belongs to a donkey, the symbolic king who dies for the life of the world, the shepherd who lies down to rest on a mountaintop with his sheep. Yet the questions remain. Do his life and death bring Dostoevsky’s “lucidity” (an allusion to The Idiot) to a nasty world and a bleak if masterful film, or do we weep at film’s ending for despair, not transfiguration?

Mouchette (1967) Claudio Monteverdi’s Magnificat frames the story of a 14-year-old girl crushed by rape, humiliation, and cruelty. As in most of Bresson’s films, the poor are abandoned. But can this film bear an alternate interpretation, as Balthazar might? In 1521, Martin Luther confided in a letter to his confessor that he had gone hunting for two days “to see what this bittersweet pleasure of heroes is like.” He managed to save a little live rabbit, which he rolled up into the sleeve of his cloak. The dogs found it and bit through the cloak, breaking its leg, then choking it. Luther leaps metaphorically from the rabbit’s body to comment upon the universe: “Thus pope and Satan rage to destroy even the souls that have been saved.” (Krodel 1963, 295). In this letter, Luther encapsulates the theological contradictions that infuse Bresson’s films, nowhere as poignantly as in Mouchette, the eighth of his full-length features. Mouchette lives “under the sun of Satan” (to borrow the title of a 1926 novel by Georges Bernanos), condemned to spend her nights caring for her dying mother, infant brother, and alcoholic father and brother, and her days brutally taunted at school. Bresson’s uncompromising audio-visual text expresses disgust at the squalor in which she lives: mud and darkness cover the screen in almost every frame. The plot chokes the girl in ever-tightening traps until she wraps herself in a gauze dress and rolls over a hill to her death. Mouchette is hunted literally by her music teacher, the village boys, Arsène (who rapes her), and the gamekeeper, and metaphorically by the villagers, false comforters (cf. Job 16) who thirst after her sexual secrets, and by an old woman who hawks easeful death. Hunts – for partridges, then rabbits – open and close the film, a trope for Mouchette’s final hours on earth. The dialectical structure common to Diary, A Man Escaped, and Balthazar also complicates Mouchette. The movie runs along multiple interpretive tracks: misery, elaborated in every frame; rescue, hinted every time she rebels or scents a human A fancier wording that comes tolerably close to that meaning is ‘the poor and lowly may upon their Lord feed’, which is apparently based on a translation of the liturgical hours by John David Chambers.” This translation is available online: http://www.preces-latinae.org/thesaurus/Hymni/ SacrisSol.html (accessed April , ). In further personal communication, Benedictine Abbot Father Peter Funk, Chicago, notes: “The verb manducare needn’t necessarily be an impolite word for eating, but it does have overtones of munching, devouring, etc, as animals are wont to do. In the context of the Eucharist, it is usually taken to be quite literal and even a bit provocative.”

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connection (as with the bumper cars);³ and a miraculous, distanced life where her suffering is redeemed. On one side, humans endure brutal humiliations; on the other, the film vibrates with the fool-for-Christ promise of Carnival (a key scene in the movie, the only time she smiles, offering a flash of hope). The soaring music that opens and closes the film sets the tone for cosmic power reversal: Monteverdi’s “Magnificat for six voices,” part of Vespers for the Blessed Virgin (1610). The appearance of a young woman in the middle of the first frame invites the viewer to identify her with the Virgin Mary (Luke 1:46 – 55) and, thus, anticipate a joyful spiritual resolution to her misery and that of her adolescent daughter. Rather than addressing the angel Gabriel as Mary does in Luke, the woman speaks into a void, to a silent God. “What will become of them without me? I can feel it in my breast. It’s like a stone inside.” In the spirit of the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:1– 12), the Magnificat upends hierarchical order: “My soul magnifies the Lord, And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. […] He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” Perhaps, in Luther’s terms, the “game” that appears to belong to Satan actually belongs to Christ. In that configuration, Mouchette is rescued, while those who pursue her will gnash their teeth unto all eternity, their prey snatched from their jaws. Bresson’s texts never yield a tidy salvation story, despite tempting interpretive devices such as the Magnificat. He empties his modèles of all emotion and tonal inflection, refuses the seductions of depth of field or theatricality, and irons the images as flat as the modèles’ voices. The techniques banish melodrama and the temptation to indulge in sentimental excess or ignore the filmmaker’s attention to Mouchette’s extreme poverty. Yet Bresson captures a rebellious and assertive, not a passive, character. Mouchette pierces the invisible circles that surround her just as Lt. Fontaine in A Man Escaped resists confinement with a pencil, a spoon, a map, insistent words, a braid, and a window frame. She creates moments of competence within her life-crushing environment. She prepares the family’s coffee and adeptly pours it into a line of cups. She warms the baby’s bottle against her own chest and comforts her mother as she lies dying. She cares for the stricken Arsène when he falls ill. Mouchette’s rebellion against everything that seeks to defeat her recalls the Magnificat and its literary precursor, Hannah’s war song (I Sam. 1:11; I Sam. 2:1– 10). The young girl cannot wait for the agents of Barmherzigkeit: mercy or charity (the Proph-

 Mouchette, like Diary of a Country Priest and Balthazar before it, contains a scene of pure joy. In Diary, the young afflicted priest, given a ride through the countryside on a motorcycle, smiles for one of the few times in the movie. The little donkey Balthazar, adopted by a circus troupe, communes silently with other animals in a sequence central to the film’s meaning. Mouchette, given a ticket to a bumper car ride at the village Carnival, releases her sadness in laughter – sweet release, if only a moment, from the misery that entraps her.

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ets; Deut. 5:15; Mic. 6:8). The viewer might wish the villagers to protect the young girl (cf. Luke 6:36), but they do not appear. Instead, increasingly isolated, Mouchette identifies with a dead rabbit and eases her way through the rabbits’ killing fields and down a hillside into the water. Monteverdi’s music reappears. Does the music comment bitterly upon her suffering, or should we still long for cosmic justice?

L’argent (1983) Saturated colors protrude in their incongruity; actions lack cause, completion, or consequences. The protagonist of L’argent, Yvon, moves through his suffering with passivity shattered by bursts of blind violence. In Bresson’s final feature, no extradiegetic music challenges sentiment or eases pain, unlike the sound tracks for A Man Escaped, Balthazar, or Mouchette, where Mozart or Schubert or Monteverdi advance or complicate narrative movement. Bach plays diegetically in L’argent only twice, the second time a tonal flash as in a nightmare. In the world of money, spirituality loses out despite occasional screen hints that Yvon might yet be rescued from his unimaginable misery. The freshness, strangeness, and unexpected appearance of objects (the blue prison truck, for instance) and people (Lucian the petty villain decked out as a savior) shock the viewer even as we struggle to keep up with the swift deterioration of Yvon’s life. Violence lies coiled beneath all surfaces, whether or not visually realized; out of control economic greed consumes Yvon and others swept along by unforeseen and undeserved horrors. Falsely accused of passing a forged bank note, Yvon loses his job and is imprisoned. His little daughter dies; his wife leaves him. He attempts suicide. The malefactors (Norbert and Lucian among them) are never punished; his cellmates dole out condolences that smack of Job’s comforters; Lucian, one of the accusing snakes, reeks of phony salvation and proposes to Yvon an escape that mocks the (perhaps) divinely guided activity of Bresson’s early feature, A Man Escaped. What becomes of a man or a woman who leaves jail? The prisoner’s return to society is an ancient staple of the crime genre. The Shawshank Redemption (dir. Frank Darabont, 1994) shows two paths: one, you hang yourself; another, you get even. Upon his release, Yvon simply leaves the space. He checks into a hotel – “Hotel Moderne,” a neon sign flashes, strange item suspended in the middle of a shot for no apparent reason – its owners barely seen through a crack in the door. Cut to a man’s legs descending a staircase, left hand bloody. Cut to a full shot of a sink with running faucet and a second shot that shows bloody water flushing down the drain. We assume Yvon has murdered the hotelkeepers. Why? Surely not for the small change he removes from the two cash drawers, which recalls a drug addict’s meticulous pocketing of coins from the Poor Box in The Devil, Probably. The colors of the hotel sequence, suffused with darkly nuanced browns and blacks of the twelve paintings in Houston’s Rothko Chapel, contrast with Yvon’s

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last days in a pastoral setting located at the edge of a small village, where hazelnut trees hang over the clothesline and he bonds with a kind new friend. The intense exchanges with his hostess border upon the psychotherapeutic: “Save yourself; do not sacrifice your life for your unworthy family” (to her) or “Rest yourself here; be pardoned” (to him). The dialogue recalls the verbal interplay of Raskolnikov and Sonia in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866) or Michel and Jeanne in Bresson’s Pickpocket (1959). The warm pastels that infuse the woman’s watchful care over Yvon, contrasted with her abusive family, could presage the rebirth of another Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (1862). L’argent does not seize upon these tantalizing salvific models. Rather, it activates the suppressed energy of the unseen (the first murders) and the unspoken (the sexual charge between him and the unnamed woman) to exceed convention, genre, archetype, and the predictable and propel the narrative toward meaningless nihilism. Yet Bresson places Yvon’s final murders steps away from the Garden of Eden: an unspoiled Paradise, where lovers walk, the earth yields its bounties (freshly dug potatoes, hazelnuts snapped off the tree and shared), and the soiled spirit might draw refreshment. The ultimate murder sequence defies hope for life-affirming resolution. It is night. Yvon pries open the door to the house with the axe he spotted near his bed in the barn, where the unnamed woman gave him refuge. We see and hear little as the camera tracks his slow walk from room to room. Apart from the nervous whimpering of the family’s dog, Bresson allows only a fleeting shot of bodies spread along the stairs to orient us to the action. The camera travels into the room of the unnamed woman with whom Yvon once shared symbolic communion of fresh-plucked hazelnuts. It frames her aware body from the waist up, as she waits in bed neither fearful nor reproachful – a saint’s image devoid of hysterical piety. She anticipates the descent of the axe, a “Holy Agony” that accepts and forgives all. The spectator sees Yvon with axe upraised, an overturned lamp, and a sudden splash of bright red blood against yellow wallpaper. In denying the spectacle of murder, Bresson sends the viewer back to primordial beginnings when Cain slew Abel and turns the constructed narrative to ash in a supreme act of iconoclasm – perhaps the ash of Ash Wednesday, an ash post-crucifixion that might issue in rebirth. The movie ends with Yvon’s return to the site of his original humiliation: the public house. He enters what Mikhail Bakhtin calls Carnival space, the crossroads where Sonia counsels Raskolnikov to bow down and kiss the earth and confess his murders, the confession box of the world (Bakhtin 1984, 176). As Yvon exits with the gendarmes, the patrons continue to gaze toward the inside of the bar, anchored forever in historical time. Yvon has entered Kingdom time, the divine casting of Carnival, a time out of time when the thief is pardoned (Luke 23:40 – 43); the time for which Yvon’s dear friend has prepared him even though he slew her; a time in which confession yields to communion and community, where the mighty might be brought low and the humble exalted (Luke 1:46 – 55).

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Conclusions The five films highlighted in my chapter defy narrative logic, genre boundaries, classical notions of “acting” or mimesis, and easily grasped religious interpretation. So also of their cinematic mates. Even Bresson’s first three films (including Diary,) all of which use a non-diegetic musical underlay, complicate the plots’ drive toward conversion. Further, they confuse spectators’ desire to identify with a wholly “good” character who might save the sordid world of the movie. With A Man Escaped, Pickpocket, Balthazar, and Mouchette, the music suggests, however subtly, a transcendence that lies behind and above the films’ ruthless physicality – an alternate reality that does redeem the time and place. Bresson removes the offense of a consummable religious product and plunges into Bible’s heart and our own: exploring ways to probe our common life together under the wings of eternity.

Works Cited Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics [1929]. Ed. and transl. by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota. Bresson, Robert. 1997. Notes on the Cinematographer. Transl. by Jonathan Griffin. Copenhagen: Green Integer. Cunneen, Joseph. 2003. Robert Bresson: A Spiritual Style in Film. New York: Continuum. Jones, Kent. 1999. L’Argent. BFI Modern Classics. London: BFI Publishing. Krodel, Gottfried G., ed. and transl. 1963. Luther’s Works. Vol. 48. Philadelphia: Fortress. Provoyeur, Jean-Louis. 2003. Le cinéma de Robert Bresson: De l’effet du réel a l’effet du sublime. Paris: L’Harmattan. Quandt, James, ed. 2012. Robert Bresson. Rev. and Exp. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. Schrader, Paul. 1972. Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.

Films Cited Au hasard Balthazar (dir. Robert Bresson, 1966, Argos Films, FR/CH) The Bells of St. Mary’s (dir. Leo McCarey, 1945, Rainbow Productions, US). Going My Way (dir. Leo McCarey, 1944, Paramount, US). Journal d’un curé de compagne [a.k.a. Diary of a Country Priest] (dir. Robert Bresson, 1951, Union Générale Cinématographique, FR). L’argent [“Money”] (dir. Robert Bresson, 1983, Eôs Films, FR/CH). La femme douce [a.k.a. A Gentle Woman] (dir. Robert Bresson, 1972, Marianne Productions, FR). Le diable probablement [a.k.a. The Devil, Probably] (dir. Robert Bresson, 1977, Sunchild Productions, FR). Les anges du péché [a.k.a. Angels of Sin] (dir. Robert Bresson, 1943, Synops, FR). Mouchette (dir. Robert Bresson, 1967, Argos Films, FR). Pickpocket (dir. Robert Bresson, 1959, Compagnie Cinématographique, FR).

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The Shawshank Redemption (dir. Frank Darabont, 1994, Castle Rock Entertainment, US). Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut [a.k.a. A Man Escaped] (dir. Robert Bresson, 1956, Gaumont, FR/DE).

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38 Roberto Rossellini: From Spiritual Searcher to History’s Documentarian Italian filmmaker, Roberto Gastone Zeffiro Rossellini (1906 – 1977), is perhaps best known as the director of Roma, città aperta (1945, a.k.a. Rome, Open City) and, thus, as one of the founding fathers of cinema’s neo-realist movement. Yet, for many, his contribution has significance far beyond that one film, extending to an unparalleled body of work whose depth of vision is matched only by its profound insights into the human condition. His work has a profound spirituality, despite his love of the scientific method, and he pioneered innovations, both technically and artistically, in what the camera can achieve. Biblical allusions and Christian imagery abound in his body of work and continued even after he concluded that his search for God had been unsuccessful.¹ Indeed, whilst earlier in his career he created three films about saints and several more that appropriated biblical texts in creative ways, it was only at the end of his career that he adapted specific parts of the Bible in Atti degli apostoli (1969, a.k.a. Acts of the Apostles) and Il messia (1975, a.k.a. The Messiah). Born in 1906 to a construction firm owner, Rossellini first got into filmmaking during Italy’s fascist era. Indeed, Vittorio Mussolini, son of the dictator Benito Mussolini, was a close family friend. It was he who gave Rossellini his first major break, directing several feature-length propaganda films for the fascist regime during the Second World War, including L’uomo dalla croce (1943, The Man With a Cross) about an military chaplain portrayed, in some ways, as a Christ-figure. Yet it was the release of Roma, città aperta that catapulted him to fame. Shot in 1945 as German forces were still leaving Italy, Roma tells the story of various ordinary members of the Italian resistance movement, including Pina, Manfredi (the communist leader she is hiding), and the local priest Don Pietro. The film’s depiction of Manfredi as a Christfigure, as well as the portrayal of Don Pietro as a brave and noble hero, have long ensured that this work is frequently part of discussions on religion and cinema. Yet Don Pietro’s faith is largely incidental. Whilst there is no reason why Don Pietro, a Catholic priest, cannot be a heroic figure, the film makes little attempt to explicitly portray his faith as the source of his heroism. However, it was Rossellini’s style and methods, rather than his plot, that won international acclaim for the film. Shot using

 Rossellini’s own beliefs seem unclear, contradictory even, and certainly changed considerably during his life and career. Gallagher (, ), for example, cites a  interview where Rossellini stated “I never believed. I never had faith,” but then immediately disagrees with his subject’s claim: “But he did believe.” Gallagher (, ) also cites Ingrid Bergman, “He was always searching […] for some meaning or some higher power that would be up there and we couldn’t find.”

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largely unprofessional actors, in real locations, where similar events had taken place, using whatever strips of film Rossellini could get his hands on, Roma was lauded for its documentary feel and its sense of realism. A year later Rossellini repeated his success with Paisà (1946, Paisan), six short films about the closing years of the war in various parts of Italy. Again religious faith was present though largely incidental to the film’s themes and concerns. The most overtly religious episode takes place in a Catholic monastery where three American chaplains take up residence. Of the six episodes, this is the one that, on the surface, has least to do with the war. Yet it very much sustains and develops the film’s theme of barriers to communication, exploring the problems of communication across barriers of language and religion.

The Search for the Hidden God The following year tragedy struck the Rossellini family as Roberto’s nine-year-old son Romano died after a brief illness. It was to have a profound effect on Rossellini’s work, spurring him on to make Deutschland im Jahre Null (1947, Germany Year Zero), the third in what subsequently became known as his War Trilogy. Deutschland told the story of Edmund, a boy living in desperate poverty in decimated, post-war Berlin. But, it was also a film that signaled the start of a substantial transition to a body of films that dealt with more overtly spiritual work. As Gallagher explains: Religion, previously, had been peripheral to Rossellini’s concerns; the religious elements in Roma, città aperta and Paisà had been more humanist than transcendent. But upon Romano’s death, a transcendent God became a vital necessity, and for the next ten years Rossellini’s movies try to bridge the gap between this world and the next, between the living and the dead. In Paisà he had looked to the human heart as source for impulse; in Deutschland he begins to look to God and religious symbolism as its sources […]. By Il miracolo and Stromboli Rossellini will have become an Augustinian, convinced of the corruptness of our nature and our lack of freedom, of our inability to unite mind and heart, scientific knowledge and feeling ‒ and thus achieve freedom ‒ without a process of healing that is impossible without God’s help. (Gallagher, 1998: 249)

So it was that in 1948 Rossellini released L’amore (a.k.a. Love), two shorter films both showcasing the ability of his then girlfriend, Anna Magnani. On the surface neither film has a great deal to do with the other: the first features a jilted women pleading with her former love not to break up; the other a simple woman who believes she is carrying the child of St. Joseph. Yet more links the two films together than their director and star. The “love” of the title is in both cases one-way and the object of that love is a silent, yet dominant presence, even though he remains unseen in the first film, Una voce umana (a.k.a. The Human Voice). However, it is the second film, Il miracolo (a.k.a. The Miracle), which is more relevant to the present study, since it deals with spirituality, the portrayal of a saint, the role of the Catholic Church in a rural setting, and the possibility of miracles and also explores key moments in the life

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of Jesus, including the passion and the nativity. Magnani plays Nanni, a shepherdess in a rural village. One day she encounters a man whom she believes is St. Joseph. She showers the man with praise, repeatedly mentioning how attractive he is. He plies her with wine whilst the two lie down together. Some months later it becomes clear she is pregnant, and, whilst the rest of the town denounces her, she is steadfast in her claim that the baby is from St. Joseph. Biblical allusions abound. First she is Eve, succumbing to temptation to steal an apple during a church service. Then she is Mary facing the wrath of the local townspeople for her pregnancy out of wedlock. Eventually the villagers turn on Nanni en masse, mocking her and placing a bowl on her head, clearly paralleling the crown of thorns. At this point she even cites Jesus’ words on the cross: “My God forgive them, they know not what they do.” (cf. Luke 23:34). Nanni escapes and follows a goat to a monastery in the mountains, only to find it locked. However, she manages to force entry through a back door where she gives birth to her infant, holding it up to her breast in the final shot. Rossellini fills the film with all kinds of interesting ambiguities. What is the miracle of the title? Is it, as Nanni claims, her vision and conception, or is it, as Rossellini himself claimed, her gaining sanity as she feeds her baby? Rossellini never gives clear proof that Nanni is mistaken, instead leaving the audience to decide based on their own preconceptions. The year 1948 would be significant for Rossellini in two other ways. Firstly, he shot La macchina ammazzacattivi (a.k.a. The Machine to Kill Bad People), which would not be released for another four years. Unusually for Rossellini, La macchina is a comedy about a photographer who meets a demon and is given a special power: he can kill his fellow townspeople using his camera. Clearly the film’s theme casts doubt on the ability of the camera (both still and movie) to be a moral force for good, and so would seem to be the beginning of Rossellini’s move away from cinema. At around the same time Rossellini received a letter from Ingrid Bergman expressing her admiration for his work and her desire to work with him. Their subsequent collaborations produced some of the most significant films about miracles and faith. Indeed their first film together, Stromboli, terra di dio (1949), opened by explicitly citing a passage from the Bible: “I gave to those who were asking nothing of me. I let myself be found by those who were not looking for me” (Isa. 65:1), though some versions cited Paul’s later quotation of this passage (Rom. 10:20). Bergman plays Karin, a Lithuanian refugee who is so desperate to escape the displaced persons camp in which she is confined that she agrees to marry Antonio, who lives on a small volcanic island, despite their inability to communicate and his unveiled threats of violence. Unsurprisingly, Karin becomes increasingly unhappy living with Antonio. Eventually she falls pregnant and in her wretchedness tries to escape by climbing over the top of the mountain to reach the town on other side. But as she approaches the volcano’s summit she collapses on the ground, weeps and in desperation cries out: “God, if you exist, …give me a little peace.” She falls asleep under the starlit sky and when she awakes a peaceful tune replaces the previously

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torrid soundtrack and Karin seems at peace. It is clear her prayer has been answered to some degree and she cries out again, this time for “help […] strength, understanding” and “the will.” Though the film is ambiguous as to whether Karin returns to life in the village, Rossellini himself felt it was perfectly clear. “It was not difficult to discern my intentions ‒ I shall even say my prayer ‒ if one took the trouble to read the Bible verse placed on the screen after Stromboli’s titles” (Rossellini 1956, 10 – 11). Rossellini described his evolving interest in spiritual and biblical matters: “Germany Year Zero is the world that has reached the limits of despair because of its loss of faith, whereas Stromboli is the rediscovery of faith. After which, it was natural to look for the most accomplished form of the Christian ideal: I found it in St. Francis” (Rossellini 1995, 31). Like Stromboli, Francesco giullare di dio (1950, “Francis, God’s Jester”) also opens with a biblical citation: “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty” (1 Cor. 2:27). The film is an exploration both of that sentiment and of Christ’s admonishment to “love your neighbor” (Mark 12:31). Rossellini eschews all the conventions of a biographical film; there is nothing about Francis’s birth or upbringing, nor his conversion or calling. Indeed in reality it is a film about the first Franciscan community rather than its founder. As Cawkwell observes, “Rossellini always liked to see the great figures of history as part of a group of men and women, not as isolated individuals” (Cawkwell 2004, 132). Shot as a series of vignettes, based on the medieval text Fioretti di Santo Francesco d’Asesi, the film focuses on the joy and apparent foolishness of the first Franciscans. Far from a sombre and deferential biopic, Rossellini strips away centuries of religious glaze, offering a more realistic portrayal. Francis’s first followers gleefully skip about typifying the jester/fool referred to in the title and in the film’s biblical preface. It was a portrayal that caused scandal and offence, a hint of which remains in the fact that the American DVD release still refuses to give a literal translation of the film’s original title but rather names it after its source material (The Flowers of St. Francis). What is striking is how the film underlines the simplicity of following the example of good works so deeply embedded in Jesus’ teaching whilst never shying away from the difficulty in doing so. It also intertwines the more traditional and formal Christian practices with those that are more particular to the Franciscans. In one early scene, for example, Francis is alone, communing with birds whilst praying the “Make me a Channel of your Peace” prayer. He quickly follows this with the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9 – 13), though the birds twitter around him so loudly that he pauses to admire their ability to praise God and then to ask them to be quieter to allow him to finish. The formal structure of Jesus’ prayer is interrupted by Francis’s spontaneous communication with nature. Having explored the example of St. Francis in a historical context, Rossellini next became interested in the question of what Francis’s teaching would look like in a modern day context. This becomes the central question in his next film with Bergman, Europa ’51 (1952, a.k.a. Europe ’51). Bergman plays the role of Irene (the Greek word for “peace”), whose shallow life as a socialite is shattered when her

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son dies. Driven initially by guilt and curiosity, Irene eventually finds a sense of purpose and identity in helping those around her with no thought as to the price she is paying. Eventually her compassionate actions see her arrested by the police and confined to an asylum. There she finds even more people in need of her help and is thus content. Although Irene is portrayed as a type of Christ, biblical citations are generally less explicit in this film. One significant exception occurs when she tries to convince a priest of the value of her work, saying: “I came to earth not to condemn sinners but to save them” (paraphrasing John 3:17). Indeed Irene’s quest to “save” so many of those around her becomes so extreme that her family and the authorities believe that she can no longer function in normal society. Yet, whilst Rossellini’s conclusion seems bleak, he saw it as a positive affirmation of the human capacity for compassion. “I want my cinema to be a message of faith, of hope, of love […] an appeal to humanity […]. In all my films there’s an anxiety for faith, hope and love […] there’s always the problem of the spiritual, of the decline of human values” (Gallagher 1998, 388 – 89). Arguably the most famous collaboration between Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman is Viaggio in Italia (1953, a.k.a. Journey to Italy). George Sanders starred with Bergman as Alexander and Katherine Joyce, a couple travelling together around Italy despite becoming increasingly detached from one another. Eventually, they agree to get a divorce, but before the conversation reaches its natural conclusion they are interrupted by the San Gennaro procession where the “Neapolitans virtually demand a miracle each year” (Brunette 1996, 168). In the climactic scene, Bergman is swept away by the crowd and looks back in desperation towards Alex, who forces his way through to save her, causing the two to miraculously rediscover and declare their love for each other. In 1954 Rossellini returned to his interest in saints for another collaboration with his, by then, wife, Ingrid Bergman. Unusually, the film was to be an adaptation of Paul Claudel and Arthur Honegger’s oratorio about Joan of Arc. The result, Giovanna d’Arco al rogo (1954, a.k.a. Joan of Arc at the Stake) sits somewhat uncomfortably between Rosellini’s earlier films and his later didactic, historical films. Claudel and Honegger’s oratorio has Joan posthumously revisit her story from heaven. Rossellini underlines this device at the start of the film by showing the clouds parting in a circle and combining shots of Joan descending, with overhead shots suggesting her heavenly perspective, as well as God’s. The circle formed around her is significant; in addition to the circular plot structure both the set and the camera movements reflect this interest in circles. Guarner notes how “[t]his cyclical structure, identifiable with the idea of prison is broken only at the end, with the fall of the chains that bind Joan to the stake. The prison has broken and the circle opens out into a line with Joan’s ascent” (Guarner 1970, 70). As might be expected, biblical allusions abound, but of particular significance is the opening, which is rich in the kind of creation imagery that is familiar from Genesis 1 and the Psalms, with onlooking angels, light emerging from darkness and the stars suddenly punctuating the night sky. The film also draws parallels between Joan and

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Fig. 71: Joan descends from heaven in Giovanna d’Arco al rogo (1954)

Christ, most explicitly as the film’s closing line is sung by the angelic chorus as Joan ascends into heaven: “There’s no greater love than giving up your life for someone you love” (John 15:13).

The Death of Cinema Rossellini’s work had evolved significantly during his relationships with Bergman and Magnani from his neorealist war films to more personal, psychological dramas exploring themes of spirituality and communication, which earned him the ire of the very critics who had so lauded his early work. But Rossellini’s key themes and interests continued to develop in unusual and surprising ways. As film director Martin Scorsese explains in My Voyage to Italy (2001), “Rossellini was one of the few filmmakers who actually became more adventurous as he got older, and that’s rare.” One of his major innovations during this period was the use of long, impassive takes, manipulating the audience less and giving his films a more neutral, scientific feel. This was developed further by his invention of the remote controlled Pancinor zoom which was first featured in Il generale Della Rovere (1959, a.k.a. General Della Rovere) and showcased to great effect in Era note a Roma (1960, a.k.a. Escape by Night). The Pancinor zoom, along with the plan-séquence, enabled Rossellini to use fewer cuts, create a more realistic and neutral aesthetic, spend less time arranging shots, and use the space in more interesting ways.² Paradoxically, whilst reducing  Rossellini’s Pancinor Zoom was a significant development in both technology and technique, which came to define his later work. It used a new type of lens, with far greater depth of field, in tandem with a slow zoom for which Rossellini created a remote control. He then used it to create extremely long takes which would often gradually zoom into one part of the frame and then zoom out again, before choosing another point of focus within the frame and zooming in on that. Not only did it allow him to connect sequences in specific ways, but the remote control gave him greater freedom to control the camera.

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the number of edits made his films less artificial and cinematic, zooming in and out also meant deliberately drawing attention to the presence of the camera. Yet, whilst Il generale Della Rovere was Rossellini’s most commercially successful film for some time, he was increasingly feeling the need to educate on a wide scale and decided to focus his attention on major historical figures. However the most dramatic shift in Rossellini’s thinking became apparent in 1961 when he declared to a shocked press conference that “Cinema is dead” (Gallagher 1998, 538). There were many reasons behind this dramatic shift of position. While he was becoming increasingly interested in the power of film to communicate historical ideas to the masses, he had failed to gain the required funding. This convinced him that film was too commercial and “fostered a homogenized mass culture that hindered independent rational thought, whereas television could provide a democratic diffusion of culture to large, commercial audiences” (Bondanella 1993, 125). The movie business was “part of the political or ideological structure […] that served to mystify rather than inform and improve humanity, perverting with the corruption of propaganda the cinema’s didactic potential” (Bondanella 1993, 126). Television, however, enabled him to talk “not to the mass public, but to ten million individuals; and the discussion becomes much more intimate, more persuasive” (Rossellini 1995, 94). So it was that the latter part of Rossellini’s career was taken up with making didactic historical films that would “aid human beings in becoming more rational” (Brunette 1996, 253). These were not the spectacular peplum epics that were dominating many Italian studios at the time; they were intended to inform the masses by neutral presentation of the facts without dramatization or embellishment. The best known of Rossellini’s didactic television films, and the only one that holds widespread critical acclaim, was La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV (1966, a. k.a. The Rise of Louis XIV). However, it was also during this era that Rossellini returned to explore the lives of some of the leading figures in the Christian religion, starting with Jesus’ first followers in Atti degli apostoli (1969, a.k.a. Acts of the Apostles). In contrast to the majority of films based on Acts, which rush from episode to episode,³ Atti manages to imbue these events with a quite particular slowness, whilst still including all the major incidents (only chs. 19 and 24 are omitted). One of the main ways Rossellini achieves this is his use of ultra-long takes. The majority of scenes in Atti are filmed in a single, extended, plan-séquence shot. This neutrality emphasizes the film’s apparent historicity, though interestingly scenes such as the fictional food riot in Jerusalem are filmed as montage. Indeed, one of the great strengths of this production is how emotionally powerful it is given its restraint and understated acting. The subtleties of the performances and how they are filmed are particularly moving. For example, in the lead up to the disciples’ reunion at the

 For a discussion of films based on Acts see Walsh’s chapter on the early Church in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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council of Jerusalem, Rossellini pauses to show Peter waiting for the other delegates, and there is a clear sense of his joy at being reunited with his friends and brothers, the other disciples. The film uses quietness and simplicity, to recreate the feel of the period, as well as showing the disciples’ mundane, everyday existence. The apostles spend a great deal of time engaged in manual labor. Peter is shown dyeing cloth, Paul weaving, Stephen serving food and so on. The disciples spread the gospel as they work, a theme that would reappear in Il messia. Atti suggests a more protracted timescale by stressing how geographically isolated Paul and the other disciples are from one another, and how unaware they are of the spread of the gospel. Paul is stunned to discover that he (and Christ) is already well known when he meets Prisicilla and Aquilla and, likewise, when he nears Rome at the end of the film. There’s a masterful Pancinor shot towards the start of the seventh episode, which starts with a close-up of a deserted dust track.⁴ The shot very gradually widens as the camera zooms out, gradually incorporating and then dwarfing Paul and Barnabas as they trek up the road to Pisidian, epitomizing the long quiet walk along a deserted road. This lowkey approach is also apparent in some of the speeches made by the apostles. As Brunette observes “In these films, characters boldly foreground their words, paradoxically, by delivering them in a flattened, often completely uninflected way […focusing attention] on the ideas and historical forces at work” (Brunette 1996, 262). There are several examples of Rossellini’s desire to communicate contextual historical information, notably the opening half hour when a Roman noble is given social and historical commentary during a tour of Jerusalem or when another character offers an exposition of the rise and fall of the various Caesars. Rossellini also shows a great respect for the Judaism of the period. A lengthy prologue places the narrative firmly in a broader context explaining, for example, that Christianity was only one of a number of Jewish sects. The film is also keen to stress the Judaism of the early apostles. Prior to his conversion Saul is shown sitting in the Sanhedrin, and even after his trip to Damascus he retains his payot (side curls). Yet, rather than a detailed reconstruction of the period, Rossellini’s primary concern is to minimize those elements of the Bible that Hollywood epics sought to exaggerate. As a result, large crowd scenes are kept to a minimum, as are onscreen depictions of miracles. Acts’ many sermons are delivered in a low-key style rather than depicted as rousing speeches, and Rossellini refuses to import romantic subplots and underplays the persecution of leading figures. This is perhaps why so many of the miraculous stories are not shown directly. Whilst miracles are a feature of Luke’s work, Rossellini relies solely on characters recounting supernatural occurrences, reflecting the manner in which the story has been heard ever since. Furthermore, simply reporting the miracles is far more ambiguous than showing them and

 This scene occurs in episode seven of the dubbed, ten-episode, “catechical” version. It is also featured towards the start of the fourth hour of the five-episode, Italian language version.

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allows the viewer to approach them from their own perspective, without having a particular opinion forced upon them. Moreover, the miracle reports set these stories in a fresh context so that they once again become startling as they were for their original audiences, thereby liberating viewers from the confines of over-familiarity. Yet, the action is punctuated by moments where nothing in particular is happening. There is space in this series, often at the start or the end of a shot. Whilst some might argue these moments of space are unnecessary, they are, along with the brilliantly memorable visuals, the very essence of the film. Rossellini moved on swiftly to Socrates (1971), before his films Blaise Pascal and Agostino d’Ippona (Augustine of Hippo) were broadcast in 1972. Augustine was Rossellini’s third film to take a particular saint as its subject, though its focus on doctrinal discussion was something new. The film was mainly concerned with various heretics, most notably the Donatists. But, whilst the Christians argue over theological and biblical interpretation, the pagans fret about the fall of Rome. In fact despite Rossellini’s previous interest in St Francis, Joan of Arc and the apostles, here he seems to side with the pagans. Rossellini’s concerns for historicity are very apparent, particularly his selection of a Berber filmmaker to play the North African bishop and his choice to film at Pompeii and Herculaneum in order to incorporate authentic Roman art. Indeed, the Christian attitude toward the arts underpinned much of the film, in contrast to the more biographical Blaise Pascal (1972) from earlier in the year. Pascal was certainly the more visceral film, with its unnerving soundtrack and pallid, sickly lead. Whilst the film touched both on Pascal’s science and his faith, it was the latter that seemed more to the fore, as an early reading from the story of Moses and the burning bush by Pascal’s father anticipates. That citation is nicely paired with Pascal’s Night of Fire towards the end of the film (replete with a scene of Pascal sewing the page detailing his experience into his jacket lining). There are various other biblical references as well as Pascal expounding his famous wager. Rossellini’s final film was Il messia (1975, a.k.a. The Messiah). As might be expected, it takes an unusual approach to filming the life of Christ.⁵ Rather than starting the story with Mary and Joseph, or John the Baptist, or Jesus about to ride into Jerusalem, it starts 1000 years earlier. Israel’s tribal leaders seek to persuade their prophet, Samuel, that they ought to do what the other tribes do and have their own king (1 Sam. 8). Samuel and God disagree, but reluctantly give way, albeit with dire warnings about the consequences: a king will charge taxes, press their young men into service, and abuse power. The Israelites, however, are determined. Saul is anointed king and it is not long before we see Saul’s army taking advantage of their position. When the film eventually begins to tell the story of Jesus, it starts in the court of Herod, who is even more corrupt and even more hated than Saul was. He makes vi-

 See also the comments on this film in Tatum’s discussion of the Jesus film genre in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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cious plans to be enacted upon his death so the people will at least grieve about something. Clearly, for Rossellini, if power corrupts, then the role of king brings with it an even more concentrated form of corruption and evil. When Jesus finally appears on screen, he is portrayed in stark contrast to the corrupt elite at the top of Jewish society. The Jewish leaders are associated almost entirely with grand buildings, either around the great temple or in an enclosed council chamber. Jesus and his disciples, on the other hand are associated with the open air and with the ins and outs of peasant life, the dust, and the dirt. Jesus and his disciples continue to work with wood or catch fish as he teaches them. Their ministry is not that of wandering enthusiasts; real life very much carries on as before. A significant amount of Jesus’ ministry takes place in the same space. Jesus and his disciples interact on and return to the same patch of land over and over again, in the heart of a small village. At one point, Rossellini even uses a Pancinor zoom to move from the ‘present’ day to a flashback from Jesus’ childhood and back again, all within the same unaltering, rural space. As they head towards Jerusalem, Jesus and his followers cross a bridge signaling that a new phase is being entered, one in which the authorities become infuriated by Jesus’ growing popularity. The group climbs up the hill into Jerusalem with the small donkey straining to make it to the gates, nicely highlighting the sense of a king coming in humility, rather than power, and all the while suggesting that Jesus’ ministry is reaching its peak. Once inside the city, final events pass by quickly and with the minimum of fuss. Key iconic events such as the Last Supper are shot in a naturalistic way with almost no sense of grand occasion. Jesus’ trial is even more restrained and downplayed. There are no point-of-view shots from around the crowd; the shots are long and dispassionate, and close-ups of Jesus are still relatively rare. Rossellini’s use of space and composition is particularly notable. Pilate’s courtyard is vast, dwarfing the initial delegation from the Sanhedrin. When the leaders realize their case is gaining little traction with the Roman governor they order a servant to “(f)ind people. We must gather a crowd.” This stresses that the crowd is not representative of the Jewish people, but a handpicked mob. Furthermore, the group comprises fewer than thirty people, which Rossellini contrasts with the vast courtyard, further emphasizing that the crowd cannot be seen as representatives of the entire Jewish people. Rossellini also composes the later shots in the manner of a modern courtroom only with Jesus, rather than Pilate, in the position of judge. Even more surprising is the absence of any procession to the cross. The two Marys and John witness the trial, but when it ends in confusion, they do not initially even realize that sentence has been passed. When they arrive at Golgotha moments later, Jesus is already on his cross and dies a short while later without darkness, thunder, earthquakes or a torn curtain. The scene is grimly accompanied only by children chanting the Ḥad Gadyo a cumulative Seder prayer about escalating violence after the untimely death of a (sacrificial) goat.

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Fig. 72: Jesus stands above Pilate in Il messia (1975)

Perhaps the only time the film attempts to tap into traditional Christian iconography is the moment in which Mary cradles her dead son, perfectly reconstructing Michelangelo’s Pietà. Even the resurrection is only portrayed by the perpetually youthful Mary kneeling in worship at the entrance to the empty tomb. Such an ending is consistent with Rossellini’s portrayals of the “miraculous” in other films such as Atti, Stromboli, and Viaggio. In all these films, it is only on reflection that the audience works out the significance of what has happened. Rossellini effectively places the viewer in that very moment, almost unable to tell yet that something incredible has occurred. Only on reflection does the potential miracle become apparent. Perhaps Rossellini’s view was that miracles too represented a form of power, which has the potential to corrupt. God may well be present, but his presence is not always discernible at that moment in time.

Conclusion Whilst Il messia was Rossellini’s last major production, he worked on a few smaller projects before his death and was in discussions to create a film about Karl Marx, but two days after RAI agreed to produce the film Rossellini had what prove would be a fatal heart attack (Gallagher 1998, 685). He left behind an extensive, profound and pioneering body of work, which “begins in the pain and disruption of war and works toward the essayist calm of a philosopher” (Thomson 2003, 760). He worked with movie stars and non-professionals; embraced communists and Catholics; and experienced box office success and uninterested television audiences. His use of the Bible at times focused and facilitated his search for answers, yet later became the influential text which underpinned so many of the values he held dear as he pursued his quest for truth to the very last.

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Works Cited Bondanella, Peter. 1993. The Films of Roberto Rossellini. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brunette, Peter. 1996. Roberto Rossellini. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cawkwell,Tim. 2004. The Filmgoers Guide to God. London: Darton, Longman and Todd. Gallagher, Tag. 1998. The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini: His Life and Films. New York: Da Capo Press. Guarner, José Luis. 1970. Roberto Rossellini. Transl. by Elisabeth Cameron. London: Studio Vista. Rossellini, Roberto. 1956. “Dix ans de cinéma.” Cahiers du Cinéma 55.1: 9 – 15. Rossellini, Roberto. 1995. My Method: Writings and Interviews. Transl. Annapaola Cancogni. New York: Marsilio Publications. Thomson, David. 2003. The New Biographical Dictionary of Film [1975]. 4th ed. London: Little, Brown.

Films Cited Agostino d’Ippona [a.k.a. Augustine of Hippo] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1972, Orizzonte 2000, IT). Atti degli apostoli [a.k.a. Acts of the Apostles] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1969, Orizzonte 2000, IT/FR/ES/DE/TN). Blaise Pascal (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1972, Orizzonte 2000, IT/FR). Deutschland im Jahre Null [a.k.a. Germany Year Zero] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1947, Tevere Film, IT/FR/DE). Era note a Roma [“It Was Night in Rome”; a.k.a. Blackout in Rome or Escape by Night] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1960, International Goldstar, IT/FR). Europa ’51 [a.k.a. Europe ’51] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1952, Ponti-De Laurentiis Cinematografica, IT). Francesco giullare di Dio [“Francis, God’s Jester”; a.k.a. Flowers for St. Francis] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1950, Cineriz, IT). Giovanna d’Arco al rogo [a.k.a. Joan of Arc at the Stake] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1954, Produzioni Cinematografiche Associate, IT/FR). Il generale Della Rovere [a.k.a. General Della Rovere] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1959, Zebra Film, IT/FR). Il messia [a.k.a. The Messiah] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1975, Orizzonte 2000, IT/FR). Il miracolo [a.k.a. The Miracle] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1948, Finecine, IT). L’amore [a.k.a. Amore or Ways of Love] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1948, Finecine, IT). L’uomo dalla croce [a.k.a. The Man With a Cross] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1943, Continentalcine, IT). La macchina ammazzacattivi [a.k.a. The Machine to Kill Bad People] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1952, Tevere Film, IT). La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV [a.k.a. The Rise of Louis XIV] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1966, ORTF, FR). My Voyage to Italy (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2001, MediaTrade, IT/US). Paisà [a.k.a. Paisan] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1946, Organizzazione Film Internazionali, IT). Roma, città aperta [a.k.a. Rome, Open City] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1945, Excelsa Film, IT). Socrate [a.k.a. Socrates] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1971, Orizzonte 2000, IT/ES/FR). Stromboli [a.k.a. Stromboli, terra di dio; “Stromboli, Land of God”] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1950, Berit Films, IT/US). Viaggio in Italia [a.k.a. Journey to Italy] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1953, Italia Films, IT/FR). Una voce umana [a.k.a. The Human Voice] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1948, Finecine, IT).

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39 Federico Fellini: From Catholicism to the Collective Unconscious The interface between Federico Fellini’s (1920 – 1993) oeuvre and religion is rich but complex and evident in a broad range of religiously connoted topics, motifs, stories, and styles. Literal biblical references rarely appear in Fellini’s cinematic universe. Nevertheless they are present, often visualized and materialized in a subverted character. For biblical reception in Fellini’s work is mediated through his interpretation of Catholic ideas inasmuch as he received the biblical tradition in a thoroughly Roman Catholic context. Fellini’s creative period, which started in 1950 with Luci del varietà (a.k.a.Variety Lights) and ended in 1990 with La voce della luna (a.k.a. The Voice of the Moon), comprises twenty-four films that he directed. Films without reference to Roman Catholicism are in the minority, as Fellini unremittingly accused the Church and its agents of factitiousness and ambivalence. Roman Catholic censors officially banned La tentazione del dottor Antonio (1962, a.k.a. The Temptation of Dr. Antonio, a contribution to the omnibus production Boccaccio ’70) and 8½ (1963). Conservative groups protested at the screenings of other works. Fellini’s critical ambivalence toward the Church is repeatedly evident in the aesthetic of his work and attests to the significance of Roman Catholicism in his familial, social, and educational background. Fellini has explained Roman Catholicism’s inescapable presence in his life story: It’s difficult biologically and geographically not to be a Catholic in Italy. It’s like a creature born beneath the sea – how can it not be a fish? For one born in Italy, it’s difficult not to breathe, from childhood onward, this catholic atmosphere. One who comes from Italian parents passes a childhood in Italy, enters the church as baby, makes his Communion, witnesses Catholic funerals – how can he not be a Catholic? Still, I have a great admiration for those who declare themselves a detached laity – but I don’t see how this can happen in Italy. (Cardullo 2006, 40 – 41)

Fellini’s experience of being raised in the Roman Catholic tradition provided him with a large pool of symbolic, ethical, and ritual material on which to draw. This material was later supplemented through his interest in supernatural experiences, such as medium-led séances, and in the Jungian theory of dreams, archetypes, and the unconscious. As a result, a vast spectrum of religious symbols, themes, and dimensions populate Fellini’s films, derived not only from Roman Catholicism but also from spiritual, supernatural, and psychoanalytical ideas. The Italian director was born on January 20, 1920, as the first child of a Roman Catholic middle class family in Rimini, Italy. His filmography is closely related to and an important part of his personal interests and their development. This chapter therefore follows the chronology of Fellini’s films, with a specific focus on individual

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scenes. On that score the analysis concentrates on three particular references in his work: (1) to the Roman Catholic Church, and especially to its agents, ethical issues, institutional aspects, and power relations, (2) to miracles, especially in their substance and form within a Roman Catholic context (Stubbs 2006, 1– 36),and (3) to dreams, phantasies, and archetypes as understood by psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung (Stubbs 2006, 37– 69; Bondanella 1992, 150 – 226).

Suffering, Repentance and Mercy in the Humanitarian Fifties While working as a scriptwriter and assistant director in the 1940s, Fellini had been embedded in the tradition of Italian neorealism, but he subsequently, and quickly, found his own artistic style. On an ethical level, Christian understandings of issues such as suffering, guilt, forgiveness, repentance, and redemption play a crucial role in Fellini’s seven black and white productions of the 1950s. In all these productions, a certain ambivalence toward the Roman Catholic Church is expressed. Some protagonists experience relief, but that amelioration never lasts for long as in Lo sceicco bianco (1952, a.k.a. The White Sheikh). In this first film as sole director we encounter the Fellini universe at its best. Lo sceicco bianco contains two storylines, each driven by one of the protagonists. In the first, a young married couple, Wanda and Ivan Cavalli, travel to Rome for the first time. Ivan wants to introduce his young wife to his relatives in order to impress his uncle, an employee at the Vatican. The uncle arranges for the young couple to attend an audience with the pope. The second storyline tells of Wanda’s secretly meeting the hero of a soap opera called the “White Sheikh.” As soon as she has a chance, she sneaks away from the hotel room to go to the soap opera’s production office. Meanwhile Ivan is looking for Wanda in the streets of Rome, encounters two prostitutes (Cabiria is played by Giulietta Masina), and spends the night with one of them. In the morning the hospital calls Ivan to tell him that his wife had tried to kill herself but that he can take her home. With less than one hour until the audience at the Vatican, time is running out. Ivan meets Wanda at the hospital. Both are crying and both repent their actions, although they do not recount the full stories to each other. They arrive on time at St. Peter’s Square, to be welcomed by Ivan’s relatives, who had been told by Ivan that Wanda was unwell and are happy to see her recovered. As the couple proceeds hand in hand to their audience with the pope, the bells of St. Peter’s ring out. They have forgiven each other, without knowing the details of each adventure. Wanda looks at her husband and tells him, “Ivan, mio sceicco bianco sei tu!” (You are now my White Sheik!).¹

 All translations of Italian dialogue are by the author.

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The happy ending does not see the innocence of the couple restored, but through the institution of the church, they can return to a conventionalized reality. The audience alone knows both storylines and can detect the ambiguous overtones. The image of the innocent couple is to be preserved without digging more deeply. Fellini portrayed how he believed institutional religion functioned. The church watches over morals, but its concerns are superficial. The truth can be suppressed to allow the church to frame the perfect Roman Catholic couple. Two worlds depicted in Lo sceicco bianco are typical of Fellini’s narratives. On one hand, we encounter a self-reflexive attitude toward artistic work, its milieu, and its agents. In Lo sceicco bianco that setting is provided by the soap opera; elsewhere in Fellini’s work it is provided by the circus (La strada, 1954; I clowns, 1970), theatre and variety shows (Luci del varietà, 1950), film (Intervista, 1987), television (Ginger e Fred, 1986), and an orchestra (Prova di orchestre, 1979). The artist is often a morally ambivalent and sad outsider; the behavior of some artists is unstable, exaggerated, and excessive (Stubbs 2006, 105 – 107). On the other hand, we are provided with a depiction of Christian morality that represents a second world, but one that is just as ambivalent as the artist’s world. The attitudes of the Roman Catholic Church provide a double moral standard, for the church sets up its values and norms in opposition to the artistic lifestyle, which its agents denounce as undignified. Watching over morality and proper conduct, the adherents of the institutional church seek to regulate everyday life and to control fantasy – but without success in either field. The pressures applied by Christian morality and values also play a crucial role in I vitelloni. The idea of marriage as a promise kept for life is also found in other Fellini films from this period, but with a less hopeful outcome as in Agenzia matrimoniale. ² The plot from Fellini’s early years as director is conciliatory, leading up to a happy ending, but by contrast, the protagonists are not saved in the black-andwhite narration of later productions. Fellini encourages no compassion for either offender or victim. The poor, naïve, and helpless figures are mostly exposed to evil while they still believe in miracles. The suffering of the characters reinforces the emotionality of the story and stimulates the empathy of the audience. Ethically these films focus on values based on Christian concepts of charity, which is, in turn, closely connected to suffering, repentance, and redemption (Wiegand 2003, 42– 71). For example, in La strada (1954, “The Road”) the amiable tramp Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina) is delivered up to the arbitrary brutality of Zampanò (Anthony Quinn). Only when he learns of her death does he recognize the error of his ways, as now he misses her. To a certain extent Gelsomina could be considered as Christ-figure and the whole film as a Christian parable. In Il bidone (1955, “The Swindle”) three swindlers dress up as clergymen and recount invented stories to

 The film is part of the omnibus production Amore in città (), with short films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Alberto Lattuada, Dino Risi, and Cesare Zavattini among others.

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poor and credulous peasants in order to acquire their money. After one fellow wants out of the business, his companions attack him with stones and take all his money, leaving him gravely injured and alone in the wasteland, where he dies. Aesthetically these narrations are full of Roman Catholic symbols employed in emotional situations and often at turning points: Touched by a large procession that includes crosses and statues, Gelsomina kneels down as it passes by her. Later, during her journey with Zampanò, she meets a warm and loving nun in a cloister, where the travelers can stay overnight. Gelsomina feels accepted and comfortable in this place and cries when they have to leave in the morning. Picasso in Il bidone sees a statue of the Virgin Mary and starts to regret having lied to his wife; after hearing church bells ring out, he decides to go home. In Le notti di Cabiria (1957, a.k.a. Nights of Cabiria) friends invite the prostitute Cabiria to join them on a pilgrimage to a shrine to the Virgin Mary. The place is crowded with praying and chanting people full of hope and expectation. Votive offerings are brought, candles are sold, and a procession tries to reach the church. Cabiria queues to see the picture of the Virgin Mary, praying for help to change her life. After the ritual she desperately realizes that nothing has changed. The sad ending is anticipated, even as Cabiria hopes for a better future.

Fig. 73: Praying for a miracle in Le notti di Cabiria (1957)

Fellini’s roots as a filmmaker lay in Italian neorealism, traces of which can be determined in his portrayal of ordinary people – Wanda and Ivan, Sandra and Fausto, Picasso, Augusto, or the outsider figures Gelsomina and Zampanò – as well in his shooting on location and his use of lay actors. But at the same time Fellini was developing his own artistic style, which has been termed by Chris Wiegand a “phantastical individualism” (Wiegand 2003, 43). Fellini’s striking success in the 1950s, evident in the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film awarded to La strada and Le notti die Cabiria, would only continue to grow.

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Death and Transience in the Self-Reflexive 1960s As the film studio grew in significance in the 1960s, Fellini was able to develop his fantastical story worlds. Roman Catholic symbolism can still be found in La dolce vita, La tentazione del dottor Antonio, and 8½, but criticism of Roman Catholicism is now more pronounced. And while Catholicism is still visible in the setting, it no longer has either impact on individuals or effect on society. Increasingly religious tradition is portrayed as an empty shell. As in the opening scene of La dolce vita (1960, “The Sweet Life”), which criticizes the materiality and superficiality of the Roman Catholic Church. On May 1, 1957, a huge statue of Jesus had been transported by helicopter to St. Peters Square. That event is recalled in La dolce vita when this singular combination is seen flying over the roofs of the outskirts of Rome. The bells of St. Peter’s are ringing so loudly that the noise of the helicopter is drowned out. The statue of Jesus and the paparazzi Marcello (the term “paparazzi” was invented by this film), the protagonist, are introduced together. Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) is an aspiring writer in search of novelties amongst the Roman upper class. The latter and the arrival of the statue of Jesus at the Vatican are staged as spectacles for the mass media, but so too are religious rituals. The miraculous appearance of the Virgin Mary to some children is transformed into a sensational television event, with paparazzi everywhere. In the midst of the exaggerated excitement about the possible miracle, a sick girl, who had been brought to the site by her mother in hope that she would be healed, dies. The morning after the “false” miracle the visitors and even the paparazzi, still shocked by the incident, listen in silence to the priest’s Latin benediction of the death. This scene portrays a rare and brief moment in La dolce vita, in which a religious professional creates a silent and respectful atmosphere.

Fig. 74: A mother seeks a miracle for her sick daughter in La dolce vita (1960)

In La tentazione del dottor Antonio (1962, The Temptation of Dr. Antonio) the double moral standards of Christian politicians are again criticized. In the film the politician Dr. Antonio is distracted by a large and tempting advertisement that has been placed in front of his house. On this poster, a woman, Anita Ekberg, seductively promotes the drinking of milk. The film introduced the topic of temptation and uncontrolled

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dreams, to which Fellini returned in a number of subsequent productions. The director was very interested in Jung’s dream theory, although at the time references to the Roman Catholic Church were still plentiful. He connected these two worldviews, the Roman Catholic and the Jungian, in 8½, which proved highly successful and provided noteworthy insight into the mind of a film director. The opening sequence of 8½ (1963) considers the uncontrolled unconscious as it portrays a nightmare experienced by the middle-aged film director Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni). Unable to escape his creative crisis, Anselmi cannot finish his film. At the end of the film, during a meeting with journalists, he hides under a table and shoots himself. The narration ends as it had begun, with a dream sequence in which the director finishes his film. The film portrays its subject’s self-seeking attempt to form a continuous narrative of his life. Anselmi, Fellini’s alter ego, is omnipresent as the first-person narrator. The protagonist is searching for authenticity and individual truth within a context shaped by religious tradition and public opinion (Pamerleau 2009). Several scenes reference Roman Catholicism as a defining element of the principal protagonist’s daily life and biography. In his process of selfdiscovery, the morality on which religious tradition and the church insist is a demanding obstacle that needs to be overcome. This issue can be seen clearly in the scene in which Anselmi asks for the advice of a clergyman, as a representative of the Church, about his screenplay, which will deal with religious issues. The clergyman insists that some topics, such as religion, cannot be broached by cinema because films often mix the sacred with profane love. Subsequently the director is introduced to another clergyman, this time a cardinal, who does not even listen to the director’s doubts. The feeling of not being heard by representatives of the Church is recapitulated in a flashback. Anselmi recalls being caught, along with his friends, watching the prostitute Saraghina dance on the beach. A humiliating punishment had followed, in front of his teachers, all of them clerics, and in the presence of his cruel-hearted mother. Having confessed and repented, the boy returns to Saraghina. The punishment could not stop him watching the prostitute’s dance. In a subsequent dream sequence, Anselmi again encounters the cardinal, this time in the steam bath. At the end of their conversation the cardinal stresses that there is no salvation outside the Church and states that if you don’t belong to the “civitas dei” you belong to the “civitas diabolic.” The door to the bishop’s bath is closed, symbolically also closing off the path to the Church. In addition to many other prizes, 8½ was awarded Fellini’s third Oscar in the category Best Foreign Film; simultaneously the film was banned by the Roman Catholic Church. Fellini was now at the zenith of his achievement as a director. His public and personal falling out with the Church portrayed in 8½ was not picked up again in subsequent productions.

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Dreams and LSD in the Supernatural Mid-Sixties Fellini’s interest in Jungian psychology and paranormal phenomena strongly influenced his later works. John Stubbs has identified possible connections between Fellini’s engagements with religious belief and with Jungian psychology, arguing that “Jung provided Fellini with a kind of equivalent belief system that could supplant more traditional religious belief: in short, an ordering vision, if not a philosophy” (Stubbs 2006, 260). Although Fellini has forcibly rounded on those who have understood Jungian theory as a belief system, recording, “I am terribly impatient with people who dismiss Jung as a nutcase who took himself for an Aryan Christ,” (Pettigrew 2003, 83) Jungian archetypes that include the concept of the anima and animus and the collective conscious can be understood as forming parallels with a religious worldview (Morgenthaler 2002, 234– 246). Fellini’s experimentation with psychedelic drugs also provided multifaceted sources of inspiration. In the mid-1960s he had started to experiment with LSD under the supervision of psychoanalyst, parapsychologist, and journalist Emilio Servado, one of the founders of Italian psychoanalysis. This new preoccupation left conspicuous traces in his films with the fact that all his films were now shot in color. Fellini’s colorful aesthetic, which Frank Burke has termed “one of the most vivid explorations of color in the history of the medium,” (Burke 1996, 137) formed a significant stylistic means of expressing the supernatural and unconscious realm. In Giulietta degli spiriti (1965, a.k.a. Juliet of the Spirits), which mirrors Fellini’s interest in paranormal phenomena, visual differences between dreams, reality, the subconscious, and the supernatural are difficult to discern. Betrayed by her husband, Giulietta is searching for the true spiritual experience. She does not believe that séances can provide access to the spirit world, but she holds that she herself encounters that world through the voices she hears. The narration is full of religious symbols and rituals that are Roman Catholic, supernatural, or psychological: the martyr play, the séances with the medium, the guru meeting, and the psychodrama, for example. But none of these encounters can help Giulietta in her lonely situation as betrayed wife. With a last gaze into the lens of the camera, she withdraws into her personal imagination where, Burke writes, “her mind and world are conjoined” (Burke 2003, 137). Giulietta’s transformation comes from her leaving this world behind and envisaging a new beginning. Toby Dammit in Tre passi nel delirio (a.k.a. Spirits of the Dead), Fellini’s third contribution to an omnibus production also deals with the world of spirits. The film is based on a short story by Edgar Allen Poe in which an English Shakespearean actor, named Toby Dammit, receives an Italian award. His prize takes the form of a yellow Ferrari, which Dammit drives when very drunk, resulting in his death. Toby Dammit is full of critical and even satiric references to Christianity and Roman Catholicism, set in the context of show business. Dammit’s award, for example, is given in recognition of his role as Jesus in an Italian Western. In a television interview, in response to the journalist’s question whether the devil looks like a black

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cat, a bat, or a ghost, Dammit answers: “O no, I am English, not Catholic! To me the devil is cheerful. He looks like a little girl.” The actor’s imagination shows the devil as a girl dressed in white playing with a white ball, very much the opposite of the conventional religious typology recalled by the journalist in the interview. Not only in this answer but also in the unfolding of the story, Dammit starts to free himself of the limitations of his life as an actor. Finally the devil frees him from this demanding system during his fateful drive: Dammit is beheaded by a bar as he tries to run over the white-dressed girl with the white ball.

Fig. 75: The devil in Toby Dammit (1968)

Again show business and religion, both institutional and social, are intermingled, with each depicted as a false, superficial, and exploitative system. The successful actor who voluntarily follows the devil can be read as a religious worldview conquering the film industry. The colorful tint in red and orange acts as a surreal reminder of the haze of a nightmare or the fire of purgatory. The film’s style is a reference to an aesthetic of the 1960s in which drug experiences and engagement with the unconscious were central. The power and attractiveness of the metaphysical, paired with the surreal and fantastical style of excess, shape the colorful Felliniesque universe. Fellini Satyricon (1969), Fellini’s first historical film, provides an excessive narration of Roman antiquity. For a while Fellini leaves Roman Catholicism behind and turns his attention to another Italian cultural myth, which he deconstructs in a discontinuous narrative as a fantasy of the past. The film is based on text fragments of the Roman poet Petronius. The travelogue through an unknown past is full of references to the collective unconscious and archetypes of Jung. The two protagonists, Encolpio and his pupil Ascilto, a homosexual couple, provide continuity in the fragmented narration. The film is a metaphor for the nature of history and its contingent process. Fellini scrutinizes Roman decadence, highlighting perverted behavior. Death, marriage, and sacrificial rituals are excessively staged, with the participants driven by sexual and material instincts. Remarkably, the tagline of the U.S. film poster was “Rome before Christ. After Fellini.” Even though it was an inaccurate

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description as the narration is situated in the first century A. D., the wording is adequate according to the unique representation of antiquity in film history.

Coming of Age and the End of Life in the 1970s and Early 1980s In Roma and Amarcord Fellini returned to biographically inspired topics. Both films are coming-of-age stories centered on young male adult(s) discovering life in a specific social setting. The tensions between reality, on one hand, and fantasies or dreams, on the other, and between the present and memories are interwoven with multifaceted and unsparing references to Roman Catholicism and to the fascist Italy of Fellini’s youth. The power of fascism to suppress, supported by religious agents, and the connections of both fascism and Roman Catholicism to the myths of Roman antiquity formed another defining moment in Fellini’s work. The interface of Roman Catholicism, the militarism of fascism, and Roman myth is displayed in the beginning of Roma (1972, a.k.a. Fellini’s Roma). In a Roman Catholic boys’ school, a class is watching a slide-show presentation by their teacher, a priest, about important sites in Rome. One slide, secretly inserted, shows a (almost) naked woman from the back, sitting astride a chair. The pupils scream enthusiastically when they see the forbidden image. In a panic, the teacher orders that the projector be turned off, and shouts repeatedly: “Close your eyes! It’s the devil! Don’t look!” The supervisor, his stick in hand, intones “Inno a Roma” (hymn to Rome) by Giacomo Puccini, a piece of music heard often and on diverse occasions in fascist Italy. After a transition to black, a family is seen sitting at the table in their dining room. The maid enters, screaming excitedly that the pope is on the radio. The father tries to stop his family from kneeling down and praying but he loses the fight against the clout of the Vatican. The fascist regime is dominant in the public sphere, but in the private sphere the religious institution still reigns. The young Fellini, as a boy in the countryside and as young adult in Rome, is perfectly able to cope with both regimes. Fellini, as director of Roma and in real life, draws on his memories as an endless source of fantasy to show how fascism and Roman Catholicism complemented each other. Amarcord (1973) tells another nostalgic coming-of-age story, looking back this time to Fellini’s place of birth, Rimini, in the 1930s. The film shows fascism starting to take control in the provincial town on the Adriatic coast while the Roman Catholic Church continues to oversee morals. Sexuality and youthful desire provide the motors of the narrative. The actions and presence of fascist agents are starting to influence public life. But neither church nor political party has complete control. In short scenes, the sexual experiences of five friends are depicted, with a voiceover by one of the boys. What the boys recount in their confessions and what really happened are not the same. The boys handle the double moral standards of the Church skillfully.

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Indeed, it seems that clerical supervision promotes sexual desire instead of preventing it. This confession sequence is followed by a parade of fascists. The camera tracks the running participants, who tell of their commitment to the new fascist Roman Empire and honor the “Federale,” the leader of the district. The sequential editing of the boys’ confessions and the fascist parade holds up individual and group rituals to ridicule. The participants themselves do not question the fact of the confession or the parade; they simply adapt outwardly as is necessary. Fellini reveals the emptiness and insignificance of such rituals in the mise-en-scène and the editing. By setting the sexual desire of male youth against the church and the political party, he undermines both authorities. Neither system is able to control (sexual) life and fantasies. Roma and Amarcord have a sentimental undertone strongly connected to Fellini’s youth in Rimini and his fledgling years in Rome. Further productions in the 1970s and 1980s consider male midlife crisis and aging. The idea of decay is connected to the protagonists’ increasing estrangement from the present, a topic Fellini had already addressed earlier, in his middle phase, in I clowns, which depicted clowns as a species that was dying out. Il casanova di Fellini (1976, Fellini’s Casanova) and La città delle donne (1980, City of Women) also focus on male protagonists as they seek to come to terms with social changes and their male identity. E la nave va (1984, And the Ship Sails On), a film in a film, directs its focus at a decadent society gathering on a ship. None of these films use explicit religious references as Fellini’s earlier works had done, but they do consider the meaning of life. Analysis of a sequence in Il casanova di Fellini makes evident their implicit religious-philosophical perspective and Fellini’s continuing distinct references to Jung. Il casanova di Fellini is about an aging womanizer who is losing his ability to attract and seduce women. John Stubbs interprets the film in light of the Jungian concept of anima, which refers to the female within the man (Stubbs 2006, 57): The job of the anima may be to show what is knowable in the unconscious, but it is also to show us there is more. This ‘more’ is what I have called the ‘ineffable’ earlier, and it is perhaps the most important aspect of Jung’s appeal for Fellini. It is not necessary to group or understand the ineffable. By definition, that is impossible. But what is important is to know that it exists. The mediatrix can offer such assurances. (Stubbs 2006, 62– 63)

“Mediatrix” is a term used in Mariology in reference to Mary in her role as mediator between Jesus Christ and mankind (McBrien 2005, 7884). The religious dimension of the “ineffable” is evident in its reference to a transcendental realm beyond the representational. According to Jung, the concept of anima is connected universally to the male existence. Images of the anima appear in dreams in the form of archetypes derived from the collective unconscious. As already noted, Fellini used Jung’s symbol system as a rich fundus for interpretation of the psychic condition of his male protagonists in crisis. In one scene Casanova (Donald Sutherland) passes through the whale’s mouth into its belly. The whale symbolizes the vagina, in which Casanova is meeting with

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the collective unconscious.³ The whale motif may also be connected, however, with the narrative of the disobedient Jonah in the Old Testament. The showman at the funfair praises the whale: “The great Mouna! The king of the whales. The Leviathan of Jonah. Everybody may enter. The belly is still warm.” Inside the belly a slide show displays outsized sketches of the female sex with, for example, a small man lying on a women’s labs, and the vagina with a corona of snakes or in the form of a spiral sucking in small male figures or as a frightening face. The whale’s belly is frightening connoting sexual fantasies. Likewise, Marcello Snaporaz (Marcello Mastroianni), the male protagonist in La città delle donne, is searching for his anima on a journey to the unconscious, but without success. This time the protagonist is not able to find the mediatrix of his anima. The narration may express Fellini’s difficulties in dealing with the changing contemporary world, as well as with his role as a male in the wake of the social revolution of 1968, and a clear dissociation of feminism, which was difficult to integrate into his male-centered universe (Burke 2003, 320 – 36). In both films, Fellini mingles Christian symbols with Jung’s archetypes in an expressive setting composed of sexual dream phantasies. The strategy of connecting these two belief systems results in a personal religious worldview typical of Fellini’s late phase. The unconscious is turned into a transcendental power induced by sexual desire and expressed in archetypes.

The End: Looking for Real Miracles in the 1980s Fellini’s late works Ginger e Fred (1986) and Intervista (1987, a.k.a. Interview) express an obvious discomfort with television. Fellini questions the new and successful system of signification located outside the religious or psychological realm, and his final films often, according to Burke, “not only exemplify but dispute postmodernity, especially the relative ‘meaningless’ that endless signification seems to imply” (Burke 1996, 24). The meaninglessness of mass media is portrayed in Ginger e Fred, when an old and formerly successful dance couple (Giulietta Masina and Marcello Mastroianni) reunite to perform in a Christmas show. The director of the show is looking for “wonders” that might touch the audience, like having a clergyman who fell in love present his beloved during the show or a woman is hearing voices from beyond. Ginger and Fred’s intent is, however, somewhat different: they want to perform their dance number despite a number of possible hurdles – forgetting the steps and the constraints of their age, for example – as a means of recalling their good times. Their achievement is not a miracle that is evidence of a power “somewhere out there,” but neither is their dance simply for the television show. Their performance, an authentic, satisfying, and live experience, is exclusively for themselves.  The whale is called Mouna, which, according to John Baxter is a term for “vagina” in the Romagnola dialect; see Stubbs (, ).

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In a similar vein, by recalling former times in Intervista Fellini makes evident that miracles take place only in film studios. The film director, again played by Fellini himself, as in Roma and I Clowns, recounts to a Japanese journalist and her team of film reporters a dream about filmmaking that is self-evidently set in Cinecittà, the largest film studio in Italy and where many of Fellini’s films were shot. Fellini meets again his screen gods, Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg – “The first women of the creation!”, as Mastroianni had called her in La dolce vita. At the end, after a rainstorm, the members of the film crew receive a panettone, a typical Italian cake, and wish each other “Merry Christmas!” as they leave the set. Christian rituals now belong simply to everyday life, providing a shared point of orientation and a group identity marker. Perhaps as Fellini lost his faith in contemporary society, he felt increasingly secure in his memories of the past. With La voce della luna ⁴ (1990, a.k.a. The Voice of the Moon) Fellini takes leave of the world. Two lunatics, Ivo Salvini and Nestore Gonnello, are confused by and alienated from the behaviors and events of contemporary civilization, such as discotheques, beauty competitions, and the Japanese tourists who whisk around a small Italian village. At the end Salvini, alone in a field, addresses the moon: “Probably [Or else] I think that there was a little more silence, if everybody was a little silent, maybe we’d be able to understand something.” By sticking his head into the well from which he had emerged at the beginning of the story, he withdraws forever to his own universe. Fellini died on October 31, 1993, in Rome. His body lay in state in studio number 5 in Cinecittà, wearing the evening dress that he had worn to the Oscar ceremony at which he had received the Lifetime Achievement Award (Kezich 2005, 589 – 615). Many representatives of the Roman Catholic Church were present at his funeral, to honor the great director. Probably Pier Paolo Pasolini (1986/87) is right with the following comment: “What counts in Fellini is that which endures eternally and absolutely in his broadly Catholic ideology, his loving and sympathetic optimism” (Pasolini 1986/87, 198). Fellini was born as a Roman Catholic, and he was buried as a Roman Catholic. The circle is complete. This short overview demonstrates how the Italian director’s religious education and biographical background basically filtered and formed biblical references in his oeuvre. On one hand, his films subvert traditional interpretations, conventions, and norms of the biblical narrative. On the other hand, they likewise augment the narrative with Felliniesque motifs. But the distinctive aesthetic still remains within Catholic realm, as it conveys a certain affection and fascination for material, visual, and sensual realization of the Christian worldview. Fellini’s excessive portrayal of religious dimensions exposes and repeatedly penetrates the Church’s institutional power and its agents.

 La voce della luna is loosely based on the novel Il Poema dei Lunatici by Ermanno Cavazzoni; see Burke (, ).

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Works Cited Bondanella, Peter. 1992. The Cinema of Federico Fellini. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Burke, Frank. 1996. Fellini’s Films. From Postwar to Postmodern. New York: Twayne. Burke, Frank, and Marguerite R. Waller, eds. 2002. Federico Fellini: Contemporary Perspectives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Cardullo, Bert, ed. 2006. Federico Fellini: Interviews. Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi. Kezich, Tullio. 2005. Federico Fellini. Eine Biographie. Transl. Sylvia Höfer. Zürich: Diogenes. McBrien, Richard. 2005. “Roman Catholicism.” In Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. 2nd ed. Vol. 12. Detroit: Macmillan. Pp. 7884. Morgenthaler, Christoph. 2002. “Carl Gustav Jung (1875 – 1961).” In Klassiker der Religionswissenschaft. Von Friedrich Schleiermacher bis Mircea Eliade. Ed. A. Michaels. 2nd ed. Munich: C. H. Beck. Pp. 234 – 46. Pamerleau, W. C. 2009. Existentialist Cinema. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. 1986/87. “The Catholic Irrationalism of Fellini.” Film Criticism 11.2: 190 – 200. Pettigrew, Damain, ed. 2003. I’m a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Stubbs, John C. 2006. Fellini as an Auteur: Seven Aspects of His Films. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Wiegand, Chris. 2003. Federico Fellini: The Complete Films. Cologne: Taschen.

Films Cited 8½ (dir. Federico Fellini, 1963, Cineriz, IT/FR). Amarcord [“I Remember”] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1973, F.C. Produzioni, IT/FR). Amore in città [“Love in the City” omnibus project; Un agenzia matrimoniale; “Marriage Agency”] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1953, Faro Film, IT). Block-notes di un regista [a.k.a. A Director’s Notebook] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1969, NBC, IT). Boccaccio 70 [omnibus project; La tentazione del dottor Antonio, a.k.a. The Temptation of Dr. Antonio] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1962, Cieriz, IT/FR). E la nave va [a.k.a. And the Ship Sails On] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1984, Rai 1, IT/FR). I clowns [a.k.a. The Clowns] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1970, RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana, IT/FR/DE). Il bidone [“The Swindle”] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1955, Titanus, IT/FR). Il casanova di Fellini [a.k.a. Fellini’s Casanova] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1976, Produzioni Europee Associati, IT/US). Fellini’s Satyricon (dir. Federico Fellini, 1969, Produzioni Europee Associati, IT). Ginger e Fred [a.k.a. Ginger and Fred] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1986, Produzioni Europee Associati, IT/FR/DE). Giulietta degli spiriti [a.k.a. Juliet of the Spirits] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1965, Rizzoli Film, IT/FR). I vitelloni [a.k.a. The Young and the Passionate] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1953, Cité Films, IT/FR). Intervista [a.k.a. Interview] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1987, Aljosha, IT). La città delle donne [a.k.a. City of Women] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1980, Gaumont, IT/FR). La dolce vita [“The Sweet Life”] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1960, Riama Film, IT/FR). La strada [“The Road”] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1954, Ponti-De Laurentiis, IT). La voce della luna [a.k.a. The Voice of the Moon] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1990, Cecchi Gori Group Tiger, IT/FR). Le notte di Cabiria [a.k.a. Nights of Cabiria] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1957, Dino de Laurentiis, IT/FR).

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Lo sceicco bianco [a.k.a. The White Sheikh] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1952, OFI, IT). Luci del varietà [a.k.a. Variety Lights] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1950, Capitolium, IT). Prova di orchestre [a.k.a. Orchestra Rehearsal] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1979, Daimo Cinematografica, IT/DE). Roma [a.k.a. Fellini’s Roma] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1972, Ulta Film, IT/FR). Tre Passi nel delirio [a.k.a. Spirits of the Dead, omnibus project; Toby Dammit] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1968, Les Films Marceau, FR/IT).

Gaye Williams Ortiz

40 John Huston: The Atheistic Noah

In Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), the evil, corrupt magnate Noah Cross observes that at the right time and the right place people are capable of anything. This might also prove to be a fair assessment of the American cinematic legend who played Noah Cross, John Huston (1906 – 1987), whose career spanned seven decades. During that time, he accrued fifty-four credits for acting and forty-eight for directing; he produced nine films and wrote forty screenplays. His breakthrough as a first-time director was with The Maltese Falcon (1941), critically acclaimed despite having been filmed twice before. Nominated for fifty-six awards, Huston won fortyfive, including two Oscars for best director and best screenplay, both for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). His is all the more impressive as a lifetime achievement, considering Huston’s peripatetic early life. Born in August 1906, he was the child of actor Walter Huston and reporter Rhea Gore, and as a child alternated between traveling on the vaudeville circuit with his father and on reporting assignments with his mother. He quit school at age fourteen to become a boxer, at one time earning the title of California Amateur Lightweight Boxing Champion. After making his Broadway acting debut in 1925, John Huston served briefly as a cavalry officer in the Mexican army. Back in New York, he tried his hand at being a playwright, short story reporter, screenwriter, film actor, and artist before serving in the Signal Corps during World War II. After the war he made Let There Be Light (1946), a controversial documentary narrated by his father, and banned for more than three decades. The film, whose title refers to Genesis 1:3 when God separated the light from the darkness, takes an upbeat look at seemingly miraculous new therapies, like hypnosis and drug therapy, for psychiatric treatment of soldiers. Also a human rights advocate, Huston was co-founder of the Committee for the First Amendment (1947) that fought back against Hollywood blacklisting and the witch-hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He subsequently directed a string of remarkable films still considered Hollywood classics: Key Largo (1948), The African Queen (1951), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Red Badge of Courage (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952). Huston’s personal life was no less complex; his convent-educated mother, Rhea Gore, was all her life very attached to the Roman Catholic Church. She had a rather literal faith which her son not only resisted but took pleasure in mocking, often bringing her to tears. She adored and spoiled him, while his father Walter admired him for his artistic talent and his breath of knowledge as a young man. Huston married five times, fathered four children and adopted one more. Two of his children were by ballet dancer Ricki Soma, including Angelica Huston, who began her acting career with her father when she was a teenager in A Walk with Love and Death (1969). Fifteen years later he worked with her again in Prizzi’s Honor (1985) and The Dead

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(1987). In later years Huston suffered from health problems; and, because of chronic emphysema, he often worked while wearing an oxygen mask. He died in Rhode Island in August 1987 at the age of eighty-one while working on a film, Mr. North (dir. Danny Huston, 1988). Out of all the people with whom he shared his life, Huston made it clear when he was on his deathbed that he wished to be buried next to his mother.

The Theme of the Anti-Hero Many of the characters that John Huston directed and portrayed onscreen could be said to fall under the category of ‘anti-hero.’ Characteristics affiliated with the anti-hero include moral ambiguity; grittiness and often unlikeability; acting as the protagonist, although with antagonistic behaviors; not a role model, but not crossing the line to become a villain; often contradictory and sometimes double-crossing in his dealings (Monroe 2013). They are modern heroes with troubled consciences, who personify social alienation or who walk a moral tightrope. Huston, through his faithful 1941 adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 literary work The Maltese Falcon, introduced to the screen the anti-hero Sam Spade, played with aplomb by Humphrey Bogart. It is safe to say that this role made Bogart a star. Finding Hammett’s mentality “congenial,” Huston consequently wrote the character to reflect his own philosophy of life. Spade is a private eye who seems to be cynical and selfish in his dealings with everyone he meets. This role released Bogart from the stereotypical gangster role in which he had been previously cast, winning over audiences “by playing a touch, no-nonsense good guy antihero” (Grobel 1989, 219). Huston’s immense talent as a writer and director was obvious, but not just because of the critical acclaim The Maltese Falcon received upon its release; its style is said to be the first full embodiment of the new genre of film noir – “dark, urban, brutal, disturbing, misogynistic stories focusing on private eyes.”¹ Many scholars have noted that the morally ambiguous anti-heroes of this genre are reminiscent of similar characters in the Bible.² John Huston, although himself an atheist, regarded the Bible as “the first adventure story, the first love story, the first murder story, the first suspense and the first story of faith” (Grobel 1989, 548). He directed several films that featured conflicted

 Roman Polanski studied The Maltese Falcon and other film noir classics to prepare for the making of Chinatown. (Grobel , ). See Ellis’s discussion of biblical reception in film noir in Part I (Pp.  – ).  Christopher Deacy (, ) argues that the story of King David, for example, is one that begins promisingly, but becomes one of “loyalty, corruption and tragedy through moments of moral weakness.” David’s story has an ignoble end that reminds him of another anti-hero, Michael Corleone, who despite his failings and compromises with evil in an Italian-American setting, is admired by movie audiences. Readers empathize with the fallible human nature of King David as it is laid out in the Bible, just as moviegoers do with cinematic antiheroes who are irresistible in their brokenness.

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characters, including a debauched, defrocked minister (The Night of the Iguana, 1964); a religious zealot, Hazel Moats (Wise Blood, 1979) who, in the words of Francine Prose, is “groping his way toward redemption” (Prose 2009); and the Consul in Under the Volcano (1984) of whom Huston said, “He’s like a Churchill gone bad, a great man with a flaw” (Grobel 1989, 745). The Night of the Iguana, based on a 1948 Tennessee Williams story and subsequently a Broadway play, is set in Mexico, a place that Huston loved and where he spent many years of his life. The Reverend T. L. Shannon is an Episcopal priest who was locked out of his church and institutionalized after an outburst during a service in which he calls God a “cruel senile delinquent”; his outburst is perfectly suited to the times, the early 1960s being the period of the “God Is Dead” controversy. The text of Shannon’s sermon, from which he deviates so dramatically, is based on Proverbs 25:28 (“Like a city breached, without walls, is one who lacks self-control.”) Unlike the Tennessee Williams script, Huston’s script begins the film with this scene, foreshadowing with that biblical passage the lack of self-control that causes Shannon to spiral into chaos and despair. Wise Blood, based upon the 1952 Flannery O’Connor novel, was filmed in Georgia; the son of O’Connor’s literary executor, Robert Fitzgerald, sent him the script. Huston, by then in his mid-seventies, accepted the challenge to film it despite its black humor, allegorical bent, and extreme grotesque religiosity. He had much advice from the Fitzgerald family, since Robert’s sons wrote the screenplay. Huston set the story in the present day, however, and also cast himself as a minor character, the fundamentalist grandfather of the main character, Hazel Motes, played by Brad Dourif. Dourif says that Huston, being a “devout atheist,” did not agree with him that Motes in the end finds God, but that, after discussion with the Fitzgeralds, said grudgingly to them, “Jesus wins” (Holden 2009). Under the Volcano (1984) is another film shot on location in Mexico. Huston recreates a day in the life of a British diplomat whose life is falling apart; that day is The Day of the Dead, a Mexican festival celebrating (like the Christian All Souls’ Day) the memories of deceased loved ones. He shifts from the internal hallucinogenic struggle that is described in Malcolm Lowry’s stream-of-consciousness 1947 novel to an unremittingly grim character study of an alcoholic, portrayed most convincingly by Albert Finney. Another film by Huston about nonconformist outcasts in a fallen world, Under the Volcano also gives its main character a healthy skeptical attitude toward religion, especially when it comes to praying for divine intervention for his troubles. Just as Ahab shakes his fist at God in Moby Dick (1956), so Huston seems to take pleasure in directing actors whose characters are at the least conflicted with religious questions and at most, proudly and scornfully dismissive of any notion of God as a saving force in their dismal worlds.

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Playing Noah (Cross)³ As an actor, Huston played two roles that writer Scott Hammen says “echo the theme that critics have been most eager to define as the central one of his career: that of the eccentric engaged in an impossible quest” (Grobel 1989, 555). Those roles are the biblical Noah in Huston’s own film The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966) and Noah Cross in Polanski’s Chinatown (dir. Roman Polanski, 1974). These two characters, seemingly so different, have in common a name (Noah in Hebrew means ‘comfort’ or ‘repose’) and an affinity with water. The biblical Noah has the unthinkable mission to save his family and all the animals from a deluge of water, and Noah Cross is a megalomaniac with an evil plan to control the entire water supply of Los Angeles. The heights and depths to which these two men will go to achieve their quests draw in the viewer with their unswerving vision. The Bible: In the Beginning… presents Noah as a jovial man who, with his family, builds an ark that provides comfort and escape for the animal kingdom while the waters rise to destroy the rest of the living world. In Chinatown, the charming Noah Cross – said by his creator Robert Towne to have the “sort of patina of grandfatherly charm [that] is a perfect receptacle, if you will, for the evil that is at the heart of Chinatown” (Simon 2013) – wields his power to manipulate the water supply of the parched California climate. The pleasant façade that both characters employ more interestingly covers the potential for the dark side, including incest. The eccentricities of both characters appealed to Huston, who Neil Sinyard says, is “foolhardy enough to make a film of the Bible with himself as Noah, and then will have the audacity to play a villain of biblical proportions in Chinatown, where he will also be laying claim to valuable water supply, and who will have the resonant name of Noah Cross” (Sinyard 2010, 79).

The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966) The original script of The Bible: In the Beginning… was written by the British poet Christopher Fry, as a commission from producer Dino De Laurentiis. Huston liked it, and De Laurentiis gave him free reign to adapt it to the screen, reportedly saying, “I do not ask him in advance what he is going to do […] It is like giving an artist paint and brushes” (Grobel 1989, 548). The film covers only twenty-two chapters of the book of Genesis, with much of the dialogue in the style of the King James Version. When asked, as a guest on the BBC’s radio program Desert Island Discs, about the limited scope of the film, Huston said that he would not “go a verse further” (Plumley 1973). It was clear that for Huston, the atheist, putting the Bible on film was a challenge. As well as directing, Huston played the part of Noah (which he had originally intended for Charlie Chaplin) and provided the voice of both the narrator and  See also Kozlovic’s discussion of Noah films in Part I (Pp.  – ).

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God. The film reflects the cinematic culture of the 1960s; the soundtrack, by Toshiro Mayuzumi, comprises modern experimental music that made use of the electronic techniques for which he was known. The cinematography, especially in the four-minute creation montage featuring ‘primordial’ elements of the earth such as steaming gases and molten lava, recalls the epic nature of other films of the decade, such as Exodus (dir. Otto Preminger, 1960), Lawrence of Arabia (dir. David Lean, 1962), and Doctor Zhivago (dir. David Lean, 1965). As Noah, Huston portrays a gentle man (“a righteous man: he was blameless in his age; Noah walked with God,” Gen. 6:5). As one of the major segments of the film, the flood story is a combination of visual storytelling, dramatic soundtrack music, narration, and dialogue. Noah receives the news of the impending flood and the command to build the ark through hearing God’s voice; while he is looking up to hear God speak, there is a quick cut away from him to the donkeys, also craning their necks as if to listen to God as well. There is no record in Genesis of Noah speaking directly, but he does claim to do so several times in the film when addressing his family, once to respond to a challenge from one of his sons about the need to build the ark. Noah’s wife also speaks up to defend her husband.

Fig. 76: Huston as a gentle Noah in The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966)

The story veers between light and tragic tones; the jeers of the onlookers as the ark is built turn later to wails and pleas as they are drowning in the floodwaters. There is a comic moment when Noah, hanging alongside the ark, calls for his sons to bring more pitch. They are exhausted and sleeping on the ground underneath him, so he lowers himself down but accidentally sticks his foot in the bucket of pitch; he then slides down to collide with a sleeping son, whose head gets the full force of the bucket.

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Noah’s evident energy and enthusiasm for building the ark culminate in the quirky scene of animals filing into the finished boat in pairs. The technical skill behind this scene (which was done in the first and only take) involved a circular design of the entrance to the ark that allowed a circus owner to train the animals to walk the road through the ark (Grobel 1989, 555). Noah leads them on board like a biblical Pied Piper, playing a flute and reassuring his family members, who look on aghast as bears, tigers, and hippos file into the boat. Another whimsical touch appears when Noah hurries to carry in the tortoise, the last of the creatures to enter, just after he stretches out his hand to catch the first raindrop. The biblical verse itself is matter-of-fact about the rising waters (“The waters swelled and increased greatly on the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the waters,” Gen. 7:18),⁴ but the visual impact of the ark being lifted into the churning flood is reinforced by the dramatic swelling of the soundtrack, as the family realizes that Noah indeed has saved them from death. He tells them solemnly that “the Lord has taken the ends of the earth and shaketh it.” The mood changes quickly as Huston gives us cameos of life on the ark – caring for the animals, a family discussion on how long the rain will last, new life being born in a pen of goats.⁵ The next dramatic scene is of the sun shining through the rafters, and the reaction of the animals and family. A combination of narration and dialogue tells the story of the raven and dove being sent out to search for dry land, and the lowering of the ramp for the animals to exit is followed by God’s voice promising to set the rainbow in the clouds. The final peaceful shot of the tale of Noah’s ark frames the rainbow over its beached hulk, which rests on a ridge above a pool of water where animals are swimming and drinking. The film’s intermission follows immediately, imparting an image of peaceful resolution that is unmatched by the actual text of Genesis 9. The second half of the film begins with the Tower of Babel, skipping over the Table of Nations found in Genesis. The film’s second half differs from the first in its lack of humor; the biblical story starts to be very serious at this point, in marked contrast to Noah’s comical portrayal. Huston omits the narrative in Genesis 9 in which Noah plants a vineyard (v. 20), becomes drunk on the wine he makes from it, is seen sleeping naked by his son Ham, and consequently curses his grandson Canaan before his death at the age of 950. This omission is significant given the rich and controversial reception history of this passage. The “Curse of Canaan,” specifically, has been used to justify anything from the dominance of Israel over the Canaanites to the institution of slavery. And more important still is the lack of explana-

 Huston’s narration made use of the NRSV although Robert Alter’s translation (, ) is more impactful: “All the wellsprings of the great deep burst and the casements of the heavens were opened.”  This scene provides an interesting echo of the creation when, as Alter (, ) says, “what was made on the six days is wiped out in these forty” of the flood.

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tion given in Gen. 10’s genealogy of the way in which humankind was once one at Creation but is now divided.

Chinatown (1974) And so we come to the second ‘Noah’ that John Huston has portrayed in film: Noah Cross in Polanski’s Chinatown. The critical acclaim this film received when it was released was due to Huston’s excellent crafting of it as a thriller/private eye story and as a period piece set in late 1930s Los Angeles.⁶ William Deverell and Tom Sitton describe Chinatown as revolving around businessman Noah Cross, “who plots to bring Sierra Nevada water to his recently acquired agricultural acreage in the ‘Northwest Valley’ by murdering an opponent of a $10 million bond issue that would finance the building of an aqueduct and reservoir. Cross uses hired muscle and city personnel to enforce the secrecy of the fraud. Private investigator Jake Gittes eventually uncovers Cross’s plan to convince Los Angeles taxpayers that drought necessitates that they pay for the transfer of water, which would irrigate his land, raise prices, and make him another fortune” (Deverell/Sitton 2013).

Fig. 77: Huston as the despotic Noah Cross in Chinatown (1974)

Jack Nicholson plays Jake Gittes as “a street-wise private investigator […] running into ever darker depths in an investigation of what initially seems a rather ordinary case of infidelity.” Every time the detective thinks he has solved the mystery, it takes another turn (five twists in total), until “he reaches the horrific bottom of a well of evil.” Once Gittes does understand the entire story, “knowledge is not only power but, more than that, is not necessarily worth having” (Anker 2004, 68). In terms of genre, Chinatown follows in the tradition begun by Dashiell Hammett, with the transition from page to screen for the “hard-boiled detective” (Cawelti 1992, 498). The uniquely American myth of the detective-as-hero and the distinctive  Robert Towne received an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Best Screenplay. Jack Nicholson received the Golden Globe for Best Actor.

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visual style of film noir combine in Chinatown, but it also carves out for itself notable deviations from the formula so ably presented in Huston’s The Maltese Falcon. For one thing, Chinatown is not shot in black-and-white but in color, although this does not diminish the darkness of the plot; critic Paul Zimmerman calls this effect “a moral midnight in the solar glare of Los Angeles” (Anker 2004, 69). The film is shot in what Anker calls a “parched sepia,” which contradicts our assumption that evil hides in darkness: “…this evil is ubiquitous, does not contain itself to the night, and has parched the land both ecologically and spiritually, like the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37” (Anker 2004, 75). The analogy of the dry bones is an apt one. The immoral deals of Noah Cross may literally have resulted in the deaths of people who got in his way and who may well be buried out in the desert. The cry of no hope is justified by the justice that the dead – Evelyn and Hollis, among others – fail to receive, despite the attempts made by Gittes. The dénouement so central to detective stories typically sees the hero protect the innocent, uphold the law and punish the villain. It is also the norm to deny a romantic ending to any relationship between the detective and a mysterious/dangerous woman – sometimes by revealing the female as the villainess (as in The Maltese Falcon) or by her death (as in Kiss Me Deadly, dir. Robert Aldrich, 1955). Cawelti points out that, although Chinatown bears a close resemblance to the detective genre, its ending contrasts almost entirely with the myth: “Instead of protecting the innocent, his [Gittes’s] investigation leads to the death of one victim and the deeper moral destruction of another. Instead of surmounting the web of conspiracy with honor and integrity intact, the detective is overwhelmed by what has happened to him” (Cawelti 1992, 501). Kevin Burton Smith asks on The Thrilling Detective Website, “…isn’t noir, in the end, about the fact that evil is always there, and although a good man must go down those mean streets, there’s no guarantee he’ll win, or even survive?” (Smith 2015). This type of anti-hero, whose weakness of character does not allow him solve the crime and put the crook away behind bars, is a development across genres due to an increasing cultural preoccupation, seen most explicitly in the 1960 suspense films Psycho (dir. Alfred Hitchcock) and Peeping Tom (dir. Michael Powell), with the psychologically motivated behaviors of characters. However, the anti-hero is a more complex, realistic portrayal than the archetypal hero of earlier films. Gittes’s previous experience in law enforcement in Chinatown taught him that even the obvious ‘bad guy’ is difficult to identify or defeat at times: “Chinatown is a pretty good metaphor for the futility of the good intentions. …[Police officers in the film] are told to do as little as possible in Chinatown in the way of law enforcement, because you never know whether you’re helping to avert a crime or helping to commit one” (Towne 2014). The inability of Gittes to deal competently with the case he takes on is in part due to his discovery of just how depraved a man Noah Cross actually is. When he invites Gittes to lunch, Cross initially seen as simply a wealthy man who is charming and seemingly respectable (“Of course I’m respectable – I’m old”). However, Cross is

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soon revealed as a manipulative land baron, snapping up cheap desert land in the valley in order to irrigate it, while bribing the local water department and reselling the property for outrageous sums of money. What is more, Cross has bought the loyalties of the local police force and anyone else who possesses political power. Robert Townes says of his creation, “He’s one of those guys that was a member of the Tuna Club and the California Club. The old saying was that the Tuna Club ran L.A., and that’s what the Albacore Club was based on, in the movie. They ran the city, like an oligarchy” (Simon 2013). The even more despicable layers beneath Cross’s corrupting behavior are shocking and unthinkable for Gittes, which is partly why he takes so long to fully grasp the evil he faces; Cross even declares, “You may think you know what’s going on here Mr. Gittes, [deliberately mispronouncing the detective’s name as ‘Gitts’] but you don’t.” The detective, for his part, has never seen such malevolence before, and cannot believe that anyone would be capable of such casually amoral conduct. Robert Townes says of the connection between the two evils that form the basis of the plot and sub-plot, “the first structural question, which may seem absurd now after the fact, was the question of which revelation comes first, the incest or the water scandal? And of course, it was the water scandal. When I realized that, I realized how foolish it was even to have asked the question. But the water scandal was the plot, essentially, and the subplot was the incest. That was the underbelly, and the two were intimately connected, literally and metaphorically: raping the future and raping the land. So it was a really good plot/subplot with a really strong connection” (Townes 2014). Gittes develops a relationship with Cross’s daughter Evelyn, unaware that she is her father’s daughter/mistress and mother of his daughter/granddaughter. Cawelti observes that “Cross is reminiscent of the primal father imagined by Freud in Totem and Taboo, but against his overpowering sexual, political and economic power, our hero-Oedipus in the form of J. J. Gittes proves to be tragically impotent” (Cawelti 1992, 503). The dark despair of the ending – which Polanski insisted on, instead of the more upbeat one originally written by Townes – comes out of a realization that Cross will never be stopped from his mission to control Los Angeles and, in the words of Cawelti, that the “revelation of the rape-incest by which Noah Cross has fathered a daughter on his own daughter and is apparently intending to continue this method of establishing a progeny through the agency of his daughter-granddaughter” (Cawelti1992, 503). One online blogger reflects on the reason behind this plot change and what it says about Cross: “Polanski changed Robert Towne’s ending to let Noah Cross destroy Evelyn and take possession of his grand-daughter as his new slave. Why did Cross do this? Because he could. Because he was rich and politically powerful and normal human beings didn’t matter next to his whims. He may even have thought of himself as an artist” (Retro Daddy 2009). Critic Jeremiah Kipp says that the role of Cross “taps into the power and charisma associated with John Huston, filmmaker, performer and Hollywood legend” (Kipp 2006). Kipp claims that the force of Huston’s personality, so strong on the screen that

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it could even eclipse that of Jack Nicholson, makes Cross anything but a typical heavy. He observes that the interaction Cross has with Gittes in several scenes is framed in long, unbroken two-shots, possibly because “Cross’s evil is so potent that it doesn’t need to be emphasized in macro close-ups.” Cross tells Gittes that at the right time and the right place most people are capable of anything “in the middle of one of those master takes we rarely see anymore” (Kipp 2006).

The Noahs in Comparison and Contrast The irony resulting from the role Huston plays in Chinatown – a monster whose “conspiracy to dominate a city by manipulating its water supply” (Cawelti 1992, 503) – in contrast to the previous decade’s biblical Noah, is one to explore more in depth. First, the name itself implies, for Anker, that the rottenness of Chinatown’s villain is of “biblical proportions” and that he “knows too well the value of water” (Anker 2004, 75). Norman Holland suggests that because of Noah Cross’s power, “there is ‘no crossing’ him.” Anker also sees the aspect of “double-crossing” and being “at cross-purposes with any notion of goodness” reflected in the name. Furthermore, the combination of the biblical first name with the theologically-charged surname, suggests “the extent to which Noah Cross represents an inversion” of the values of “love, self-sacrifice and hope” espoused by Christian theology and symbolism (Anker 2004, 76). The power of God in the book of Genesis in establishing retributive justice is made evident in the presence of Noah. God made a covenant with Noah and his sons, saying, “He who sheds human blood by humans his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God he made humankind” (Alter 1996, 1418). However, as we know, at the conclusion of Chinatown, Noah Cross escapes any kind of retributive justice. Not only that, but for Cross, his evil deeds are business as usual; he has no regrets, and even says to Gittes that he does not blame himself for the public and private crimes he commits. Just as Noah’s descendants are numerous in Genesis, the Noah of Chinatown, is determined to carry on his line through incest. Holland says of the film, “This is a film about generations and generating life. It is about water as a source of life and woman as the source of life. To some extent they are equated because the father owns both. The film is ‘triangular’.” The theme of water is perhaps the most obvious link between these stories, but another is the city. Genesis 4 traces the origins of cities, and, by the chapter 6 story of the flood, God despairs at the wickedness within them. Water washes away not only the human race, but all living creatures because God is sorry that he made them. The subsequent pact that God makes with Noah is that he will never again cause such destruction. By Genesis 11 another city is being built with a tower that reaches to the heavens, and God again interferes with human civilization to prevent it from breaching his realm. Noah Cross embarks upon a mission to subject the city of

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Los Angeles to his domination of water. The adjacent desert, which lacks water, is nevertheless valuable because the irrigation of the desert is a strategy by which Cross can then control Los Angeles. The water scandal of Robert Townes’s plot was based on real events in the early 1900s, concerning an aqueduct and the loss of water by farmers of the Owens Valley. Similar to what happens in the Chinatown plot, Los Angeles annexed the valley for the water that then went to the city. Another water scandal, the St Francis dam burst of 1928, must have seemed to the residents a flood of biblical proportions: five hundred people in Ventura County died because the dam site was unsuitable (Anker 2004, 73). The symbolism of water as the source of life, in the sense that “life emerged from such a wet, primordial chaotic landscape,” is another commonality of these two stories. “No life of any kind, and certainly no human society, civilization, or culture” (Pilch 1999, 868) can exist without water, and so the power that Cross wields is immense. However, as we see, Noah in The Bible: In the Beginning… saves his family and the animal kingdom from the water that wipes away life and civilization. In Chinatown the lack of water threatens life; in The Bible: In the Beginning…, we see how water destroys it. Huston is larger than life in his three roles as the Narrator, Noah, and the voice of God in The Bible: In the Beginning…. Kipp draws attention to the corresponding “majesty of Huston’s old Hollywood charm” invested in the character of Noah Cross. He makes an analogous connection between Cross’s and the movie industry’s public and private faces, saying about Cross that “the old man’s sunny, ‘respectable’ public image and depraved private life tease the viewer’s worst case visions of just how low Hollywood power players will sink to satisfy their fantasies, and how far they’ll go to acquire still more wealth” (Kipp 2006). The echo of Hollywood in Chinatown can also be seen in the film’s dark message, like the messages in so many works of film and literature, ancient and modern: that there is a possibility “that the final triumph of history belongs to evil, and that there is little that human beings can do to defeat it, simply because of its very nature” (Anker 2004, 89). Many critics point to the traumatic life that Polanski endured as a reason why he rewrote the screenplay to make Evelyn die and Noah survive.⁷ Whatever the motivation for it, the message of Chinatown is of futility and powerlessness in the face of evil: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” In contrast, the ending of The Bible: In the Beginning… is full of promise: following Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac, the film ends with God’s promise: “Now will I multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is by the seashore, innumerable” (cf. Gen. 22:17).

 Polanski’s childhood in Poland was marked by his parents’ imprisonment in concentration camps, his mother’s death in Auschwitz, and his transitory life until he could be reunited with his father. Polanski made several films before moving to Hollywood, where he made Rosemary’s Baby in . The next year his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, was murdered by members of the Charles Manson cult.

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Conclusion John Huston’s long career features a number of films that, through his direction, acting, and writing, are consonant with his atheistic attitude to life. He was admired in the film industry as a generous, principled man; a patriot; and a curious, eccentric and creative person who lived for his craft. His life was certainly flawed, particularly in his complex, chaotic love life and strained family relationships. He also was antagonistic, if not downright hostile, to notions of God and to organized religion. However, if one examines Huston’s body of work, it exemplifies his belief that the “mystery of life is too great, too wide, to do more than wonder at” (Grobel 1989, 548). The movies that make up his filmography explore much to wonder at, and they span a time in American history – and religion – in which certainty gave way to exploration and experimentation. In the end, however, John Huston is to be known for his love of a good story, and his grudging admiration of the Bible and of religion springs from his ability to recognize them as such and to shape them to fit a modern storytelling medium.

Works Cited Alter, Robert. 1996. Genesis: Translation and Commentary. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Anker, Roy M. 2004. Catching Light. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans. Cawelti, John G. 1992. “Chinatown and Generic Transformation in Recent American Films.” In Film Theory and Criticism. 4th ed. Ed. Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen and Leo Braudy. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 498 – 511. Deacy, Christopher. 2008. “A Time to Kill? Theological Perspectives on Theology and Film.” In Theology and Film. Ed. Christopher Deacy and Gaye Williams Ortiz. Oxford: Wiley. Pp. 123 – 42. Deverell, William and Tom Sitton. 2013. “Forget it, Jake.” Boom 3.3: http://www.boomcalifornia. com/2013/09/forget-it-jake/; accessed March 26, 2015. Grobel, Lawrence. 1989. The Hustons. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Hammett, Dashiell. 1989. The Maltese Falcon [1930]. New York: Vintage. Holden, Chris. 2009. “Brad Dourif Wise Blood Hazel Motes Interview.” https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Al0rhl4d2ZA; accessed March 26, 2015. Holland, Norman N. “Roman Polanski, Chinatown, 1974.” A Sharper Focus: Essays on Film by Norman Holland. http://www.asharperfocus.com/chinatow.htm; accessed July 23, 2014). Kipp, Jeremiah. 2006.”Evil Under the Sun: John Huston in Chinatown.” Slant (August 15): http:// www.slantmagazine.com/house/2006/15/evil-under-the-sun-john-huston-in-chinatown; accessed July 23, 2014. Lowry, Malcolm. 2007. Under the Volcano: A Novel [1947]. New York/London: Harper. Monroe, Katrina. 2013. “Ten Traits That Make the Perfect Anti-Hero.” (June 4): http://onfiction writing.com/taketen/Ten-Traits-that-Make-the-Perfect-Anti-Hero/158/; accessed March 26, 2015. O’Connor, Flannery. 2007. Wise Blood [1952]. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Pilch, John J. 1999. The Cultural Dictionary of the Bible. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. Plumley, Roy. 1973 “Desert Island Discs John Huston.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loz IplDOfHc; accessed March 26, 2015.

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Prose, Francine. 2009. “A Matter of Life and Death.” The Criterion Collection Current (May 11): http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1132-wise-blood-a-matter-of-life-and-death; accessed July 23, 2014. Retro Daddy. 2009. “The Ending Roman Polanski’s Chinatown Was Supposed to Have” Retro Daddy Blog (September 30): http://open.salon.com/blog/retrodaddy/2009/09/30/the_end ing_roman_polanskis_chinatown_was_supposed_to_have; accessed March 26, 2015. Simon, Alex. 2013. “Forget It, Bob, It’s Chinatown.” The Hollywood Interview (February 1): http:// thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.com/2009/10/robert-towne-hollywood-interview.html; accessed March 26, 2015. Sinyard, Neil. 2010. “The Discreet Charm of Huston and Bunuel: Notes on a Cinematic Odd Couple.” In John Huston: Essays On a Restless Director. Ed. Tony Tracy and Roddy Flynn. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. Pp. 73 – 82. Smith, Kevin Burton. 2015. “J. J. ‘Jake’ Gittes, Created by Robert Towne.” The Thrilling Detective Website. http://www.thrillingdetective.com/gittes.html; accessed March 26, 2015. Towne, Robert. 2014. “3. Chinatown.” 101 Greatest Screenplays. Writers Guild of America, West. http://www.wga.org/subpage_newsevents.aspx?id=1907; accessed March 26, 2015.

Films Cited The African Queen (dir. John Huston, 1951, Romulus Films, US/UK). The Asphalt Jungle (dir. John Huston, 1950, MGM, US). The Bible: In the Beginning… (dir. John Huston, 1966, Dino de Laurentiis, US/IT). Chinatown (dir. Roman Polanski, 1974, Paramount, US). The Dead (dir. John Huston, 1987, Channel 4, US/UK/IE). Doctor Zhivago (dir. David Lean, 1965, MGM, US/IT/UK). Exodus (dir. Otto Preminger, 1960, Carlyle Productions, US). Key Largo (dir. John Huston, 1948, Warner Brothers, US). Kiss Me Deadly (dir. Robert Aldrich, 1955, Parklane Pictures, US). Lawrence of Arabia (dir. David Lean, 1962, Horizon Pictures, UK). Let There Be Light (dir. John Huston, 1946, US Army Pictorial Services, US). The Maltese Falcon (dir. John Huston, 1941, Warner Brothers, US). Moby Dick (dir. John Huston, 1956, Moulin Productions, US). Moulin Rouge (dir. John Huston, 1952, Romulus Films, UK). Mr. North (dir. Danny Huston, 1988, Heritage Entertainment, US). The Night of the Iguana (dir. John Huston,1964, MGM, US). Peeping Tom (dir. Michael Powell, 1960, Michael Powell Theatre, UK). Prizzi’s Honor (dir. John Huston, 1985, ABC, US). Psycho (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1960, Shamley Productions, US). The Red Badge of Courage (dir. John Huston, 1951, MGM, US). The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (dir. John Huston, 1948, Warner Brothers, US). Under the Volcano (dir. John Huston, 1984, Conacite Uno, US/MX). A Walk with Love and Death (dir. John Huston, 1969, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Wise Blood (dir. John Huston, 1979, Anthea, US).

Nathan Abrams

41 Stanley Kubrick: Midrashic Movie Maker

American filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick (1928 – 1999) was one of the most influential directors of the twentieth century. His movies have had a lasting impact even though he was a self-taught filmmaker. Kubrick was born in New York in July 1928. His parents, Jacques and Gertrude (née Perveler) were both Jewish, but they did not practice much religion at home. Kubrick did not, for example, have a bar mitzvah; however, the traditional mourner’s Kaddish was recited at his funeral. Unable to enter college because of his low grades, Kubrick’s first job, at age seventeen, was as a photographer for Look magazine. Arguably, in terms of framing, lighting, and subject, many of the images he took influenced his later films. During this time, as an autodidact, Kubrick was pursuing his own education, reading voraciously, and seeing every movie he could, both commercial and art-house, including many foreign imports. Convinced he could make as good a movie as those he saw in the cinema, he began making films, with his first effort Fear and Desire (1953), appearing when he was just 25. He then went on to make a further dozen movies. Shortly after finishing his final film, Eyes Wide Shut in 1999, Kubrick died age seventy. Rarely thought of as a Jewish director, Kubrick never denied his ethnicity but neither did he practice any religion. Although he said very little about the subject, his Jewishness surely had a significant effect upon him, manifested, in part, by his desire to make a film about the Holocaust. Arguably, however, the impact of his ethnicity is also apparent in his films – but only obliquely, rarely explicitly – typically via analogies and metaphors that often misdirect the viewer. One could describe this style of filmmaking as “midrashic.” While Kubrick’s trademark signature style has been much discussed in many essays,¹ two overlooked aspects are his Jewishness combined with his tendency to draw attention away from it through such a strategy of misdirection.

Biblical Violence and Teaching Morality Of the thirteen feature films that Kubrick made, the one that most explicitly invokes the Bible is A Clockwork Orange (1971). Its protagonist and narrator, Alex (Malcolm McDowell) recounts in voice-over how, while in prison, he read the New Testament:

 The scholarly material on Kubrick is too voluminous to list exhaustively but an idea of its range can be found here: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/kubrick.html (accessed April , ).

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I read all about the scourging and the crowning with thorns and I could viddy [see] myself helping in and even taking charge of the tolchocking [beating] and the nailing in, being dressed in the height of Roman fashion.

However, Alex prefers the Old Testament: I didn’t so much like the latter part of the book, which is more like all preachy talking than fighting and the old in-out [sex]. I liked the parts where these old yahoodies [Jews] tolchock [beat] each other and then drink their Hebrew vino [wine], and getting onto the bed with their wives’ handmaidens. That kept me going.

Fig. 78: Alex imagines himself a biblical Hebrew in A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Accompanying the voiceover narration are images, based on Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959), of Alex, first dressed as a Roman soldier, whipping Jesus, and then as an ancient Israelite. Little comment is made on the Bible, suffice that the Hebrew Bible and, to a lesser extent, the New Testament, fuel Alex’s fantasies of violence. The sermons of the prison chaplain (Godfrey Quigley) also invoke biblical language and texts: I ask you friends. What’s it going to be then? Is it going to be in and out of institutions like this? Or more in than out for most of you? Or are you going to attend the divine word and realise the punishment that awaits unrepentant sinners in the next world as well as this. A lot of idiots you are, selling your birth right for a saucer of cold porridge. The urge to live easy. I ask you friends, is it worth it? When we have undeniable proof oh yes, my friends, incontrovertible evidence that Hell exists. I know, I know, my friends. I have been informed in visions that there is a place darker than any prison, hotter than any human flame of fire, where unrepentant criminals, sinners like yourselves… Don’t you laugh, damn you, don’t you laugh. I say like yourselves, oh, scream in endless and unendurable agony. Their nostrils choked with the smell of filth, their mouths crammed with burning ordor. Their skins rotting and peeling. A fireball spinning in their screaming guts. I know…oh yes, I know.

Here the chaplain blends the New Testament imagery of hell with a reference to Jacob and Esau. But he substitutes the biblical stew of lentils with the prison diet of porridge (Gen. 25:29 – 31). Kubrick described the prison chaplain as the moral voice of the film. It is somewhat ironic, then, that the chaplain champions a morality based on free will, as op-

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posed to the aversion therapy that Alex undergoes, yet is also practicing his own kind of aversion therapy by preaching fire and brimstone to encourage a fear-based morality.² One could argue that Kubrick is subtly critiquing the Bible and biblical religion for hypocrisy here. The chaplain’s attempt to teach morality is undermined by religion’s traditional methods, as well as its resort to violence-filled scriptures. It has also been pointed out that the chaplain is somewhat satirical and a semi-caricature. Indeed much of Kubrick’s oeuvre contains allusive digs of this type such as the suggestive name of Reverend Runt in his next film, Barry Lyndon (1975) or the linkage of explicit violence and overt Christianity in Full Metal Jacket (1987).

The Exodus and the Akedah Eleven years earlier, however, Kubrick made a film with more overt biblical parallels: Spartacus (1960). The film starred Kirk Douglas, as the eponymous gladiator, who escapes Roman enslavement in c. 71 B.C.E. to lead a band of ex-gladiators and slaves to the sea and thence, it is hoped, to freedom. In this sense, this diverse group of oppressed peoples from different lands escaping slavery at the hands of a charismatic leader resembles the biblical story of Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt (cf. Exod.12:38, “A rabble of non-Israelites went with them, along with great flocks and herds of livestock.” NLT).³ Certainly, the group of ex-slaves that Spartacus leads in the film can be described as a “rabble” of non-Israelites, and the Spanish landscapes that were used as locations for the film’s shooting appear very desertlike, suggesting wanderings in the wilderness. While some scholars have seen parallels between Spartacus and Exodus (dir. Otto Preminger, 1960),⁴ released in the same year and, similarly adapted for the screen by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, none have connected Kubrick’s film to the biblical book from which Leon Uris, the author of the novel Exodus (1958), borrowed its name. Such a reading is reinforced by the use of biblical narratives in 1950s American Cold War films, in particular The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956) and Ben Hur. Instead, as is typical for Kubrick’s films, cinema scholars have preferred to read non-Jewish Biblical analogies. Frederick Ahl, for example, writes “Spartacus is, paradoxically, full of visual symbols of Christianity yet adamantly silent about religion” (Ahl 2007, 89). A surface reading of the text certainly lends this claim credence for Spartacus is crucified at the film’s conclusion. Furthermore, the theme of self-sacrifice is also present. The key incident that sparks Spartacus’ rebellion is the death of

 This irony was pointed out to me by Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch via personal correspondence.  The NRSV renders this verse: “A mixed crowd also went up with them, and livestock in great numbers, both flocks and herds.” According to The Jewish Study Bible this indicates “non-Israelites, most likely members of other enslaved groups in Egypt. Egyptian texts and arts show the presence of such groups, including Semites and Nubians.” Berlin/Brettler (, ).  See Ahl (,  – ) and Malamud (,  – ).

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his fellow gladiator Draba (Woody Strode) and the subsequent display of his corpse. In the pivotal sequence, Draba and Spartacus are paired in the gladiatorial ring. Draba, however, is the more experienced gladiator who defeats Spartacus but refuses to kill him at the end of their duel. As Draba holds the trident to Spartacus’ throat, the latter, in close up, braces himself for death. But reverse-angle close ups on Draba’s face reveal to us his innate nobility: he is thinking of the inhumanity of what he has been forced into doing. Repeatedly taunted by the aristocratic Romans for whose pleasure he has been selected to fight (“Kill him! Kill him, you imbecile!”), Draba instead hurls his trident at Roman general/politician Crassus (Laurence Olivier) and climbs up the balustrade to attack him. He is hit by a guard’s spear in the back but manages to get a hold on Crassus’ legs. Crassus cuts the sinews between Draba’s shoulders, and the dying man falls to the ground. Rather than kill Spartacus for the Romans’ pleasure, Draba knowingly opts for a course of action that it will result in his own death. He sacrifices himself so that Spartacus can survive, despite telling him earlier in the film, “Gladiators don’t make friends. If we’re ever matched in the arena together, I’ll have to kill you.” Certainly, a superficial analysis backs up Ahl’s claim and it is possible that audiences (who were primarily Christian) might view Spartacus as a Christ-like figure. But when set against the violence of the film, some of which Spartacus was responsible for, the parallels fail to hold up. Indeed, contemporary Catholic reviewers were repulsed by what they perceived to be the film’s unnecessary brutality, sadism, and cruelty. Furthermore, self-sacrifice is not exclusively a Christian theme. More convincing is an interpretation of the film that identifies its allusions to Genesis 22. During the film’s denouement, spurned by the wife of Spartacus, Varinia (Jean Simmons), Crassus orders Spartacus and Antoninus (Tony Curtis) to fight a gladiatorial match to the death. Aware that the winner will endure an excruciating and prolonged death by crucifixion, each vows to defeat the other. Spartacus tells Antoninus that he loves him like a son and then stabs him to spare him further pain. As Margaret Burton has written, “no divine hand stays Spartacus and no ram is caught in the thicket to substitute for Antoninus. Choosing to spare Antoninus the greater suffering, Spartacus accepts for himself the more prolonged, painful death. There is no hope of redemption” (Burnton 2008, 12). Finally, another intertextual link to the akedah is provided by the crucifixion of Spartacus. In Gen. 22:6, Isaac is described as carrying the very wood on which he is to be burned. A midrash connects this to the Roman method of execution that was sometimes used on Jewish martyrs: “It is like a person who carries his cross on his own shoulder” (Bereishit Rabbah 56:3). Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) also invokes Genesis 22, particularly in its central idea of a father seeking to murder or sacrifice his son at the bidding of a higher power. God instructs Abraham: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you” (v. 2). Abraham and Isaac then journeyed for three days to Mount Moriah where, at the crucial moment, an angel stays Abraham’s hand and a ram caught in a thicket is substituted for Isaac and sacrificed.

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Abraham named that place “Yehovah ⁵-yireh” (Hebrew: “the Lord will see/look”) because “he saw Him on the mount” (v. 14). Many of The Shining’s details parallel Genesis 22. Just as God instructed Abraham, a mysterious force draws Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) to the Overlook Hotel, which sits high in the Colorado Mountains. The name “Overlook” itself suggests a Godlike higher power in its omniscience and omnipotence. One also cannot help noticing the similarity between the words “Yehovah” and “Over” and that the word “yireh” can be translated as “looked” although there is no suggestion or evidence that this was intentional on Kubrick’s part given that Stephen King coined the name of the hotel in his 1977 source novel for the film. Danny (Danny Lloyd) is Jack’s only son whom Jack tells: “I love you, Danny. I love you more than anything else in the whole world, and I’d never do anything to hurt you, never… You know that, don’t you, huh?” Midrash also states that Abraham was silent during the three-day journey. Likewise, as Jack drives his family up the mountain to the hotel, he is irritable and bad-tempered, dismissive towards Danny’s curiosity and distant from his wife. It is also suggestive, although again not necessarily intentional on Kubrick’s part, that the opening sequence lasts three minutes mirroring the three-day trip to Mount Moriah. Jewish and Christian interpreters have long struggled with the character of God as the deity is depicted in this passage. Jewish tradition constantly stresses that it was never God’s intention that Abraham kill Isaac, but rather a test to determine whether he was willing to do so. In an early form of what is today called intertextuality, the rabbis invoked other biblical sources to support this view, and multiple biblical passages condemn or prohibit outright child sacrifice as an abomination.⁶ Judah Goldin has written, “As everyone knows, nothing could be more repugnant to the God of Israel than human sacrifice” (Spiegel 1979, xiii). Yet in one midrash (Bereishit Rabba 56:7), Abraham argues with God to let him carry on and complete the sacrifice. In this reading, Abraham is carried away, almost drunk with submission; obsessed with obeying God. In this respect, he compares to Jack who is literally drunk, as well as submissive to the higher power of the Hotel that orders the “correction” of his family. But, as Paul Miers has perceived, while Jack is obedient, he is left “bellowing in the maze like an Abraham just deprived of both the son and the ram” (Miers 1980, 1366). Contra the preferred Jewish interpretation of Genesis 22, the Overlook indiscriminately demands death; if not Danny then Jack himself will do. Jack freezes to death – his frozen body, in fact, providing a lasting image at the end of the film. Thus in The Shining, Danny is spared. Instead, trapped in the maze, Jack himself becomes the proverbial ram caught in the thicket, the  Yehovah is a Hebraized version of the King James-type “Jehovah,” a misapprehension based on the Masoretic combination of the Hebrew consonants of YHVH with the vowels of “Adonai,” but not actually a form that was ever vocalized.  Exod. : – ; : – ; Deut. :; :; Lev. :; : – ;  Kgs. :; : – ; Jer. : – ; Ezek. : – ; : – ; :; Ps. : – .

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offering that The Overlook demands. If Kubrick is intentionally (or subconsciously) providing a reading of Genesis 22 in The Shining it is certainly not an orthodox one that attempts to exonerate God of evil as in the Jewish and Christian traditions. Alternatively, it could be suggested that, since the declaration of Genesis 22 is clear – “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him” (v. 12) – Jack is punished because he seeks to sacrifice his son against (the biblical) God’s wishes. The name Jack is replete with biblical allusion. Jack is short for Jacob – the morally ambiguous Israelite patriarch. In Genesis 28:10 – 18, Jacob dreams of a heavenly stairway on which angels were ascending and descending and later in Genesis 32, he wrestles with an angel and is renamed “Yisrael.” The damage caused to his thigh in this struggle causes him to limp, possessing the gait of the slow and weak. In The Shining, Jack awakens in fright from a terrifying dream in which he murders his family. The accompanying music is that of Krzysztof Penderecki’s The Awakening of Jacob suggesting an intentional connection to Jacob’s dream. The hotel’s elevator is a mechanical ladder that evokes the image of a gateway/stairway to heaven or, as in the biblical story, a site of connection between the natural and supernatural realms. Jack’s wife, Wendy (Shelly Duvall), later physically disables him, crippling his right leg. Jack’s disability is emphasized in a twelve-second uncut sideways tracking shot as he drags his limp foot while pursuing his son. Like Jacob, the now monstrous Jack has been physically altered as a result of his encounter with a supernatural being.

Creation and Odyssey Yet the film that has invited most biblical speculation is Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). It is possibly Kubrick’s most elliptical film, which he described as “the first six-million dollar religious film” (Baxter 1997, 210). He also insisted that “the God concept” lay at the heart of the film and that he had tried to achieve “a scientific definition of God.”⁷ Paradoxically, 2001 has been variously interpreted as both as Kubrick’s most secular and most religious film. Certainly, its religiosity, or lack of it, has been picked up by critics and scholars alike but their interpretations have been overwhelmingly Christian. For example, at the end of the film, when the aging and dying body of astronaut David Bowman (Keir Dullea) is transformed into the Star-Child and sent back to Earth from whence he came, many have read this as analogizing the Second Coming of Christ.⁸ However, such analysis misses the clearly Jewish parallels invoked in the whole film, in particular its final sequence. An alternative approach reveals a distinctly Jewish understanding of the universe, especially in its use of imagery drawn from Hebrew scriptures, as well as Jewish liturgy. Divided into four clear sections, the film  See Gelmis (, ) and Naremore (, ).  Such an interpretation is noted in Krämer ().

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automatically mirrors the Judaic approach to biblical interpretation known as “Pardes.” Pardes is an acronym for Peshat (plain/simple); Remez (hint); Derash (to inquire/seek); and Sod (secret/mystery), which seeks to penetrate a text through four layers of seeing. In what can be noted as a first coincidence, the number four punctuates the film. Carolyn Geduld (1973) goes as far as to say that “Kubrick seems to be fascinated by the number four” (Geduld 1973, 34). She continues: 2001, which took four years to complete is divided into four episodes, covers four million years, have four heroes (ape, scientist, machine, astronaut), concerns four evolutions (man, machine, alien, the universe), uses the music of four composers (the two Strausses, Ligeti, and Katchaturian), and is dominated by a four-sided rectangle that appears on screen four times. The number four crops up ritualistically throughout the film, something not accounted for by Clarke. It creates an obsessively rhythmic force in the film. (Geduld 1973, 35)

One could also add here the number of words in the title and the four digits of 2001. Each of the four sections of 2001 is laden with symbols, which can be decoded in terms of biblical imagery. Part one of 2001, or Peshat, evokes Genesis, especially chapters 1– 3, which recount the story of Creation and the Garden of Eden. 2001 begins with an extended black screen lasting three minutes and 17 seconds, only punctuated by the MGM logo, before the moon and sun become visible rising over the curve of the blue-black earth. Thus, as is described in Genesis 1:1– 3: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” – the very cinema itself moves from darkness, formlessness, and void to light. As Geduld put it, “This is the film’s Garden of Eden” and “Shot in total silence and without a sign of movement or life, the vista has the Old Testament flavour of, say, the third morning of creation, when the land had been separated from the waters, but before the ‘dawn’ of even plant life.”⁹ The next segment of the sequence, entitled the “Dawn of Man,” traces the evolution of consciousness from ape to human. It depicts prehistoric apes acquiring intelligence and hence learning to kill as a result of alien intervention. This intervention takes the form of a black rectangular monolith (recalling the various stone monoliths erected in the Bible), which the apes touch. This echoes Genesis 3:7, “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” Open eyes here connote enhanced knowledge or intelligence (the mind’s eye), moving the man and woman beyond childhood innocence. The subsequent image of the ape smashing an animal’s thigh bone onto the skull of a rival ape leader invokes not only the story of Cain and Abel (Burnette-Bletsch

 Geduld (, ). See also Burnette-Bletsch (,  – ).

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Fig. 79: A monolith imparts knowledge to apes 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

2012, 5), but also that of Judges 15:15 in which Samson grabs the first chance object that came to his hand and uses it as a weapon: “Then he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached down and took it, and with it he killed a thousand men.” That the murder weapon is a thighbone again invokes Jacob’s (Israel’s) struggle with the angel (Gen. 32:25). In part two, Remez, we penetrate deeper into the mystery of the movie when a second monolith is found buried on the moon. But this section only yields up hints or clues. Dr. Heywood Floyd (Heywood Sylvester) flies in the ships Orion (a hunter, resembling Esau, the brother of Jacob – one of the crew members on board the Discovery is named Dr. Charles Hunter) and the Lunar Transfer Vehicle Aries 1-B (ram – alluding to the sacrificial victim of the akedah). In part three, labelled “Jupiter Mission: 18 Months Later,” we enter the realm of midrash. Eighteen months later, the spaceship Discovery – derash means to seek or inquire – is on an international space mission to Jupiter. Eighteen in Hebrew (vav, chet) is equivalent in numeric value to “life” (chai). The Discovery is run by a supercomputer named HAL 9000. Whatever the precise meaning of “HAL,” unlike the initial draft suggestion of “ATHENA,” the name had the advantage of not being explicitly anchored in any one specific religious (or any other) tradition. Reflecting the biblical tradition, however, HAL has been “created in our image” (Burnette-Bletsch 2012, 6). Furthermore, HAL’s lack of physical form, omnipotence, and omniscience, as well as control over life and death, suggest higher godlike powers; and HAL certainly exercises a godlike power over the crew of the Discovery, regulating their life-support systems and ultimately killing all but one of them. Like the biblical God, HAL is “by any practical definitions of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.” HAL can also be read as invoking one of the biblical names for God, corresponding to the Hebrew letters he (h), aleph (a) and lamed (l). In this respect, it is significant that HAL detects a fault in the AE-35 communications unit. In Gematria, the number 35 is represented by letters lamed and he. In Genesis 1:1– 2:3, which recounts the seven days of creation, the word “God” occurs exactly thirty-five times and the section devoted to narrating the seventh day has exactly thirty-five words in Hebrew (Berlin/Brettler 1999, 12). Furthermore, HAL is a twin of a computer

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back at Mission Control in Houston, invoking Genesis 1:26 when God says “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (emphasis added). In a change from Clarke’s story on which the film was based, the lead astronaut is named David (“Dave”) Bowman invoking his biblical namesake, the shepherd boy who slew Goliath and succeeded Saul as Israel’s second king. Bow-man, which many have read as representing Odysseus’ archer, also suggests David’s ability to play a bow harp. Furthermore, Dave plays chess against HAL. Both Midrash and Jewish myth suggest that the biblical king Solomon played chess but does not say from whom he learned it. Perhaps it was from this father – King David (Ginzburg 1913, 172– 73). HAL can also be likened to the Goliath whom David slew in the Bible. Incidentally, Jacob is again obliquely evoked when David unsuccessfully attempts to fool HAL, thinking he can only hear but not see, just as Jacob deceived his blind father Isaac. The fourth and final section of the film, “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite,” correlates to Sod, that is, the mystical or hidden meaning of a text. It is surely no coincidence that this is the most oblique and mysterious section of the film. This sequence depicts Bowman knocking a crystal wineglass to the floor. The shards of glass evoke the closing of a Jewish marriage ceremony and its memory of the suffering of past generations and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E. In fact, Arthur C. Clarke, who recognized this Jewish allusion, suggested, “Stanley was listening to his inner deamons [sic] at the time and they may have been telling him, ‘What’s a nice Jewish boy like you doing in a place like this’” (Clarke). It is also by no means insignificant that the final words uttered in the film are “total mystery.” 2001 can be said to mark Kubrick having taken a “religious turn” after 1967. After all it was with the making of the film that Kubrick chose to grow a beard, achieving the rabbinic look that he would retain for the rest of his life. This religious turn, however, was not manifested in any traditional or conventional religious belief or practice. Kubrick’s definition of God may have been scientific, but in a classic piece of Kubrickian misdirection, it was still very much rooted in Judaism. Furthermore, given that 2001 marked Kubrick’s permanent shift to color film, the directorial pattern within the film could also be said to provide the template for understanding the remainder of his oeuvre.

Conclusion Just as with the Bible, in Kubrick’s films nothing is rendered easily or lightly and the viewer has to work hard to decode deeper meanings. Consequently, many (quasi-religious) commentaries have arisen interpreting his oeuvre from a myriad of perspectives. However, hitherto, scholars, critics, and fans alike have been all too willing to ignore Kubrick’s own origins and ethnicity which surely played a part in shaping his view of the world. Kubrick may not have been a religious man, but the religious framework of Jewishness and Judaism that surrounded him – however diluted – in-

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fluenced his films. This is most clearly rendered through a midrashic style of filmmaking, which incorporated extensive biblical imagery. A longer essay could clearly take into account other symbolism, including snakes, Lilith, Eve, rainbows, and much more, for which there was not space here.

Works Cited Ahl, Frederick. 2007. “Spartacus, Exodus, and Dalton Trumbo: Managing Ideologies of War.” In Spartacus: Film and History. Ed. Martin M. Winkler. Malden, Mass. and Oxford: Blackwell. Pp. 65 – 86. Baxter, John. 1997. Stanley Kubrick: A Biography. New York: Westview Press. Berlin, Adele, and Brettler, Marc Zvi, eds. 1999. The Jewish Study Bible. New York: Oxford University Press. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda. 2012. “2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).” In Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films. Ed. Adele Reinhartz. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 3 – 8. Burton, Margaret. 2008. “Performances of Jewish Identity: Spartacus.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 27.1: 1 – 15. Clarke, Arthur C. 2000. 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968]. New York: Penguin. Clarke, Arthur C. “Annotated Book Interviews, 1968 – 1970.” SK/1/2/8/10/2, The Stanley Kubrick Archives, Archives and Special Collections, University of the Arts, London. Geduld, Carolyn. 1973. Filmguide to 2001: A Space Odyssey. London and Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. Gelmis, Joseph. 1970. The Film Director as Superstar. New York: Doubleday. Ginzburg, Louis. 1913. The Legends of the Jews. Vol. 4. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. King, Stephen. 2012. The Shining [1977]. New York: Anchor. Krämer, Peter. “‘Dear Mr.Kubrick’: Audience Responses to 2001: A Space Odyssey in the Late 1960s.” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 6.2: http://www.partic ipations.org/Volume%206/Issue%202/special/kramer.htm; accessed March 2, 2015. Malamud, Margaret. 2007. “Cold War Romans.” Arion, 3rd Series 14.3: 121 – 54. Miers, Paul. 1980. “The Black Maria Rides Again: Being a Reflection on the Present State of American Film with Special Respect to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.” Modern Language Notes 95.5: 1360 – 66. Naremore, James. 2007. On Kubrick. London: BFI. Spiegel, Shalom. 1958. The Last Trial. Transl. Judah Goldin. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. Uris, Leon. 1958. Exodus. New York: Doubleday.

Films Cited 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968, MGM, US/UK). Barry Lyndon (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1975, Peregrine, UK/US). Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959, MGM, US). A Clockwork Orange (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1971, Warner Brothers, UK/US). Exodus (dir. Otto Preminger, 1960, Carlyle Productions, US). Eyes Wide Shut (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1999, Warner Brothers, US/UK). Fear and Desire (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1953, Kubrick Family, US).

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Full Metal Jacket (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1987, Natant, UK/US). The Shining (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1980, Warner Brothers, UK/US). Spartacus (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1960, Bryna Productions, US). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956, Paramount, US).

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42 In the Wake of the Bible: Krzysztof Kieślowski and the Residual Divine in Contemporary Life Among filmmakers, Krzysztof Kieślowski (June 27, 1941– March 13, 1996) stands as one of the greatest of the late twentieth century. Though he disavowed any official religious affiliation, he still believed that metaphysical questions animate contemporary thinking and life, even in a post-secular Europe. His films often exude a deep and intentional theological curiosity and important biblical themes suffuse his work: fate/chance, presence/absence, predestination/free will, etc. Some of his works even enter into explicit conversations with biblical texts and their possible meanings in the modern context of Polish and broader European society. To understand Kieślowski’s treatment of the biblical tradition, we must first situate this Polish filmmaker and his work within their historical and cultural context.

Context of Reception Kieślowski was born on June 27, 1941, in Nazi-occupied Warsaw.¹ Hitler had betrayed Stalin and taken Poland as his own that very month, and, so, Kieślowski grew up amid the fresh wounds of occupation, war, and genocide. Soviet oppression characterized most of his experience. In addition, constant transition, rootlessness, and trauma characterized Kieślowski’s youth, as his father suffered from tuberculosis, forcing the family to move constantly from sanatorium to sanatorium (Insdorf 1999, 7). He finally died from the disease when Kieślowski was in college, studying theater. Kieślowski eventually gained entrance into the famed Lódź film school, where he discovered the full range of Western films and studied under several Polish cinematic luminaries, including the documentarian Kazimierz Karabasz. Like most Poles of his generation, Kieślowski was raised a Catholic, and the faith offered an alternate narrative to state propaganda. This religious influence, combined with his socio-political context, convinced Kieślowski of the reality of evil and doubtless contributed to his darker view of human nature and overall pessimism about society. In an early artistic manifesto, he writes of “fighting evil” through filmmaking (Garbowski 1996, 4). Later in life, when asked about the root of evil, he intimated that it might emerge from basically good people who find themselves unable “to bring about the good” (Stok 1993, 118, 135). Many of Kieślowski’s characters find themselves in ethical dilemmas, where the “good” course of action is obscured or indiscernible.

 For a more extensive biography, see Insdorf () and the first chapter of Kickasola ().

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It is not clear when Kieślowski left his childhood faith behind, but numerous interviews suggest that he vacillated on the question of God throughout his life. He never outright denied God’s existence, but often appeared cautious about theological claims; for instance, in one interview he evasively said, “I’m not a non-believer” (Coates 2003, 60). He did, however, more resolutely affirm ideals that often flow from belief in God’s existence, such as an overarching purpose to existence (Coates 1999, 116, 117).

Biblical Dialogues and Religious Themes in Kieślowski’s Films Kieślowski made numerous documentaries in his early career, before moving to feature films in the mid-1970s. The documentaries and the early features could be labeled “political,” in the broadest sense, as they engaged the everyday concerns and issues of Polish life: the plight of the ordinary Polish citizen, human rights, the nature of reality, and the necessity of morality. The politically active Catholics he encountered often became his friends, and one such friendship proved incredibly important: the activist lawyer, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, began to collaborate with him in the early 1980s and co-wrote nearly all of Kieślowski’s screenplays from 1984 – 1996. Kieślowski’s early fictional efforts deployed a “realist” aesthetic, as he attempted to search out the “truth” of his subjects. They often looked like documentaries (handheld camera, natural lighting, naturalistic and/or amateur actors, etc.) and typically featured contemporary stories of ordinary Polish protagonists who faced ethical challenges and questions in Communist Poland (e. g. Życiorys, 1975, a.k.a. Life Story; Personel, 1975, a.k.a. Personnel; Blizna, 1976, a.k.a. The Scar; Spokój, 1976, a.k.a. The Calm). More often than not, these men and women failed to rise to the challenge or find answers. Amator (1979, a.k.a. Camera Buff), for instance, features a young father who obtains a film camera to document his new daughter’s childhood. Despite all his best intentions, he “gains the world” (through artistic success) and “loses his soul” (in the form of broken ties to his community, his roots, and his family). Przypadek (1981, a.k.a. Blind Chance) would prove influential on many later films (particularly in its “forking path narrative” structure), as the life of the protagonist, Witek, is rendered in three radically different versions, all hinging on his seemingly trivial attempt to catch a train. The future for all these “Witeks” appears unpromising, at best, but Bez konca (1984, No End) would prove an even darker film, engaging tragic death, political crisis and oppression in Solidarity-era Poland, as well as spiritual torment through the story of a young widow. Though religious figures appear in most of these films and are typically presented sympathetically, they are ultimately powerless to help us navigate around evil, right the wrongs, or avoid a tragic end. In short, the filmmaker does not scorn religious hope, but there is a lingering, existential dread that it will disappoint us.

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Ten Commandments for Twentieth-Century Poland² In the late 1980s, Kieślowski’s Catholic co-writer, Piesiewicz, suggested he should think about writing a ten-film series, based on the biblical Ten Commandments. “A terrible idea,” he responded. Later, after a thoughtful walk around Warsaw, observing “people who didn’t know why they were living,” he began to think Piesiewicz was right (Stok 1993, 143). Originally produced in 1988 and aired as a TV miniseries in 1989 – 90, not long before the fall of Communism, Dekalog (The Decalogue) marks a watershed moment in Kieślowski’s career, stylistically, politically, thematically, and historically. In addition to a more adventurous aesthetic and humanist thematic scope, Kieślowski began to more fully invest in the aforementioned theological themes that would characterize the rest of the films in his career. In The Decalogue, Kieślowski used the biblical commandments – ordered in the Roman Catholic tradition, not the typical Protestant numbering – to demarcate human existential arenas of ethics, choice, and philosophical concerns. He did not approach the stories as Christian parables, much less pedagogical illustrations of the commandments. Rather, he used the themes that each command engenders as the basis for a story of existential ethical choice for a set of characters, all of whom are united by residence in one single apartment complex in late twentiethcentury Warsaw. As a common people, in a common place, they stand as a microcosm of humanity. Unlike Kieślowski’s early films, this series holds a mixture of positive and negative feelings about religious hope, and stands as something like a negotiation with the biblical God of both law and grace. These themes are sometimes very directly derived from the commandments, and others times connect with the biblical directives more obliquely. Each theme, however, forms the situation around which an approximately one-hour drama turns with the title signified by a Roman numeral. I tackles the problem of evil head-on. A father, Krzysztof (Kieślowski’s own name, we note), is a college professor, and an agnostic biological materialist. His son, Pawel, is more spiritually inquisitive and open. The film traces their delightful relationship, as well as that of Pawel and his devoutly Catholic aunt, Krzysztof’s sister. Conversations with loved ones and other pedestrian events inform Pawel’s spiritual inquiries into the meaning of life and death. He loves ice skating, and his father confirms, in numerous ways (including scientific calculation, hands on testing, reliance on experts) that the ice on the pond is thick enough to skate upon. The next day, without any obvious explanation, the ice breaks, and Pawel’s lifeless body is eventually pulled from the pond. The entire community kneels in prayer, save Krzysztof, who remains standing, shell-shocked. This judgment on breaking the first commandment (“I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, you shall have no other gods before me…” cf. Exod. 20:1– 6; Deut. 5:6 – 10) appears to  Compare the discussion of this series in Koosed’s chapter on Moses films in Part I (Pp.  – ).

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be extraordinarily harsh, and the father’s god – science, reason – has failed him. Yet, the final images of the film suggest divine commiseration, and some hints that faith may be possible. In his grief, Krzysztof staggers to the church, where he overturns the altar. The commotion ruptures candles above the Madonna’s portrait, and the wax hits the icon below the eyes, like tears. Krzysztof pulls a chunk of frozen holy water from the baptismal and touches it to his forehead. The film ends with the aunt weeping before a television image of Pawel running, slow motion, out of the frame. II gives us a jaded, bitter old doctor, a pregnant woman, named Dorota, and her comatose husband. We soon learn the baby to be born is from an affair, and Dorota is trying to determine whether she should abort the baby, as it may be her last chance to have a child. If her husband dies, she will keep the child and live with her lover. If he lives, she will abort the child and hide the truth of the pregnancy. Her decision is tangled up in her complicated feelings for both prospective fathers, as well as her attempts to determine the likelihood of her husband’s recovery. In this episode, the prohibition against taking the Lord’s name in vain (cf. Exod. 20:7; Deut. 5:11) becomes a meditation on marriage vows in God’s name as well as identity, deriving from the question of who will “father” the child. The film stands as the most strained command-film relationship in the series, and yet it might be the one that holds out the most theological hope. Here, in this rather particular commandment, Kieślowski and Piesiewicz located a larger, more universal question: to what degree are we defined by others who would “name” us and decide our fate? Within this context, our ability to predict and decide things ethically is questioned. Dorota wants the doctor to give an absolute pronouncement on her husband’s future. He adamantly refuses. When pushed, he seems to finally proclaim that the husband will die. Ironically, she then cuts off her relationship with her lover, and begins consistently visiting her comatose husband in the hospital. Her deep affection for him and desperate wish for his recovery becomes evident. Against all odds, the man recovers. It remains ambiguous whether the doctor had manipulated the situation or not (possibly motivated by his own tragic backstory), but it becomes clear that this apparent miracle has saved everyone: mother, father, child. That said, the road ahead for them is far from easy. In III, the concept of the Sabbath day (cf. Exod. 20:8-11; Deut. 5:12-15) is transferred to a more broad and familiar “holy day”: Christmas Eve. To keep this day “holy” (i. e., to conform to the norms associated with this special day), Janusz must stay home with his family. However, his former lover, Ewa, a vengeful and aggressive woman, has other plans for him. Her false story – that her lover is missing and she needs Janusz to help her find him – is the pretext for keeping him with her that entire evening. It becomes apparent that Janusz is aware of the manipulation going on, but he plays along for reasons that aren’t immediately clear. The evening becomes an odyssey of self-discovery for them. They face danger (a near accident), confront evil in others (including a maniacal and cruel jailer), and overturn all the issues of their past relationship. Throughout, Janusz remains faithful to his wife,

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and when morning comes Ewa reveals that she had planned on suicide that night, but his presence with her that evening stayed her hand. In unexpected ways, Christmas morning truly brings redemption, and they part with smiles and resolution. Kieślowski has taken a particular command from the Jewish world and found its ethical core: to consecrate specific time for God. Though nothing in the evening suggested this was happening, in the end, given the redemption and healing that occurred, perhaps it was. Honoring one’s father and mother requires understanding your relationship to them and understanding the sanctity of authority (cf. Exod. 20:12; Deut. 5:16). IV urges us to consider familial and social relationships as regulators of identity, but also to maintain that such sociological structures are really not excuses to avoid solid moral choices. Michał and his daughter, Anna, must rethink their close and affectionate relationship after she discovers a letter from her late mother, casting doubt on his paternity. Michał and Anna take turns, throughout the episode, admitting to the complexities of their feelings for each other. Anna reveals numerous problems relating to men throughout her life, including the revelation that she had undergone an abortion early on. Both wonder if they ought to consider becoming lovers, but, in the end, Michał ends this wondering, declaring it impossible. Anna awakes the next morning to find him gone, but her fears of abandonment are allayed when she sees him out the window, having only gone to buy milk, like any good father would. She runs after him, embraces him, calls him “Dad,” and admits that she never actually read the letter left for her, but only assumed what was in it as a type of searching test of their relationship. Together, their relationship bolstered, they burn the original letter, unread. Our fragmentary view of the burning text suggests, in fact, Anna’s instincts were correct, but we now know that true fatherhood transcends biology. In V, the commandment (“You shall not kill,” Exod. 20:13; Deut. 5:17) finds embodiment in the seemingly random encounter of two men, one of whom viciously and unsparingly kills the other for no apparent reason. Yet, in typical Kieślowskian fashion, the story then flips: the second half of the film focuses upon the murderer’s trial and execution by the state, presented with the same dispassionate, clinical, and merciless detail as the original crime. In raising the issue of the death penalty – the most overtly “political” issue raised in this otherwise non-political series – Kieślowski suggests that morality is never as easy as identifying “bad people” (who very clearly exist in Kieślowski’s universe) and “good people” (who are harder to find in his films). Throughout V, there is no excusing or avoiding the profound evil of the first killing, but the unflinching depiction of the second killing (the execution, overseen by a priest, politicians, and other authorities) brings to light a dark reality often hidden by modern societal institutions. Thus, Kieślowski raises the question of whether the commandment condemns all killing: state executions as well as individual killings. Two damaged, needy, sexually dysfunctional people negotiate what love might actually be in VI (“You shall not commit adultery,” Exod. 20:14; Deut. 5:18). Adultery and voyeurism are common enough cinematic themes, partly because the cinema it-

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self is a type of voyeurism (an unhindered looking, without the normal consequences of doing so), and we, the viewers, are implicated. Kieślowski tips his hat to Hitchcock’s famous voyeuristic film Rear Window (1954) in this story of Tomek, a teenage peeping Tom with a telescope, and Magda, the object of his gaze across the apartment complex. Magda is an artist with a sexually loose reputation (cf. the tradition that develops around the biblical Magdalene), and Tomek seems utterly consumed with the parade of men going in and out of her apartment. Beginning with the trappings of a B-grade movie about obsession, Kieślowski then subverts all those generic expectations. It turns out that both Tomek and Magda are desperately looking for something more permanent and lasting than sexual titillation, or the shallow power that voyeurism or exhibitionism can yield. The film chronicles how Tomek wishes to love Magda apart from her sexuality, and how Magda is suspicious of the notion of love entirely. They spend a fair amount of time manipulating each other, and eventually Tomek is driven to humiliation, despair, and a suicide attempt. Magda is deeply moved and regretful, and watches for Tomek’s recovery, but the film ends with his final declaration that their relationship is over: “I’m no longer spying on you.” Though neither of these characters are married, and no sexual act between them really consummates, Kieślowski takes the complexities of contemporary lives, full of confusions, isolation, and hidden desires, and drives them back to the heart of the commandment: the sanctity of sexual love. Indeed, the longer version of this film is called A Short Film about Love (1988), and ends much more happily.³ If Jesus expounded on the commandment as being more than just a sexual act, but also lustful “looking,” thoughts and feelings as well (Matt. 5:27), Kieślowski here also expands the positive ideal standing behind the command: the advocation of a truly mutual, embodied, and intimate bond that endures. The commandment serves as “ground zero” for all of contemporary life’s desires and confusions regarding the sexual bonds between people. VII, arguably the weakest episode of this otherwise exceptional series, problematizes the concept of possession by focusing not on the ownership of an object but rather on the possession of identities and relationships (cf. Exod. 20:15; Deut. 5:19). In this case, the possession really counts: a young child, Ania, whose mother’s true identity has been hidden from her in plain sight. Initially, the grandmother, Ewa, was well intentioned in taking on the role of “mother” and relegating the underage mother, Majka, to role of “sister.” Of course, bitter possessiveness and horrendous ethical tangles eventually arise. The child’s bonds with her “mother” Ewa must be considered, as well as the rights of the biological mother Majka. By revealing the secret to the child, are they stealing Ania’s “mother” from her again, to rectify the original

 In that film, the ending features Magda awaiting Tomek’s recovery and receiving a vision of them through Tomek’s telescope. Across the apartment complex, she sees herself crying, and Tomek comes to comfort her.

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theft of the child? Kieślowski offers no definitive answer, and numerous strands of guilt, failure, and responsibility form a vexing knot at the center of the film. After failing in her plan to run away to Canada with the child and the biological father, Majka jumps on a train and flees the situation. She leaves her bewildered daughter on the platform with the only family she has ever known. Majka loses a child, as well as her own parents. VIII suggests that lying, even ethical deceit for the protection of others, must ultimately come to light (cf. Exod. 20:16; Deut. 5:20). Here Kieślowski presents the story of a woman, Zofia, who faced impossible choices while trying resist the Nazis and secretly provide refuge to Jews. She went on to become a philosopher of ethics, as a means of working through the ethical horrors she had faced. A young Jewish child, Elżbieta – whom Zofia might have saved but did not – unexpectedly reappears many years later, and wants some answers. Throughout the film, the full complexity of the original ethical situation is slowly revealed: what seemed to be obvious abandonment is shown to be a very frightening and dangerous situation for all involved. It turns out that the little girl’s adoptive family, to whom Zofia was charged with delivering her, was allegedly collaborating with the Gestapo, and so contact with them would bring down the entire Underground movement. In yet another twist, that situation is later revealed as having been based on misinformation, a “false witness” against a family that proved utterly consequential to everyone involved. In the end, however, the film is largely about grace, forgiveness, and giving the benefit of the doubt to the ethically vexed. Though Zofia and Elżbieta’s efforts to contact and reconcile with the falsely accused man prove fruitless, Zofia and Elżbieta establish reconciliation between them as the war-scarred man looks on at them. The prohibition in IX (“You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife…” Exod. 20:17; Deut. 5:21), might have been a straightforward story of a philandering husband named Roman. However, this protagonist gives his wife, Hanna, permission to cheat on him when he discovers he is impotent. His surprising feelings of anger and jealousy reveal something of his true feelings and desires for his spouse. At the same time, while not entirely innocent of adultery herself, Hanna ironically and desperately struggles to make her way back to faithfulness in her marriage to Roman. After a failed suicide attempt, partly driven by his suspicion that Hanna is not sincere about reconciliation, Roman calls home to find her there, looking for him. This graceful ending suggests that people sometimes surprise us with goodness, despite many reasons to behave otherwise. If the first episode opened with a horrific demonstration of the “curse” of the law, and the dire consequences of veering from it, the final Decalogue episode ends with a note of grace (however tinged with dark humor). In X, two brothers discover that their recently deceased father has left them joint possession of an exceptionally valuable stamp collection. Their joy turns to envy, defensiveness, suspicion, and all manner of hilarious and irrational behavior as they seek to safeguard their personal fortunes from others, and then each other. Coveting another man’s possessions is shown to be more than just “wanting more”; it is often but a desperate core

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desire to feed one’s ego, protect oneself to an absurd degree, and exercise power over virtually everyone else – even loved ones (cf. Exod. 20:17; Deut. 5:21). In the end, they lose everything they sought to protect, but gain a renewed relationship with each other.

Fig. 80 and Fig. 81: Anonymous Observer in The Decalogue series

Throughout all the episodes (save X), an anonymous character quietly observes the inhabitants of this apartment complex. He looks knowingly, listens, sometimes cries, and often sympathizes. Kieślowski refused to define this character – preferring simply to call him “The Young Man” in the scripts. The filmmaker later stated “He’s not very pleased with us,” and in the screenplay wrote: “It is the same man who sat around the fire in the first story, who stood in the hospital corridor in the second story, and who will continue to appear, forever” (Kieślowski/Piesiewicz 1991, 111). The actor playing him (Artur Barciś) apparently thought of him as Christ, and Kieślowski reportedly told Barciś to play the character “as if you were five centimeters off the ground” (Garbowski 1996, 18).

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Humanism and the Pauline Love Hymn After this sustained dialogue with the biblical commandments, Kieślowski made La double vie de Véronique (1991, The Double Life of Veronique), a doppelgänger story with significant theological resonance, followed by a trilogy of films, structured around a humanistic creed: the French motto Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity (symbolized in the colors that form the films’ titles: Bleu/Blue, Blanc/White, and Rouge/ Red). In keeping with the more global, humanistic approach to his work since The Decalogue series, these films explore these ideals as universal goals and zones of universal spiritual struggle. Trois couleurs: Bleu (1993) most explicitly engages in dialogue with the biblical text. It features a woman shattered by grief over the death of her husband and daughter. While trying to cut herself off from everything in her past life, fragments of her husband’s music sporadically intrude upon her. These musical phrases, written for an unfinished concerto for the Unification of Europe, become a rich symbolic ground for the film, representing what Julie cannot ignore or leave behind, and what she must build upon for the future. After a time of extended anguish, she decides to help Olivier (her husband’s musical collaborator) to finish the concerto, and several mysterious hints have been given that Julie may have been an uncredited co-composer of the work. So, the quest to complete “her husband’s” unfinished musical work becomes something more: a finished work that does not bear a single author, representing healing and redemption on several levels (with her husband, and “unification” in Europe, a theme the war-torn people of Poland could appreciate). Near the mid-point of the film, at a time when Julie is at her most desperate and considering suicide, she pulls an old Bible off a shelf, and opens it to Paul’s ode to love in 1 Corinthians 13 and names it as the text her husband intended for the final movement of the concerto. This brief encounter with the scripture is cut off, ironically, by discussion of her late husband’s infidelity. Yet, as Julie heals, she turns to completing the concerto with Olivier at film’s end. In this powerful story, the scripture, expressed through the remarkable score (of Zbigniew Preisner), forms the peak of the story, highlighting the efforts of numerous characters to find physical, emotional, and spiritual “liberty” in their individual circumstances. The inspiring words on love and all its many virtues triumphantly thunder over a gliding, seamless, and nearly timeless revisitation of the primary characters in the film. All struggled for liberty in some way or another, and love is presented as a hopeful key to their situations. Julie and Olivier are shown making love. With Julie having found the ability to love again, her earlier, blatantly meaningless encounter with Olivier is redeemed. The camera then reveals other characters in the film, some of them questioning, some lost, some hopeful. For instance, Lucille, the stripper and social outcast whom Julie befriended, sits in the strip club, looking terribly sober and pensive. A camera tilt then jumps time and space to an image of new life arising in a sonogram, a child for Julie’s husband’s mistress. This child, the sonogram metaphorically notes, has four, fully functioning

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chambers in his heart, and an expression of wonder washes over the new mother’s face. Finally, we see a close-up on an eye, symmetrical to the eye that greeted us after the great catastrophe that initiated the film. This time another figure is reflected: Julie, with her naked back turned toward the subject. We do not know who possesses the eye; perhaps it is Olivier, perhaps God. Most likely, it is Julie herself, seeing her own image, turned away from herself (i. e., a selfless giving away) and now, for the first time, truly beholding herself with healing objectivity. The final close-up reveals her crying, facing the world through the window. In the context of 1 Corinthians 13, which we have heard throughout this sequence, we realize that all life, and all hope, all possibility of redemption, is undergirded by love. While the other two films in this trilogy do not explicitly cite a biblical text, they nonetheless touch upon biblical themes. Trois couleurs: Blanc (1994) is a farce that takes place in post-communist Poland, where a young pathetic hairdresser, Karol, who has nothing, gains everything through capitalistic ambition, forgetting or ignoring anything of spiritual substance, and then loses it all once again. This satire on the follies of blind ambition and avarice also serves as a lighthearted reminder that “Equality” is not simply a matter of “getting even.” Likewise, the image of the protagonist combing his hair in the reflection of a religious icon reminds us that spiritual downfall is often a matter of distraction rather than active volition. It is worth noting, however, that the film ends with Karol and his wife, Dominique, professing love for each other, even after an entire film’s worth of vengeful acts towards each other. Trois couleurs: Rouge (1994) tells the story of a very unlikely (and redeeming) “fraternity” between a young fashion model in Switzerland and an old, socially ostracized retired jurist who lives alone. The Judge stews in bitterness over his past, and spies on his neighbors. In his quasi-omniscience and his past life as a judge, the man can be seen as a former idealist stymied by the Pauline “curse of the law” (Gal. 3:13), and in need of encounter with faith, hope, and love (1 Cor. 13:13). At the same time, we note this imperfect and contemptible character’s God-like qualities: how he seems to know when things will happen, manipulates things behind the scenes, and understands people’s secret motives. Though a fully metaphorical or allegorical reading of the Judge should probably be avoided, Kieślowski does seem to be considering how the divine is entangled (or, sometimes, seemingly disengaged) from human affairs. Stylistically, Rouge is one of the most formally adventurous of his films, capping a trend (beginning with The Decalogue) that moved from realist, documentary style to formalist experimentation. Throughout this film, as with nearly all his feature films, themes of ethical choice and human agency mingle with intimations of predestination, fate, and the uncanny. Rouge ends with some of the most forthright expressions of grace in Kieślowski’s oeuvre, including the seemingly miraculous rescue of the few survivors of a tragic shipwreck: characters from Bleu (Julie) and Blanc (Karol

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and his unfaithful-yet-reconciled wife Dominique), as well as Valentine and the man (her neighbor) whom the film has suggests might be the love she has always sought. Even after announcing retirement after Rouge, Kieślowski set to work on another trilogy, structured on concepts from Catholic doctrine: Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. However, he tragically died while in heart surgery on May 13, 1996, at 54 years old. The first two screenplay ideas – both incomplete – were filled out by Piesiewicz and made into films after Kieślowski’s death (Heaven, dir. Tom Tykwer, 2002, and L’enfer, dir. Danis Tanović, 2005, Hell).

Spotlight on Form: The Decalogue Though religion weaves its way explicitly and implicitly throughout most of his films, we must not lose sight of the fact that Kieślowski treated religious concepts existentially first, as things to be lived through before they were ideas to be rationalized. His sensual approach to the cinema suited itself to this view, and so we would do well to sample a scene, in order to see how he utilized cinematic forms to both situate theological ideas in his stories and animate them in the lives of his characters and the imaginations of his viewers. An in-depth formal investigation of the opening shots to I (indeed, the inaugural images of The Decalogue) illuminate how cinematic form is used to engender theologically-resonant experiences that prove essential for understanding the entire series. The film opens with the sound of hollow wind, groaning over a close-up shot of water, partly frozen. The image is very abstract, with only a few reeds present to signal that we are looking at a natural form of some kind. The right side of the frame moves in an abstract flow, while inert ice packs the left side. The contrast is heavy and dark, particularly over the moving water on the right, and the overall image holds a green, mucky tint. This dichotomous image speaks directly to the story of the film of course, as the ice will play a key role in the overall plot, and the drab, uninviting visual scene sets an appropriately somber tone. But we must also see this as the sort of liminal image at which Kieślowski excels,⁴ and its importance here, inaugurating the entire series, cannot be understated. Here, between states of matter, the water shows two simultaneous dimensions that echo other dichotomies that characterize the whole of religious life: immanent/transcendent, life/ death, sin/redemption, law/grace. In addition, the laws themselves have a dramatic duality of effect: they can yield both life and death. We note that Kieślowski does not say all this, but gives viewers occasions to feel it more directly. In fact, there is precious little dialogue at all in the first few minutes of the film. Rather, he presents us with a series of experiences, which we assemble

 For a fuller articulation of the liminal image see chapters  and  of Kickasola (). In short, the idea is that Kieślowski utilizes images of liminality to evoke a view of the immanent/transcendent tension in human life. He seeks a metaphysical view, from immanent, material ground.

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together as both semiotic meanings and experiential meanings that resonate in our bodies. We know the feeling of ice, hovering on the edge of breaking, just as we know the tensions of spiritual life, between despair and hope, temptation and sin, death and life. We understand that the law (i. e., the idea of a divinely revealed ethical code, a Decalogue) itself is liminal ground. The haunting score, characterized by a mournful flute over strings, creeps into the soundtrack as the camera slowly tilts up to reveal the far bank of the lake, including a huddled figure sitting before a small fire, a massive apartment complex looming behind him. All is white and grey, with the exception of his dingy brown coat. The sky is overcast, the world is cold, and soulless, concrete and metal architecture piles up in the background. In a dramatic pivot, the next shot is curious: showing this mysterious man closer up (see figure 80), yet his back is turned to us (cf. Exod. 33:18 – 23). It seems even here, that our natural, yet powerless, desire to see the man’s face echoes Kieślowski’s own sincere, yet agnostic theology. He is closed to us. Does he judge us? Has he abandoned us? Has he forgotten us? These questions naturally come to mind, as the man is eventually revealed to have a quasi-divine aura. As mentioned, Kieślowski only called him “The Young Man” in the script, but I have called him Theophanes, not because he is God, but because he bears God’s presence on earth, and marks the deity’s observing eye throughout the film. Suddenly, we do see him in close-up (see figure 81). He gently looks to his left, and then his eye suddenly catches us. He stares directly and intently at us. The dramatic shift – from turned back to direct address – is another example of the rhetoric of liminality. One would be tempted to call it “alterity,” but in the context of Christian theology one sees paradox, where these opposites co-habitate in divine mystery. God is at once “other” and separate from us (divine Transcendence), and yet this is matched directly with God’s direct gaze and address (divine Immanence). The next shot is matched with another face, looking not at us, but upward. The camera first pushes forward into a dark environment and a woman comes into view. She walks up to what seems to be a shop window, and we view her reflection in the glass. She is gazing upward, as if to God, and she is weeping. The object of her gaze is then revealed: a television featuring running children. The speed of their running slows through a gradual slow motion effect. The tension-filled minor-second motif on the soundtrack jumps to a higher register, elevating its importance as we consider the boy’s face. Eventually the moving images stop in a freeze frame; the boy on the screen lingers, suspended in time. Kieślowski cuts directly to Theophanes again, still staring directly at us. We note here that the shots of the woman and the television have been a miraculous view into his mind and his heart. After a beat, his look softens; he breaks the stare and wipes a tear from his eyes. He hunkers down into his coat and stares at the smoldering fire before him (an image of judgment, historically). The soundtrack repeats the half of the minor-second theme, but this time does not resolve the musical motive. It

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suspends the second note, hanging in tension as the strings swell in intensity beneath it. Then the music simply starts to die away over the next image. The next shot is of hundreds of tiny stones in an abstract pattern. The camera tilts up to reveal they are part of the cross-like concrete supports of the apartment building, and a flurry of birds unexpectedly rush up from the bottom of the frame precisely when the music has finally left. One of those birds lands in the next shot on a window ledge, and the very same boy from the television screen appears at the window. Successive shots reveal charming bits of imitation between the pigeon and the boy, who smiles and moves his head curiously back in forth like the bird. So the story, proper, has begun. These opening shots reveal a number of techniques and motifs that Kieślowski uses throughout The Decalogue series to evoke the themes of the biblical commandments and their spiritual and experiential import. One such technique is to initially withhold the expected establishing shot that classical Hollywood style typically demands. In the case of the first few shots of the film, the cut to the man’s back is unusual, as standard film technique is to see a man in an establishing shot and immediately reveal his face in medium shot. Kieślowski seems to alter this rhetoric for theological reasons, adding a bit of due mystery to this quasi-divine character on the banks of the lake. In another instance, we do not know why the woman is crying – she might be elated, might be devastated – and by showing her in an upward gaze we might believe she is looking at something upward, even in a prayerful gesture. Only after that bit of ambiguity do we see the object of her gaze is a television, but the shot pattern has already experientially primed us for spiritual suggestion, and the series will continue to do so again and again. Kieślowski repeats this editing pattern of ambiguity and disclosure in numerous variations and at many key moments in The Decalogue, creating a pattern of reception that encourages spiritual mystery, spiritual suggestion, and overall “openness” in one’s initial encounter with an image as an encouragement to see the biblical commandments in a wider, metaphysical frame. Likewise, characters do not often stare directly at the camera, but when they do it echoes the spiritually charged tradition of the religious icon, where the direct address is thought to engender a potent inward vector of reflection, conviction, and adoration. Indeed, Theophanes functions like an icon, inaugurating the entire series. The soundtrack is haunting, but provides more than just standard emotional and interpretive clues. In the case of this sequence, the inherent tensions of the minorsecond motif are manipulated to suggest unresolved tensions in the grandest sense: that of ethical and doctrinal uncertainty. The music dies away as flying birds carry us across what we will come to understand as a spatio-temporal rift in the storytelling: the images in the opening sequence actually come from the end of the story, and the scenes to follow are the beginning. Finally, visually abstract imagery figures prominently in several shots, from the morphing and undulating flow of water in the opening shot, to the hazy, distorting smoke that wafts and slightly warps our view of Theophanes face, to the many reflec-

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tions on the shop window housing the television and reflecting the woman, to the initial close-up view of the apartment building façade. Abstract imagery naturally obscures the identity of an object, or, if we still recognize it, renders it less “solid,” almost as if it places it in an a second-order ontological state. Abstract images are not simply “themselves” as elements in a scene, but are also forms that carry suggestions of other things, and appear as if they might transform before our eyes into something else. These powers of withholding, transforming, and generalizing forms are used by Kieślowski to engender a sense of mystery at key moments of spiritual theme or suggestion. The opening of this monumental film series is no exception.

Conclusion Although Kieślowski resisted any particular creed, his musings on the possibility of spiritual reality became increasingly positive throughout his career. In this sense, he pursued the Transcendent, through both his stories and his cinematic style, though it might be more accurate to say that he did not divide the Immanent and Transcendent so neatly. Kieślowski’s films suggest that the temporal may intersect the spiritual through mystery, and we mortals have a responsibility to plumb those depths as best we can. In this way, he remained true to his 1981 personal manifesto through the end of his life: “Deeper, rather than broader…” (Coates 1999, 94). Part of this “depth” involved critical engagement with the Bible and Christian tradition. Both explicitly (in The Decalogue and Bleu), and implicitly (in White, Red, and numerous earlier films), Kieślowski saw us to be floating in the wake of an enormous faith tradition. Sometimes he suggests that this ship has truly sailed on. Other times, he seems to offer hope that the ship – or something like it – will circle back again.

Works Cited Coates, Paul. 2003. Cinema, Religion, and the Romantic Legacy. Aldershot: Ashgate. Coates, Paul, ed. 1999. Lucid Dreams: The Films of Krzysztof Kieślowski. Trowbridge, Wiltshire: Flicks Books. Garbowski, Christopher. 1996. Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Decalogue Series: The Problem of the Protagonists and Their Self-Transcendence. Boulder, Colo.: Eastern European Monographs. Insdorf, Anette. 1999. Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieślowski. New York: Hyperion. Kickasola, Joseph G. 2004. The Films of Krzysztof Kieślowski: The Liminal Image. New York: Continuum. Kieślowski, Krzysztof K., and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. 1991. Decalogue: The Ten Commandments. Transl. P. Cavendish/S. Bluh. London: Faber and Faber. Stok, Danusia, ed. 1993. Kieślowski on Kieślowski. London: Faber and Faber.

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Films Cited Amator [a.k.a. Camera Buff] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1979, Film Polski, PL). Bez konca [a.k.a. No End] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1984, P.P. Film Polski, PL). Blizna [a.k.a. The Scar] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1976, Film Polski, PL). Dekalog [a.k.a. The Decalogue] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1989 – 90, Sender Freies Berlin, PL/DE). Heaven (dir. Tom Tykwer, 2002, Miramax, DE/IT/US/FR/UK). Krótki film o milosci [a.k.a. A Short Film About Love] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1988, Zespol Filmowy, PL). Krótki film o zabijaniu [a.k.a. A Short Film About Killing] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1988, Zespol Filmowy, PL). L’enfer [a.k.a. Hell] (dir. Danis Tanović, 2005, Asap Films, FR/IT/BE/JP). La double vie de Véronique [a.k.a. The Double Life of Veronique] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1991, Sidéral Productions, FR/PL/NO). Personel [a.k.a. Personnel] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1975, Zespol Filmowy, PL). Przypadek [a.k.a. Blind Chance] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1981, P.P. Film Polski, PL). Spokój [a.k.a. The Calm] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1976, Polish TV, PL). Trois Couleurs: Blanc [a.k.a. Three Colors: White] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1994 MK2 Productions, FR/PL/CH). Trois Couleurs: Bleu [a.k.a. Three Colors: Blue] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1993, MK2 Productions, FR/PL/CH). Trois Couleurs: Rouge [a.k.a. Three Colors: Red] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1994, MK2 Productions, FR/PL/CH) Życiorys [a.k.a. Life Story or Curriculum Vita] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1975, WFD, PL).

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43 Peter Weir: Man of Mystery, Mysticism, and the Mundane The Aussie Auteur

Peter Lindsay Weir (b. 1944) played a leading role in the Australian New Wave by manufacturing cinema successes out of distinctive Australiana imagery, which was quickly followed by a flourishing career in Hollywood with various international co-productions.¹ His directorial canon ranged from cop film to romantic comedy, tradesman tale to rural horror, war film to political history, teacher tale to media fantasy, prison escape to disaster movie. Throughout them all, he artfully interweaves mystery, mysticism, and the mundane underpinned by creative camerawork, anxious atmospheres, clashes of culture, titillating tinges of terror, distinctive mood music, and eerie sound effects that became trademark Weir[d] signatures. Ostensibly a non-religious filmmaker, Weir frequently employs Christian symbolism, sacred subtexts, and scripture-quoting throughout his oeuvre, along with Aboriginal tribal religion, New Age references, Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, Indonesian spirituality etc., as appropriate.

Weir’s Australian Films Starting with various low-budget Commonwealth Film Unit shorts, and independent productions, notably The Life and Flight of the Reverend Buck Shotte (1968), Homesdale (1971) and Whatever Happened to Green Valley? (1973), Weir’s debut feature film was The Cars That Ate Paris (1974). This Australian Gothic horror showcases the insular rural community of Paris and its youth rebelling against its elders; all of whom prey upon outsiders by engineering car accidents to salvage their wreckage. In a cross-adorned church with Bible-laden pulpit, the complicit Christian community sing hymn #407: “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before…” under the spiritual guidance of newly arrived, unaware outsider, Reverend Ted Mulray (Max Phipps). The town’s sinister mayor “adopts” weakwilled Arthur Waldo (Terry Camilleri), a car-phobic crash survivor who seeks sanctuary from his personal purgatory following his brother’s death, but Arthur eventually commits a murder that triggers his mental recovery (and escape by car).

 On Weir’s migration to Hollywood and its affect on his filmmaking, see Formica () and Haltof ().

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Weir also depicts a crippled gravedigger erecting numerous white crosses whilst Rev. Mulray delivers a naïve funeral prayer – “Oh gosh Lord, sometimes you work in ways that are totally incomprehensible” – followed by his unexpected murder by Charlie, a mentally-disturbed “irreligious bastard.” During the “Paris Pioneers Ball,” town councillor Metcalfe wears an “Early Missionary” costume with shepherd’s crook, as the deathtrap town is slowly wrecked by its disaffected youth driving bizarrely re-built vehicles decorated with predatory totemic symbols (e. g., shark’s teeth) and menacing accoutrements (e. g., grotesque silver spikes covering a Volkswagen Beetle). Overall, Weir dramatically demonstrates ethical ambiguity, religious hypocrisy, and how horror, hysteria, and heartlessness can underlie country Christianity. Weir’s Australian bush tale, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), concerns the uncanny disappearance of schoolgirls, Miranda, Marion, and Irma (angelic sacrificial virgins in white dresses), plus Appleyard College teacher, Miss McCraw (Vivean Gray), on St. Valentine’s Day 1900 whilst picnicking at the local “geological marvel” aged “a devil of a long time.” The community’s mundane explanations for the mystery contrasts with Weir’s atmosphere of metaphysical menace comprised of brooding landscapes, disturbed wildlife, stopped watches, enforced slumber, missing memories, distressing dreams, and Irma’s Lazarus-like return. Furthermore, Weir’s mysterious mountain portal, strange red cloud, and mist-veiled monolith that pulses with power subtextually evokes a brooding, smokey and fiery Mount Sinai (Exod. 19:16, 18), the Piped Piper of Hamelin legend, and artfully introduces an Australian Stonehenge in the mysterium tremendum et fascinans (“fearful and fascinating mystery”) tradition. Additionally, the girls’ barefoot dancing and dreamlike ascent of Hanging Rock, accompanied by haunting panpipe music off-screen, evokes Pan – the horn-headed, goat-footed god of carnal desire and irrational terror. This ancient pagan deity inhabits mountain wilds, enjoys the companionship of nymphs, and is frequently associated with the Christian Devil/Satan and goats (cf. Matt. 25:32– 33). The girls’ unresolved fates and expulsion from their subtextual Garden of Eden (i. e. Appleyard College and bush environs) triggers despair, desolation, and death within their insular rural community, whilst its palpable supernatural presence remained unseen, unknown, and unattainable.² Weir’s woolliness left the audience forever wondering what really happened in the bush and boulders. His mystical movie, The Last Wave (1977), concerns a supernatural flood and its watery precursors: storms, fist-sized hailstones, black rain, double rainbows, raining frogs (cf. Exod. 8:2– 6), “raining” indoors (overflowing bathtub, flooded staircase), and surrealistic scenes of drowned bodies and a car radio spouting water. This mixture of mundane and macabre incidents are interspersed with disturbing nature scenes, spirit walkers, shape-shifters, accounts of “a beautiful light,” “angels,”

 According to Weir, this film “presents humankind’s total helplessness when confronted with the inexplicable.” Quoted in Johnston (, ). See also Bliss (,  – ).

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and “Jesus,” plus premonitory dreams about an apocalyptic tidal wave destined to destroy humanity “at the end of a cycle when nature has to renew itself.” Taxation-turned-criminal lawyer, David Burton (Richard Chamberlain), personifies white Western rationalism caught between two cultures (and dimensions) whilst defending Gerry, Jacko, Lindsey, Larry, and Chris (David Gulpilil) – Aboriginal custodians of a cavernous sacred site hidden amidst labyrinthine Sydney sewers that contain archaeological skeletons, religious totems, and sacred artwork (e. g., a white Christic cross inside three concentric circles). These tribal men were falsely accused of the drowning death of aboriginal Billy Corman, who was actually executed by Charlie-the-owl’s bone-pointing sorcery for breaking tribal law and stealing their sacred stones, notably, “Mulkurul” – the Dreamtime spirit. In court, Chris swears upon a Holy Bible, but dutifully protects their tribal secrets, whilst David slowly unravels psychologically as his rational-scientific worldview crumbles during his spiritual awakening to the Dreamtime dimension. Near a Christian church, his Anglican minister stepfather recalls David’s forgotten childhood dreams about “witches,” “ghosts” and being taken “on a long ride to another world.” But after David’s cultural education and intense spiritual exposure, he no longer deems Aboriginal beliefs naïve primitivism or mystical mumbo-jumbo, and even becomes upset with his minister-father for explaining away Christian mysteries during his pulpit preaching (claimed but not detailed).³ Chris escapes into the Dreamtime, David discovers his death mask and cosmic Mulkurul role, then the prophesized last wave arrives, so kneeling penitently upon Sydney beach, he dutifully accepts the devastating recycling of life. What happens after this watery apocalypse, Weir leaves as a tantalizing mystery for the audience to ponder, but overall, he crowns ancient Aboriginal spirituality as the source of sacred wisdom in contrast to contemporary Christianity that suppressed divine mystery and missed the apocalyptic markers.⁴ Non-Western tribal artifacts, New Age “Om” chanting, tea leaf reading, the Cheops pyramid, and the noticeable absence of explicit biblical references characterize Weir’s tense television film, The Plumber (1979), a water-themed psychological thriller. Anthropology masters student, Jill Cowper (Judy Morris) had been threatened by a home-invading, male sorcerer during her New Guinea Highland fieldwork; and when back in Australia, she experiences a similar home-invading “primitive,” university plumber, Max (Ivar Kants). He is a self-confessed drug-taker who, un-summoned, began slowly “fixing” her undamaged bathroom plumbing, and made joking confessions of his imprisonment for rape and cat-burglary disguised as a plumber. These

 Robert Shail (, ) notes that as his apocalyptic dreams continue, “David becomes increasingly sensitive to the inadequacies in his own value system.”  Weir’s films are often described as mystical, whether informed by aborigine spirituality, Christianity, or other religious/spiritual traditions. For further discussion of this aspect of Weir’s films, see Gauper () and Leonard ().

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and other disturbing incidents transform Jill from timid, to terrified, to framing Max for theft, but leaving Max’s true purpose a mystery at film’s end. Weir’s First World War movie – and foundation myth of Australian nationalism⁵ – Gallipoli (1981), features two country boys-turned-soldiers, Frank Dunne (Mel Gibson) and Archy Hamilton (Mark Lee), battling enemy Turks. Therein, Weir utilizes water imagery, haunting music, brooding Australian and Egyptian deserts, spectacular pyramids (Ancient Egyptian symbols of death and immortality), plus Christian iconography, martyrdom, and explicit biblical quotations for effect. Most notably, numerous grave crosses on Gallipoli beach, an anxious soldier reciting portions of Psalm 23, and Archy’s freeze-frame agony following his sacrificial death for God, King, Country, and his military mates (cf. John 15:13)⁶ at film’s end.

Weir’s International Films His political thriller, The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) explores race, class, religion, and cultural clashes in post-colonial Indonesia prior to President Sukarno’s overthrow (circa 1965). Interspersed with Christian exclamations – “Jesus!” “Oh, God!” “For Christ’s sake!” – the film showcases ambitious Australian journalist, Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson), “a man of light,” who Judas-like betrays British attaché assistant (and lover), Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver), to advance his career, but later successfully earns redemption. His dwarf cameraman, Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt), loves Jakarta’s poor and believes that “[t]he unseen is all around us,” he enjoys “wajang, the sacred shadow play” (representing “the forces of light and darkness in endless balance”), and sagely quotes both Krishna (Bhagavad-Gita 3:38) and John the Baptist: “And the people asked Him, saying, ‘What shall we do then?’…It’s from Luke. Chapter 3, verse 10. ‘What then must we do?’” This key biblical question greatly exercises Billy’s perturbed mind. Later, when salacious rival journalist, Pete, offers Guy prostitutes, he aggressively counters Billy’s reproach with: “Keep it up Billy. Keep it up. We’ll just nail you to the old cross, huh? […] Get me the nails. I’m gonna hang the little bastard up right now” (elsewhere Pete pins Billy, crucifix-like, against a wall). An agitated Billy repeatedly writes down the Baptist’s paraphrased question, makes pleas to God, and thrice repeats the crucial question (for symbolic emphasis), which leads to his dramatic public protest and demise as a political (and subtextual Christic) martyr. A funeral service opens Weir’s police/romance thriller, Witness (1985), which highlights religio-cultural clashes between “the English” and pious, pacifist, Penn-

 See Haltof (, ).  Jonathan Rayner (, ) notes the “clearly scriptural” frame of reference in Gallipoli established by the film’s “foregrounding of religious imagery and allusion” and the “symbiosis between religion and patriotism in the formation of a national myth.” Yet he questions, as do other commentators, whether Archy’s sacrifice has redemptive value.

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sylvanian Amish with biblical names. In Philadelphia (subtextually Sodom), young Amish boy, Samuel Lapp, witnesses a cop murdered by narcotics officer McFee, which endangers himself, his widowed mother, Rachel (Kelly McGillis), and their cop savior, Captain John Book (Harrison Ford). All three hide amidst the technology-averse, Ordnung ruled Amish community (subtextually Eden) wherein Elder Eli counsels Samuel against killing: “Wherefore, come out from among them, and be yet separate, saith the Lord. And touch not the unclean thing” (2 Cor. 6:17, KJV). During John and Rachel’s burgeoning romance, he watches her bathe (cf. David and Bathsheba, 2 Sam. 11:2), but their union is untenable; as evidenced when a troublemaker said about the Amish-masquerading John: “Hey watch it Frank, he’s gonna hit you with his Bible” moments before John bashes him. Later, after a deadly shootout, surviving corrupt cop, Schaeffer, is neutralized by insular Amish members surrounding him and bearing witness, so he reluctantly accepts his doomed fate, and sinks to his knees, penitent-like. Adventure epic, The Mosquito Coast (1986), concerns disgruntled genius-inventor, Allie Fox (Harrison Ford), who moves his family from North America to the jungles of Central America to build a massive ice-making machine. This non-believer engages in various scripture-jousting battles, for example, he corrects proselytizing preacher, Rev. Gurney Spellgood (Andre Gregory): Gurney: “The last shall be first.” Allie: No, “some.” Gurney: Pardon? Allie: “Some of the last who will be first and some of the first who will be last.” Luke [13:30]. Gurney: I was quoting Matthew [19:30]. Allie: You were misquoting Matthew. Matthew says “many” not “some” […] I’ve tinkered a bit with the Bible. God’s owner’s handbook, isn’t it?

Fig. 82: The Blue Jeans Bible in The Mosquito Coast (1986)

Afterwards, Gurney gives Allie the Blue Jeans Bible, which he rejects saying: “‘Of making many books there is no end. Much study is a weariness of the flesh.’ Ecclesiastes [12:12].” Gurney retorts: “There are many rooms in my Father’s house [John

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14:2], but I am the door [John 10:9].” Upon arrival, they clash again when the visiting cross-wearing Reverend angrily recites: “And Pharaoh said…And Pharaoh said: ‘Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice…and let you, Israel, go? I know not the Lord… neither will I let Israel go!” This time Allie retorts: “Exodus 5[:2]. Now, get off my land.” Allie’s benign monomaniacal utopianism regrettably turns delusional, destructive, and murderous when he lies about America’s nuclear annihilation after his ice-making machine is destroyed. Later, Allie (acting as an anti-savior) burns the Reverend’s cross-adorned church, with its “GOD IS LOVE” sign (1 John 4:8), and a video-taped sermon about Gideon’s trumpet (Judg. 7), but he is mortally wounded in the process. Weir once again illustrates religio-cultural clashes, hypocrisy, and ethical ambiguity; especially when the Bible-quoting, murdering minister enables Allie’s family to return home (their original Promised Land) physically free of their misguided, Moses-like, patriarch. Weir’s 1950s teacher tale, Dead Poets Society (1989), opens in a Christ-and-cross adorned chapel within Welton Academy (nicknamed “Hell-ton”), a boarding school whose boys strain under strong parental expectations and rigid traditions until unorthodox teacher, John Keating (Robin Williams), inspires them with his “seize the day” (carpe diem) gospel – because life is too short to do otherwise (cf. Jas. 4:14). When students are reluctant to rip out textbook pages, John chides them with: “It’s not the Bible. You’re not gonna go to hell for this,” and during soccer practice, he scripturally quips to a student wearing glasses: “Mr. Meeks, time to inherit the earth” (cf. Matt. 5:5). John’s pedagogic passion prompts the resurrection of Welton’s “Dead Poets Society,” which ignites Todd Anderson and Neil Perry’s hunger for poetry and acting, respectively. Neil defies his father by playing Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and when he is transferred to Braden Military School as punishment, he commits suicide. Following the Judas-like betrayal of several students, John (the film’s Christ-figure) is dismissed for his literary evangelism and replaced by the uninspiring Dr. Nolan. Whilst John collects his belongings, timid Todd boldly mounts his desk and proclaims Walt Whitman’s refrain, “Oh Captain, my Captain,” which fires further student defiance, respect, and passionate declarations of their newfound faith.⁷ In Weir’s romantic comedy, Green Card (1990), American Brontë Parrish (Andie MacDowell) and bohemian Frenchman Georges Fauré (Gerard Depardieu) navigate a sham marriage, so that she can rent a couples-only Manhattan apartment (with a paradisiacal greenhouse) and he can gain “green card” residency status in the American Promised Land. The biblical theme of an Edenic garden (cf. Gen. 2:8), finding a life companion (cf. Gen. 2:18), and a bitter expulsion (cf. Gen. 3:23 – 24) are faintly echoed therein.

 For an interesting discussion of this film see Brie and Torevell ().

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Weir’s disaster film, Fearless (1993), focuses upon the spiritual rebirth of Max Klein (Jeff Bridges) as a “Good Samaritan” (Luke 10:30 – 36) following his miraculous survival of a plane crash that triggers a profound sense of invulnerability and fearlessness. When the waitress “Faith” serves Max strawberries – previously a ‘forbidden fruit’ because of his allergies – he learns that he is now mysteriously unaffected by them, which verifies his newfound godliness (cf. Gen. 3:5). Max begins collecting images of tunnels of light, notably Gustave Doré’s Celestial Rose (1861) and Hieronymus Bosch’s The Ascent of the Empyrean (1490), and he is himself frequently lightbathed, but was Max touched by God’s grace or dangerously deluded by his own self-denying psychology (medically diagnosed as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)? Weir manufactures further mystery by mystically implying that Max might be an other-dimensional spirit: “I thought I was dead,” “we died already,” “we passed through death,” “we’re ghosts.” Or perhaps Weir is casting Max as a traditional Christ-figure, as symbolized in the shower by his blood-and-water side wound (cf. John 19:34), others’ “Jesus, Max!” explications, Byron’s claim: “You saved me” (cf. 2 Tim. 1:9), Max’s command: “Follow me to the light!” (cf. John 8:12), Jeff’s Max-directed “God” explication, Max’s cruciform poses, and his blunt truth-telling proclivities (cf. John 8:45). Conversely, Carla Rodrigov (Rosie Perrez), a “very Catholic” fellow survivor, owns many crosses, Virgin Mary statues, and other religious icons, plus a “Jesus is my best friend” (in Spanish) bedroom door sticker. Suffering debilitating depression following the death of her son she only moves between her shrine-room and neighborhood Catholic Church (with magnificent Jesus artwork). Overcome with intense guilt, she repeatedly prays: “Hail Mary, full of grace…, “ but both she and Max perform acts of redemptive love, heal each other and become “alive.” Max functions as Carla’s Godsent angel, whilst Max acts as a prodigal son who was lost but is now found (cf. Luke 15:32), and restored to “normal” at film’s end. Weir’s satire about American reality television, The Truman Show (1998), stars Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey), subtextually Adam, who lives “in paradise,” the community of Seahaven, which is actually the world’s largest reality TV studio owned by the all-seeing OmniCam Corporation. This 24/7 show is directed by its creator, Christof (subtextually God), Truman’s absent father, who micro-manages his fishbowl life for his audience’s voyeuristic pleasure. Literally media property, Truman’s innocence was “corrupted” by wayward actress, Lauren (subtextually Eve), who defies Christof’s rules by revealing forbidden knowledge about his manufactured life. Truman consequently rebels, disobeys his father’s commandments, and escapes, which prompts a TV viewer to exclaim: “Jesus God in heaven.” Near film’s end, Truman is found lying in a curious combination of crucifixion and Pietà pose upon his stormed-tangled boat, the Santa Maria (the Virgin Mary), as a shaft of light from heaven illuminates him. He then crashes into the “sky,” walks upon the “sea” (cf. John 6:19), takes a stairway to “heaven” (cf. Gen. 28:12), and after a brief dialogue with “the Creator,” he leaves his former world via an

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Fig. 83: Truman Burbank in Christic pose in The Truman Show (1998)

“exit” door in the cloud-heaven set (cf. Acts 1:9). Truman now knows the truth, and the truth set him free (cf. John 8:32).⁸ Weir’s maritime adventure, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), features nineteenth-century British Captain “Lucky” Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) of the H.M.S. Surprise battling the superior French flagship, Acheron. Following a run of bad luck that the sailors attribute to the reputedly cursed Midshipman Hollom, a sinister seaman quotes scripture: “And they said unto him, ‘For what caused the evil?’” (Jonah 1:8), whilst another seaman explains: “It’s from the Bible, that…That’s from the Bible. The story of the Jonah.” Later, Hollom commits suicide and during his funeral service Captain Jack refuses to recite from Jonah, returns his thick Bible, and instead says: “We’re all God’s creatures” (cf. Col. 1:16) before delivering a compassionate forgiveness prayer. Much later, during another funeral service, Captain Jack holds the Bible again, and with the crew, they recite the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9 – 13) over their dead comrades about to be buried at sea. Weir’s World War II prison escape drama, The Way Back (2010), chronicles the torturous 4,000-mile trek of an international group of Soviet prisoners from their snow-bound Siberian gulag, through enemy territory and deserts, into India and freedom. Janusz (Jim Sturgess) was gulag-bound following a Judas-like betrayal by his cross-wearing wife. Valka (Colin Farrell) proudly wears a Russian Orthodox cross (with naked woman) tattoo; the praying Latvian killer-priest, Voss (Gustaf Skarsgård), trades his Latin cross for food, various graves bear rough crosses, whilst Janusz repeatedly ritually crosses himself. Inside a desecrated Mongolian Buddhist temple, Voss recalls similarly desecrated Christian churches in Russia and Latvia, and, when helped by Himalayan Tibetan monks, he confesses to fighting the enemy instead of re-building his church. Weir, yet again, interweaves different religious traditions.

 For other useful discussions of The Truman Show in relation to Genesis  – , see Baker () and Johnston ().

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Conclusion Weir’s oeuvre repeatedly emphasizes dramatic clashes, whether of culture, society, religion, psychology, personal, or interpersonal, whether situated locally, nationally, or internationally. His ostensibly mundane worlds are filled with mystery and mysticism. Christian symbols, biblical quotes and sacred subtexts are artfully interwoven throughout. But one could not call Weir a biblical filmmaker per se, but rather, a provider of scriptural fodder when artistically, historically or thematically appropriate.

Works Cited Baker, Deane-Peter. 2002. “Transcendental Arguments: The Truman Show and Original Sin.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 113: 97 – 108. Bliss, Michael. 2000. Dreams within a Dream: The Films of Peter Weir. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press. Brie, Stephen, and David Torevell. 1997. “Moral Ambiguity and Contradiction in Dead Poets Society.” In Explorations in Theology and Film. Ed. Clive Marsh and Gaye Ortiz. Oxford: Blackwell. Pp. 167 – 80. Formica, Serena. 2012. Peter Weir: A Creative Journey from Australia to Hollywood. Bristol: Intellect. Gauper, Stephanie. 2001. “Aborigine Spirituality as the Grounding Theme in the Films of Peter Weir.” The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought 42.2: 212 – 27. Haltof, Marek. 1996. Peter Weir: When Cultures Collide. New York: Twayne. Johnston, Robert K. 2006. Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue [2000]. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic. Leonard, Richard. 2009. The Mystical Gaze of the Cinema: The Films of Peter Weir. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press. Rayner, Jonathan. 2003. The Films of Peter Weir [1998]. 2nd ed. New York: Continuum. Shail, Robert. 2015. “The Last Wave (1977).” In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Films. Ed. Sarah Barrow, Sabine Haenni and John White. Milton Park: Routledge. Pp. 305 – 8.

Films Cited The Cars That Ate Paris [a.k.a. The Cars That Eat People] (dir. Peter Weir, 1974, Australian Film Development Corporation, AU). Dead Poets Society (dir. Peter Weir, 1989, Touchstone Pictures, US). Fearless (dir. Peter Weir, 1993, Spring Creek Productions, US). Gallipoli (dir. Peter Weir, 1981, Australian Film Commission, AU). Green Card (dir. Peter Weir, 1990, Touchstone Pictures, FR/AU/US). Homesdale (dir. Peter Weir, 1971, Experimental Film and Television Fund, AU). The Last Wave (dir. Peter Weir, 1977, Australian Film Commission, AU). The Life and Flight of the Reverend Buck Shotte (dir. Peter Weir, 1968, 7 Network, AU). Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (dir. Peter Weir, 2003, Twentieth Century Fox, US). The Mosquito Coast (dir. Peter Weir, 1986, The Saul Zaentz Company, US).

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Picnic at Hanging Rock (dir. Peter Weir, 1975, Australian Film Commission, AU). The Plumber (dir. Peter Weir, 1979, Australian Film Commission, AU). The Truman Show (dir. Peter Weir, 1998, Paramount, US). The Way Back (dir. Peter Weir, 2010, Exclusive Films, US/AE/PL). Whatever Happened to Green Valley? (dir. Peter Weir, 1973, Film Australia, AU). Witness (dir. Peter Weir, 1985, McElroy & McElroy, US). The Year of Living Dangerously (dir. Peter Weir, 1982, McElroy & McElroy, US/AU).

Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch

44 Cheick Oumar Sissoko: West African Activist and Storyteller When Ray Privett of Cinéaste magazine asked the French-educated, Malian filmmaker Cheick Oumar Sissoko (b. 1945) why he decided to make movies, he responded: I wanted to contribute to the emerging consciousness of our people. For me, filmmaking seemed the best way. […] I returned to Mali in 1980 as Traoré was still ruling. I had my diploma for filmmaking and history and sociology. In France, nobody needed me. My country needed me, and I needed to go there to make images. The world is run on images, and we need to make our own images to show to the world. (Privett/Sissoko 2000, 38 – 39)

Sissoko drew inspiration from the early wave of indigenous African cinemas,¹ which emerged in the late 1950s and 60s in the wake of independence. Prior movies made by European colonizers had served the purposes of colonization – functioning as instruments of control and propaganda, often under the guise of education for the indigenous population. Moreover, colonial cinemas had been flooded with distorted and derogatory images of Africans as exotic, primitive savages; child-like villagers; and half-witted servants (Ukadike 1994, 16). Postcolonial filmmakers such as Ousmane Sembène therefore devoted themselves to creating authentic portrayals of African life and cultural traditions from diverse indigenous perspectives. Black African cinemas forged distinctive cinematic practices and styles while appropriating the Western medium of film as a tool for addressing very real social problems in postcolonial African societies and for generating pride in their indigenous cultures (Thackway 2003, 49). A relative latecomer to West African cinema, Sissoko would adopt these goals as his own and emerge as one of the most prominent and acclaimed African filmmakers of the late twentieth century. It was in this postcolonial context that Sissoko created a small but significant body of films, born out of a sincere desire to “make images” for his people – images that would both entertain and agitate. Over the course of his cinematic career, he retained an avid commitment to activist filmmaking, creating documentaries and feature films that addressed what he saw as “the big problems of our continent” (Privett/Sissoko 2000, 39) – including education, poverty, drought and famine, political corruption, and the emancipation of women from the strictures of traditional society. In so doing, he drew deeply upon Africa’s indigenous artistic traditions, which he oc-

 African filmmakers rightly object to any description of “African Cinema” that might suggest that this vast continent of fifty-three countries and hundreds of languages produces only a certain kind of film (Dovey , ). Nonetheless, the postcolonial cinemas that emerged across the continent in the s and s made a body of films that share many distinctive characteristics. Sissoko’s films are influenced by and continue this tradition. See also the discussion of biblical reception in Third Cinema by Sison in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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casionally combined with biblical stories and motifs that had been mediated to Sissoko through both his own Islamic tradition and the legacy of Christian colonialism. This biblical/quranic influence is most particularly evident in the early documentary Sécheresse et exode rural (1985, “Drought and the Rural Exodus”), and more explicitly in his fourth feature film La genèse (1999, “Genesis”). This chapter will focus on the latter film, situating it in the broader context of Sissoko’s ongoing political engagement with the “big problems” in postcolonial Mali and beyond.

The Context of Reception: Postcolonial Mali Sissoko was born in 1945 in the town of San in Ségou, the fourth administrative region of Mali, and was a teenager when his country gained independence from French colonial rule in 1960. He initially shared the enthusiasm of many Malians for the potential unification of postcolonial Africa and, subsequently, shared their great disappointment and frustration when those dreams were not realized. Sissoko was completing his education in Paris – where he earned a Diploma of Advanced Studies (Diplôme d’études approfundies) in African history and sociology at Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales before studying filmmaking at Ecole nationale Louis Lumière – when news reached him that the French-supported military officer, Moussa Traoré, had led a successful coup d’état against Mali’s first popularly elected president, Modibo Keïta. In later interviews, Sissoko would attribute Keïta’s overthrow to his record of supporting liberation movements in Algeria, South Africa, and the Congo, reflecting that the deposed Malian president had “constantly fought for the liberation of the people. The French government did not like him for this, nor for his nationalism, which of course is related to his belief in liberation. Malians – at least those of us who had access to newspapers and so forth – suspected something bad would happen to him” (Privett/Sissoko 2000, 38). Traoré established a corrupt and dictatorial military regime that, despite several attempted coups, would hold power for twenty-three years (1968 – 1991). These decades also witnessed two severe famines that claimed thousands of lives and growing economic disparity between a small, wealthy elite and Mali’s general population. Having spent the 1970s in Paris engaged in student protests against apartheid, the Vietnam War, dictatorships in South America, and other causes (Curiel 2000), Sissoko did not hesitate to resist Traoré’s regime when he returned to Mali in 1980. The first decade of his career was devoted to making films that exposed the nation’s political corruption and resulting social and economic oppression – sometimes going so far as to submit phony scripts in order to obtain government approval for these productions (Privett/Sissoko 2000, 39). After accepting a position at the Centre National de la Production Cinématographique (CNPC), his earliest projects were documentary films focused on Malian schools, drought, and rural migration. His first feature films, Nyamanton (1987, “Gar-

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bage Boys”) and Finzan (1989), dramatized respectively the plight of impoverished Malian children and that of African women denied the right to choose or reject traditional practices like levirate marriage and excision.² Commenting on Nyamanton, Sissoko described the purpose of his films as “the awakening of consciousness by explaining to the population that their misery, the fact that they are exploited, is not due to fatalism or Allah’s will. It’s due to the social relations of exploitation existing in that society, to the fact that a minority is exploiting them” (Diawara/Robinson/Sissoko 1987– 88, 46). Sissoko temporarily set aside his cinematic career in 1990 in order to join the protest movement attempting to end Traoré’s dictatorship and establish a political democracy in Mali. Pro-democracy protest marches multiplied and, at times, were violently suppressed by military personnel instructed to fire into crowds of men, women, and children. In the midst of escalating violence, Traoré was overthrown in 1991 and a transitional government established. Mali’s first multi-party presidential elections took place the following year, resulting in the election of Alpha Oumar Konaré, who would go on to serve two consecutive five-year terms. Sissoko returned to filmmaking with the award-winning film Guimba, un tyran une époque (1995, a.k.a. Guimba the Tyrant), which offered a thinly veiled critique of Traoré’s regime in the guise of a fictionalized tale about the rise and fall of a cruel, despotic village chief set in the pre-colonial era. Reports of ethnic violence in the north between the nomadic Tuaregs and settled Songhai, as well as similar conflicts throughout and beyond Africa, led Sissoko to the stories of fraternal strife in Genesis for his next epic film, La genèse (discussed below). His final film, Bàttu (2000), adapted for the screen the novel The Beggars’ Strike (1986), a comedy by the Senegalese author Aminata Sox Fall that pits articulate beggars against an ambitious politician. Continuing his involvement in politics, Sissoko and former student-protestor Oumar Mariko co-founded a political party called African Solidarity for Democracy and Independence (ASDI) in 1996. The filmmaker served as the party’s president while Mariko made a series of (unsuccessful) runs for the Malian presidency. Sissoko ultimately ended his career in cinema when nominated to serve as Mali’s Minister of Culture in 2002, a post he would retain for the next five years.

 In response to criticism, Sissoko denied that Finzan depicts female excision as an oppressive practice; rather, he insisted that the film argues “more generally for women’s right [sic] and struggle for freedom” (Aufderheide , ).

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A Universal Story: Human Conflict and Hope for Reconciliation While Sissoko was filming Guimba in the summer of 1994, members of the conservative Hutu majority in Rwanda viciously slaughtered an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu in a planned genocidal campaign. “One hundred kilometers from where I was shooting Guimba people were killing each other,” he recalls. “Elsewhere in Africa there were many similar tragedies, many fratricidal conflicts. So I knew that I had to make a film that dealt with these kinds of tragedies” (Privett/Sissoko 2000, 39). In a personal interview with African film scholar, Lindiwe Dovey, the Malian filmmaker stated that he never chose his artistic subjects but made films only when compelled by “situations of urgency” (Dovey 2009, 253). This was a situation of urgency indeed, but not one that was unique to Rwanda or to Africa. Similar conflicts across the African continent, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the conflict in Chiapas, and other examples of internecine warfare in the 1990s seemed to Sissoko symptoms of the same universal human problems of greed, xenophobia, and racism. In response, he released La genèse in 1999 – a film dedicated to “all those throughout the world who are victims of fratricidal conflicts” and “all those who make peace.” When he first announced his intention to adapt the book of Genesis to screen, the postcolonial filmmaker received criticism for working with a canonical Western text – specifically one identified with French Christian colonialism. Sissoko countered that this was a human narrative rather than a Western one; moreover, it was the property of three monotheistic religions, which share the same prophets: “The Bible – it is also the Qur’an and the Torah” (Dovey 2009, 269). While screenwriter Jean-Louis Sagot-Durvaroux worked primarily from the Bible/Torah, Sissoko’s final version of the film is filtered through Islamic traditions and thoroughly Africanized. In adapting Genesis, both men were contributing to a long history of African engagement with the Bible and the Qur’an—a history in which Western texts are often appropriated selectively and transformed to meet pressing needs of the contemporary situation (West 2001). Dovey suggests that West African adaptations like La genèse are most appropriately analyzed through the lens of performance criticism (Dovey 2009, 12– 13). This recognizes strong performative aspects in West African cinema, most especially its indebtedness to indigenous traditions of orature or “griotry.” Like many African directors, Sissoko has described himself as a “screen griot” – implying that filmmakers are cultural successors to the custodians and practitioners of the West African oral storytelling tradition – thereby positioning himself as both a social commentator and preserver/transmitter of indigenous culture (Thackway 2003, 203). The storytelling in Guimba is done through an onscreen griot, who also provides comic relief. Several characters in La genèse (Esau, Jacob, the “slave” at the Assembly of Nations) take turns as storytellers throughout the film as they recall earlier episodes in Gen-

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esis. Sometimes these memories are recreated in flashback, and sometimes they are performed in the style of Mali’s popular koteba theatre, which combines dance, chanting, burlesque comedy, and satirical storytelling to expose the problems of the village and the larger society (Ukadike 2002, 185). This performative tradition allows Sissoko to introduce elements of humor into what is otherwise a rather tragic storyline of rape, murder, and internecine conflict. The structural and stylistic influence of West Africa’s oral griotic tradition is also evident in the film’s episodic, digressive, and sometimes verbose narrative (especially the Assembly of Nations sequence, which relies heavily on the spoken word). The events of Genesis 34 – the rape of Dinah and its aftermath – comprise the main storyline of the film, while other portions of the Genesis narrative emerge slowly as numerous voices engage in monologue, discussion, and storytelling. This narrative layering, with all of its circularity and repetition, eventually results in the construction of a strong ethical message that recognizes ways in which bigotry and limited perspectives shape one’s understanding of group conflict. By mimicking structures of orature, Sissoko’s film encourages West African audiences to respond to his tale as they would to a griotic or koteba performance – as active participants with a critical eye, far removed from passive spectators (Dovey 2009, 13 – 14). Set three hundred years after the flood, La genèse privileges sections of the Genesis narrative that have not enjoyed abundant screen-time in European and American cinema. Sissoko combines two primary storylines that are narratively separate in Genesis – the ongoing interpersonal conflict between the twin brothers Jacob and Esau (Gen. 25 – 28, 32– 33) and the conflict between Jacob’s pastoral nomads and Hamor’s settled horticulturalists (Gen. 34). Clan affiliation is clearly demarcated by costume. Jacob’s pastoral nomads (l’éleveurs) wear vivid blue robes – perhaps a visual reference to Mali’s nomadic Tuareg people, who are popularly known as the “Blue Men of the Desert” (Dovey 2009, 256). Hamor’s peasant agriculturalists (cultivateurs) wear gold, and Esau’s hunters dress in animal hides. At the same time, the film underlines the kin relationships among these groups, all of whom are descended from Noah (Hamor is called Jacob and Esau’s “cousin”). Only Dinah, the clanless widowed bride, wears white as she drifts among these groups. Using the same coded, allegorical approach he employed in Guimba, Sissoko transforms these three biblical patriarchs and their associated clans into ancient types of modern-day peoples engaged in socio-cultural strife. As La genèse circulated among film festivals in 2000, Sissoko explained: In the film you have peasants and farmers. They live together for centuries. They know each other very well, and they share many things. Because they know each other so well, they also have many reasons to hate each other. In the film, like right now in Mali and across Africa, they are choosing to focus on these. Why? They share customs, they marry together. But because of poverty, because of money, there is all this jealousy and envy and ultimately fratricide. (Privett/Sissoko 2000, 40)

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The first sequence of La genèse introduces the blue-robed pastoralists and the hidewearing hunters. The film opens in Jacob’s camp, where Dinah is washing the bloodstains from Joseph’s robe at the behest of her mother Leah – depicted here as a nagging and manipulative wife. Jacob, who has been sequestered in his tent for the last twenty months mourning the loss of his beloved son, is overcome by righteous anger. He chases Dinah away, reclaims his bloody keepsake, and glowers menacingly at Leah’s sons, seeming to suspect their duplicity in Joseph’s disappearance (cf. Surat Yusuf 12:4, 18). The dark, enclosed shots of tent-dwelling Jacob are visually contrasted with open-air shots of his revenge-seeking brother, Esau (played by famed Malian singer, Salif Keïta³), who wanders across the drought-stricken landscape spying on the other clans. He and his clan are almost always shot in relation to Mali’s distinctive Mount Hombori Tondo. As the film’s first griot, Esau stands against an open horizon with his arms raised and, addressing God directly, recounts a tale of human creation – marred by drought and thirst, the creation of woman (associated with “unquenchable thirst”), and fraternal strife.

Fig. 84: The hunter, Esau, tells a story of creation in La genèse (1999)

Hamor’s gold-robed clan is introduced through the rape of Dinah. She seeks out Shechem and teases him before the young man bodily carries the screaming girl back to his village and into his house. This interaction is captured in a distant long shot and the rape itself occurs offscreen. It is made almost more horrible, however, by Hamor’s clan, which sits outside the house awaiting the outcome – a bloody sheet held aloft and celebrated in song: “The mighty bull has trembled […] The bull’s desire can’t be denied!” Comments in the crowd underline the fact that these peasant farmers view Jacob’s clan with suspicion and contempt: “These people lack honor, they are nomads.”

 This casting choice emphasizes the film’s themes of caste boundaries and racism. Albinism is considered a sign of bad luck in Mandinka culture, and Salif Keïta’s direct descent from Sundiata Keïta, the founder of the Malian Empire, makes his choice of careers transgressive (Dovey , ).

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A displeased Hamor verbally vents his anger toward Dinah, rather than the nowsmitten Shechem, but reluctantly agrees to approach his fellow patriarch to negotiate a marriage agreement between their clans. Once at the pastoralists’ camp, the clan leaders hold a public conversation with Hamor sitting outside and shouting to Jacob, who remains sequestered inside his dark tent. They begin by reviewing their shared genealogy (“Jacob, son of Noah, our father? Um-huh.”) – once again underlining the theme of their essential brotherhood. Nonetheless, comments from Leah and her sons illustrate that clan bigotry runs both ways. Leah: My God, hear me, the gazelle’s milk will not be mixed with the hyena’s droppings. Judah: Never! For it is said, “Canaan is cursed!” [cf. Gen. 9:25 – 27] Rueben: We must not let uncircumcised men have our women. It is a dishonor. That will never happen.

Jacob rules in favor of marriage on one condition: that Hamor’s people must first be circumcised like his clan (cf. Gen. 34:13, where this proposal comes from Jacob’s sons). “Only then will you marry our women, and we will marry yours. Together we will make a single nation,” Jacob offers. Each of Dinah’s brothers and her nephew Shelah (Gen. 38:1– 5) publically vow to avenge their kinswoman should Hamor’s people refuse this condition. Bowing to this pressure and Shechem’s supposed love for Dinah, the men of Hamor’s clan are circumcised in an extended and rather comedic scene. As they wait in line for their turn at the blacksmith’s block, the men are subjected to bawdy taunts from a toothless old woman, who warns them that tillers of the soil “need a nice long plow to dig deep into the furrows and reap a nice fat harvest.” Again, Sissoko’s camera remains discreet, but viewers are teased with the sounds of chopping, sharpening knives, and male groaning. This provides a brief comedic respite before the film’s most tragic scene.

Fig. 85: A blacksmith prepares to circumcise the Shechemites in La genèse (1999)

The Shechemite massacre is shot in an extended sequence that intentionally evokes memories of the Rwandan genocide and other similar atrocities. Jacob’s sons enter the village on horseback and kill all the men, young and old. Rather than sensation-

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alizing this violence, Sissoko shoots the sequence at night (partly with a handheld camera), interrupts the action with numerous cuts, and refuses to use musical cues to interpret the scene for his audience. Darkness obscures our view of the killing – although we do hear the sound of a spear thrust through a wailing infant’s body, followed by abrupt silence. It is difficult to distinguish the members of each clan in the confusion. In a significant departure from Genesis, Hamor survives the attack in which his male lineage is wiped out. The camera pans around the post-massacre darkness where Hamor now sits stricken as a woman whimpers quietly nearby. From this point, the film narrative departs from the chronology of Genesis to examine the causes of the night’s atrocity (as well as the pending conflict between Jacob and Esau) from a multiplicity of angles. Jacob emerges from his tent, rends his clothes, and bids “Dinah, wife of Shechem,” to follow him. They pay their respects to Hamor, who is sitting outside the village alone in his grief. Rather than defend himself or his clan (cf. Gen. 34:30), Jacob sympathizes with his cousin as one bereaved father to another. For his part, Hamor laments that “the world has become as it was before the great flood. Evil is everywhere, famine is spreading, droughts and quarrels have emptied our granaries. In a year at most your animals will die.”⁴ They agree to call an Assembly of Nations to address these problems and prevent further violence, although Jacob refuses to attend. Ironically, in the absence of strong patriarchal leadership, it is his murderous sons who face Hamor as representatives of their clan at the assembly. For Western viewers, the long Assembly of the Nations sequence – essentially a West African palaver – might appear wordy and anti-climatic following the Shechemite massacre. However, it is here that the Genesis story is most thoroughly Africanized and the “situation of urgency” that drove Sissoko to this film is addressed most directly in koteba theatre style. Issues of xenophobia, intermarriage, and violence are first examined through rational discussion before being considered once again from a performative angle. Recalling leitmotifs of Esau’s earlier creation narrative, Jacob’s sons blame their fratricidal conflict on the “thirst” that Hamor’s sons have for “our women.” Accordingly, Jacob’s eldest son Reuben proposes that a pact be formed between their peoples: “No shepherdess will marry a peasant. No shepherd will marry a peasant girl. It will be an unbreakable pact between us. In this way the borders will be defined. We will know who is who. Anyone who breaks this pact will be responsible for war.” In response, Hamor has the Canaanite woman, Ada, brought forward and reveals that she is the wife of Judah and the mother of Shelah. Should Shelah be cut in half, the assembly ponders, since his blood is half shepherd clan and half peasant clan? Here the film reverts to the satirical comedy of koteba theatre when a cross-dressing male (Sissoko calls him the “slave”) sits in Judah’s lap and taunts him for this hypoc-

 Sissoko has associated the droughts in the film with those that claimed thousands of lives and decimated half of Mali’s herds in the s and s (Dovey , ).

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risy. Elders advise the angry Judah that “[t]ruth speaks with two tongues. One is insolent. The other is modest.” It might be that their “insolent slave” has “immodest eyes” that “see into places where your modesty is blind.” The immodest slave then takes on the role of griot and, with help from players in the audience, further reveals Judah’s hypocrisy by acting out the story of Judah and Tamar (Gen. 38). Not only did he marry a Canaanite woman, Judah also impregnated his Canaanite daughter-in-law.

Fig. 86: The fool taunts Judah for his hyprocrisy in La genèse (1999)

The riled assembly is only stopped from killing Jacob’s sons by the arrival of the patriarch himself. At Hamor’s request Jacob tells the story of Isaac’s betrothal to Rebekah (Gen. 24), which he interprets as a love story from “the times before the world was torn asunder.” This finally prompts Esau, who has been lurking nearby, to reveal himself and protest that “[s]ince the dawn of time, children have been born into rift and discord.” Esau finally confronts his brother, whom he blames for their parents’ rejection of him. The hunters leave to kill Jacob’s herds and poison his wells, while Jacob tells Benjamin the story of Esau selling his birthright for a bowl of soup (Gen. 25:29 – 34). Just as a violent conflict appears inevitable, the film ventures for the first time into the supernatural realm, signified by a formalist stylistic turn. A small child dressed in white – presumably an angel – stops Esau from taking vengeance on Jacob. “Justice is for God alone to will,” he says, causing Esau to lower the knife clenched in his fist. Seeking to reconcile with his brother, Jacob is surrounded by white-clad children/angels with whom he “wrestles” until daybreak (Gen. 32:22– 31). Among them is the white-robed Dinah, who since her rape has descended into “enlightened insanity” (Dovey 2009, 259). Jacob is called to account for daring to question God about the loss of Joseph. The angels taunt, “Jacob, teach me. You who speak with God! Do you rule over the sun? […] Each devours his brother’s flesh. Brother does not spare brother. We devour each other unceasingly. Even the doe abandons her litter. But I am different. I shall never forget you.” Modifying the Genesis account, it is Jacob who pleads with the angels to let him go, but they

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refuse to release him without first bestowing a blessing. “Your name is no longer Jacob. Your name is Israel! For you are strong against God,” they say. As lights flash on and off they arise and run away, leaving the patriarch unconscious upon the ground.

Fig. 87: Jacob collapses after ‘wrestling’ with angels in La genèse (1999)

Hamor, informed of Jacob’s plight by yet another angel, organizes the herder’s sons into an impromptu search party. They find him just regaining consciousness with a smiling Esau and Dinah sitting nearby. They reveal what Jacob seems to have suspected all along – Joseph is alive in Egypt – and tell his other sons that this is where they must go now that all their cattle are dead. Against his sons’ protests that Dinah and Esau are both mad, Jacob sends them to Egypt to recover their long lost brother. The film ends with the three reconciled patriarchs (and Dinah) watching Jacob’s sons disappear into the distance. A narrator (voiceover by the “insolent slave”) finishes the story by describing Joseph’s reconciliation with his brothers and the reunion of Jacob’s clan in Egypt, where they established themselves for many generations.

Fig. 88: Esau, Dinah, Jacob, and Hamor watch as Joseph’s brothers start for Egypt in La genèse (1999)

Concluding Thoughts on a Screen Griot Like other postcolonial filmmakers, Sissoko used cinema as a tool for both social analysis and the celebration of indigenous culture. In La genése, he appropriated

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biblical texts and images to address, from an African perspective, the universal human problem of fratricidal violence as exemplified in the 1990s by ethnic cleansings in Rwanda and Bosnia. Sissoko’s allegorical reading of the interconnected stories of Jacob, Esau, and Hamor transforms these characters into ancient types of modern-day peoples engaged in socio-cultural strife. Viewing these chapters of Genesis through the distinctively West African interpretive lenses of koteba performance and griotic storytelling, the film examines the social dynamics of internecine conflict and, through this story, offers the possibility of reconciliation. Sissoko also aimed in La genèse, as in all of his films, to forge authentic images of Africa to shape the emerging consciousness of his people. As he said in a 1988 interview, “If you look at Africa today and at the rate of literacy, film becomes a very useful tool. [… Film] enables Africans to describe themselves, to create images of themselves and also to correct the image of Africa as produced by Hollywood and colonial literature” (Diawara, et al. 1987– 88, 46). When asked whether he worried that the oral storytelling motifs employed in La genése might prove aesthetically inaccessible for Western viewers, Sissoko responded: Obviously some aspects will seem odd or not readily comprehensible, but the door to dreaming and discovery is open to those who wish to enter it. Too often, and to our detriment, Africans put too much effort into understanding Europe and America. Europe and America, on the other hand, do not make the effort to reciprocate. […] I think when this criticism is made, one needs to respond that some effort needs to be expended by America and Europe to understand and learn about Africa, its histories, and its cultures. (Ukadike 2002, 194)

La genèse offers a distinctly African interpretation of Genesis, reminding viewers that biblical literature originated in a West Asian and North African context. Sissoko’s film reinserts Africans into a narrative from which they have long been excluded by European and American interpretive traditions. Without succumbing to the temptations of cinematic sensationalism and spectacle, the film foregrounds the extreme violence of biblical stories that are often sanitized or ignored in Western films. La genése forces audiences schooled in Western cinematic conventions and interpretive traditions to see Genesis anew through an unaccustomed lens.

Works Cited Aufderheide, Pat. 1991. “Interview: Cheikh [sic] Oumar Sissoko.” Black Film Review 6.2: 4 – 5, 30. Curiel, Jonathan. 2000. “African Moviemaker Explores ‘Genesis’: First sub-Saharan Film at Jewish Film Festival.” San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/AfricanMoviemaker-Explores-Genesis-First-2748367.php; accessed April 5, 2015. Diawara, Manthia, Elizabeth Robinson, and Cheick Oumar Sissoko. 1987 – 88. “New Perspectives in African Cinema: An Interview with Cheick Oumar Sissoko.” Film Quarterly 41.2: 43 – 48. Dovey, Lindiwe. 2009. African Film and Literature: Adapting Violence to Screen. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Fall, Aminata Sox. 1986. The Beggars’ Strike. Transl. Dorothy S. Blair. Longman African Classics Series. London: Longman Publishing Group. Privett, Ray, and Cheick Oumar Sissoko. 2000. “I Make Films about the Big Problems of Our Continent: An Interview with Cheick Oumar Sissoko.” Cinéaste 25.2: 38 – 40. Thackway, Melissa. 2003. Africa Shoots Back: Alternative Perspectives in Sub-Saharan Francophone African Film. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. Ukadike, Nwachukwa Frank. 1994. Black African Cinema. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. —. 2002. Questioning African Cinema: Conversations with Filmmakers. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press. West, Gerald. 2001. “Liberation Theology: Africa and the Bible.” In The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible. Ed. John Rogerson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 330 – 42.

Films Cited Bàttu (dir. Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 2000, British Screen, SN/FR/UK). Finzan (dir. Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 1989, Kora Films, ML). Guimba, un tyran une époque [a.k.a. Guimba the Tyrant] (dir. Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 1995, Centre National de la Cinématographie du Mali, ML/BF/DE). La genèse [“Genesis”] (dir. Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 1999, Kora Films, ML/FR). Nyamanton [“Garbage Boys”] (dir. Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 1987, Centre National de la Cinématographie du Mali, ML). Sécheresse et exode rural [“Drought and the Rural Exodus”] (dir. Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 1985, Centre National de la Cinématographie du Mali, ML/FR).

Fumi Ogura and N. Frances Hioki

45 Lee Chang-Dong: Exploring the Hidden Christ Biblical Reception in a Multi-Religious Context The internationally renowned Korean film director, Lee Chang-dong was born in 1954, in Daegu, South Korea.¹ After graduating from Kyungpook National University in 1980, Lee first sought a literary career while teaching Korean literature at a high school. In 1983, his novel Jeon-ri won an award from the newspaper Dong-a Ilbo, and he published short stories successively through the 1980s. In 1992, his book There’s a Lot of Shit in Nok Cheon won a literary prize from The Korean Times and established his position as a rising star in the cultural scene. Then, in 1993, he joined Park Kwang-su’s production of the film Geu seome gago shibda (1993, a.k.a. To the Starry Island) as a scriptwriter and assistant director. His successful former career as a writer of short stories may have affected his filmmaking, especially in regard to the meticulously crafted plots, the use of irony, and the way his films often end ambiguously – stirring an allusive feeling.² Lee’s directorial debut was with Chorok mulkogi (1997, a.k.a. Green Fish). His second film Bakha satang (1999, a.k.a. Peppermint Candy) was chosen to be the opening film at the Busan International Film Festival, and his third film Oasiseu (2002, a.k.a. Oasis) won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival.³ Between 2003 and 2007, Lee did not make any films because he was appointed Minister of Culture and Tourism by the Korean President, Roh Moo-hyun. After five years’ absence from filmmaking, Lee directed Milyang (2007, a.k.a. Secret Sunshine), which was invited to the official competition of the Cannes International Film Festival, where the film’s female lead, Jeon Do-yeon, won the award for best actress. His next film Shi (2010, a.k.a. Poetry) also won the award for best screenplay at the Cannes film festival. Lee once said in an interview: “One of the most important things to me was to find a way to portray things that are not visible to the naked eye, faith being one of them” (Lim 2007). Here, while talking about faith, Lee does not refer to any specific religion. In another interview, Lee explained the multi-religious context of modern Korea as follows: “You see many crosses against the skyline of Korean cities, […] There are many religions and sects. My family has a Confucian tradition so I had no religion, but my wife’s family was Protestant, and I taught in a Protestant school”  On Lee’s biography, see Kim ().  On modern Korean literature’s reception of the Bible, Hee-an Choi (, ) notes that the writers “explored the Bible in a creative and unconventional way, challenging the Christian traditional dogmatic ideologies in a multi-religious society.”  On Peppermint Candy, see Hye/Diffrient (,  – ).

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(Dupont 2007). Such a religious landscape is deeply relevant to the director’s ambivalent approach to Christianity and the biblical tradition.⁴ To many viewers, his films contain a critique of the conventional interpretation of Christianity’s message, the idea that our prayers may be answered in the form of practical, material blessings. Still, there is no doubt that the issues of redemption and the suffering of the innocents are pivotal themes in his films. The three internationally acclaimed films in his oeuvre, Oasis, Secret Sunshine, and Poetry, can be read as allegories of suffering and redemption, and it is worthwhile to explore their biblical implications. Lee is among those contemporary Korean directors who “seek to express the confusing status of individuals and their moralistic chaos in the pursuit of the individualistic lifestyles against the psychological burden from society and history” (Lee 2000, 62). The director’s impeccable filmmaking and the actors’ outstanding performances project the untold suffering of innocents against the quotidian background of present-day South Korea. As in Teng-Kuan Ng’s apt comparison of Secret Sunshine and the book of Job, Lee’s characters struggle with difficult conditions over which they have no control: physical disability, lack of social skills, Alzheimer’s disease, or the sudden loss of a beloved child (Ng 2001, 176 – 77). They look up to the sky and implore God for a remedy and comfort, albeit in vain. The prayers of family members and neighbors are well intended but are also misdirected. What these tragic characters do not notice, however, is that they have an “emphatic Immanuel” at their side, a person who cares and stays with them through the difficulties, as in Isaiah 43:5, “Fear not, for I am with you.” In what follows, we shall discuss Lee’s portrayal of “Jesus Incognito” (anonymous Jesus), a hidden Christ-figure disguised in ordinary people who are paradoxically un-Christlike. This expression is borrowed from Martien Brinkman whose examination of Western films, literature, and visual arts since 1960 argues that indirect references to Jesus in these media contribute substantially to the continuing reflection on Jesus’ significance.⁵ Likewise, we intend to show in this chapter that indirect references to Jesus in Lee’s works provide an important example of the reception of biblical themes in Korean cinema. Lee’s portrayal of Korean Christianity is not always affirmative, but underneath the critical tone, we may find another layer that connotes profound theological questions.

Oasis (2002) Oasis is an unusual melodrama in which a man and a woman with disabilities find saviors in one another. Unlike most Korean Christian melodrama, the director reso-

 According to a  survey, “Christians constituted . percent of the South Korean population, surpassing Buddhists, the next largest religious group.” (Lee , ).  See Brinkman (,  – ). On cinematic Christ-figures, see Kozlovic (); Deacy (); McEver (,  – ); Reinhartz (,  – ).

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lutely avoids making moralistic observations.⁶ Still, it is “as much a film about Jongdu’s transcendent redemption as it is a romance” (Kim 2011, 162) and has a power to move the heart of the viewer to reassess the generic notion of happiness and the meaning of life. The story evolves as the mildly retarded ex-offender Jong-du (Sol Kyung-gu) meets and falls in love with Gong-ju (Moon So-ri), who suffers from cerebral palsy. One of the notable features of this film is the use of fantasy scenes to highlight the toughness of reality. In the first scene where Gong-ju appears, the director suggests her God-nearness through a vision of a shining white dove, though it turns out to be a reflection of light reflected from the mirror on the wall of her shabby apartment. In another critical scene on a deserted subway platform, Gong-ju gains a fully functioning body in her fantasy, places Jong-du in her wheelchair, and starts serenading him with the song Naega Manil (“If I Were”). As in many melodramas, the anticipation of physical intimacy is the hub of the story, and Lee rejects portraying them as an immaculate couple devoid of human desires. The course of the couple’s physical relationship suffers from Gongju’s severe physical disability and Jong-du’s child-like mental capacity. Especially, Jong-du cannot control his compulsive, anti-social behavior and tendency toward violence. His family offers an earnest prayer to God with a local pastor asking that he will cause no more trouble. Nonetheless, towards the end of the film, he ends up being sent back to prison again due to a false charge of raping Gong-ju (after her brother and his wife stepped suddenly into her apartment as the couple was making love).

Fig. 89: Intersection of fantasy and reality: a dove flies around Gong-ju’s room in Oasis (2002)

In contrast to the early scene, in which Gong-ju was looking upwards playing with the imaginary white dove, in the last scene, the director shows her looking down, diligently sweeping the floor of her apartment. She is embraced by warm sunlight and appears peaceful and more fulfilled than ever. The voice-over recounts an affec-

 On the issue of Korean melodrama and Christianity, see An ().

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tionate letter from Jong-du in prison, to assure the viewers that she waits for Jongdu’s release and their reunion with an unfaltering patience.

Secret Sunshine (2007) The plot of the next film Secret Sunshine is based on Yi Chong-jun’s (Lee Chung-joon) novel The Story of Insects (1985). In both the screenplay and the novel, a Christian community’s inability to console Shin-ae (Jeon Do-yeon), a mother whose child was kidnapped and murdered, is made painfully explicit. The film can be interpreted as a criticism of Christian evangelism,⁷ and when the film opened in Korean theaters, “Christians were uncomfortable because Christian messages and activities are depicted in a simple and superficial way”; nonetheless, the film has raised “heavy theological questions.”⁸ In Yi Chong-jun’s novel, the narrator of the story is a husband whose wife committed suicide after their son was murdered, but in the film Shin-ae is a widowed mother. The film also introduces an additional character, Jong-chan (Song Kangho), an unmarried auto mechanic who follows Shin-ae around. Initially, Shin-ae moves to the hometown of her late husband, Milyang, with some romanticized image of the historical countryside. The presence of an attractive single-mother from the city stirs the innocuous curiosity of the local townspeople, which unforeseeably leads to the death of her younger son. The additional character Jong-chan would be this film’s “Jesus Incognito,” and Lee’s storytelling focuses on the aftermath of the tragedy and the survival of Shinae while Jong-chan tries to relieve her by any means. Lee demonstrates both Shinae’s lack of romantic interest and Jong-chan’s failure to help her despite his consistent willingness to offer her unconditional support. However, while Shin-ae barely survives all of her life’s challenges, Jong-chan is transformed through the experience of escorting Shin-ae on her difficult journey. He becomes involved with the church, which Shin-ae has rejected. A wooden cross is hanging from the windshield of this car, and when asked by Shin-ae’s brother whether he goes to the church, he answers that he started attending the church because of Shin-ae but now it has become his custom to do so. In the film’s abrupt, anti-climactic ending, sunlight shines on the muddy ground suggesting the earthly presence of the savior. In the interview with The New York Times, Lee has revealed what he wanted to show through this ending. He said, “Shin-ae is always looking up and never at the ground […] I wanted to show that the meaning of life is not far from where we are. It’s not up there. It’s here in our actual life” (Lim 2007). Shin-ae would not allow Jong-chan to take the place of

 For an overview of the history of evangelical church in Korea, see Lee (,  – ).  Sung-Deuk Oak, the assistant professor of Korean Christianity at the University of California, Los Angeles, quoted in Lim ().

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Fig. 90: Jong-chan drives Shin-ae to the church. Secret Sunshine (2007)

her late husband, but there is hope for more down-to-earth happiness as their lives go on and he continues to stay by her side.

Poetry (2010) In Lee’s most recent film, Poetry, a superstar of 1970s Korean cinema, Yun Jeong-hie, plays the delicate sixty-six-year-old woman, Mi-ja, who is raising a teenage grandson for her daughter who works in another city. Mi-ja is devastated because she has been diagnosed with an early stage of Alzheimer’s disease and has discovered that her grandson was responsible for the suicide of a local Catholic girl named Agnes; he and some other boys had repeatedly raped her over a period of time. The families of the boys try to cover up the incident and seek a settlement with Agnes’s mother. Mi-ja cannot afford her share of the settlement, nor does she like the idea of the cover-up. Mi-ja visits Agnes’s memorial mass and traces her path from the site of the gang rape to the suicide bridge – only to realize that it is not her responsibility to right her grandson’s wrong. The “Jesus Incognito” character in this film – the local police detective, Mr. Park (Kim Jeong-gu), who is also a member of the poetry club Mi-ja sometimes visits – is found outside the main characters. Mr. Park is the clown of the group and likes to tell dirty jokes between poetry readings, but, despite his crudeness, he is also a good cop who has fought against corruption. Mr. Park plays a critical role in helping Mi-ja find justice for Agnes and ensures that Mi-ja will not be abandoned after the police take away her grandson. The film ends with Mi-ja’s disappearance and the voice-over of her poem, “Agnes’s song.” Lee leaves the film’s ending ambiguous and does not make clear Mi-ja’s whereabouts. Nevertheless, the viewer is left with the impression that Mi-ja has gained a new perspective on life through her difficult experiences and that she will find solace when she returns to the poetry club.

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Conclusion In his three works above, Lee chose to highlight no other religion but Christianity and its local churches. His portrayal of the Korean evangelical church is disapproving at times – particularly in Secret Sunshine – but this should not be assumed to represent the director’s negative view on the religion. It is important to note that toward the end of Secret Sunshine, Jong-chan embraced the church, instead of Shin-ae, in his own crude but joyful manner. The director is also inclined to contrast what is dreamy and heavenly with what is earthly and “not pretty”; and towards the end of each film, he comes back to illumine the earthly, inner beauty of common people. Oasis ends with the scene of Gongju sweeping the floor, and the last shot of the Secret Sunshine is the muddy ground. In Poetry, it is not made clear whether the dreamy old woman Mi-ja finally wakes up to live her own life or inevitably fades into the Alzheimer’s. Positively, however, she does have some people who deeply care about her. By illustrating how God’s silence toward the suffering of the innocents is compensated by the earthly redeemer figures, Lee indicates that the way toward redemption is hidden in our neighbors and our companionship. The hidden Christ can be a young woman with a severe handicap, an auto mechanic next door, and a friendly detective. They are not angels or miracle workers, but they do escort their loved ones quietly through misery. The anonymous saviors’ understated work of redemption tends to go unrecognized as such, save by the audience, who has followed the details that the director carefully laid out on the screen. Rather than refusing Christianity, Lee tries to show that the kingdom of heaven is not “up there,” but it is among us, in our actual, everyday living; and in doing so, he may be contributing his own artistic, albeit unorthodox, work of rooting the Christian message in contemporary Korean society.

Works Cited An, Jinsoo. 2005. “Screening the Redemption: Christianity in Korean Melodrama.” In South Korean Golden Age of Melodrama. Eds. Kathleen McHugh and Nancy Abelman. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Pp. 65 – 97 Brinkman, Martien E. 2013. Jesus Incognito: The Hidden Christ in Western Art since 1960. New York: Rodopi. Choi, Hee-an. 2013. “East Asia, Korean Literature.” Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Ed. Dale C. Allison, et al. Vol. 7. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Pp. 188 – 92. Deacy, Christopher. 2006. “Reflections on the Uncritical Appropriation of Cinematic Christ-Figures: Holy Other or Wholly Inadequate?” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 13: https://kar. kent.ac.uk/6414/; accessed March 6, 2015. Dupont, Joan. 2007. “Cannes: ‘Secret Sunshine,’ a mysterious journey of faith.” The New York Times (May 23): http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/23/arts/23iht-cannes24.1.5835562.html? _r=0; accessed March 6, 2015.

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Hye, Seung Chung and David Scott Diffrient. 2007. “Forgetting to Remember, Remembering to Forget.” In Seoul Searching: Culture and Identity in Contemporary Korean Cinema. Ed. Frances K. Gateward. Albany: State University of New York. Pp. 115 – 39. Kim, Kyung Hyun. 2011. Virtual Hallyu: Korean Cinema of the Global Era. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Kim, Young-jin. 2007. Korean Film Directors: Lee Chang-Dong. Seoul: Seoul Selection. Kozlovic, Anton Karl. 2004. “The Structural Characteristics of the Cinematic Christ-figure.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 8.1: http://dspace2.flinders.edu.au/xmlui/bitstream/handle/ 2328/14295/2004054629.pdf?sequence=1; accessed March 6, 2015. Lee, Hyangjin. 2000. Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Lee, Timothy S. 2006. “Beleaguered Success: Korean Evangelicalism in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century.” In Christianity in Korea. Eds. Robert E Buswell Jr. and Timothy S. Lee. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Pp. 330 – 50. Lim, Dennis. [September 30, 2007]. “A Portraitist of a Subdued, Literary Korea.” The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/movies/30lim.html; accessed March 6, 2015. McEver, Matthew. 2009. “The Savior Figure.” In The Continuum Companion to Religion and Film. Ed. William Blizek. New York: Continuum. Pp. 270 – 80. Ng, Teng-Kuan. 2011. “‘Now My Eyes Have Seen You’: A Comparative Study of Secret Sunshine and the Book of Job.” The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 23.2: http://www.academia. edu/9546380/Now_My_Eyes_Have_Seen_You_A_Comparative_Study_of_Secret_Sunshine_ and_the_Book_of_Job; accessed March 6, 2015. Reinhartz, Adele. 2009. “Jesus and Christ-Figures.” In The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film. Ed. John Lyden. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Pp. 420 – 39.

Films Cited Bakha satang [a.k.a. Peppermint Candy] (dir. Lee Chang-dong, 1999, East Film Company, KR/JP). Chorok mulkogi [a.k.a. Green Fish] (dir. Lee Chang-dong, 1997, CJ Entertainment, KR). Geu seome gago shibda [a.k.a. To the Starry Island] (dir. Park Kwang-su, 1993, Park Kwang-su Films KR). Milyang [a.k.a. Secret Sunshine] (dir. Lee Chang-dong, 2007, CJ Entertainment, KR). Oasiseu [a.k.a. Oasis] (dir. Lee Chang-dong, 2002, Dream Venture Capital, KR). Shi [a.k.a. Poetry] (dir. Lee Chang-dong, 2010, UniKorea Pictures, KR).

Samuel D. Giere

46 Mark Dornford-May: Transposing the Classic Mark Dornford-May (b. 1955) is a British-born, South African theater and film director.¹ He is married to South African opera singer and actress, Pauline Malefane, and was officially inducted into the clan of her family, the Sotho clan, in 2007. They have three children together. Dornford-May and Malefane are artistic partners working collaboratively in both theater and film. She has starred in all of his films (Whewell 2010). His work in cinema includes three feature length films – U-Carmen eKhayelitsha (2005), Son of Man (Jezile) (2006), and Breath Umphefumlo (2015) – as well as a short film Noye’s Fludde – Unogumbe (2013). Dornford-May’s directorial vision is accented by four primary influences: (1) his theatrical formation by and in the Chester Mystery Plays; (2) his populist approach to theater; (3) his collaborative, ensemble approach; and (4) his adopted home, South Africa, into which he transposes² Western classics, including biblical stories. Dornford-May was born on his grandfather’s farm near the village of Eastoft in Yorkshire, England, and grew-up in the town of Chester, near the border of England and Wales. As a young artist, he cut his theatrical teeth on the Chester Mystery Plays. These public and popular dramatizations of the biblical narrative originated in thirteenth-century Europe. Their production in Chester dates back at least to 1422, when, as with many of the mystery cycles, they were produced in conjunction with the ecclesial celebration of the Feast of Corpus Christi.³ The narrative of the Chester Mystery Cycle begins with the fall of Lucifer and the creation the world. It then touches on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible stories of Noah, Abraham, and Melchizedek and moves with much greater detail through the story of Jesus Christ, offering a pastiche of all four New Testament gospels that crescendos through Jesus’ crucifixion and ultimately reaching an apocalyptic final judgment.⁴ The mystery plays narrate the cosmic and earthly struggles between good and evil, with God Almighty, the ultimate victor, introduced at the beginning and the end of the cycle with the words, “Ego sum alpha et omega, primes et novissimus.”⁵ In short, “the entire message of the medieval Church was encompassed in one glowing festival” (Prosser 1961,

 For this essay, I am particularly indebted to Zirpel ().  Adele Reinhartz (, ) employs “transpose” in relation to Dornford-May’s film Son of Man (Jezile), though it is indicative of all of his work since his relocation to South Africa.  Celebrated in Western Christianity on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, sixty days after Easter Sunday.  Cf. Lumiansky/Mills (). A text-critical transcript of the Chester Mystery Cycle is also available online: machias.edu/faculty/necastro/drama/chester/index.html (accessed April , ).  “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last.” Cf. Rev. : (Vulgate).

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6). In the wake of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, however, the plays were banned by the Church of England. The final performance at Chester Cathedral was in 1575. The plays were revived in Chester in 1951, and continue to be produced there every five years. Dornford-May came of age acting various roles in these plays, from playing an angel when he was a child, rising to the role of Lucifer, and finally graduating to the role of Jesus Christ (Zirpel 2013, 167). The dramatic tradition of the Chester Mystery Plays has significantly stamped Dornford-May’s creative impulse for his work on both stage and film. He produced and directed the stage production, The Mysteries – Yiimimangaliso, a version of the Passion Play from Chester transposed to South Africa. His films Son of Man – Jezile (2006) and Noye’s Fludde – Unogumbe (2013) are both based on portions of the Chester Mystery Cycle. After studying theater at the University of Bristol, Dornford-May spent a number of years directing theater productions in England, including a decade with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In the 1990s, he began work with the Broomhill Opera Company in London collaborating with musical director Charles Hazelwood (Jefferson 2014). Part of Dornford-May’s service at Broomhill was extending the reach of the theater beyond the typical audience, beyond the wealthy and the educated middle class. Toward this end, the price of admission at Broomhill productions was what the theatergoer could pay. This resulted in audiences that were a diverse mix of social and economic classes.⁶ Dornford-May has attributed this socially conscious, communal approach to theater to the influence of one of his parents “who was passionate about the uses of drama as a way of helping people work together socially” (Dercksen 2008). The South African ambassador to the United Kingdom visited one of DornfordMay’s Broomhill productions and was impressed by this social experiment. He approached Dornford-May about bringing this concept to South Africa in order to help deconstruct Apartheid Era policies, which, for example, severely limited the place of black South Africans in theater. Dornford-May and Hazelwood accepted the challenge and began working in South Africa in 2000 recruiting black South African actors, actresses, singers, and musicians from across the country (Jefferson 2014). Together with thirty-five artists, they formed the theater company Dimpho di Kopane (Sesotho for “combined talents”). The question arose as to what the company would perform. In a country so long and deeply divided, what narratives could draw people together? The company moved in the direction of recontextualizing Western classics in order to engage contemporary issues in South Africa. In a country where 95 % of the population across racial and tribal divisions is Christian, the stories of the Christian Bible offered a common narrative that crossed the violent boundaries of Apartheid. This, together with Dornford-May’s experience with the Chester Mystery Cycle, helped to decide the material with which this brave new company would

 Zirpel (, ). Also, McGill ().

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debut. One of the first stage productions was The Mysteries – Yiimimangaliso, scored by Charles Hazelwood and directed by Dornford-May. In the words of one reviewer, “The tested formula of bringing different people together in a theatre project, employing the strongest of theatre’s tools – poetic language, good singing, music, drums and dancing, and a mythic tale – worked here, and very beautifully. As we all struggle with the place of theatre in our saturated world, it cannot be foolish to remind ourselves that simple and ancient formulas retain the power to bring communities together and to provide their audiences with moving celebrations” (Tucker 2002, 305). As an encore to the work of the ensemble Dimpho di Kopane, Dornford-May and Pauline Malefane co-founded Isango Ensemble in 2006.⁷ Isango Ensemble continues this work of recontextualizing classics, bringing to the stage the likes of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, Mozart’s Magic Flute, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and Puccini’s La Boheme. Dornford-May’s directorial work for both stage and film remains committed to ensemble-driven productions and to transposing classic narratives of Western culture⁸ into contemporary South African contexts in order to draw out contemporary, relevant truths found therein.

Transposing the Classic Onscreen Dornford-May’s films, like his theatrical work in South Africa, have been the result of this creative transposition. U-Carmen eKhayelitsha takes Bizet’s 1875 opera Carmen and sets it in the township of Khayelitsha (Xhosa for “New Hope”) outside of Cape Town. Son of Man (Jezile) sets and retells the story of Jesus Christ in a (fictional) modern-day African Judea, emphasizing truth and freedom, both political and spiritual, in the face of injustice. The narrative of Son of Man (Jezile) is built upon the “backbone” of the Chester Mystery Plays with strong accents of the language of Stephen Biko (d. 1977), South African martyred anti-Apartheid leader (Zwick 2013). Dornford-May’s short film, Noye’s Fludde – Unogumbe (2013),⁹ is both an intertextual and cross-cultural crossroads. In this film, Dornford-May and the Isango Ensemble reimagine in a contemporary South African context the 1957 operetta, Noye’s Fludde, by British composer Benjamin Britten, who himself based his operetta on the Noah’s Flood portion of the Chester Mystery Cycle. Dornford-May’s most recent film, Breath Umphefumlo (2015), a South African transposition of Pucinni’s 1896 opera La Boheme, is set to premiere at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival.¹⁰  See the website of the ensemble here: www.isangoensemble.org.za.  While it is a misnomer to speak of the Bible as a Western cultural narrative, in the sense that Dornford-May’s productions of biblical narratives rely heavily on the Chester Mystery Cycle’s dramatization of portions of the biblical narrative, he is working with Western cultural texts.  I am grateful to Isango Ensemble for granting access to the film.  See: https://www.berlinale.de/en/programm/berlinale_programm/datenblatt.php?film_id= #tab=filmStills (accessed April , ).

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Son of Man (Jezile) secured Dornford-May’s place at the table of Bible and film studies.¹¹ This film beautifully and deftly transposes the story of Jesus into a fictional modern-day African nation¹² in a world where evil, both cosmic and earthly, is real and the Xhosa-speaking Jesus (Andile Kosi) proclaims truth in the face of power, heals, and raises the dead. For this, he “disappears.” He is abducted, executed, and buried in a shallow grave. Jesus mother, Mary (Malefane) is lead to the grave. With the other women, she digs up her son, brings him back to the township, and hangs him on a cross high above the town for all to see. Evil is exposed for what it is. Mary, the women, the centurion, and Jesus’ disciples defiantly sing and dance toyi-toyi¹³ beneath the cross of Jesus, even in the face of armed soldiers calling them to disperse. At Mary’s leading, they sing, “The land is covered in darkness.” While the cross is not the instrument of death in Son of Man, it is an instrument of liberation. Jesus’ being lifted up on the cross draws all to him (John 12:31– 32) and by way of the truth being raised upon the cross all people are set free (John 8:32).

Fig. 91: Defiance under the cross in Son of Man (2006)

Accents in Dornford-May’s Filmmaking Dornford-May highlights strong female characters in his films, especially in Son of Man. While Jesus of course plays a central role, arguably the main character of the film is Mary, the mother of Jesus.¹⁴ The scene that sets Mary as the main character of the film begins with an eyewitness television report, setting the stage of bloody conflict in the township of

 Compare, in Part II, the discussions of this film by Tatum (Pp.  – ) and by Sison (Pp.  – ).  For further exploration of this, see the collection of essays (particularly those by West, Griere, and Zwick) in Walsh, et al. ().  Toyi-toyi, a dance that originated in Zimbabwe, became a tool of protest in South African during the struggle against Apartheid meant to intimidate the oppressor.  Recognizing this accent in the film, P. Jennifer Rohrer-Walsh and Richard Wash () suggest that a more apt title of the film is “Mary and the Mothers.”

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Judea with government troops bringing peace by means of violence. The camera finds Mary running for her life as she ducks into an elementary school classroom to hide. Her desperate search for sanctuary is shattered by the horror of a mound of executed children in the opposite corner of the room. As she hears her pursuers draw closer, she plays dead among the children and escapes detection. Into this context, Dornford-May transposes the Annunciation (Luke 1:26 – 38) and the Magnificat (Luke 1:46 – 55).

Fig. 92: The angel Gabriel in Son of Man (2006)

Amidst the carnage Mary is met by the archangel Gabriel (James Anthony), a boy simply costumed in a loincloth with white feathers on his chest. In Xhosa, the angel boldly announces to Mary that she is with child. Mary responds with song, the Magnificat, which Malefane’s operatic voice carries with haunting majesty. Dornford-May has expressed that it is the Magnificat that served as the “launching pad for actually hearing Mary’s voice, even if it is subliminal, throughout the whole film” (Dercksen 2008). The strength of the character of Mary returns throughout the film, in particular at Herod’s massacre of the innocents (Matt. 2:16 – 18), when Mary, after first shielding the child Jesus’ face from the horror, turns his face to see the evil in the world, and also again at Jesus’ death, when Mary and two other women are taken by “Century” to the unmarked grave. With her bare hands Mary digs up her son and takes his body back to the township in order to unmask the evil of “disappearance” (Giere 2013, 29) by hanging his body on a cross for all to see. She leads the singing and defiantly dances toyi toyi in the face of armed soldiers. Another related accent is Dornford-May’s work as a complex mix of both honoring and challenging tradition. In some ways, Dornford-May’s portrayal of Mary draws

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upon religious convention. He clothes her in light blue throughout the film, gives her a makeshift halo as she gazes upon the infant Jesus in the stable, and quotes Michelangeo’s Pietà as Mary holds Jesus’ body in the back of a pickup truck as they transport him from the grave to the cross. He also breaks tradition by shifting the role of casting the mighty down from their thrones (cf. the Magnificat, Luke 1:52) from Jesus Christ to Mary. While Jesus teaches and heals and even raises the dead, it is Mary that serves as a stronger prophetic agent in the face of power. She confronts Herod with the lie of “disappearance.” She digs up her son’s body, carries it back to town, and hangs him from a cross to expose the darkness of evil. Mary boldly sings truth when Dornford-May frames her at the foot of Jesus’ cross between a U.S. made M-16 and an Israeli made Uzi. It is in her singing and action that Jesus’ prediction earlier in the film comes to pass: “When you are told, and you will be, that people just ‘disappear,’ you must say we have been lied to. And evil will fall.” Mary is not the only female character whose role is strengthened in DornfordMay’s films. When Jesus’ disciples are introduced, in the manner reminiscent of Martin Scorsese’s introduction of the main characters in Mean Streets (1973),¹⁵ after the first few are introduced with their names in text over a freeze frame, the viewer then meets Simone, Phillippa, Thaddea, and Andie, all female disciples. Another example in the short film Noya’s Fludde – Unogumbe (2013) is Mrs. Noah (Malefane), righteous ark-builder¹⁶ and God’s saving agent. Music plays an essential dramatic role in Dornford-May’s films. Whether it is Malefane’s operatic solos or ensemble numbers, music serves as an essential element of the narrative. Imagining Dornford-May’s films without their music is like imagining Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) without “As Time Goes By” and “La Marseillaise.” Children are important symbols in Dornford-May’s work, as they represent present and future hope. The angels and shepherds are all played by children in Son of Man (Jezile). Also, Noye’s Fludde – Unogumbe opens with Chumisa Dornford-May, Malefane and Dornford-May’s daughter, framing the production by singing the opening verse of the fifth-century hymn, “Lord Jesus, Think on Me.”¹⁷

 Perhaps a technique that originated in Japanese gangster films of the s and s, DornfordMay’s use of this quick means of character introduction also resembles Danny Boyle’s introduction of characters in Trainspotting (). Darnford-May also uses this technique in Noye’s Fludde – Unogumbe ().  The ark is actually a submarine in the film.  In Britton’s operetta, the hymn is sung by a congregation. Dornford-May begins with the solo child’s voice and follows this with a second time through the first verse sung by the ensemble. The hymn was penned by Synesius of Cyrene (c.  – ), translated into English by Allen W. Chatfield ( – ).

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Reception Dornford-May’s films have received critical acclaim. U-Carmen eKhayelitsha (2005) won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and was an official selection at both the Cannes and Toronto film festivals. Son of Man – Jezile (2006) opened at the Cannes Film Festival and has been the subject of a collection of scholarly essays, Son of Man: An African Jesus Film (2013). American film critic, Roger Ebert, proclaimed it to be “one of the most extraordinary and powerful films at Sundance” (Ebert 2006).

Works Cited Dercksen, Daniel. 2008. “Interview: Mark Dornford-May – Son of Man.” The Writing Studio. www. writingstudio.co.za/page2159.html; accessed March 6, 2015. Ebert, Roger. 2006. “Sundance #5: From Judd to Jesus.” Roger Ebert: Festivals and Awards (January 23): http://www.rogerebert.com/festivals-and-awards/sundance-5-from-judd-to-jesus; accessed March 6, 2013. Giere, S.D. 2013. “‘This is My World!’ Son of Man (Jezile) and Cross-Cultural Convergences of Bible and World.” In Son of Man: An African Jesus Film. Ed. Richard Walsh, Jeffery L. Staley, and Adele Reinhartz. Bible in the Modern World 52. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Pp. 23 – 33. Jefferson, Margo. 2014. “African and Western Worlds Collude Happily.” The New York Times (November 10): www.nytimes.com/2004/11/10/arts/music/10jeff.html?pagewanted=all&posi tion&_r=0; accessed March 6, 2015. Lumiansky, R.M., and David Mills, ed. 1972. The Chester Mystery Cycle. London: Early English Text Society/Oxford University Press. McGill, Hannah. 2006. “Carmen Seduces Africa.” The Herald (Glasgow). (April 11): http://www6. upcom.it/classicaonline/site/44_2_2.asp?id=244&testata=The%20Herald; accessed March 6, 2015. Prosser, Eleanor. 1961. Religion in the English Mystery Plays: A Re-Evaluation. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Reinhartz, Adele. 2013. Bible and Cinema: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Rohrer-Walsh, P. Jennifer, and Richard Walsh. 2013. “Mary and the Mothers.” In Son of Man: An African Jesus Film. Ed. Richard Walsh, Jeffery L. Staley, and Adele Reinhartz. Bible in the Modern World 52. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Pp. 166 – 77. Tucker, Betsy Rudelich. 2002. “Yiimimangaliso: The Mysteries (review).” Theatre Journal 54 (May): 305. Walsh, Richard, Jeffery L. Staley, & Adele Reinhartz, eds. 2013. Son of Man: An African Jesus Film. The Bible in the Modern World 52. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. West, Gerald O. 2013. “The Son of Man in South Africa?” In Son of Man: An African Jesus Film. Ed. Richard Walsh, Jeffery L. Staley, and Adele Reinhartz. Bible in the Modern World 52. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Pp. 2 – 22. Whewell, Tim. 2010. “From South African’s townships to the opera house.” BBC Newsnight, South Africa (July 6): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8739017.stm; accessed March 6, 2015. Zirpel, Thimo. 2013. “Mark Dornford-May über Son of Man.” Religion und Gewalt im Bibelfilm. Ed. Reinhold Zwick. Film und Theologie 20. Marburg: Schüren. Pp. 165 – 74.

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Zwick, Reinhold. 2013. “Between Chester and Capetown: Transformations of the Gospel.” In Son of Man: An African Jesus Film. Ed. Richard Walsh, Jeffery L. Staley, and Adele Reinhartz. Bible in the Modern World 52. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Pp. 111 – 14.

Films Cited Breath Umphefumlo (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2015, Advantage Entertainment, ZA). Casablanca (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1942, Warner Brothers, US). Mean Streets (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1973, Warner Brothers, US). Noye’s Fludde – Unogumbe (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2013, Film and Music Entertainment, ZA). Son of Man (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2006, Spier Films, ZA). Trainspotting (dir. Danny Boyle, 1996, Channel Four Films, UK). U-Carmen eKhayelitsha (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2005, Spier Films, ZA).

J. R. Daniel Kirk

47 Serious Men: Scripture in the Coen Brothers Films Joel (b. 1954) and Ethan (b. 1957) Coen were both born in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, sons of an economics professor at the University of Minnesota and an art history professor at St. Cloud State University. Their parents were Jewish, their mother Reba having been brought up in an orthodox Jewish Latvian family (Robson 2003, 5). Each had a bar mitzvah and was sent to Hebrew school. The family attended the conservative synagogue Adath Jeshurun, and the boys attended the Talmud Torah of Minneapolis four days a week in addition to regular attendance at Shabbat services (Prell 2011, 367– 68). Their own experience of growing up in a subculture that was saturated with religious significance has left its mark on their scripts. Films such as O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Ladykillers, no less than A Serious Man, find their religious traction as much from the religious cultures within which the plot lines are embedded as in specific scriptural references or themes. Their filmmaking began when they purchased a Super 8 camera with money earned mowing lawns.¹ In what has become something of a trademark in their professional career, their initial forays into movie making were remakes of movies they had seen on television. Their collaboration as adults ensued when both found themselves in New York after college. There, Joel’s film career started to gain traction when he landed a job as assistant editor to Sam Raimi on The Evil Dead (1981). Ethan, meanwhile, was working odd jobs including being a typist at Macy’s Department Store. They began to write together in what has become a thoroughgoing collaboration. Though often only one is mentioned as producer or director of their projects, both function equally in these roles, as well as the screenwriting and editing capacities.²

Coen Brothers Films Biblical references and allusions in Coen Brothers movies bring the story being told onscreen into thoroughgoing conversation with the biblical world. Such references often signal that the rules guiding the film are not contained within a universe explicable as a closed system of cause and effect, but are instead understood only when the possibility of divine agency is taken into account.³ The biblical threads analyzed

 Robson (, ); Russell (, ). On the Coens’ initial foray into filmmaking, see also the interview with Michel Ciment and Hubert Niogret in Postif, July-August , translated and reprinted in Palmer (,  – ; here, ).  Russel (,  – ). The editor of their films, Roderick Jaynes, is a pseudonym for themselves.  For a parallel assessment, see White ().

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below are but one aspect of their richly textured stories. Though they provide one crucial hermeneutical lens for these films, other dynamics, often equally important, are always in play as well, even if I cannot do full justice to them here.⁴

Barton Fink (1991) The Jewish title character of Barton Fink (credited dir. Joel Coen) finds that his journey from New York playwright to Hollywood film writer is, in fact, a Babylonian exile in which he becomes a sort of anti-Daniel figure. The film achieves this refraction of Fink’s destiny through a number of interpretive cues, including the scene in which he turns to a Gideon Bible and reads, “And the king, Nebuchadnezzar, answered and said to the Chaldeans, ‘I recall not my dream; if ye will not make known unto me my dream, and its interpretation, ye shall be cut in pieces, and of your tents shall be made a dunghill.’” The passage, a slight modification of Daniel 2:5, ties together several themes in the story. Barton is attempting to write a movie for a cinema mogul but does not know what is expected; he needs to play the role of mind reader if he is going to meet with success. Then, there is the literal threat of being chopped to pieces by Charlie, his psychotic next-door neighbor.

Fig. 93: Babylonian exile in Barton Fink (1991)

 In Barton Fink, for instance, numerous references and allusions to World War II add layers of nuance to the story, including references to the rise of Nazi Germany through the  date of the story, Charlie’s screaming “Heil Hitler,” and the studio producer’s donning of a military uniform after the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. Cf. Russell (, ).

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The notion that Barton is in Babylonian exile is reinforced through at least two other devices in the film. First, the reference to Nebuchadnezzar recurs when another writer, W. P. Mayhew, hands Barton an autographed copy of a novel by that name. Second, the hotel itself is adorned with tropical plants so as to evoke, perhaps, the hanging gardens of Babylon – an allusion that would also explain the constantly dripping, floral wallpaper in Barton’s room.⁵ This raises the questions of why Barton might be in exile, and why Hollywood might be an apt symbol for it. To the former question, the film provides some clues. When Barton turns from the book of Daniel to the book of Genesis, the text is not the expected “In the beginning God created” (Gen. 1:1) but instead the opening lines of the film that Barton is trying to write: “Fade in on a tenement building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.” Later, Barton will proclaim himself to be a creator. The hubris of his assertion is visible not only in its contrast with his writer’s block, but also in the way that he reads his work in the place of God’s in Genesis 1. In addition, Barton is deeply self-deceived about his connection with the “common man.” He sees himself above such people, whom he treats with recurring condescension. Though he purports to be their advocate and tell their stories, he is confronted with his failure in this regard by his murderous working-class neighbor, who condemns Barton with the words, “You don’t listen!” In Hollywood, Barton struggles to write the wrestling picture assigned to him by the studio. His writer’s block appears to be a combination of alienation from “the common man” and an overall ignorance about wrestling. On the latter score, his neighbor Charlie attempts to give him a lesson, but to no avail. Barton’s exile from New York embodies the exilic narrative of his Jewish people and confronts him with the trauma that results from attempting to play the part of God while failing to give voice to the voiceless, and from failing to know the wrestling that should characterize Israel’s relationship with God (Gen. 32:22– 32).

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) The few direct references to the Bible in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (credited dir. Joel Coen) undergird a wholesale “Christianizing” of the Odyssey-inspired narrative that is mediated by the “Christian” culture and music of Depression-era Mississippi.⁶ The first biblical reference is found on the lips of Ulysses Everett McGill, the leader of a trio of runaway convicts, when he urges his hopeless companion to “consider  Ethan Coen has signaled the significance of the hotel and Fink’s arrival: “In the way we presented the hotel, we hint that Fink’s arrival in Hollywood was not completely ‘normal’”; see Palmer (, ).  In a press conference, Joel Coen indicated that the music influenced the script as much as the script influenced the musical selection; see Mottram (, ). This is significant for the issue of the Bible in the film, inasmuch as the musical score is regularly revisiting biblical and broadly Christian themes.

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the lilies of the goddamn field” (cf. Matt 6:28). Everett’s deployment of religious language, however, is cynically self-interested. Throughout the film, he celebrates the dawning age of reason and enlightenment that will cast out religious superstition. But when he learns that there is money to be made from “singing into a can,” he introduces himself and his recently-baptized travelling companions by saying, “My name is Jordan Rivers and these here are the Soggy Bottom Boys… Songs of Salvation to Salve the Soul.” Their song, in turn, is “Man of Constant Sorrows,” whose lyrics allude to Isaiah 53:3, and include a promise of a future reunion “on God’s golden shore.” Throughout the film, there is a recurring motif of how to interpret the world. Is Everett’s rationalism, symbolized in the arrival of hydroelectric power, the inevitable and desirable replacement to the superstitions of religion? James Mottram sees this “agnosticism” as the perspective not only of Everett but also the Coens (Mottram 2000, 163). The story, however, points in a different direction. In an early encounter with a prophet, the convicts are told that they will see a cow standing on top of a cotton house as they go on a journey that will ultimately lead to their salvation. The crucial, climactic scene of the film turns when Everett and his companions are about to be hanged. As he prays for deliverance, the camera shot provides a God’s eye view of his petition. A raging flood then sweeps away the lynching party.

Fig. 94: O Brother protagonists, saved by a miracle?

When the convicts surface, Everett enters into immediate debate with Pete and Delmar about whether the flood was a miracle of God’s deliverance or simply the humanly planned flooding of the valley. Everett’s loquacious paean of the “veritable age of reason” that is going to displace the superstitious ways of religion, however, is silenced as he sees a cow, standing on a cotton house in the middle of the flood, staring at him. In the end, Everett’s rationalism cannot contain the story of which he is a part.

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The Ladykillers (2004) The reception of the Bible in The Ladykillers (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen) is also tightly woven with the fabric of a Christianized Southern culture in Mississippi. We first encounter scripture on the lips of Mrs. Munson as she is swearing out a complaint against a young man who plays his music too loud. The scene ends with Mrs. Munson expressing her desire that the police extend a helping hand to the younger generation: “You don’t wanna be tried and be found wantin’ […] Don’t want that writin’ on the wall” (cf. Dan. 5, esp. vv. 25 – 27). She clarifies for the puzzled policeman that this refers to “the feast of Balthazar,” before quoting a verse that does not exist: “The apostle John said, ‘Behold, there is a stranger in our midst come to destroy us.’”⁷ We soon meet that portended stranger, G. H. Dorr. The film’s biblical references provide hermeneutical keys for the action, and help the viewer understand the universe in which the action takes place. A “garbage island” is a recurring image in Ladykillers, an image explained in a sermon in Mrs. Munson’s church. It is the home of the sort of earthly trash from which the “backsliding” Israelites formed the golden calf. The preacher locates this island way outside the kingdom of God, as the final resting place of the backsliding damned. As the band of crooks with whom Dorr surrounds himself end up, one by one, transported to the garbage island, the viewer knows that the salvation of Mrs. Munson comes with the damnation of her would-be murderers. The biblical allusions help create a world in which the viewer knows God’s own hand plays an active role.

A Serious Man ⁸ (2009) The Job-inspired story that is A Serious Man (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen) wrestles with a God, and world, whose ways are not predictably favorable toward the righteous.⁹ Larry Gopnik is a Jewish physics professor whose life starts to come unraveled, beginning with his wife asking him for a divorce. A Serious Man receives the biblical tradition as mediated by the Jewish religion and culture of 1967 Minnesota, deeply reminiscent of the scenes of the Coens’ own Minnesota upbringing. The film begins with a quote from Rashi, “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.” The biblical allusions themselves are somewhat subtler. The primary signals that the story of Larry Gopnik is a retelling of Job’s come in the form of three rabbis, introduced by title shots for the viewer, and a concluding

 Perhaps this is an allusion to John , which has Jesus saying both that the sheep will not follow a stranger (verse , the only reference to a stranger in the Johannine corpus) and that the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy (verse ). However, creating a Bible verse is well within the realm of normal for directors who regularly credit their own editing work to the non-existent Roderick Jaynes.  Compare the discussion of this film by Zwick in Part I (Pp.  – ).  Jason Klayman (, ) notes, “For all the uncertainty in the film, the Coens are certain about one thing: The reason the apparently righteous suffer cannot be definitively explained.”

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tornado.¹⁰ While Larry seeks out answers for why his life is falling apart, the rabbis push him in other, less comforting directions (Shandler 2011, 352– 53). The first indicates that the problem is one of perception: Gopnik needs to learn to see Hashem as he is in the world, and, perhaps most importantly, to see everything as an expression of God’s will. The second rabbi tells an elaborate, but seemingly irrelevant, story after which he can only confess that he has no answer, “Hashem doesn’t owe us the answer.” Gopnik’s rabbis can give him only a deference to God that fails to make sense of his world. Though the terms have shifted slightly, these voices echo the speeches of Job’s sorry comforters. The third rabbi, Marshak, refuses to see Gopnik, though he does speak with Gopnik’s son, Danny, after his bar mitzvah. Then, the rabbi quotes Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love,” which has been a recurring musical motif throughout the film. The song evokes the moment when what was thought to be truth is shown up to be false, and when joy passes away – the situation that appears to typify Gopnik’s life in juxtaposition to the sort of faith he is being encouraged to embrace. Marshak, though, does not advocate love, but instead admonishes Danny, “Be a good boy.” The ending of A Serious Man appears, for a moment, as though it will echo Job in the restoration of Gopnik’s fortunes. His marriage seems to be on the mend, his tenure has been approved at the university. But then he receives a legal bill that sends him to an envelope of money that has been left for him as a bribe – Larry forsakes righteousness and the admonition to “be a good boy” – and an ominous phone call from his doctor. In this film, unlike Job, the suffering questioner does not have all things set to rights in the end (Klayman 2010). This film is one in which the biblical themes, particularly that of uncertainty, are complemented by other elements of the storytelling. First, there is an apparently unrelated folk tale with which the movie begins. The husband in the tale is helped by a man whom his wife thinks to be a dybbuk (a spirit possessing a dead person). In addition to underscoring the theme of uncertainty (is the man a dybbuk or not?), the tale trades on themes of recompense for doing a mitzvah and being blessed or cursed by God. Second, the theme of uncertainty is further highlighted by Gopnik teaching his physics class “The Uncertainty Principle” which, he says, “proves we can’t ever really know what’s going on.” The final scene provides the last allusion to Job. In the biblical forerunner, God appears in a tornado to speak and to rebuke the various parties, prior to Job’s restoration (Job 38:1). In A Serious Man, in keeping with the theme of God’s not giving the answers, there is no voice of God, only a tornado heading straight toward Danny and his classmates.

 The echoes of Job are widely recognized; e. g., Nathan (,  – ).

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True Grit (2010) The opening shot of True Grit (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen) is an epigraph that reads, “The wicked flee when none pursueth. Proverbs 28:1”. In stark contrast to the inscrutability of divine action in the story of Job and A Serious Man, the wisdom tradition of Proverbs tells of an economy of reward for the righteous and punishment for the wicked. True Grit operates within this latter world. Viewers immediately learn that the wicked man, a murderer named Tom Chaney, has in fact fled, though none was pursuing him. This is soon rectified by Mattie Ross, the murdered man’s daughter, who speaks in a voiceover: “No doubt Chaney fancied himself scot free, but he was wrong. You must pay for everything in this world, one way and another. There is nothing free, except the grace of God.” Invoking Proverbs and God, the film suggests that the reason payment must be rendered is not because this world is a closed system of cause and effect, but because this is a world where God is actively ensuring such an outcome. Another allusion to Proverbs comes from the mouth of a man about to meet his death by hanging. He addresses the crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen, train up your children in the way that they should go,” a close paraphrase of Proverbs 22:6. “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (KJV). The man then confesses to killing another in a dispute over a pocket knife, and laments his own lack of instruction as a child. This scene adds thickness to the depiction of the world in True Grit as one where Proverbs’ tight economy of deeds and consequences is in effect. The Bible also finds its way into the film by way of the soundtrack. As Thomas Dougherty remarks, “The scriptural epigraph that opens the film and the haunting hymnal music on the soundtrack are signals that the trail the Coens are most interested in following runs in a theological direction” (Dougherty 2011, 17). The recurring motif is the tune of the hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” The successful venture of Mattie Ross finds its interpretation through the lyrics, as the song claims not only blessedness, joy, and peace, but also that those who lean on the everlasting arms are “safe and secure from all alarms.” The song’s refrain echoes Deuteronomy 33:27, “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (KJV). Of course, Mattie’s adventure is not safe from all alarms, as she experiences loss in herself and in the death of her horse. Perhaps this is a clue to the viewer that not only is the world not a perfect place, but the notion of just reward and retribution cannot be an absolute depiction of it. Mattie herself learns that everything in this life must be paid for. Notwithstanding the darker hues with which this film ends in contrast to the 1969 original, the biblical references come alongside the Western genre to uphold the notion that good will prevail in the end because of divine superintendence.

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No Country for Old Men (2007) No Country for Old Men (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen) seems an unlikely ground for biblical reception. It contains no direct quotations, and the failure of good to triumph over evil appears to leave little room for the sort of Bible-infused world we have surveyed in other films. However, in a scene toward the end of the film, there is a cluster of pointers toward another book from the Hebrew wisdom tradition: Ecclesiastes. In the biblical book, good does not see its reward, God is all too absent from “life under the sun,” and so all of life is “vanity, and a chasing after the wind” (e. g., Eccl. 1:14). Sheriff Ed Tom Bell has been involved in a literal chase as futile as chasing the wind. And the metaphor of chasing wind itself might be suggested by the windmills that dot the film’s Texas landscape. Viewers see one such windmill as Bell arrives at a relative’s house to debrief his disappointments. Bell tells Ellis that he had been hoping for a time that God would come into his life – but to no avail. Bell tries to pin this absence on God’s opinion of him, but Ellis won’t allow it: “You don’t know what God thinks of you.” Bell’s experience of the absence of God “under the sun” is evocative of the teacher’s despair in Ecclesiastes, and, as in the biblical book, such absence is no indication of whether a person’s activities have been pleasing to God or not. Ecclesiastes meditates on the circular nature of existence, in which “there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl. 1:9). Similarly Ellis assures Bell, “What you got ain’t nothin’ new.” Finally, Ellis tells Bell that he cannot stop what is coming as though it is waiting on him, “That’s vanity.” This reference to “vanity,” absent from the Cormac McCarthy novel the Coens are adapting, is the closest we have to a verbal echo of Ecclesiastes, whose meditations begin, “Vanity of vanities […] All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?” (Eccl. 1:2– 3, NRSV). With this allusion, No Country for Old Men finds its hopelessness plotted onto the theological landscape of Ecclesiastes, a book that acknowledges God, but wrestles with the divine absence in a manner that stands in no little tension with the cheery vision of Proverbs, in which those who do good will be successful and reap their rewards here on earth.

Biblical Reception in Coen Brothers Films In the words of Ian Nathan, Joel and Ethan Coen “reconfigure myth as a means of revelation” (Nathan 2012, 97). As the Bible is received into their films, it helps shape these reconfigured myths and the worlds in which their characters operate. Such worlds are as diverse as the various biblical texts that inspire them, not offering one constant portrait of God or the world where God is active (or absent), but instead exploring a diverse palette of potential divine activities and human engagements with them. Often, the effect of the biblical allusions is to infuse the story with a sense of the divine, sometimes even indicating that God is an off-screen character guiding the plot to its successful conclusion. At other times, the allusions make the divine truancy that the characters are experiencing a deeply haunting absence.

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By drawing on the Bible’s own diverse theologies of divine presence and absence, the Coens provide their readers with a filmography that draws viewers into the complex business of wrestling with a God whose ways of engaging the world admit of no easy explanations.

Works Cited Dougherty, Thomas. 2011. “The Duke and the Dude.” Chronicle of Higher Education 57.18: 16 – 17. Klayman, Jason. 2010. “A Serious Man.” Association for Jewish Studies Perspectives (Fall): 53 – 54. McCarthy, Cormac. 2005. No Country for Old Men. New York: Knopf. Mottram, James. 2000. The Coen Brothers: The Life of the Mind. Dulles, VA: Brassey’s, Inc. Nathan, Ian. 2012. Joel and Ethan Coen. London: Phaidon. Palmer, R. Barton. 2004. Joel and Ethan Coen. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Prell, Riv-Ellen. 2011. “A Serious Man in Situ: ‘Fear and Loathing in St. Louis Park.’” Association for Jewish Studies Review 35: 365 – 76. Robson, Eddie. 2003. Coen Brothers. London: Virgin Books. Russell, Carolyn R. 2001. The Films of Joel and Ethan Coen. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Shandler, Jeffrey. 2011. “‘Serious’ Talk.” Association for Jewish Studies Review 35: 349 – 55. White, Armond. 2011. “The Coens Keep the Faith.” First Things 210: 53 – 55.

Films Cited Barton Fink (dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen [uncredited], 1991, Circle Films, US/UK). The Evil Dead (dir. Sam Raimi, 1981, Renaissance Pictures, US). The Ladykillers (dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2004, Touchstone, US). No Country for Old Men (dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2007, Paramount Vantage, US). O Brother, Where Art Thou? (dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen [uncredited], 2000, Touchstone, UK/FR/US). A Serious Man (dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2009, Focus Features, US/UK/FR). True Grit (dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2010, Paramount, US).

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48 Liberative Visions: Biblical Reception in Third Cinema In looking at cinema’s reception of the Bible, Third Cinema is distinctive in that it appropriates biblical texts and imagery to serve as tools for social analysis. The only critical theory of film that did not arise from a Euro-American context, Third Cinema is “moved by the requirements of its social action and contexted and marked by the strategy of that action” (Gabriel 1989, 40). From its genesis in Latin America during the fecund period of the late 1960s where it operated as a social and aesthetic movement within the larger struggle for liberation and equality in the postcolonial aftermath, Third Cinema developed into a methodological approach that identifies the link between cinematic style and ideology. The work of Teshome Gabriel, specifically Third Cinema in the Third World: An Aesthetics of Liberation (originally published in 1979), is credited for the shift from Third Cinema’s seminal conception as an “expropriator of image weapons” in a sociopolitical and cultural war against the imperialism of commercial cinema epitomized by Hollywood, to a hermeneutical focus that pays serious attention to a film’s stylistic strategies – cinematography, mise-enscène, editing, music – and their role in social analysis. The core project, however, remains constant: The principal characteristic of Third Cinema is really not so much where it is made, or even who makes it, but, rather, the ideology it espouses and the consciousness it displays. The Third Cinema is that Cinema of the Third World, which stands opposed to imperialism and class oppression in all their ramifications and manifestations. (Gabriel 1982, 2)

It is not a film’s origins that determine Third Cinema but its social analysis; the lynchpin is the tracing of lines of causation between situations of injustice, discrimination, and other forms of inequality represented onscreen and the complexity of their structural causes. Third Cinema could then be understood as the aesthetic/audiovisual equivalent of social analysis. That said, this study is not so much prescriptive as descriptive; an exploration of how appropriations of biblical texts and imagery figure in Third Cinema social analysis. I propose that there are two hermeneutical tendencies. The first tendency is a hermeneutics of suspicion, which argues that society’s powerholders and powerbrokers may use the Bible in self-serving ways to perpetuate and sacralize the status quo. Third Cinema maintains a dialectical relationship with the Bible and religion; neither is exempted from interrogation and critique. The second tendency is a hermeneutics of liberation, which is focused on how the prophetic-liberating character inherent in the Bible contributes to the concrete, historical quest for greater human flourishing, specifically, among the oppressed

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and marginalized. From this optic, Third Cinema recognizes the power of the Bible as a subversive and emancipative religious text. Neither mutually exclusive nor neatly demarcated, these two tendencies serve as heuristic touchstones that allow for a more lucid analysis of the reception of the Bible in Third Cinema.

A Hermeneutics of Suspicion The Last Supper (dir. Tomas Gutiérrez Alea, 1976) A key figure in Latin American Cinema, Cuban filmmaker Tomas Gutiérrez Alea is credited for a number of seminal films in the Third Cinema “canon”– La muerte de un burócrata (1966, a.k.a. Death of a Bureaucrat), Memorias del subdesarollo (1968, a.k.a. Memories of Underdevelopment), and Fresa y chocolate (1994, a.k.a. Strawberry and Chocolate), to name a few. Whether literally or allusively, the Cuban Revolution and the sociopolitical change that issued from it are thematic leitmotifs in Gutiérrez Alea’s films.¹ Religion and the Bible do not figure prominently in his corpus of works with the exception of two titles: La última cena (1976, The Last Supper), which is acclaimed as a masterpiece of world cinema, and the lesser known Una pelea cubana contra los demonios (1971, A Cuban Fight Against Demons). Aside from being the more important film, the former is the one that gives privileged space to biblical imagery, thus, meriting attention here. Unusual for a Gutiérrez Alea film in regard to style – controlled and largely static as opposed to his experimental stylistic signature – and in regard to context and setting – feudal eighteenth-century Cuba as against twentieth-century Cuban Revolution – the film’s title already cues the audience to draw biblical parallels. The centerpiece in The Last Supper’s dramatic arc is an extended meal sequence, a cinematic mimesis of the Passover bread-and-wine meal that precedes the crucifixion of Jesus (Matt. 26:26 – 29, Mark 14:22– 25, Luke 22:14– 20). Set in Havana in the eighteenth century, The Last Supper opens in a sugar mill where Afro-Cuban slaves are yoked to a life of hard labor. Holy Week is approaching and the owner of the mill, a pompous Count, witnesses the brutal punishment inflicted on a runaway slave under the hands of the overseer, Don Manuel. Despotic and violent, Don Manuel had cut off the ear of the slave and fed it to the dogs before subjecting him to a cruel lashing. To placate his conscience, the Count decides to host a

 Gutiérrez Alea’s  manifesto “The Viewer’s Dialectic” (Dialéctica del Espectador), which he wrote twenty years after the Cuban Revolution, offers a glimpse of his filmmaking philosophy. Noting the deepening social consciousness in his country, Gutiérrez Alea asserts the need for Cuban Cinema to challenge the point-and-shoot conventions of the straightforward documentary and to recognize the exigency of social analysis in filmmaking: “The filmmaker is immersed in a complex milieu, the profound meaning of which does not lie on the surface.” See Gutiérrez Alea (, ).

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reenactment of Jesus’ final meal on Holy Thursday with twelve randomly selected slaves as his honored guests, among them, Sebastian, the punished slave. Consistent with the events that anticipate Jesus’ passion as found in the Johannine account (John 13:1– 17), the Count washes his slaves’ feet and plants a kiss, albeit flinchingly, on each of them. It is important to mention that prior to the foot washing ceremony, the slaves were subjected to a biblical crash course led by a priest who reminds them of the blissful hereafter where they will dine at God’s table with the Virgin Mary and the saints. As the wounded Sebastian joins the group, the priest admonishes the slaves to obey their master: To go there [Heaven], you must be pure and keep all the commandments. The slave has to be good and serve his master because God says so. God says…to love your master very much.

The exhortation draws apparent reference to the culturally conditioned verse from Ephesians 6:5: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ” (cf. Col. 3:22– 25; 1 Pet. 2:18 – 25). As the slaves take their places at the Count’s table of plenty – laden with opulent servings of meat dishes, wine, and other rich fare – they form a symmetrical tableau reminiscent of Michelangelo’s iconic The Last Supper fresco.

Fig. 95: Table arrangement in The Last Supper (2008)

The painterly scene is presented as militant irony. The Count sits at the center of the table while the slaves are evenly seated to his left and to his right. The equation is bereft of subtlety: the Count casts himself in the role of Jesus Christ; the slaves are the twelve disciples. The very appearance and costuming of the characters belie the meal’s authenticity; dressed in upper-class finery and sporting a powdered wig, the Count is a figure of striking contrast to the weary and weather-beaten slaves dressed in filthy rags. Driven by his agenda of preserving the lopsided master-slave equation, the Count opens the gathering with a pious exhortation, underlining the soteriological dimension of the meal and its resonances with Jesus’ Last Supper:

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This is for you. This isn’t just any day. It’s special, written in the Book of God. On a day like this Christ called his friends, his disciples who were his slaves, to depart from them. He was going to die…I’m talking of Christ. He went to Heaven. His Father called him. Someone had to be sacrificed to save mankind, a lamb to take God’s punishment in silence to pay for all the evil of men. Eat now.

The hungry slaves lose no time devouring the food while the Count relentlessly spews twisted biblical rhetoric. But the slaves prove to be more perceptive than the Count anticipated, and a tragi-comic repartee takes place over the dinner table. He turns to the punished slave Sebastian and interrogates him with a version of Jesus’ messianic question, “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt. 16:15, Mark 8:27, Luke 9:20): “Look, Sebastian, who am I? Come on, identify me. Who am I, Sebastian? Well, recognize me… I ask you in the name of Christ: Who am I?” In the Lukan pericope, Peter responds with the declaration, “The Messiah of God.” In this sequence, Sebastian chooses not to answer; instead, he spits on the face of the Count. It is notable that a bloodied bandage covers the area of one of his ears, which the overseer had sliced off in an earlier scene; this is an image loosely borrowed from the biblical account where one of the disciples (Simon Peter, according to John) cuts off the ear of the high priest’s slave (Matt. 26:51, Mark 14:47, Luke 22:50 – 51, John 18:10 – 11). In all accounts except for Mark’s gospel, Jesus rebuffs the violent act, and Luke adds that Jesus heals the slave; equivalent scenes are significantly absent in The Last Supper. When the Count collapses in a drunken stupor, the slaves, led by Sebastian, draw native wisdom from the Afro-Cuban folk religion, Santería, and eschew the Count’s duplicitous biblical narrative. Ultimately, The Last Supper comes to a tragic denouement, but the character of Sebastian symbolizes the threshold of an alternative, liberated future. In the gospels, Jesus’ table symbolizes the dangerous memory of the praxis of God’s Reign, the transcendent vision of a fully reconciled humanity. In The Last Supper, the Count’s table is the very representation of the “Anti-Reign,” the distorted vision of a diminished and enslaved humanity.

Perfumed Nightmare (dir. Kidlat Tahimik, 1976) Although not to the same extent as The Last Supper, the acclaimed Filipino film Mababangong bangungot (a.k.a. Perfumed Nightmare) is another example of how Third Cinema does not exempt religion and the Bible from the suspicion that they can be indiscriminately used as tools for the perpetuation of the unequal status quo. This film’s emancipative Third Cinema trajectory can be traced to the filmmaker’s biography. Kidlat’s coming of age as an artist happened amid turbulent sociopolitical circumstances in his native Philippines, which was then under the militarized, authoritarian government of Ferdinand Marcos. The U.S.-backed Marcos regime was marked by wide-scale human rights violations and stringent censorship of the arts, but this

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was the very humus that would produce some of the most important filmmakers in Philippine Cinema, among them, Kidlat Tahimik.² In Perfumed Nightmare, the filmmaker himself plays the loosely autobiographical main character, who is also named Kidlat. A country bumpkin enamored of western-style progress – symbolized in the film by frequent references to the historic 1969 moon landing – Kidlat dreams of leaving his humble hometown in the Philippines and moving to the United States. He is so bewitched by his American dream that he subjects himself to ritual self-flagellation in order to gain divine favor, a Lenten practice in some rural areas in the Philippines. Ritual self-flagellation forms part of the postcolonial syncretism that resulted from the acculturation of the Roman Catholicism, introduced to the islands in the sixth century by the Spanish colonial enterprise, and indigenous, precolonial Filipino religious practice. Evidently based on the flagellation of Jesus found in the gospel accounts (Matt. 27:26, Mark 15:15, Luke 23:16, John 19:1), Filipino folk piety understands self-flagellation as a salvific participation in the passion of Jesus Christ.³ The opportunity to travel to Paris under the employ of an American businessman materializes one day, and he sees this as the first step to pursuing his American dream. While performing menial tasks in the French capital, Kidlat’s eyes are opened to the shadow side of progress, as he becomes witness to the displacement of small pushcart vendors by big business. Shortly, the American businessman decides to move his activities back to the United States and offers to take Kidlat with him. In this pivotal scene, a stained glass window with the embossed face of the American looms behind a headshot of Kidlat as a voice-over declares – “Tomorrow, Kidlat, tomorrow… you shall be with me in Paradise” (cf. Luke 23:43). The promise is an obvious appropriation of what is traditionally referred to as “the word of salvation,” one of the few utterances of Jesus Christ as he hangs on the Roman cross. The equation has eerie, if not sinister, resonances akin to that of the meal sequence in Gutiérrez Alea’s The Last Supper. The American businessman, his visage glowing with a divinized radiance on the backlit stained glass, appropriates the Christic identity, relegating Kidlat, by default, to the role of the crucified thief who cries out for salvation. In the original gospel passage, the converted thief utters the words, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:32). Kidlat’s “salvation” lies in the hands of his American “savior”; Paradise or the kingdom is the fulfillment of Kidlat’s American dream. But a crisis of belief rises within Kidlat as he voices his simmering doubt: “Is this the Paradise I prayed for? Is this the Paradise I dreamed of?” Per-

 Under the tutelage of German filmmaker Werner Herzog, Kidlat developed his own stylistic signature: a bricolage of both shot and found footage intuitively assembled on the editing table like a jigsaw, a process Kidlat describes in quasi-religious terms. See Sison (,  – ).  For an examination of the representation of ritual self-flagellation in Philippine Cinema, see Sison (,  – ).

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fumed Nightmare ends with a metaphorical allusion to an exorcism of Kidlat’s postcolonial demons and a return to home. Be it ever so humble.⁴

A Hermeneutics of Liberation Guadalupe (dir. Santiago Parra, 2006) A Mexican melodrama told in telenovela fashion, Guadalupe was produced by the Catholic production outfit, Dos Corazones, to commemorate the 475th anniversary of the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Unapologetically, it grafts onto the genre of “religious film.” Beyond the pious layers, however, is a film that takes the sentence of colonial history seriously, and examines its implications for Mexican religious and cultural identity. This is the locus for a Third Cinema examination of Guadalupe’s biblical resonances and its hermeneutics of liberation. Guadalupe interweaves, albeit loosely, two parallel narratives: a present-day family drama set in Madrid and a re-telling of the Guadalupe apparition based on the indigenous Nahuatl source material known as the Nican Mopohua (Nahua, “Here it is Told”).⁵ Jose Maria and his sister, Mercedes, are Spanish archaeologists set to travel to Mexico to study the Guadalupe phenomenon. The Nican Mopohua records a miraculous apparition of the Virgin Mary before a simple Nahuatl man by the name of Juan Diego in 1531, at the height of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. It is telling that the Virgin in the apparition has Nahua/Spanish mestiza features and speaks in Nahuatl, the indigenous language; she is uno de ellos, “one of them.” The Virgin sends Juan Diego on a mission to convince the Spanish Bishop Juan de Zumarraga to build a temple for her on the hill of Tepeyac, near present-day Mexico City. When the Bishop doubts the veracity of the message and asks for evidence, the Virgin instructs Juan Diego to gather winter roses and bring them back to the Bishop on his tilma or cloak. Returning to the Bishop, Juan Diego unfurls the tilma and the Bishop is stunned to see a full body image of the Virgin, miraculously imprinted on the fabric.⁶ The brother and sister team is anxious to discover whether the story is historiography or sheer myth-making. In the process of examining artifacts in Tepeyac and engaging in conversations with key people, they find their own family secrets unraveling before them; the personal becomes the vis-à-vis of the erudite. The centrality of the figure of the Virgin Mary in Guadalupe immediately establishes a biblical connection. The biblical Mary was a Jewish woman from Nazareth in  For a thorough Third Cinema analysis of Perfumed Nightmare from an eschatological perspective, refer to Sison (,  – ).  The Nican Mopohua is believed to have been written by the mestizo chronicler Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl. See Brading (,  – ,  – ).  The very same tilma is currently venerated at the Guadalupe Shrine in Tepeyac, and continues to inspire devotees in Latin America, the Philippines, and other Catholic communities in the world with a strong Marian spirituality.

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Galilee. Two canonical gospels identify her as the Mother of Jesus by the divine intervention of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:18, Luke 1:34 – 35). She is not unfamiliar with apparitions; her role in giving birth to the messiah was announced through an angelophany (Luke 1:26 – 38). Not figuring in the film in any direct manner, the biblical tradition of Mary based on the infancy narratives serves only as a kind of backstory to the Mary in Guadalupe. What does figure decisively in the film’s Marian representation is the Mary of the Magnificat, as reported in the Lukan account (Luke 1:46 – 55), the Mary who breaks out into a canticle when she visits her cousin Elizabeth, herself blessed with bearing the would-be prophet John the Baptist despite her barrenness and advanced age. The interpretive center of Guadalupe is found in a scene involving Juana, the indigenous Mexican woman who works as a housekeeper for the researchers’ host family in Mexico. Queried by Mercedes as to the meaning of Guadalupe, Juana assumes the role of cultural and theological exegete as she engages in a passionate, native informant’s semiotic analysis of the stained glass Guadalupe image hanging on the kitchen wall.

Fig. 96: Juana as cultural exegete in Guadalupe (2006)

The resonances with the Magnificat are dilated in Juana’s spirited interpretation of the symbolic meaning of the image, but only after she prefaces her narrative with a historical footnote – that the Spanish colonizers came preaching a God of love and compassion but their behavior demonstrated otherwise. It was in the shadow of the Spanish Conquest that a gift from the Holy Spirit came to “one of ours.” Juana says, A message from Heaven… just as the big book from the Mayans had predicted it. There it said that God promised that one of ours, a woman, would bring back the smile on our faces, would take away the burden from our shoulders so we could climb the steepest mountain, and then we could have a fiesta for days and days! A sign appeared […] a divine sign from Heaven itself. A woman whose grandeur is greater than all of the Emperors put together. How grand her power must have been that she stood in front of the sun! The sun, giver of life! Look at her on top of the moon […] she’s our ally to understand light. A woman dressed with the firmament’s

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stars, the stars that govern our everyday life, every activity we engage in, the stars that tell us when to start sowing. This woman’s face is telling us that there’s something bigger than her. If you notice, her head is bowed as a mark of respect. Our ancestors fed the Gods with beating hearts […] and suddenly this woman shows up and says that without taking our hearts out, we place them in her hands because she’ll present them to the true God.

Without forcing a one-to-one correspondence between Juana’s version of the message of the Guadalupe Virgin, and that of the biblical Mary of the Magnificat, both messages reveal a dynamic equivalence in regard to Mary’s identity and circumstantial background: (1) a woman in an oppressive, patriarchal world, (2) a woman secure in her role in God’s salvation, and (3) a woman who speaks as a prophet. In regard to the hermeneutics of liberation, the third identity of “prophet” underlines the apparent resonances between the prophetic-liberating content of both messages. The Lukan Magnificat is considered to be one of the most subversive biblical texts ever written; New Testament scholar Herman Hendrickx proposes that the canticle alludes to three “revolutions” (Hendrickx 1988, 86): (1) a moral revolution (v. 51b “…he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts”), (2) a social revolution (v. 52 “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly…”), and (3) an economic revolution (v. 53 “…he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent away the rich empty.”). It is interesting to note the allusive connections that can be gleaned in a creative consideration of the text of Juana’s Guadalupe narrative: (1) a moral revolution (“A woman whose grandeur is greater than all of the Emperors put together. […] Our ancestors fed the Gods with beating hearts […] and suddenly this woman shows up and says that without taking our hearts out, we place them in her hands because she’ll present them to the true God.”), ⁷ (2) a social revolution (“How grand her power must have been that she stood in front of the sun! The sun, giver of life!”), and (3) an economic revolution (“[…] would take away the burden from our shoulders so we could climb the steepest mountain, and then we could have a fiesta for days and days!”). Ultimately, the shared message evinced in the Magnificat and Guadalupe can be distilled: the balance of power is about to change; a subjugated people is about to rediscover their dignity and authentic humanity. The message of Guadalupe emerges from a historical milieu of great trauma and displacement among the indigenous Aztecs who believed that their Gods had been vanquished in the Spanish Conquest. Guadalupe is credited for ushering-in a reconciled postcolonial identity, a new mes-

 It is notable that the precolonial culture also undergoes a moral revolution; Guadalupe is credited for ending the Aztec practice of human sacrifice, a ritual associated with the worship of the goddess Tonantzin. This argument is a clear indication that Guadalupe is not simply Tonantzin redivivus, a misperception drawn from the historical fact that Tepeyac was the erstwhile site of the temple of the Aztec goddess. See Rodriguez/Fortier (,  – ).

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tizaje symbolized in the very face of the image, which reflects both Aztec and Spanish features. As Juana points out to the Spanish Mercedes, “She has your face and mine.”

Son of Man (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2009)⁸ Scholars who work in the interdiscipline of Religion and Film note that the stories of the Bible do not make for a good screenplay. From dialogue and setting, to the psychological and physical attributes of the characters, the Bible leaves out many of the details that are cinematically important so that filmmakers have had to depend on licentia vatum or poetic license to fill-in the gaps. Such is the case with the Jesusfilm genre where the imagination of the filmmaker plays a key role in drawing a balance between the “reality” of Jesus and the meaning of Jesus. The 2009 South African film Son of Man eases this artistic tension by opting for a sense-by-sense translation that is more focused on the dynamic equivalence between the gospel accounts and the cinematic material, than a dogmatic, literal translation. Son of Man inculturates the Jesus story in a contemporary African context – a fictional Southern African state named Judea – marked by a violent internecine war; the occupying forces had taken control of the city, triggering an insurgency. Mary narrowly escapes execution by feigning death amid a pile of bloodied corpses. When she is at her wit’s end, God’s wisdom begins – an angel in the form of a child announces the good news that she will bring the messiah into the world. In worshipful response, she sings the Magnificat canticle. Akin to the biblical Jesus who was born at a dangerous time of sociopolitical volatility under the Roman Empire, the African Jesus is born at a time of summary executions and human rights violations under an occupying power. Basileia tou Theou, the Kingdom or Reign of God, the core message of Jesus that is mentioned ninety-nine times in the synoptic gospels, is both an eschatological vision of definitive eco-human salvation and a dynamic, here-and-now reality that unfolds in concrete praxical initiatives. In Son of Man, Jesus favors the latter; his preaching and salvific acts represent a radical “no” to the structural forces that threaten the dignity and wellbeing of the poor and defenseless. Dornford-May’s Jesus proclaims: All authority is not divinely inspired. If you follow me, you will have peace. […] When those with imperial histories pretend to forget them, and blame Africa’s problems on tribalism and corruption while building themselves new economic empires, I say we have been lied to. Evil did not fall. When I hear that someone was beaten and tortured in the Middle East, I say we have been lied to. Evil did not fall. […] When you are told, and you will be, that people ‘disappear’, you must say we have been lied to.

 Compare the discussion of Son of Man by Giere in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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In the trajectory of Third Cinema, the cinematography of Son of Man works to strengthen this praxical emphasis. Jesus is often captured in wide-angle shots that portray him as being immersed in a communitarian context. Constantly in relationship with the suffering members of the community whom he comforts and heals, Jesus to them is the “Brother-Ancestor par excellence.”⁹ It is precisely for his uncompromising solidarity that the ruling tribal authorities consider him a threat to their Pax Africana. Guided by videocam footage shot by the traitorous Judas, they hatch an assassination plot. Following the gospel accounts, Son of Man portrays the death of Jesus but reinterprets how it is carried out. In the gospels, Jesus is subjected to public flogging and dies by crucifixion, the death penalty specified for Jews under Roman law. In the film, the government goons torture Jesus to death behind closed doors and dump him in an unmarked dirt grave. Mary would then literally search for and dig up the body of Jesus, transport it up the hill, and hang it on a cross, making a public spectacle of the grave injustice committed against her son. When the authorities arrive at the scene and attempt to take the body down, Mary leads a coterie of women in a defiant, rhythmic African song-and-dance as the onlookers begin to join them in an expanding fellowship. The leadership of women in the face of Jesus’ suffering and death meaningfully connects with the gospel accounts, which note the abiding feminine presence through Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection (Matt. 27:55 – 56, 61; 28:1– 10; Mark 15:40 – 41, 47; 16:1– 8; Luke 23:49, 55 – 56, 24:1– 12; John 19:25 – 27, 20:1– 2, 11– 18). The film’s ending happens in a liminal space where a resurrected Jesus leads a host of angels – African children clothed in white garments – up the hill. Just prior to the closing credits, the camera focuses on a baby, while a quote from Genesis 1:26 fades-in: “And God said let us make humankind after our image and likeness.” Through the Paschal Mystery of the African Jesus, imago dei, a fuller, more authentic humanity, becomes a promise and possibility.

Concluding Observations Given an exponentially globalizing world characterized by trans-migration and interculturality, identity will have to be negotiated in the interstices of culture. Third Cinema will inevitably and increasingly reflect the liquidity of cultural identity markers – the politics of rituals and food cultures, postcolonial and religious iconography, processes of inculturation in the light of changing contexts, to name a few – and the accompanying challenge of making social analysis speak across cultural boundaries. It would be interesting to explore how Third Cinema’s reception of the Bible will shift in the light of these “signs of the times,” even as the zeitgeist brings new ques “Brother-Ancestor” is an honorific title of Jesus drawn from an African inculturated Christology. See Orobator (,  – ).

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tions that challenge the universalizing tendencies in biblical interpretation and appropriation, vis-à-vis the continued appreciation of the Bible as a prophetic-liberating text that is both ancient and constantly new.

Works Cited Brading, D.A. 2001. Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gabriel, Teshome H. 1982. Third Cinema in the Third World: The Asthetics of Liberation [1979]. 2nd ed. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press. —. 1989. “Towards a Critical Theory of World Films.” In Questions of Third Cinema. Ed. Jim Pines and Paul Willemen. London: BFI Publishing. Pp. 30 – 52. Gutiérrez Alea, Tomas. 1997. “The Viewers Dialectic.” Transl. Julia Lesage. In New Latin American Cinema: Theory, Practices, and Transcontinental Articulations. Ed. Michael T. Martin. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Pp. 108 – 31. Hendrickx, Herman. 1988. Social Justice in the Bible [1985]. 2nd ed. Quezon City: Claretian Publications. Orobator, Agbonkhianmeghe. 2008. Theology Brewed in an African Pot. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Rodriguez, Jeanette, and Ted Fortier. 2007. Cultural Memory: Resistance, Faith, and Identity. Austin: University of Texas Press. Sison, Antonio D. 2006. Screening Schillebeeckx: Theology and Third Cinema in Dialogue. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. —. 2009. “Postcolonial Religious Syncretism: Focus on the Philippines, Peru, and Mexico.” In The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film. Ed. John Lyden. London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 178 – 93.

Films Cited Fresa y chocolate [a.k.a. Strawberry and Chocolate] (dir. Tomas Gutiérrez Alea, 1994, ICAIC, CU/MX/ES/US). Guadalupe (dir. Santiago Parra, 2006, Dos Corazones Films, MX/ES). La muerte de un burócrata [a.k.a. Death of a Bureaucrat] (dir. Tomas Gutiérrez Alea, 1966, ICAIC, CU). La última cena [a.k.a. The Last Supper] (dir. Tomas Gutiérrez Alea, 1976, ICAIC, CU). Mababangong bangungot [a.k.a. Perfumed Nightmare] (dir. Kidlat Tahimik, 1976, Privately funded, PH). Memorias del subdesarollo [a.k.a. Memories of Underdevelopment] (dir. Tomas Gutiérrez Alea, 1968, Cuban State Film, CU). Son of Man (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2009, Spier Films, ZA). Una pelea cubana contra los demonios [a.k.a. A Cuban Fight Against Demons] (dir. Tomas Gutiérrez Alea 1971, ICAIC, CU).

Dwight H. Friesen

49 The Reception of Biblical Films in India: Observations and a Case Study

The reception of the Bible in film encompasses not only the filmmaker’s appropriation of biblical material, but also audience reception of the biblically inflected film. Although the field of film audience reception is growing, studies of the reception of specific genres, especially in cultural contexts outside North America and Europe are still scarce. Reception analyses of biblical films in India, therefore, are fertile ground for further inquiry, promising insights into Indian cinema history and the interplay of film, religion, and culture that have shaped the nation’s film industry for the last century. By attending to audience reception of biblical films, rather than offering a reception analysis in the form of a review of a particular film or a comparative analysis of what others have written about it, I aim to highlight the factors that shape how biblical films may function, or be understood to function, in the daily lives of viewers in myriad contexts. Put differently, attention to the interplay of such factors serves as a reminder that neither the production, nor the reception, of either biblical texts or their cinematic representations can be isolated from the complexities of human experience. Given their widespread distribution in India over the last century, a helpful starting point for reception analyses of biblical films in India could well begin with Western imports such as The King of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1927), The Ten Commandments (dir. DeMille, 1956), what is now known as Campus Crusade for Christ International’s (CCCI) The Jesus Film (originally Jesus, dir. John Krish/Peter Sykes, 1979), or The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004). Yet, whether scholars opt to analyze the reception of Western biblical films in India or focus on Indian productions, they must be prepared to account both for the contexts in which they were produced and the film cultures in which they are received. Following are several key points for consideration by those who would pursue the task of analyzing the reception of biblical films in India, complemented by examples from a limited study of the reception of Karunamayudu (dir. A. Bhimsingh, 1978, IN), arguably India’s bestknown Jesus film.¹ The brainchild of Hindu filmmakers and completed in collaboration with a Catholic communications agency in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, Karunamayudu is one of the few, and arguably the best known, of Indian biblical films produced to date. It is a unique complement to its Western counterparts that have been shown throughout the nation for nearly a century, ranging from French silents to the recently re-

 Unless otherwise noted, references to my own research are from my unpublished dissertation (Friesen ). This chapter deals with the reception of Karunamayudu in Indian cinemas. For how this film adapts the Jesus story, see Tatum’s comments in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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leased Son of God (dir. Christopher Spencer, 2014, US). Like some of its better-known Western forbearers such as DeMille’s The King of Kings, and CCCI’s Jesus film, it has also traveled across India and been screened in some of its most remote locales. According to a review in a Catholic magazine not long after the film’s commercial release, the positive reception of Karunamayudu could be attributed to three factors: (1) its status as a Hindu production, (2) Indians’ general openness to all things religious, and (3) cinema’s popularity in India (The Tablet 1980, 142). Although its novelty as a biblical film produced in India was also undoubtedly a key factor in its reception, my limited analysis of its reception offers an instructive introductory case study for future research in the field and foregrounds a number of additional dynamics for which scholars in the field must account.

The Relative Obscurity of Biblical Films Produced in India It is well established in the annals of Indian cinema history that D. G. Phalke, oft-recognized as the “father” of Indian cinema, was inspired by a French Jesus film to produce movies of India’s gods, thereby giving birth to the mythological genre that was foundational to the industry (Phalke 1988 – 89, 54). Despite this early influence of Western biblical film on Indian cinema, however, overtly biblically themed commercial movies produced in India likely number in the tens at most, and that may be generous. Of those, not more than five have received any mention among scholars, much less critical attention, and are limited almost exclusively to the category of “Jesus films”.

Fig. 97: Indian Jesus film, Shanti Sandesham (2004)

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Cases in point are Indian Jesus movies including, but not limited to, Karunamayudu; Jesus (dir. P. A. Thomas, 1973); Shanti Sandesham (dir. P. C. Reddy, 2004); and Mulla Kireetam (dir. Raja Reddy, 2006). Additionally, India has produced Dayamayudu (dir. Vijay Chander, 1987), a rare treatment of the Apostle Paul’s life featuring the star of Karunamayudu playing the dual roles of Paul and Jesus; like the majority of the Indian Jesus movies it has yet to receive much critical attention.

The Dynamics of Regional Cinemas Despite the sheer magnitude of its output, Indian cinema is not a production monolith but a multi-faceted cultural industry that cannot be reduced to simplistic stereotypes. Yves Thoraval’s wide-ranging volume, The Cinemas of India (2000), offers an important corrective to the tendency among pundits and scholars alike to lump all Indian film under the categories of “Bollywood” or “Hindi cinema.” Thoraval’s overview, which consists of a combination of documented and anecdotal evidence, was one of the first to identify and discuss in significant detail the seven major regional production centers, in addition to Bombay, that have shaped India’s cinematic landscape over the last century. Those who would avoid simplistic conclusions about how representations of Jesus, biblical stories, personalities, or institutions might be engaged by Indian viewers must account for such regional nuances. Tamil cinema, for example, even in its most explicitly religious forms, has from the outset been shaped by what in Western terms could be considered a secularizing agenda. In a similar vein, Telugu cinema developed a socially conscious bent, at times using even religious tales from India’s epics to provide thinly veiled commentary on societal concerns ranging from the remarriage of widows to the caste system. How viewers engage biblical stories on film, and how religious institutions and characters are represented, is arguably shaped in part by these regional dynamics. It should also be stressed that the relationship between cinematic representations of religious figures and daily life in South Indian cinema is somewhat unique in the panoply of India’s regional cinemas. It is well-known among film scholars and political pundits alike that the residents of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, in particular, have demonstrated a propensity to elevate to positions of political power actors that have played religious figures in mythological films (Vasanthi 2006). Students of the reception of biblical films, therefore, must consider that religious, as well as political, affiliations may shape how viewers engage with, or respond to, biblical films. Although the career trajectory of Vijay Chander, the man who played Jesus in Karunamayudu, did not lead to a political postion, his ability to represent religious characters has been recognized in subsequent cinematic roles ranging from the Apostle Paul to Sri Shirdi Sai Baba. Regional nuances played a significant role in the initial commercial reception of Karunamayudu, the success of which can be attributed in large part to the fact that South India is home to the nation’s largest concentration of Christians. The film’s cre-

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Fig. 98: Vijay Chander as Jesus in Karunamayudu (1978)

ators undoubtedly took this factor into account when pitching it to investors, and particularly to representatives of the Roman Catholic Church that were eventually instrumental in its production. Counting on the interest of Christian viewers would have been a risky proposition, however, given that at least some Christians in India have historically been wary of the cinema (Thomas/Mitchell 2005, 33 – 36). Although the filmmakers that pitched the film were not finally responsible for its completion, any hunches they may have had about such a film’s potentially positive reception were justified. Despite a slow start, the film attained blockbuster status by Indian cinema standards, due in part to the large number of Christians in the South who went to see it. Their attendance was itself a historical shift as many broke with taboo in order to see how Hindus had treated the story of Christ; in other words, they were more motivated initially by curiosity than devotion. The South Indian “Christian factor” in the movie’s commercial success, therefore, should not be overstated. Prabhu Guptara, a critic who reviewed the film at its release was surprised that “such a potent subject as the life of Jesus” had not been made much earlier, given the appetite among South Indians’ rather “catholic” taste for all things religious (Guptara 1980, 20). Futhermore, as I have discussed elsewhere, the predominant emphasis on Jesus’ mercy and compassion in the film would have appealed to viewers of all the major religious traditions represented by South Indian viewers (Friesen 2007, 125 – 45). One Christian pastor, who told me that he had seen the film several times upon its theatrical release, reported that “Hindus, and all the religious people went” to see the film. In addition, language and the film’s attention to local cinematic conventions played a key role in its early reception. Although Karunamayudu was reportedly released in at least three dominant South Indian languages (Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam) and has since been dubbed into fourteen Indian languages in total, it is known officially as a Telugu film (Karunamayudu is a Telugu title) and features locations in Andhra Pradesh. Furthermore, the film’s content reflected a number of trends that had marked Telugu cinema at the time: a predilection for mythological or “saint” tales, a taste for the lascivious, and a strain of social commentary that has leaned toward critiques of religious institutionalism in various forms. Karunamayudu ticked all the boxes. Not only was the film about a religious figure of considerable note, but

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the original release included several sumptuous song and dance numbers and a subplot that portrayed the religious hierarchy of Jesus’ day in a less than favorable light. It also featured two contemporary stars of South Indian film, Chandra Mohan (Malachi, a blind poet) and Jaggaiah (Pilate), and the movie’s songs were voiced by S. P. Balasubramanyam (a.k.a. SPB), one of South India’s best-known playback singers. This star power alone was a drawing card for at least one woman I spoke with that had seen the movie at its release.

The Ecumenical Ethos of the Indian Cinema Industry Indian film scholar K. A. Abbas has demonstrated that the history of Indian film production has been marked by a remarkable cooperation between Christians, Muslims, and Hindus. Hindus have played Muslim characters on the silver screen, and actors of both Christian and Muslim heritage have been known to represent, and even sing the praises of, deities from the Hindu pantheon (Abbas 2004, 394). Although sectarian violence between religious communities in India has flared periodically over the decades, the film industry itself has remained largely immune to such divisions. Occasionally, representatives of one tradition have even defended the interests of another. Sushil Arora’s Cyclopaedia of Indian Cinema, for example, includes an anecdote about a theatre that was burned down by Muslims because a Bible was thrown on the ground during the scene of a locally produced movie (Mehmood/Sumutkar 2004, 387). Stephen Hughes, a scholar of South Indian cinema, has noted that in the early days of silent cinema in the region, a Parsi cinema owner deliberately screened a film about Hindu gods and goddesses to coincide with Hindu festivals (Hughes 2005, 217). This ecumenical dynamic in Indian cinema production and distribution reflects a general respect among Indians, political and religious extremists aside, for religious or holy figures of any tradition that reflect or propagate the ideal of compassion (Friesen 2009, 137– 38). As Karunamayudu’s generally positive reception following its commercial release demonstrates, therefore, an appreciation for cinematic representations of biblical saints, angelic beings, or even Jesus himself must not be understood to represent adherence to, or acceptance of, the Christian tradition by Indian viewers. Freek L. Bakker and Rachel Dwyer’s respective, and considerably different, treatments of religious figures and the gods of India’s film industries are instructive resources, in English, for researchers interested in this ecumenical dynamic (Bakker, 2009; Dwyer, 2006).

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Varied Perceptions of the Religious Efficacy of (Moving) Images In addition to the nuanced religious ethos of Indian cinema and culture, reception analysts must also consider the diverse, and often religiously informed, perceptions of images that have shaped producers’ and viewers’ interaction with the cinematic medium. Iconoclastic traditions within Islam, not to mention certain communities within the Christian tradition, have historically been apprehensive about the representation of religious figures on the silver screen. Despite the consistent involvement of Muslims in Indian cinema, representations of the prophet Mohammed or images of Jesus that have been deemed defamatory, have stirred up violent reactions among Muslim viewers. By contrast, the image-saturated Hindu traditions have welcomed filmic depictions of their gods, thanks in part to a conscious effort by India’s filmmaking pioneers to transfer the perceived efficacy of two and three-dimensional images to the silver screen. As Ashish Rajadhyaksha has argued, Phalke consciously incorporated long static close-ups of gods and goddesses in his films in order to facilitate an “Indian” gaze (Rajadhyaksha 1987, 68 – 69) often associated with darshan, which in Hindu practice encompasses a kind of visual encounter with the deities or religious figures represented (Eck 1985, 3). In other words, the long take facilitated meditation as well as mediation. Understanding reception in such a context requires attention to these nuanced perspectives and one must recognize that they are not consistent, even within broadly differentiated traditions. This complexity was underlined during several conversations I had about Karunamayudu with Christians in South India. One of the Christian pastors with whom I spoke, who had seen the movie several times when first released, suggested that some of his Hindu neighbors went to see the film to receive a blessing from Jesus and commented that some viewers, including both Christians and Hindus, felt that Jesus was looking at them from the screen; such a response is consistent with what one might expect from Hindu viewers. By contrast, I was asked by an Indian Christian woman in Andhra Pradesh what I thought about the film. When I replied that I found its Hindu influences fascinating, she appeared stunned and responded passionately that she had seen the movie many times and there were no Hindu influences. One can only imagine that from her perspective a positive response to the film by a Hindu neighbor could be taken as an expression of interest in faith in Christ, as understood by evangelical Christians, rather than as a spiritual encounter with but one of many gods or holy men. Complicating the matter of reception further are the influences of various “folk religions” on large segments of India’s southern population, often grouped into the categories of Dalits or Tribals, that have resisted the religious caste system of Hinduism. It would be misguided to assume that they will recognize deities or even holy men similarly to their Hindu neighbors or interact with images in the same ways. Indeed it would be safer to assume that they would identify with Jesus as a man op-

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pressed by religious institutionalism. For them, the political overtones of a movie like Karunamayudu may be even more pronounced than the religious ones. My study of Karunamayudu’s reception among such people was, unfortunately, limited to one screening of the film in a remote Koya village that was not complemented by interviews. The disparity of data about audience reception in such context invites further research. The complexity of interpreting Indian viewers’ interaction with the film becomes even more pronounced when one considers that response to the commercial release of Karunamayudu is only the first chapter in its reception history. Following its run in cinemas, and based in large part on its demonstrated popularity with commercial audiences, the film was picked up by an American evangelical named John Gilman for use in Christian evangelism in India (Gilman 2001, 28 – 33). His efforts, supported by numerous teams of Indian Christian volunteers over the last three decades, have resulted in its dubbing into fourteen Indian languages and propelled its viewing statistics into the millions. The differences between the film’s initial reception in commercial cinema and its reception in evangelistic contexts are most starkly demonstrated by comparing the transactions at play and the spaces in which those transactions have occurred, themes to which I return below.

Hybridity Mainstream Indian filmmakers over the decades have readily acknowledged their debt to Hollywood for stylistic and narrative inspiration, but they have also been quick to “Indianize” their Western muse. Such adaptations have not only involved converting storylines and characters to fit Indian contexts, but incorporating songs and dances, heavy doses of emotional stimuli, and a style of acting that some in the West might consider overstated. Karunamayudu is a classic example of such hybridity. Although obviously filmed in South India, the characters are fitted with costumes reminiscent of a Sunday school play. Furthermore, most of the actors converse in a manner that is stereotypical of conversational discourse in India and accompanied by emphatic gestures that, as Sheila J. Nayar has argued, are part and parcel of a dramatic heritage designed to transcend barriers of language and unpredictable levels of literacy (Nayar 2004, 16). The film’s success at the box-office and its subsequent deployment for evangelistic purposes can be attributed largely to its producers’ ability to take a subject oftassociated with Western influence and colonialism and infuse it with conventions associated with India’s devotional films. Although it draws on the standard narrative structure and conventions of its Western predecessors, that is it consists of a harmonization of the gospel accounts plus some extra-canonical material, it is also inflected with elements that have historically been designed to encourage devotion to the respected holy figures, gods, and goddesses of Hindu traditions. These include scenes designed to facilitate darshan (Karunamayudu features four long takes of

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Jesus’ eyes), as well as demonstrations of Jesus’ ethical integrity, compassion, power to perform miracles, affiliation with the divine, and physical mannerisms that are stereotypical of holy figures in devotional films. When asked to compare Karunamayudu to Western Jesus films, for example, several Christians commented that they preferred the former because it featured a Jesus that moved and spoke more slowly. This combination of hybridity and the general interest among Indian viewers (especially in the South) for most things religious, makes reception analysis in the region a complex undertaking. One anecdote from a screening of Karunamayudu that I attended in a large town in South India may serve as an instructive illustration of that complexity. Video footage of the event taken by collaborators with Dayspring International, the organization founded by John Gilman to propagate the film as an evangelistic tool, included images of a woman from the audience lighting candles at the base of the bamboo frame supporting the screen while the film was playing and then quietly walking away into the darkness. Without being able to interview the woman, but given the range of factors already discussed, the analyst is left to informed speculation: It is unlikely that she was a Christian of evangelical persuasion. Was she a Catholic, for whom the lighting of candles as a form of prayer is commonplace? Was she expressing devotion to Jesus as she might to Krishna or Shiva? Or was she turning the screen into a shrine, a common practice with two-dimensional static images of gods, goddesses, or holy characters? The complexities with which such a simple act confronts the analyst of biblical film reception in India are profound and not to be treated simplistically.

Viewing Context Unlike the highly controlled and predictable theater cineplexes common to North America, the contexts in which films are viewed in India vary widely, ranging from theaters rivaling the most elaborate elsewhere in the world to itinerant tent cinemas and open village squares, where the screen may be a wall or a white sheet pulled tightly over a bamboo frame. In the latter case, the film-watching experience may be punctuated by the sounds of traffic, conversations, the sound of cattle, and viewers’ coming and going. In such contexts, where boundaries are few, the reception of a film is hardly a controlled experience, which makes the task of analyzing its reception a demanding exercise in the exegesis of culture and daily life. Furthermore, Indian cinemas that feature fixed seating are often divided into at least three sections that vary in price, thereby introducing matters of class and identity politics to the matrix of reception. Add to this spectrum of distribution channels the availability of films on DVD, CD, the Internet, or television in multiple languages and one can begin to appreciate the myriad contextual factors at play in the reception of all films in India, not just biblical films. That said, the reception of biblical films in India, and Jesus films in particular, has often occurred in non-commercial contexts,

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the details of which can introduce unique factors for consideration that can only be discussed briefly here. First, in evangelistic contexts viewers rarely, if ever, pay to see a film. Instead, they must be willing to sit through any number of other activities associated with its screening, ranging from testimonials about its impact on the lives of its presenters, running commentary about the significance of the events portrayed in the film, evangelistic preaching, prayer, and offers of free literature and scriptures. For the last thirty years, Karunamayudu has frequently been viewed in such contexts, wherein the metrics of the transaction required to view the film include more than price and genre preferences. Second, and in spite of the strong ethos of religious diversity in India, there can be a political factor involved in the reception of films like Karunamayudu. Given that several states in India have legislated anti-conversion laws and the meaning of proselytization is often in dispute, both the projection and viewing of Karunamayudu can be interpreted politically, especially when accompanied by the activities just mentioned and in public settings. One of the screenings of Karunamayudu that I attended was in an area known for incidents of violence against Christians. The organizers therefore prepared for the event by arranging advance meetings with village elders to secure their support and minimize the possibility of disruption by those who might exploit the night’s film showing for political advantage. Thankfully, the event that night occurred without incident, but the potential for controversy around the screening of a biblical film serves as a reminder that politics of religious identity cannot be ignored.

The Reception of Exhibitors Reception analyses of Jesus films in evangelistic contexts must not only account for the responses of individual viewers that gather to watch them. The exhibitors, who have often seen a given film hundreds of times, are also actively engaged in its reception and function informally as reception analysts in their own right. My survey of over 300 volunteer exhibitors of Karunamayudu, that together have shown it in every quarter of the nation, provided numerous insights into common responses to the film, most of which serve only as starting points for more structured and comprehensive studies. Space does not permit an in-depth discussion of their responses, but a number of general trends are worth noting. These exhibitors reported reactions to the film ranging from laughter to vocal rebukes directed at the soldiers beating Jesus; one story referred to a group of women crying out in unison – ostensibly to Jesus – asking forgiveness for the way he was treated. Contrary to what some of Dayspring International’s promotional material might suggest, however, emotional and public responses to the film are not the norm. Exhibitors reported that responses often vary according to the pre-dominant religious influence in a given community; some people reportedly have refused to watch the film out of adherence to their

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own religious traditions. Other viewers have reportedly drawn comparisons between Jesus’ birth and the birth of Hindu deities. Some of these exhibitors also indicated a tendency for more positive reception of Karunamayudu among viewers in rural locations than in urban areas. I speculate that this distinction may be due in part to any number of factors, including but not limited to: less access to entertainment in rural areas, such that the showing of almost any film is welcome; an openness to religious or spiritual realities and holy figures among rural viewers that is less constrained by secular suspicions; cultural environments less informed by an awareness of religiopolitical allegiances that might take offense to the showing of a biblical film as proselytization. Although the observations of a select group of evangelical Protestant exhibitors of Karunamayudu about common viewer responses to the film are instructive, their own interaction with the film highlights another dynamic of its reception. Again, the following observations are admittedly cursory in scope and are included here simply to point out areas for future research. A number of exhibitors expressed concern about the Roman Catholic influences in the film, referencing in particular a scene where Jesus bows at Mary’s feet and one where Veronica holds up a cloth that Jesus used to wipe his face that features an imprint of his image. Others suggested that without accompanying preaching and commentary viewers were unlikely to understand the significance of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Still others described the devotional influence of the film on their own spirituality, reminding them of God’s love, the need to forgive others, and even how to demonstrate Christ’s love in the Indian context. Media scholar Ien Ang has observed that accounts of reception are never “innocent” (Ang 1996, 56). Whether in the form of critical film reviews or reports from those whose ministries or organizations rely for donations on the perceived efficacy of biblical films to support their cause, accounts of reception may, under scrutiny, reveal the perceptual frameworks that inform them. In the case of biblical films, the scrutiny of such accounts and an awareness of the factors that inform them have the potential, for example, to broaden our understanding of how theological or missional agendas shape, and are shaped by, perceptions of media. The factors discussed briefly above, complemented by observations from a reception analysis of Karunamayudu in India, serve as introductory reference points for what remains fertile ground for future research, the careful execution of which points to a more nuanced understanding of the reception of cinematic representations of biblical figures in multiple cultures and contexts.

Works Cited Abbas, K. A. 2004. “Cinema and National Integration.” Mainstream 24.28: 52 – 53 (1985). Rpt. In Cyclopaedia of Indian Cinema. Ed. Arora Sushil. Vol. 2. New Delhi: Anmol Publications. Pp. 394.

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Ang, Ien. 1996. Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World. London: Routledge. Bakker, Freek L. 2009. The Challenge of the Silver Screen: An Analysis of the Cinematic Portraits of Jesus, Rama, Buddha, and Muhammad. Leiden: Brill. Dwyer, Rachel. 2006. Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema. Abingdon: Routledge. Eck, Diana L. 1985. Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. 2nd ed. revised and enlarged. Chambersburg, Penn.: Anima Books. Friesen, Dwight. 2007. “Showing Compassion and Suggesting Peace in Karunamayudu, an Indian Jesus Film.” Studies in World Christianity 14.2: 125 – 41. —. 2009. “An Analysis of the Production, Content, Distribution, and Reception of Karunamayudu (1978), an Indian Jesus Film.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Edinburgh. Gilman, John. 2001. They’re Killing an Innocent Man. Abridged ed. Virginia Beach, Va.: Dayspring International. Guptara, Prabhu. 1980. “Religion Has Shaped Indian Film.” Action (January): 19 – 22. Hughes, Stephen. 2005. “Mythologicals and Modernity: Contesting Silent Cinema in South India.” Postscripts 1.2/1.3: 207 – 35. Mehmood, Hameedudin, and K.M. Sumutkar. 2004. Screen (1985). Rpt. in Cyclopaedia of Indian Cinema. Ed. Sushil Arora. Vol. 2. New Delhi: Anmol Publications. Pp. 387. Nayar, Sheila J. 2004. “Invisible Representation.” Film Quarterly 57.3: 13 – 23. Phalke, D. G., 1988-89. “Dossier: Swadeshi Moving Pictures,” transl. Narmada S. Shahane. Continuum: An Australian Journal of the Media 2.1: 50-73. Rajadhyaksha, Ashish. 1987. “The Phalke Era: Conflict of Traditional Form and Modern Technology.” Journal of Arts and Ideas 14 – 15: 47 – 78. The Tablet. 1980. “India.” (February 9): 142. Thomas, Sham P., and Jolyon Mitchell. 2005. “Understanding Television and Christianity in Marthoma Homes, South India.” Studies in World Christianity 11.1: 29 – 48. Thoraval, Yves. 2000. The Cinemas of India: 1896 – 2000. Delhi: Macmillan India. Vaasanthi. 2006. Cut-Outs, Caste and Cine Stars. New Delhi: Penguin.

Films Cited Dayamayudu (dir. Vijay Chander, 1987, IN) Jesus (dir. P. A. Thomas, 1973, Shaji Movies, IN). Jesus [a.k.a. The Jesus Film] (dir. John Krish and Peter Sykes, 1979, Inspirational Films, US). Karunamayudu [“Man of Compassion,” a.k.a. Daya Sagar or “Ocean of Mercy”] (dir. A. Bheem Singh, 1978, IN). The King of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1927, DeMille Pictures Corporation, US). Mulla Kireetam (dir. Raja Reddy, 2006, IN). The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004, Icon Pictures, US). Shanti Sandesham (dir. P. C. Reddy, 2004, IN). Son of God (dir. Christopher Spencer, 2014, Lightworkers Media, US). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956, Paramount, US).

Anat Y. Zanger¹

50 “A Ram Butts His Broad Horns Again and Again against the Wall of the House”²: The Binding Myth in Israeli Film Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you. (Genesis 22:2)

Ae’yal Davidovitch’s story “Osmosis” appeared in the recent Passover edition of the Ha’aretz newspaper literary and cultural supplement having won first place in the newspaper’s short story competition. The story tells of a father, mother, and their son’s everyday life. The son, perhaps alive, perhaps dead, is the narrator in a story in which mourning, melancholy, guilt, ritual, and repetition compulsion are dominant elements contributing to an ongoing present (Freud 1963). One possible interpretation of the story is that the family has suffered an accident and is now constantly reliving the moment of catastrophe. Nevertheless, several questions remain. Was it the son’s twin who was killed, or was he an only child? And if the latter, is the speaker alive or is it his ghost which keeps coming back to haunt the family? What part did the father play in the accident? As the title indicates, this was not an event that took place in a specific time and place but is an ontological state of ongoing trauma mingling past and present in an attempt to create equilibrium between one person’s pain and another’s anxieties. The story also includes other significant elements: a recurrent binding and freeing of the son by his father, the son cleaning a rifle, the mother’s tears, the ram butting the house with its broad horns, the ram’s organs being sorted and prepared by the family, and the son’s name mentioned only in the closing sentence of the story: Isaac. The story thus sketches transitions between the characters and events and an “osmotic” absorption, not only into the nuclear family, but also into the historic level of the biblical binding myth. Moreover, by connecting reality and hallucination, family history and myth, the story succeeds in describing the location of the binding myth in Israeli society and culture as moving osmotically between domestic and national spheres. The myth of the binding of Isaac (Gen. 22) has been transformed and transcribed in Jewish culture for centuries, and modern Israeli culture has made especially frequent use of it. As observed by Gideon Ofrat (1987) and Hillel Weiss (1991), it is rare to find Israeli literary texts or works of plastic art in which father-son relationships are not, directly or indirectly, related in some way to the biblical story.

 This research was funded by the Israeli Science Foundation (grant no. /). I would like to thank my research assistants: Nir Ferber, Yael Levy and Matan Nahaloni for their useful comments and suggestions.  This quotation is drawn from the story “Osmosis.” See Davidovitch (, ).

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The binding of Isaac in Jewish history is the myth of the sacrifice of the son told in conjunction with a theological account that elevates the son to the status of victim through an act of substitution. The sacrifice is thus transformed from being merely an arbitrary event into a religious trial, an intentional act of faith. Secular approaches, on the other hand, as noted by literary scholar Ruth Kerton-Bloom, substitute “God, who commanded the trial by binding with another, less clearly defined essence, whose beginning lies in what may be termed Jewish history, and whose end lies in total emptiness, as if the binding was never a commandment at all, but rather a wholly purposeless and meaningless existential act” (Kerton-Bloom 1989, 10). Thus Zionism, like God, promised the Land to the people, and has also demanded the sacrifice of its sons. But there is a salient dissymmetry between the biblical binding myth and its analogues in modern Jewish history. From pre-state Israel and Eastern European pogroms to the Holocaust and the Israeli-Arab wars, modern Isaacs are not always substituted by innocent rams. The myth has evolved through twentieth-century Jewish history from being a collective, tragic myth during the 1920s and 1930s to protests against binding as a metaphor for existence in the 1980s and 1990s (Zanger 2003). As I will show, early twenty-first-century Israeli cinema following the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin (1995), the Second Lebanon War (2006), and the recent war in Gaza (2014) constantly returns to the binding myth. Dialogue with the myth is evident in both its religious and nationalist aspects, but during the last decade especially the father has resonated as symbolic figure, evoking Jacques Lacan’s “law of the father.” This old-new myth has functioned as the internal code of Israeli society throughout its relatively short history. Contemporary manifestations of the binding story continue to be repeated. As long as the myth is relevant, its surface structure might be rearranged, but at the same time it is engaged in a constant dialogue with the deep structure of the myth. At the turn of the millennium, Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai wrote that Abraham in fact had three sons, not two: Isaac-El (“God will laugh”), Ishma-El (“God will hear”) and Yivkeh-El (“God will cry”). Isaac is saved by an angel and Ishmael by Hagar, but Yivkeh is not saved by anyone. Although in the Bible we are told that Abraham sacrificed a ram, it was actually Yivkeh who was brought as a burnt offering (Amichai 2006, 23). In this chapter, I seek to examine briefly the presence of the binding myth of these three sons in contemporary Israeli cinema. I discuss the binding of Isaac and the religious connotations of the myth in relation to the feature film Ḥufshat qayits (dir. David Volach, 2007, a.k.a. My Father My Lord) and the television episode “Aqedat Yitsḥaq” (“The Binding of Isaac”); the binding of Ishmael and Isaac and the national-political aspects of the myth in relation to Bet-leḥem (dir. Yuval Adler, 2013, Bethlehem); and the binding of Yivkeh and the mental trauma of the sacrificial victim who survives in the drama series Hatufim (dir. Gideon Raff, 2009 – 12, a.k.a. Prisoners

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of War).³ As I will show, Israeli cinema and television have entered a new phase in recent years involving rebellion against Abraham and, thereby, attempts to dislocate the seemingly inevitable cycle of sacrifice.

Isaac and Abraham An episode of the satirical television show, Ha-Yehudim ba’im (dir. Kobi Havia, 2014– 15, a.k.a. The Jews Are Coming), was titled “‘Aqedat Yitsḥaq” (“The Binding of Isaac”).⁴ Abraham (Moni Moshonov), complete with beard and caftan, is searching for a rock on Mt. Moriah. Isaac (Yaniv Biton), an overgrown lad also dressed in a caftan, follows Abraham bound in ropes. Abraham stops by a rock and binds Isaac to it by his hands and feet, while Isaac asks him in colloquial Hebrew “Dad, what are you doing?” Abraham replies, “You heard what God said?” Isaac answers “But Dad, there’s no one here,” adding “It’s me, Isaac, the son you love, remember?” In the end, God intervenes, to Abraham’s chagrin.⁵ On the way home, he asks his son not to tell his mum anything about what went on up on Mt. Moriah. This television parody proposes a double reading of the biblical text depending on the viewer’s familiarity with it and playing on his or her expectations.⁶ At the same time, the episode epitomizes visually the way Isaac is symbolically suspended between heaven and earth, between benevolence and severity in an ambivalent state charged with uncertainty and risk. Nicole Belmont’s description of the ancient Roman ritual of “Levana” is pertinent here: the vertical position of a newborn child, followed by laying him at his father’s feet (Belmont 1973). The first symbolizes his acceptance into society while the horizontal position, on the other hand, is associated with submission, rejection, and death. Additional texts over the last ten years involve substantial conflict between fathers and sons, implying criticism of the father’s readiness to sacrifice his son.⁷ I will discuss David Volach’s 2006 film My Father My Lord as an exemplar of this trend. The film portrays three days at the end of summer in Jerusalem and at the  For discussion of post-traumatic stress disorder in Israeli cinema see Gertz/Hermoni (), Kohen Raz (), Yosef () and the forthcoming study by Tzachi. On war widows in Israeli film see Friedman ().  Available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT_ZLoM (accessed April , ).  See Lacan’s (, ) citation of Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak), who comments that Abraham was bitter about the angel’s intervention to prevent his sacrifice of Isaac.  The episode was broadcast during the first season of the satirical television program, Ha-Yehudim baim (a.k.a. The Jews Are Coming), (Israel, Channel , November , ). The program combines biblical episodes with satire on current affairs.  Recent films featuring critique of Abraham and his actions include two shorts: ‘Aqedat Yitsḥaq (produced and directed by high school students, Re’ali Haifa , “The Binding of Isaac”) and Sempre diem (dir. Nachman Pichovsky, ). The directors of both shorts are young students either before or after their army service. The former is available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=GLtmzegE-Ww (accessed April , ).

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Fig. 99: “The Binding of Isaac” from The Jews are Coming (2014)

Dead Sea. Menachem (Ilan Griff), or Menachem’ke (the diminutive by which his parents called him), is the beloved only child of older parents. The family home is very modest with walls lined by holy books. Its small rooms are crowded with ceremonial prayers and religious prohibitions, leaving scarce space for the child’s soul to breathe. The child’s father Avraham (Assi Dayan), a Rabbi of a local synagogue and Yeshiva, is scrupulous in his observation of the Jewish commandments, large and small, never missing an opportunity to teach his son Torah. Menachem enjoys secular conversation only with his mother (Sharon Hacohen). In the school room in which Menachem studies (cheder), the Rabbi is teaching the story of the binding of Isaac, but Menachem’s thoughts wander to the birds and trees outside. At the child’s request, the family drives to the Dead Sea for a day out. Once there, the family observes the religious rule of separate bathing, and Menachem stays with his father. While his father joins evening prayers by the seashore, Menachem prefers casting small fish back into the sea and he gradually wades deeper and deeper in, until another child notices he has disappeared and alerts the praying men. After a long search, his drowned body is recovered by helicopter. At the end of the film, when the seven days of shiva (mourning) are over, the father tries to go on as before but cannot. The mother, for her part, expresses her bitterness by throwing prayer books one by one from the ladies gallery of the synagogue to the men’s prayer hall below, where a service is underway. The film makes repeated reference to the binding of Isaac. The father’s name is Avraham; the older couple has had difficulty having children; Menachem, who is their only child, studies the story of the akedah and fails to place the sacrificial lamb correctly in the picture on the blackboard. The time sequence of the film, its season, and place coincide with those of the binding story, which according to tradition took place during three days in the month of Ellul (late summer) on Mt. Moriah, somewhere in or near Jerusalem.⁸  Volach’s film also alludes to an early Israeli film relating to theological aspects of the myth: Sheloshah yamim wa-yeled (dir. Uri Zohar, , a.k.a. Three Days and a Child), an adaptation of a short story by A. B. Yehoshua (). As noted by Mordechai Shalev (, ), the child’s name in that film, Yali, is also an allusion to the biblical story since Yali is a diminutive of Eyal (ram). The opening

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As Lacan (1987) emphasizes, binding involves ligature. Interestingly, in My Father My Lord, the son is bound twice. The first time, on the way to the Dead Sea, his mother repeatedly takes hold of his head and neck to tie his skullcap in place with a string. Secondly, when he is winched out of the sea by the rescue helicopter, he is first bound with ropes and is then suspended between earth and sky in a manner reminiscent of the ancient Roman ritual described above. In contrast with the biblical story, however, the substitution essential to the ongoing existence of the theological myth does not take place. The biblical binding myth involves a familiar set of participants and their interrelationships, based on the principle of substitution. Each participant in the drama enacted in the symbolic setting of Mount Moriah may be substituted for the other. All are in fact interchangeable units having an identical function in the same system; each is bound in the central paradigm of binding. God, Abraham, Isaac, the ram, and Sarah are all equally victims of this trial of faith (Spiegel 1964). In David Volach’s film, there is no substitution and the son is indeed sacrificed in the name of his father’s law, and, in this sense, it takes a secular approach as well. Nevertheless, since God issuing commands has been replaced by the State of Israel’s recognition of binding as its ontology, Israel’s secular mythology tends to extract three cardinal motifs from the archetype: (a) martyrdom and the love of God, (b) the covenant between Abraham and his God in which God rewards Abraham’s faith with the promise that his seed will produce a great nation, and (c) divine trial. Volach’s film, on the other hand, by eliminating the substitution suggests a unique alignment between martyrdom and the love of God. “I was wrapped up in my prayers, I was in the arms of God,” explains the father after his son’s death. The Bible, together with all subsequent commentaries, emphasizes the binding myth as the antithesis of human sacrifice to the idol Moloch. My Father My Lord, by tampering with the substitution at the core of the myth, is situated in opposition to the original, archetypal binding story. Even before the binding episode itself, the film foreshadows or augments it with another episode in which both Menachem’s father and teacher drive a hatching mother pigeon away from the schoolroom window. When Menachem asks what will happen to the chicks, no real answer is forthcoming. Thus the film prefigures the event in which, in the name of Torah and observing the commandments, the mother is removed from the scene and her child is abandoned to his fate. During the search for Menachem in the Dead Sea, Avraham, Esther his wife, and an accompanying crowd gaze heavenward, but receive no answer. Similarly, in the final sequence in the synagogue, Avraham raises his eyes to meet only a cold, alienating, neon light.

sequence of Zohar’s film is a voice-over, which makes explicit reference to the binding myth in the last three days of the holiday, in the first days of autumn, in Jerusalem. Ultimately the father does not carry through his plan to kill his ex-girlfriend’s son “in any event” he said, “the time and place were ripe.”

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The film was produced twelve years after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1995), and following the second Lebanon war (2006) and reflects its “historical moment” (Kaes 2009, 5 – 6) of despair and protest. Volach’s film demonstrates the tragic consequence of blind obedience to dictates from above. One could read this critique as referring to both the theological and the Zionist narratives.

Ishmael, Abu Ibrahim, and Abraham There is a long tradition in Israeli cinema of lending national-political significance to the binding of Isaac myth, from Giv‘ah 24 enah ‘onah (dir. Thorold Dickinson 1954, a. k.a. Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer), via Hu halakh ba-śadot (dir. Yosef Milo, 1967, a.k.a. He Walked Through the Fields), ‘Onat ha-duvdevanim (dir. Haim Buzaglo 1991, a.k.a. Time of the Cherries) up to Beaufort (dir. Yosef Cedar, 2006) to name just a few. Bet-leḥem (dir. Yuval Adler, 2013) is an exception in that it explores the binding myth and its currency in Palestinian as well as in Israeli society, focusing on the interaction between them. The film involves several triangular relationships. First there is the relationship between two sons and a father: the young Palestinian, Sanfur (Shadi Mar’i), who is recruited by the Israelis as a collaborator (without his father’s knowledge) and his father and brother. Sanfur (literally “smurf”) is fifteen years old when he is recruited with the chance to save his sick father as leverage. His brother, Ibrahim (Simnham), is an activist in a Palestinian resistance organization and is killed by the Israeli security forces following tip offs received by Sanfur. The second triangle is the relationship between Sanfur and the head of the two organizations: his dead brother’s deputy, Bada’ui (Hitham Omari), and his Shabac (Secret Police) handler, Razi (Tsahi Halevi). Razi tells his commanding officer that he loves Sanfur like a son and sees more of him than of his own children. The third and most important triangular relationship is between Sanfur and his two fathers: Abu Ibrahim (Tarik Kopty), his Palestinian biological father, and Razi, his Israeli symbolic father. As we have seen, the principle of substitution is central to the binding myth and Bet-leḥem establishes a pattern of substitutions involving each member of the triangle: the father who sacrifices his son as a burnt offering, the son who sacrifices his symbolic father, handlers and fathers, and the principle for the sake of which the sacrifice is made. These positions are reversible: the extreme action of the Palestinian organization is analogous to that by the Israeli military, the father sacrifices his son (or the organization) but the son can also rise up against his father.⁹ The binding itself is also written into the film on several occasions. First, Sanfur’s brother Ibrahim, who is a member of a Palestinian resistance organization (actually a member of both a moderate and an extreme faction) is wanted by the Israeli security forces. When in a house surrounded by Israeli forces, Ibrahim hides on the  Taufiq Abu Wail’s  film Atash (“Thirst”) also involves a son, who kills the father that has abused him and his family. See the discussion of this film in Oleinik ().

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Fig. 100: Patricide of the symbolic father in Bet-leḥem (2013)

roof, lying supine like Isaac bound on the altar. He is killed during an Israeli military operation in Bethlehem. When informed of his son’s death, his father, Abu Ibrahim, says that he wishes he had been taken instead of his son and declares him to be a Shahid or holy martyr. Both the military wing of Hamas and the Al Aksa brigade want to claim the victim as their own and to bask in the glory of their achievement. Sanfur murders his Shabac handler, Razi. Earlier, Razi put his professional standing and his colleagues at risk when he persuaded Sanfur to get away and not join his brother as usual. Razi thus disobeyed a direct order from his commander in order to prevent Sanfur’s death, putting at risk the success of the operation and making it much more dangerous, so that the Israeli forces suffer casualties including Razi himself. Later on, when Bada’ui finds out that Sanfur had collaborated with the Israeli secret service, he presents him with an ultimatum (with his father’s knowledge): either he kills his Israeli handler or he will be executed in Bethlehem. The next time Sanfur makes contact with him, Razi hurries out alone to meet him in an isolated place, against the advice of his team. Sanfur asks Razi to give him asylum in Israel without telling him why. When Razi tries to put him off, Sanfur shoots him and lays him down bleeding on the ground. He embraces Razi and asks “will you send me to Bada’ui and Bada’ui will send me back to you and then you’ll send me back to Bada’ui again?” As Jacques Lacan remarks, the commandment “take your son, your only one” is typical of the impenetrable absoluteness of every law and also of the inability of humans to undertake this absolute demand, hence the existence of another god, the father, who understands and extricates the son via the covenant (Lacan 1987, 92). Sanfur searches among his fathers and mentors for the good father who will prevent his binding, but realizes that he is trapped between them. He smashes Razi’s head with a stone and kills him, then sits by his corpse and stares into space. Sanfur’s sacrifice of his symbolic father is not the product of faith but of Bada’ui’s ultimatum. A moment before he was prepared to transfer his loyalties, so the sacrifice is not premeditated but is carried out because of impotence and despair. In effect, it is the two

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fathers, representatives of two peoples in conflict, the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael, who situate Sanfur as bound.¹⁰

Yivkeh-El and Abraham The Israeli drama series Prisoners of War (dir. Gideon Raff, 2009 – 12, a.k.a. Hatufim),¹¹ like Bet-leḥem, features an amalgam of father-son relationships, sacrificial victims, binders and bound, betrayal and loyalty, and the suffering of the mentally damaged. Prisoners of War (henceforth POW) follows the story of three military kidnap victims, their families, and their relations with the state, the army, the security services, and the Mossad.¹² The first season deals with the difficult acclimatization of two of the kidnap victims – Nimrod (Yoram Toledano) and Uri (Ishai Golan) – on their return, following seventeen years in captivity. They have to face changes in their families, the lack of a profession, and ignorance regarding new technologies. They have difficulties sleeping and suffer from anxiety and rage attacks. During the first season, they are preoccupied with contacting the Israeli-Arab family of G’emal (Salim Dau), one of their captors in Lebanon, in quest of clues regarding the mystery of what happened to the third captive Amiel (Assi Cohen). The second season focuses on Amiel, who is living on the other side of the border. Towards the end of the series, however, we learn that both Amiel and his handler G’emal were in fact double agents working for the Israelis. The series resonates with the binding myth in its substitutions of the sacrificial victim. While in captivity, Nimrod is forced to choose between Amiel and Uri. In choosing to save Uri, he must sacrifice Amiel. Later on, Amiel lives in Syria under an assumed identity in order to serve Israel’s security interests while his supposed coffin is brought to Israel for burial. The father of Ynon, the soldier sent to bring Amiel back, is killed in a terror attack while saving his son’s life. POW deals with the ongoing trauma suffered by the returnees and their families. The inherent forgetting of the traumatic event is pertinent as a perspective that evades consciousness and perpetuates the nightmare. This is the “structural trauma” which Dominick LaCapra defines (LaCapra 2014, 80). The process begins from the time of the traumatic event itself, and the subsequent undermining of narrative structure by the trauma, such as the unravelling of linear time, is expressed as flashbacks recurring throughout the episodes.

 Sanfur’s code name in the Israeli Shabac is Esau, thus hinting at Jacob’s usurpation of Esau’s birthright (Gen. : – ).  This Israeli series was adapted to create the award winning American series Homeland (prod. Gideon Raff ‐).  During the s, Israeli soldiers were abducted while on duty by organizations hostile to Israel. During the broadcast of the series’ first season, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser’s bodies were returned, while intensive negotiations for Gilad Shalit’s release were ongoing.

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I would like to focus on the encounters between the prisoners of war and the therapeutic authorities in order to illustrate the ways mental injury is inscribed into the series. Nimrod’s wife, Talia (Yaël Abecassis), seeks professional help and suggests her husband join a support group. However, Nimrod keeps insisting that everything is fine, despite the frequent flashbacks of torture in captivity from which he suffers. When Nimrod sees the large number of people participating in the support group, he refuses to enter the room. “No one has been through what I went through,” he shouts. “How long were they held prisoner? Two weeks?” The exposure is difficult for him; he is not prepared to lay himself open like that. Talia re-joins the group while Nimrod escapes back home. One of the participants, who divorced her husband after he returned from captivity, tells Talia: “I have three children, I don’t need another,” adding “the prisoners see their nuclear family as a kind of imprisonment, so they do everything they can to break it up.” Like the Chorus in a Greek tragedy, she provides Talia with commentary on the action and predictions about what is likely to happen. The names of all three Israeli kidnap victims (Uri, Nimrod, and Amiel) are linked to the binding myth on several levels. On a linguistic level, Amiel literally means “God is with me.” On an intertextual level, both Uri and Nimrod have been included in canonical works referencing the mythology of the binding of Isaac. Uri is the name of the male protagonist in the 1947 Moshe Shamir novel Hu halach b’sadot (a.k.a. He Walked through the Fields) and its film adaptation (dir. Yosef Millo, 1967), and Nimrod is the title of the acclaimed sculpture by Yithak Danziger (1939) symbolising the affinity between the Land of Israel and the Jewish people. Each of the prisoners, like the biblical Isaac, finds himself in a twilight zone between life and death both in captivity and following their release, as they continue to suffer nightmares, mental scars, and terminal illness.

Conclusion René Girard identifies the sacrificial victim with a time of crisis: “The scapegoat emerges when the uniqueness and viability of the community is called into question” (Girard 2005, 298 – 99). Girard points to “mimetic desire” (179 – 80) as being at the root of every society’s attitude to its members as well as to prohibitions, taboos, and crises. He suggests that rival desires may be resolved, at least temporarily, by finding a potential surrogate victim (98). Such victims are chosen from among the underprivileged (children, women, hostages, prisoners), but at the same time must have a degree of symbolic power in order to shoulder the crisis adequately. His or her blood has, literally and metaphorically, a restorative and reconciliatory effect on the community (113).¹³

 See also Ilana Szobel () on Rene Girard in her paper on women poets and the binding myth.

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The sacrificial binding myth recurs at times of crisis in Israeli society. It involves a divine dictate for human sacrifice, which God ultimately rescinds.¹⁴ The father’s willingness to sacrifice his son has left its mark, however. Following Lacan’s discussion in his essay “Introduction to The Names of the Father” (1987), Ruth Ronen delineates the paradox embodied in the demand to make such a sacrifice: “There is no way to obey fully God’s command to sacrifice the son, since obedience is also an infringement of the covenant between God and Abraham and his descendants” (Ronen 2010, 19, my translation). I identify in this chapter three types of victim involved in the ritual of sacrifice in Israeli society. As expressed in contemporary Israeli cinema and television, they are all victims of the “law of the father,” whether that father is Abraham, the State of Israel, the army, or the Secret Police. Volach’s film, My Father My Lord, presents Isaac as a victim of his father’s religious faith. Yuval Adler’s film, Bet-leḥem, presents Ishmael as caught between two fathers: the biological Palestinian one and the symbolic Israeli one. POW presents Amichai’s Yivkeh, in the post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by the living-dead – returning captives who have survived their binding and continue to be exploited by Israel’s military and security institutions. November 4, 1995, marks a watershed in Israeli society. On this day, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated following a peace rally held in a central square in Tel Aviv. Rabin’s assassination may be identified as a sacrifice in the context of the binding myth, with the aim of destroying any possibility of reaching a peaceful settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, thus, perpetuating the sacrificial myth in Israeli society. The assassin, Yigal Amir, is a religious, right wing activist who will end his days in prison. The initial shock displaced an increasing rift between the religious establishment and the right, between the settlers and those who fight for peace. In that same Tel Aviv square, now called Rabin Square, Michal KastenKedar, whose husband Dolev was killed in the 2014 war in Gaza, addressed another left wing rally in March 2015: How many more lost women like me will lose their hearts, their lives? How many children like mine will lose their fathers? How many miserable parents will lose their sons until our State understands that there is no choice: we must achieve a peace settlement? We have already lost our Dolev. Nothing will bring him back. But we must prevent the next casualties.¹⁵

Like the films and television series discussed in this paper, Kedar questions the need to continue sacrificing the sons of Israel. These texts – Ha-Yehudim ba’im, My Father My Lord, Bet-leḥem, and Prisoners of War – draw our attention to the figure of the symbolic father, and Lacan’s “Law of the Father” (1987), thereby urging an end to the cycle of sacrifice embodied in the binding myth.

 The binding of Ishmael is also marked in Islam by its most important festival, Id el Adha.  Major General Dolev Kedar’s widow, Michal, spoke at a rally calling for a change of administration before the last Israeli general election in March .

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Works Cited Amichai, Yehuda. 2006. “The Bible and You, the Bible and You, and Other Midrashim.” In Open, Closed, Open: Poems [Hebrew 1998]. Transl. Chana Bloch. San Diego: Harcourt. Pp. 17 – 28. Belmont, Nicole. 1973. “Levana or How to Raise Up Children.” Annales E.S.C. 28: 77 – 89. Davidovitch, Ae’yal. 2015. “Osmosis” [Hebrew]. Ha’aretz. April Culture and Literature Supplement: 1, 8. Freud, Sigmund. 1963. “Mourning and Melancholia.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume 14. Ed. James Strachey, et al. London: Hogart Press. Pp. 239 – 58. Friedman, Regine Mihal. 1993. “Between Silence and Abjection: The Film Medium and the Israeli War Widow.” Film Historia 3.1 – 2: 79 – 90. Gertz, Nurith, and Gal Hermoni. 2008. “History’s Broken Wings: ‘Narrative Paralysis’ as Resistance to History in Amos Gitai’s Film Kedma.” Framework 49.1: 134 – 43. Girard, René. 1977. Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Kaes, Anton. 2009. Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kerton-Bloom, Ruth. 1989. “How Did I Get Hold of the Wood? The Binding as a Test Case for New Hebrew Poetry” [Hebrew]. Me’oznaim 62.9 – 10: 9 – 14. Kohen Raz, Odeya. 2013. “Religious Myths in the Character of the Military Officer in Israeli Cinema” [Hebrew]. In Identity in Transition in Israeli Culture, Festschrift in Honor of Prof. Nurit Gertz. Eds. Sandra Meiri, Yael Munk, Adia Mendelson-Maoz, and Liat Steir-Livny. Ra’anana: The Open University Press. Pp. 228 – 43. Lacan, Jacques. 1987. “Introduction to ‘The Names of the Father’ Seminar” [1963]. Transl. Jeffrey Mehlman. October 40: 81 – 95. LaCapra, Dominick. 2001. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Ofrat, Gideon. 1987. The Akedah in Israeli Art [Hebrew]. Ramat Gan: The Museum of Israeli Art. Oleinik, Meital Alon. 2007. “Atash – The Destruction of the Second Temple and the Binding of Abraham.” In On Destruction, Trauma & Cinema. South Cinema Notebooks 2. Eds. Yael Munk and Eyal Sivan. Haifa: Pardes Publishing House. Pp. 81 – 88. Ronen, Ruth. 2010. Art and Its Discontents: Lectures on Psychoanalysis and Art [Hebrew]. Ra’anana: Am Oved. Shalev, Mordechai. 1968. “Three Days and a Child of A. B. Yehushua” [Hebrew]. Ha’aretz. Culture and Literature Supplement. November 8: 14, 19 and November 15: 16. Shamir, Moshe. 1947. He Walked Through the Fields [Hebrew]. Tel Aviv: Sifri’at Hapoalim. Spiegel, Shalom. 1964. “A Scrap from the Binding Tales” [Hebrew]. In Festschrift in Honor of Rabbi Dr. Abraham Weiss. Ed. Samuel Belkin. New York: Festschrift Committee Publication. Pp. 553 – 66. Szobel, Ilana. 2008. “‘A Howl of Simple Words’: The Akedah Motif in Hebrew Women’s Poetry, 1930 – 1970.” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 23: 65 – 92. Tzachi, Adam. Forthcoming. “PTDS in Israeli Non Fiction Film” [Hebrew]. Ph.D. dissertation, Tel Aviv University. Weiss, Hillel. 1991. “Remarks for Examination of ‘Isaac’s Binding’ in Contemporary Hebrew Literature as Topos, Theme and Motif” [Hebrew]. In Fathers and Sons: Myth, Theme and Literary Topos. Ed. Zvi H. Lévy. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press & The Hebrew University. Pp. 31 – 52. Yehoshua, Abraham. B. 1999. “Three Days and a Child.” In Facing the Forests [Hebrew 1968]. Transl. Miriam Arad. London: Halban.

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Yosef, Raz. 2013. “Traces of War: Memory, Trauma and the Archive in ‘Beaufort’.” In Identity in Transition in Israeli Culture, Festschrift in Honor of Prof. Nurit Gertz [Hebrew]. Eds. Sandra Meiri, Yael Munk, Adia Mendelson-Maoz, and Liat Steir-Livny. Ra’anana: The Open University Press. Pp. 360 – 80. Zanger, Anat. 2003. “Hole in the Moon: Transformations of the Binding Myth (H’akedah) in Israeli Cinema.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 22.1: 95 – 109. —. 2011. “Beaufort and My Father, My Lord: Traces of the Binding Myth and the Mother’s Voice.” In Israeli Cinema: Identities in Motion. Eds. Miriam Talmon-Bohm and Yaron Peleg. Austin: Texas University Press. Pp. 225 – 38. —. 2012. “The Desert or The Myth of Empty Space.” In Place, Memory and Myth in Contemporary Israeli Cinema. London: Vallentine-Mitchell Publishers. Pp. 99 – 117.

Films Cited ‘Aqedat Yitsḥaq [“The Binding of Isaac”] (dir. Students, 2014, The Hebrew R’eali School in Haifa, IL). Atash [“Thirst”] (dir. Tawfik Abu Wael, 2004, Ness Communication & Productions Ltd., IL/PS). Beaufort (dir. Joseph Cedar, 2006, United King, IL). Bet-leḥem [“Bethlehem”] (dir. Yuval Adler, 2013, Entre Chien et Loup, IL/DE/BE). Giv‘ah 24 enah ‘onah [“Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer”] (dir. Thorold Dickinson, 1955, Israel Motion Picture Studios, IL). Hatufim [a.k.a. Prisoners of War] (dir. Gideon Raff, 2009 – 12, Keshet Media Group, IL). Ha-Yehudim ba’im [a.k.a. The Jews Are Coming, TV series] (dir. Kobi Havia, 2014 – 15, Yoav Gross Productions, IL). Ha-Yehudim ba’im [“‘Aqedat Yitsḥaq” or “The Binding of Isaac,” Season 1, Episode 1] (dir. Kobi Havia, 2014, Yoav Gross Productions, IL). Ḥufshat qayits [a.k.a. My Father My Lord] (dir. David Volach, 2007, Cinema Project, IL). Hu halakh ba-śadot [a.k.a. He Walked Through the Fields] (dir. Yosef Millo, 1967, Meroz Films, IL). Homeland (prod. Gideon Raff, 2011-, Showtime, US). Ḥor ba-levanah [“Hole in the Moon”] (dir. Uri Zohar, 1964, Geva Films Ltd., IL). ‘Onat ha-duvdevanim [a.k.a. Time of the Cherries] (dir. Haim Bouzaglo, 1991, Contact Productions, IL). Semper idem (dir. Nachman Picovsky, 2014, Sam Spiegel, IL). Sheloshah yamim wa-yeled [“Three Days and a Child”] (dir. Uri Zohar, 1968, A. Deshe, IL).

VI Voices from the Margins

Adele Reinhartz

51 Judaism and Antisemitism in Bible Movies

From the early twentieth century to the present, each new Bible movie has prompted the same query among film critics, clergy and scholars: How do the Jews fare in this new film? The reason for this interest is obvious: all Bible movies, whether based on the Jewish or the Christian scriptures, in some way must address a very sensitive question: how to represent Jews and Judaism? On one level, the question might seem irrelevant. The Jewish scriptures, after all, are not about Jews per se, but about the Israelites, and the Christian scriptures concern events that happened so long ago that their relevance for the present might be questioned. Nevertheless, both the Jewish and Christian scriptures remain relevant when it comes to society’s views about and treatment of Jews and Judaism. From a Jewish perspective, the Hebrew Bible, while it does not use the term “Jews” as such, tells the foundational story of the Jewish people and lays the foundation for Jewish thought, ethics, liturgy and practice to this very day. And although the gospels play a similar role for Christianity (alongside the other books of the Old and New Testaments), they are set in first-century Judea, focus on an individual who is ethnically Jewish, and to greater or lesser extent hold Jewish authorities culpable for Jesus’ death, a claim that has contributed fundamentally to the history of antisemitism. For these reasons, the directors and producers of Bible movies, whether based on the Jewish or Christian scriptures, must consider carefully the ways in which they depict Jewish characters, practices, and ideas. Even the peplum films, also called sword-and-sandal movies, while preoccupied for the most part with the fate of Christianity under Roman rule, are relevant to this issue, especially those such as Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959) that are set in Judea in the early decades of the first century.¹ The “Jewish question” arose most acutely in the period after the Holocaust, when the destructive force of antisemitism came to international attention. But the Bible movies’ potential for perpetuating antisemitism was apparent from the early decades of the twentieth century, especially to Jewish groups such as the B’nai Brith, which expressed concern about the portrayal of Jews in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1927 The King of Kings (Phillips 2008, 138 – 46). Filmmakers often took notice; D. W. Griffith, for example, cut several segments from the “Judean” sections of his epic 1916 film Intolerance (Brook 2003, 52). The present essay will make two arguments. The first is that Bible movies convey an ambivalence towards the Jewish elements of their stories and characters; at the same time that they attempt to convey a Jewish “flavor” they also distance themselves from Jewish themes in order to situate themselves more firmly within a Christian worldview. The second is that Bible movies, especially the Jesus film genre, will  For further discussion of this topic, see Reinhartz ().

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convey antisemitic attitudes and images unless the filmmakers take care specifically to avoid negative representations of Jews and Judaism. Three types of Bible movies will be considered: Old Testament films, Jesus movies, and peplum (or sword-and-sandal) films. Due to the vast number of movies produced worldwide, and the importance of cultural and national contexts in understanding film, this essay will focus primarily on American (often referred to as “Hollywood”) cinema, with some consideration of films made in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe that have received broad American distribution. Old Testament films are movies based on stories of the Hebrew Bible but we refer to these as Old Testament because in almost all cases (with the exception of films made in Israel) these films have Christian overtones and reflect the Christian appropriation and interpretation of these narratives; Jesus movies retell all or part of the life of Jesus as told in the gospels; and sword-and-sandal movies are set in the period after Jesus’ crucifixion and focus on Christian persecution at the hands of Rome.

Judaism in Bible Movies Old Testament Movies Bible movies are for the most part set in ancient times and far away places. In order to establish their historical settings, as well as their biblical connections, Old Testament movies employ a number of techniques: they quote familiar biblical phrases, create desert landscapes, and dress their characters in the flowing robes and sandals that are popularly associated with the biblical period. In establishing their biblical contexts, however, these films also insert visual, aural and narrative elements that would be considered “Jewish” by modern moviegoers. These might include the use of Hebrew or Hebrew-like elements. For example, opening credits are sometimes written in an English script that has Hebrew-like flourishes, and/or superimposed on pages from the Hebrew Bible. Some films include Hebrew phrases from Jewish liturgy, even though that liturgy did not exist in the period of either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament. For example, the soundtrack of Solomon and Sheba (dir. King Vidor, 1959) includes two Jewish liturgical pieces, both chanted by a professional male cantor, that would be familiar to Jewish audiences. One is the prayer for recovery from illness, chanted during King David’s deathbed scene. The other is the traditional mourning prayer, chanted at the funeral of Abishag. In the Bible, Abishag is the young companion of David in his old age and final illness (1 Kgs. 1:3); in this film she is also in love with David’s son Solomon, who treats her as a cherished friend but not a lover. Neither melody was composed until millennia after the biblical period, but their presence in the film serves to bridge the gap in time and space between the biblical story and modern filmgoers, some of

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whom may be familiar with them from their own experience.² Yet the Americanized pronunciation of biblical names (“Bath-sheeba” instead of “Bathsheva”; “A-don-ijah” instead of “A-don-ee-yah”) reminds viewers that these movies tell stories that do not belong only to Jews but also to Christians, and, above all, to Americans. The Jewish liturgical context is also called to mind by other ambient elements of the soundtrack, most obviously by the sound of the ram’s horn (shofar, in Hebrew). In biblical narrative, the sound of the shofar was heard at the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai (Exod. 19:19); the shofar also heralded the New Year (Lev. 23:24) and the Jubilee year (Lev. 25:9). It is still heard today in synagogue as a highlight of the liturgy on the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) (Shiloah 1992, 41). The shofar is heard in numerous Bible movies. In The King of Kings the shofar ushers in the Sabbath; upon hearing the blasts, Jesus’ mother Mary puts away her weaving. In The Story of Ruth (dir. Henry Koster, 1960), the shofar is associated with the mysterious prophet who outlines the broader context of the story, and its location in Bethlehem, in the sequence of events culminating in the birth of Jesus.

Jesus Movies³ From a historical perspective, the Jesus movies should be filled with Jewish elements, given that Jesus was a first-century Jew from the Galilee. And indeed, most Jesus movies include at least a cursory nod to Jesus’ Jewishness. Like the Old Testament movies, Jesus movies use Hebraic-looking fonts, ambient sounds, and middle-eastern settings to evoke the Jewish context of the narrative. More directly, they often incorporate references to the Jewish context in the dialogue. For example, in the animated film The Miracle Maker (dir. Derek W. Hayes/Stanislav Sokolov, 2000), Pilate introduces a new centurion to the “peculiar customs of the Jews,” a device that the film uses to explain the role of Passover as a holiday of freedom, as well as to set the stage for Pilate’s role in the events leading up to Jesus’ death. Jesus’ Jewishness is addressed explicitly in Denys Arcand’s Jésus de Montréal (1989). This film revolves around a small troupe of actors in Montreal who are commissioned to refresh the passion play that has traditionally been performed at the Catholic shrine of St. Joseph’s Oratory on top of Mount Royal in the heart of the city. The passion play that they create takes the form of a documentary (the film genre of Arcand’s first films) that contradicts many elements of Catholic belief. Among other things, the play emphasizes Jesus’ Jewish identity: “Our knowledge of Jesus is so sketchy some claim he never existed. Paradoxically, Jesus wasn’t Christian, but Jewish. He was circumcised and observed Jewish law. The destiny of Israel obsessed him.”  For a history of these melodies, see Eisenberg (, ) and Gottlieb (, ).  For detailed discussion of this genre, see Reinhartz ( and ) and Tatum ().

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The film that puts the most emphasis on Jesus’ Jewishness, however, is Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth (1979), originally made as a television miniseries. The early segments, in particular, are rich in detail about Jewish celebration of lifecycle events such as betrothal and marriage. The film even, and unusually, depicts Jesus’ circumcision (Luke 2:21). This scene is almost never depicted in the Jesus movies, perhaps because it is distasteful to Christians to imagine Jesus in the nude (Steinberg 1983) or because of a discomfort with overtly identifying Jesus as Jewish. Zeffirelli has not only the inclination to emphasize Jesus’ Jewish background but also the time, given the original format of the film. The scene adheres quite well to the modern practice of Jewish ritual circumcision, which may have differed considerably from the first-century practice but in its modern form will resonate with Jewish audiences. The occasion is joyous; Mary watches from the women’s section of the Nazareth synagogue as Joseph, attired in a prayer shawl, head covering, and locks, gives the baby to the mohel (Spigel 2012, 49). It is not known whether separate seating for men and women was a feature of first-century synagogues, but this is another example of the tendency of films to depict Jewish liturgical practice in ways that would be familiar to modern audiences even if not necessarily authentic to the historical period being depicted. In keeping with traditional (though perhaps not first-century) practice, the child’s name is also given on this occasion. In the background one can hear the strains of the morning prayers, in Hebrew. Midst the joy an ominous note is injected: the camera focuses on the knife of the circumcision. This close-up may hint at the view that circumcision was a barbaric custom that is no longer required of Christians, but it also alludes to the sword that pierces Mary’s heart (Luke 2:35), which foreshadows Jesus’ crucifixion. If Jesus’ circumcision rarely appears on film, there are two other Jewish ritual occasions that are portrayed in most Jesus movies: the Jewish wedding and the Passover. Jewish wedding practices are often incorporated into the scene depicting the wedding at Cana (John 2:1– 13), when Jesus miraculously transforms water into wine. Although the focus of the scene is on the miracle, filmmakers (e. g., Martin Scorsese in The Last Temptation of Christ, 1988) use the opportunity to create lively spectacle, often incorporating Jewish elements that arose after the first century, such as the marriage formula: “You are sacred to me through this ring according to the laws of Moses and Israel.” All four gospels depict Passover scenes; indeed, John does so three times (2:1; 6:1; 12:1). Some films depict the Passover feast of Jesus’ twelfth year of life (Luke 2) when, according to Luke, the boy goes to Jerusalem for the Passover with Mary and Joseph. In Roberto Rossellini’s Il messia (1975, a.k.a. The Messiah) this event is interpreted as Jesus’ coming of age (bar mitzvah), an occasion which provides Mary with an opportunity to instruct her son on a number of Jewish customs including the wearing of the four-cornered garment. The Passover season is very much in evidence, however, as Joseph and Jesus go to the market to purchase a lamb for the required Passover sacrifice, and the camera rests on a group of young children singing “Hadgadya” (“One Goat”). This Aramaic song, which describes the purchase of a goat for two

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coins, traditionally concludes the Passover seder. In most other Jesus films, however, the focus of this scene is on the parents’ panic when they realize that Jesus is not with them on the return journey to Nazareth, and their subsequent discovery that, though he is still a child, he has been teaching the elders in the Temple. In cinema, as in the Synoptic gospels, the Passover is associated primarily with the Last Supper and Jesus’ Passion (in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, the Last Supper is a Passover meal, whereas in John it takes place the night before the Passover). In Godspell: A Musical Based on the Gospel According to Matthew (dir. David Greene, 1973), perhaps the most playful and least literal of all Jesus movies, the clown-faced Jesus recites the traditional blessing over the bread and the wine, in well-pronounced Hebrew, and distributes them to his followers. In Mel Gibson’s overly earnest and blood-soaked movie The Passion of the Christ (2004), however, the focus is on danger. In the middle of the night, during Passover, Jesus’ mother Mary wakes up suddenly and says to Mary Magdalene in Hebrew: “Listen…Why is this night different from every other night?” Mary Magdalene responds softly: “Because once we were slaves and now we are slaves no longer.” Just then, the disciple John bursts into their room with news of Jesus’ arrest. The exchange between the two Marys combines two elements from the Passover Haggadah, which is the liturgical text recited at the table during the Passover seder. The words of Jesus’ mother are taken from the section of the Hagaddah known as the “Four Questions,” usually recited by the youngest child at the Seder to encourage children’s participation. Mary Magdalene’s response is taken from a later part of the Seder recalling Israelite slavery in Egypt.

Peplum (Sword-and-Sandal) Movies Judaism is not a major theme in most sword-and-sandal movies, with one main exception: Ben-Hur. The eponymous hero, Judah Ben-Hur, is a proud Jew. When he and his family sit down for dinner, they recite the traditional blessing over the bread; when he enters his house, he piously kisses the mezuzah (the amulet affixed to the door frames of Jewish homes). Though he is well connected in the Roman establishment, Judah remains loyal to his people; he refuses betray his people even though his family will suffer for his loyalty. Despite these positive markers of Jewish identity, Judah and his family become Christian by the end of the film, after Jesus has healed his mother and sister, and saved Judah himself. While in the first-century context it was not necessarily a contradiction to be a Jewish believer in Christ (the early believers and disciples were all Jewish believers), in the twentieth-century context in which the film was produced and viewed, this outcome has supersessionist overtones, as it implies that Christianity supplied Judah and his family with something – healing, meaning, love – that Judaism could not.

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Ambivalence towards Judaism in the Bible Movies Old Testament Movies Old Testament films acknowledge the Jewish importance of their narratives. Furthermore, they strongly emphasize the importance of allegiance to the God of Israel, of prayer, and of renunciation of the beliefs and (lack of) morals associated with idolatry. At the same time, these films downplay the connection between belief in the one God of Israel and Judaism as such. Indeed, for all the Jewish elements, Jewish particularity and ethnicity as such are curiously absent. One example of the ambivalence of these films towards Judaism is their treatment of biblical law. Some films refer to specific biblical laws that are relevant to their plots or characters. The Story of Ruth, for example, like the biblical book, focuses in part on the law of levirate marriage, which requires a childless widow to marry her husband’s closest relative. In the film, this law explains why Naomi’s kinsman Tob constitutes a threat to the romance between Ruth and Boaz (cf. Ruth 3:12). The most important biblical laws, at least according to the Bible movies, are the Decalogue or Ten Commandments. The Decalogue takes center stage, not only in DeMille’s two films called The Ten Commandments (1923, 1956), but in most other Old Testament epics as well. DeMille’s 1923 silent movie methodically dramatizes all ten commandments, but most other films focus on the big three: the prohibitions of adultery, idolatry, and murder. In David and Bathsheba (dir. Henry King, 1951), for example, David is guilty of adultery and murder, and he comes perilously close to losing his faith in the one true God, if not exactly idolatry. The Decalogue also appears visually in some films. Both of DeMille’s films include scenes of the inscription of the Ten Commandments on tablets at Mount Sinai. In The Story of Ruth, one of Naomi’s sons gives his beloved Ruth an amulet on which the Decalogue is inscribed; Ruth preserves this amulet, which also foreshadows her eventual commitment to Naomi, Naomi’s God, and Naomi’s people (cf. Ruth 1:4, 16 – 17). From a Jewish perspective, God’s revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai is the cornerstone of the covenantal relationship between God and the people of Israel. Nevertheless, the cinematic focus on the Decalogue does not underscore the Jewish elements of these stories. Rather, it points to the prominent role that the Ten Commandments have played in Protestant Christianity and, by extension, in American culture and society.⁴ For all of the focus on the commandments and their divine origin, Old Testament films subtly criticize those who keep to them too strictly. In David and Bathsheba, the prophet Nathan is portrayed as a narrow-minded legalist who cares more for the let-

 On the controversial role of the Ten Commandments on public buildings and in public, see Garver () and Herzog (, ).

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ter of the law than the spirit of love. The same is true for the old mother in DeMille’s 1923 The Ten Commandments. While the film graphically illustrates the punishments faced by those who willfully break the commandments, it also criticizes those who equate piety and faith with rigid obedience to the law. This attitude may betray the depiction of Jewish law as rigid legalism in some Protestant strands of interpretation of the Pauline letters.⁵ DeMille’s declaration about the need to temper legalism with love testifies to the Christian subtext that is evident in many Old Testament films. The focus on love is present in peplum films as well. Ben-Hur’s beloved Esther attempts to dissuade Judah from taking revenge against Messala for the pain that he has caused his family by telling him about “a young rabbi who says that forgiveness is great and love more powerful than hatred.” For Ben-Hur, originally the most Jewish of all epic heroes, peace and faith come only when he acknowledges Jesus as messiah. In The Robe (dir. Henry Koster, 1953), Marcus mocks Demetrius for his faith, and asks: “What sort of love is it that acknowledges a force greater than itself?” Petronius, a pagan nobleman in Quo Vadis (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1951) denies that he is a Christian on the grounds that he could never love his neighbor, as the Christians insist. In these films, love is also manifested by forgiveness, as in Koster’s The Robe in which Marcellus confesses his role in Jesus’ death to Peter, who in turn confesses that he denied Jesus three times. Peter assures Marcellus that God has forgiven them both. This forgiveness paves the way for Marcellus’ conversion. DeMille’s 1923 film not only illustrates ambivalence towards biblical law, but also implicitly conveys a supersessionist message about the superiority of Christianity, in which morality is tempered with love, to Judaism, in which presumably law is the highest priority. This supersessionism is conveyed visually: some of the intertitles carry the symbol of a Star of David with a cross etched in the middle. In the Prologue to the film, the scene of the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt focuses on a woman carrying a white lamb. In DeMille’s biblical iconography, especially in his 1927 silent film The King of Kings, as in the silent Jesus movies more generally, the white lamb is a symbol of Jesus. This imagery appears also in the depiction of Moses with arms outstretched in cruciform position, as he signals the seas to part and the intertitle reads: “And Moses stretched his hand over the sea, and the Lord caused the sea to go back, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided” (Exod. 14:21). The lamb and the cruciform position connect the Exodus with the redemption and liberation that, this film asserts, can only come about fully with faith in Christ (Babington/Evans 1993, 46).

 On Protestant critiques of Judaism as legalism, see Sanders (,  – ); Moore (). On DeMille’s  film, see Babington/Evans (, ).

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Jesus and Peplum Movies Supersessionist undertones are apparent in other films, often in the Passover scene of the Last Supper. In the Synoptic gospels, the Last Supper is not only a Passover meal recalling God’s redemption of Israel from Egyptian slavery, but it is also a foreshadowing of Jesus’ own redemptive power, celebrated in the institution of the Eucharist. According to Matthew 26:26 – 28, Jesus redefines the traditional Passover wine and bread as he serves them to his disciples: “While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” In Jesus of Nazareth, however, Zeffirelli has Jesus not only establish the Eucharist but indicate that the eucharistic interpretation of the bread and wine replaces the traditional Jewish meaning, a point that the gospel writers themselves do not make. Zeffirelli’s Jesus says: Blessed be thou O Lord who has blessed us with thy laws and made bread to issue from the earth. From now on this will no longer be the bread of the passage of our fathers from bondage to freedom. This Passover is for you the passage from the bondage of death to the freedom of life. This is the bread of life. Whoever eats of this bread shall have eternal life. Eat it, for this is my body. Do this in remembrance of me. From now on this cup will not only be a memorial and sacrament to the covenant God made with our fathers on Mount Sinai. This is my blood, the blood of the new covenant which is to be poured out for many.

Zeffirelli himself acknowledged the supersessionist implications of this discourse. Indeed, he believed that his interpretation represents the historical and theological truth that “the Last Supper was set up according to traditional Jewish ritual and marked the moment when Jesus superseded the ancient rite and gave his disciples and all humanity the Eucharistic mystery” (Zeffirelli 1984, 101). In the Jesus and peplum movies Jesus’ Judaism (and that of other characters) is acknowledged but downplayed. Although most Jesus films pay lip service to Jesus’ Jewishness, whether overtly or implicitly, the cinematic Jesus almost always resembles his artistic counterpart in Renaissance paintings, Bible illustrations, or popular representations rather than the Semitic-looking man he almost certainly would have been.⁶ The exception is the Jesus of the animated film The Miracle Maker, who, in contrast to most movie Jesus figures, has dark curly hair, dark skin, and dark eyes. The reasons for the apparent discomfort with Jesus’ Jewish identity are likely theological, stemming from the tendency that began in the late first century to posit an absolute opposition between Judaism and Christianity. This opposition is easily built into the narrative, in which the light-haired, white-robed savior opposes

 The most popular representation of Jesus in America was Warner Sallman’s  painting. See Reinhartz (, ).

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the dark-haired, dark-featured, dark-robed and vile enemies such as the chief priests, the Pharisees and the betrayer, Judas Iscariot.

Antisemitism in the Bible Movies? The presence of supersessionism in some Bible films raises the question of whether these films are anti-Jewish and/or antisemitic. For the purposes of this discussion, anti-Judaism will be considered to be present in scenes that declare or imply the inadequacy of Judaism as a way of relating to God and as a way of life; antisemitism will be considered to be present in scenes that depict Jews as evil and murderous. Old Testament films acknowledge that true faith is concretized in Judaism, but they insist that it is fulfilled even more perfectly in Christian faith. At the same time, these films generally do not denigrate Jews or Judaism in any overt way. Even films that “convert” Old Testament characters to Christianity, as DeMille did with Moses in the 1956 version of The Ten Commandments, are not anti-Jewish or antisemitic. By contrast, the Jesus movie genre contains numerous examples of implicit and even overt anti-Judaism and antisemitism.

Problematic Gospel Passages (1) Matthew 23 The susceptibility of Jesus movies to antisemitism is rooted in their sources, the gospels themselves. Whether the gospels, or sections thereof, are in themselves anti-Jewish is a very difficult question upon which consensus may never be reached (Farmer 1999). What is certain, however, is that throughout the history of Christianity, up to the present day, some statements in the Christian canon were, and are, used to promote and justify hatred and violence against Jews.⁷ Matthew 23 is a lengthy diatribe against Jewish leaders, punctuated by the persistent refrain: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” This chapter is the source of the still-prevalent understanding of the Pharisees as hypocrites, a definition that still appears in dictionaries. On the surface this might not seem like a particularly anti-Jewish or even antisemitic accusation, given that the Pharisees as a group ceased to exist almost two thousand years ago. From the perspective of Jewish tradition, however, the Pharisees are the forerunners of the rabbis, whose legislation laid the foundation for Jewish law as it still exists today. Critique of the Pharisees as hypocrites is often intended, and perceived, as a critique of traditional Judaism for which the Pharisees are spiritual heroes (Neusner/Chilton 2007).

 Ruether (); Reinhartz ().

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(2) John 8:44 A more difficult statement can be found in John 8:44, in which Jesus declares that the Jews have the devil as their father. In context, some have argued that this statement is directed only at Jews who used to believe in Jesus but did no longer (Griffith 2008, 191). In the history of antisemitism, this verse was detached from its literary context and used as the basis of the persistent association of the Jews and the Devil (Trachtenberg 1943).

(3) The Deicide Charge The gospel statements that have had the most lasting, and damaging effect, however, are those that hold the Jews responsible for Jesus’ death. The deicide charge is woven into the Passion narratives of all four gospels, and into the narrative of the Gospel of John as a whole (e. g., 7:19). To be sure, the Evangelists place particular blame on Judas, who betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, and the high priest, who according to John 11:49 – 52 articulated the plan to have Jesus put to death and in Matthew 26:66 and Mark 14:63 pronounced Jesus guilty of blasphemy. But the collective responsibility of the Jewish crowds and, by extension, the Jewish people as a whole comes to the fore. The Jews present at the interrogation of the high priest call for the death penalty; the Jewish crowds at the trial before Pilate call for Jesus’ crucifixion, thwarting Pilate’s best efforts to release Jesus (e. g., John 19:12). Most damaging is Matthew 25:24– 26, in which Pilate washes his hands of the whole affair, and the Jews cry out: “Let his blood be on us and on our children.” The so-called blood curse is the primary source for the deicide charge according to which the Jews are responsible for Jesus’ death down through the generations. Although this view was officially repudiated by the Catholic Church with the publication of Nostra Aetate in 1965 and by mainstream Protestant churches in the same era, there remain many Jews today who have been personally subjected to this accusation.

Cinematic Approaches (1) Omission Jesus filmmakers are faced with a difficult choice between fidelity to their scriptural sources and the ethical imperative to refrain from perpetuating antisemitism. Because the process of adapting textual sources for the screen necessarily involves condensing and simplifying, one way to deal with problematic verses and scenes is to omit them altogether. This is the approach adopted by most Jesus movies, particularly those made in the 1960s-1990s. During these decades, no major Jesus movies in-

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cluded the Johannine passage describing the Jews as children of the devil (John 8:44).

(2) Allegorization The only film from these years that includes the problematic passages in Matthew is Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Il vangelo secondo Matteo (1964, a.k.a. The Gospel According to St. Matthew). Pasolini’s film presents Matthew’s full diatribe against the Pharisees as well as the blood curse. His renditions of these scenes, however, do not seem to reflect an antisemitic perspective. Although Pasolini’s Jesus angrily shouts out the full diatribe, almost spitting out the Italian word for “Pharisees,” the visual background strongly suggests that, in keeping with the film as a whole, the speech is to be heard allegorically as a critique of the Italian state rather than historically as a statement about the Pharisees per se. As Jesus passionately preaches to the people, Roman soldiers casually observe the scene and then intervene to beat or arrest some of the bystanders. No Pharisees, or, indeed, any Jewish authorities, are in view. Even the blood curse does not convey antisemitism. In contrast to the Matthean source, Pasolini has only a single off-screen male actor shout out the blood curse, at the same time as he has the crowd standing around and watching the proceedings in silence and with sympathy for Jesus.

(3) Perpetuation of Negative Views about Jews and Judaism The restraint shown by most post-Holocaust Jesus movies was not matched, however, by the two movies produced in the early years of the new millennium. The 2003 film The Gospel of John (dir. Philip Saville) reproduces almost every word of the fourth gospel and for that reason also contains John 8:44. Much more popular, and therefore more troubling, was Gibson’s version of the Passion story, The Passion of the Christ. Gibson’s film included the blood curse, in Aramaic, but in an apparent attempt at compromise with his critics, Gibson agreed to omit the English subtitle. The omission of the subtitle, however, did not do much to soften the very hostile depiction of the high priest and his minions, who vehemently and repeatedly call for Jesus’ crucifixion. Gibson’s film omits the text of John 8:44 but includes a powerful visual depiction of the idea that the Jews are the children of the devil. After betraying Jesus, Judas is filled with remorse, and slumps against a city wall as he comes to a full realization of what has transpired. He is approached by two Jewish boys (identified as Jewish by their skullcaps), who stare at him with curiosity and then engage him in conversation. Over the course of their interaction with Judas, however, the camera transforms them into demon children with crazed eyes, bloody teeth, grotesque features, and mocking manner. To be sure, this strange vision seems intended to reflect Judas’

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Fig. 101: Demonic Jewish child in The Passion of the Christ (2004)

own madness, but the effect is nevertheless to recall, and perhaps even to perpetuate, the antisemitic trope connecting Jews with the devil.

(4) Reframing Gibson aside, Bible filmmakers are sensitive to the potential impact – positive or negative – that Jesus movies could have on public perceptions of Jews and Judaism. Even those made in the decades prior to the Holocaust often avoided blaming the Jewish people as a whole for Jesus’ death. One strategy was to single out the high priest Caiaphas and cast blame on him alone. The prime example of this approach is DeMille’s silent film The King of Kings. This Caiaphas is obese and grotesque with a demonic look to him, a depiction that draws directly the antisemitic imagery of medieval and renaissance art (Mellinkoff 1993). This high priest plotted relentlessly against Jesus, with the help of spies who informed Caiaphas of Jesus’ activities and growing popularity. The high priest’s antipathy to Jesus was not due to any theological views or lofty concerns for the safety of his people (as John 11:49 – 52 might imply). Rather, Caiaphas was motivated by love of money – another prominent antisemitic motif – and fear that Jesus intended to gain control of the Temple and therefore also the Temple treasury. DeMille’s film rewrites the blood curse so that blame falls squarely on Caiaphas and not on the people as a whole: “If thou, imperial Pilate, wouldst wash thy hands of this Man’s death, let it be upon me and me alone!” DeMille’s intention may well have been to avoid antisemitism by putting full responsibility for Jesus’ death on the high priest alone. Yet this intention was ultimately unsuccessful; it was far too easy to view the high priest as a representative of the Jewish people rather than a villain who operated solo. Babington and Evans describe DeMille’s Caiaphas as “the Romans’ Jew,” an “anti-Semite’s dream caricature of wickedness: obese, cynical, rubbing his plump fingers together in gleeful anticipation of his plots, appearing like a well-fed devil at Pilate’s side to whisper ‘Crucify him!’ The scapegoat […] is the living epitome of ethnic guilt” (Babington/Evans 1993, 122). More successful were the post-Holocaust epics such as Ben-Hur and King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961). These films not only omit the problematic gospel passages

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but also connect the first-century Jews’ oppression at the hands of the Romans to twentieth-century Jews’ systematic extermination perpetrated by the Nazi regime. The opening scene in Ben-Hur depicts masses of Jews standing in line to register in Bethlehem, overseen by hostile Roman soldiers. The scene evokes the footage that was emerging in the decade or two after the end of World War II showing Jews being herded into the ghettoes during the Nazi regime. The opening of King of Kings is even more explicit. This film begins with a lengthy voiceover, proclaimed by an off-screen Orson Welles. The voiceover describes the Jews’ fear of General Pompey, under whose eyes “the people were strewn like wheat in harvest time of Rome. […] If gold was not the harvest, there was a richness of people to be gathered. The battalions of Caesar Augustus brought in the crop. Like sheep, from their own green fields, the Jews went to the slaughter.” The reference to Jews going like sheep to the slaughter replicates the language used to describe the helplessness of Jews in the face of the Nazi genocidal machinery. The sequence of events described in the narration – Roman power, Jewish suffering, and the salvation promised by Jesus’ arrival – reflects one construction of twentiethcentury events – Nazi power, Jewish suffering, and the creation of the State of Israel.

Fig. 102: The protagonist before the chariot race in Ben-Hur (1959)

The founding of the State of Israel is also hinted at in Ben-Hur. During the famous chariot race, Judah Ben-Hur wears blue and white, the colors of the Israeli flag. The commander of the Roman garrison, Messala, acknowledges that the country belonged to the Jews before it belonged to Rome – a statement that would have been heard as affirming the Jewish right to a homeland in Israel after the Holocaust. At the same time, the film optimistically expresses hope for peace or at least co-existence in the Middle East. The wealthy Bedouin sheikh whose chariot Ben-Hur drives in the race is not only shrewd but also warm and open-minded. He pins a Star of David to Ben-Hur’s outfit, with the promise that “The Star of David will shine out for your people and my people together and blind the eyes of Rome.” The film portrays Jew and Arab as allies against oppression, and proclaims the possibility of friendship and cooperation between them.

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Conclusion Despite the concern of Jewish and Christian groups about anti-Jewish and/or antisemitic images, scenes, and dialogue in Bible movies, it is difficult to ascertain whether the movies as such have contributed to negative views about or behaviors towards Jews on the part of moviegoers. Nevertheless, one would hope that no more such motifs would appear in Bible or indeed any other types of films, and that, on the contrary, the Jewishness of Jesus, as well as the relevance of the Hebrew Bible to Jewish history and identity would come to the fore more clearly in future films.

Works Cited Babington, Bruce, and Peter William Evans. 1993. Biblical Epics : Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Brook, Vincent. 2003. Something Ain’t Kosher Here: The Rise of the “Jewish” Sitcom. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Eisenberg, Ronald L. 2004. The JPS Guide to Jewish Traditions. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. Farmer, William Reuben. 1999. Anti-Judaism and the Gospels. Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International. Garver, Eugene. 2007. “The Ten Commandments: Powerful Symbols and Symbols of Power.” Law, Culture and the Humanities 3.2: 205 – 24. Gottlieb, Jack. 2004. Funny, It Doesn’t Sound Jewish: How Yiddish Songs and Synagogue Melodies Influenced Tin Pan Alley, Broadway and Hollywood. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York. Griffith, Terry. 2008. “‘The Jews Who Had Believed in Him’ (John 8:31) and the Theme of Apostasy in the Gospel of John.” In The Gospel of John and Christian Theology. Ed. Richard Bauckham and Carl Mosser. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans. Pp. 183 – 92. Herzog, Jonathan P. 2011. The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America’s Religious Battle Against Communism in the Early Cold War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mellinkoff, Ruth. 1993. Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press. Moore, George Foot. 1921. “Christian Writers on Judaism.” The Harvard Theological Review 14.3 (July 1): 197 – 254. Neusner, Jacob, Bruce Chilton, eds. 2007. In Quest of the Historical Pharisees. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press. Phillips, Kendall R. 2008. Controversial Cinema: The Films That Outraged America. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. Reinhartz, Adele. 2007. Jesus of Hollywood. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. —. 2001. Befriending the Beloved Disciple: A Jewish Reading of the Gospel of John. New York: Continuum. —. 2013. Bible and Cinema: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. 1974. Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism. New York: Seabury Press. Sanders, E. P. 1977. Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Shiloah, Amnon. 1992. Jewish Musical Traditions. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

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Spigel, Chad Scott. 2012. Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Steinberg, Leo. 1983. The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion. New York: Pantheon Books. Tatum, W. Barnes. 2013. Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years and Beyond [1997, 2004]. 3rd ed. Salem, Oreg.: Polebridge Press. Trachtenberg, Joshua. 1943. The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Anti-semitism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Zeffirelli, Franco. 1984. Zeffirelli’s Jesus: A Spiritual Diary [1977]. Transl. Willis J. Egan, S.J. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Films Cited Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959, MGM, US). David and Bathsheba (dir. Henry King, 1951, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Godspell: A Musical Based on the Gospel According to St. Matthew (dir. David Greene, 1973, Columbia Pictures, US). Il messia [a.k.a. The Messiah] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1975, Orizzonte 2000, IT/FR). Il vangelo secondo Matteo [a.k.a. The Gospel According to St. Matthew] (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964, Arco Film, IT/FR). Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1916, Triangle Film Corporation, US). Jésus de Montréal [a.k.a. Jesus of Montreal] (dir. Denys Arcand, 1989, Centre National de la Cinématographie, CA/FR). Jesus of Nazareth (dir. Franco Zeffirelli, 1977, Incorporated Television Company, IT/UK). The King of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1927, DeMille Pictures Corporation, US). King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961, MGM, US). The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988, Universal, US/CA). The Miracle Maker (dir. Derek Hayes and Stanislav Sokolov, 2000, BBC, RU/UK). The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004, Icon Productions, US). Quo Vadis (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1951, MGM, US). The Robe (dir. Henry Koster, 1953, Twentieth Century Fox, US). Solomon and Sheba (dir. King Vidor, 1959, Edward Small Productions, US). The Story of Ruth (dir. Henry Koster, 1960, Twentieth Century Fox, US). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1923, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, US). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956, Paramount, US). The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John (dir. Philip Saville, 2003, Visual Bible, CA/UK).

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52 Ethnicity and Biblical Reception in Eve and the Fire Horse

Eve and the Fire Horse (2005), an independent Canadian film by Chinese-Canadian director Julia Kwan, establishes a new filmic perspective on ethnicity in the context of direct biblical quotation, reference, and allusion. A full appreciation of the Bible’s reception within the film requires a careful analysis of the entire film. It examines the complexities of confrontation between the religious traditions of a minority ethnic community (Chinese-Canadians) and the dominant white Christian community. Through interpretation of Christian scripture, the film depicts the intolerance of Christianity so that the Church becomes the primary threat to the unity of the ethnic family and its religious traditions. The film reverses the normal mainstream presumption that the other is the unacceptable, invasive challenge that must be assimilated or annihilated. Most surprisingly structures of biblical story and theology are exposed in a new light to be amenable to incorporation by the ethnic minority into a new and more resilient sacred cosmos. Set in Vancouver, British Columbia in the Chinese-Canadian community of the early 1970s, the film is focalized through the character of nine-year-old Eve Eng (Phoebe Kut). The film addresses the problem of theodicy: Why do good people suffer? The plot hinges on three events: May-Lin (Vivian Wu), Eve’s mother, miscarries; Grandmother (Ping Sun Wong) dies; Eve’s father, Frank Eng (Chit-Man Chan) donates a kidney to his brother, Uncle #8 (Joseph Siu). Eve becomes convinced that she, like her biblical namesake, is the source of her family’s troubles. She undergoes a bathtub baptism. The plot structure, which sounds like a triumphal Christian missionary tract, however, is nuanced throughout by the integration of Chinese and dominant North American religious cultures into an associative set of images that interprets mainstream Christianity and its use of the Bible through the lens of emergent ethnic identity and community. The movie becomes a sociological study of societies interacting with each other, none of which come to dominate the perspective of Eve or, with her, the audience. Eve’s guilt is constructed by concepts of luck, karma, and sin as viewpoints of traditional Chinese culture, Buddhism, and Christianity respectively. The resolution belongs to no single tradition but to all in the person of Eve. Eve is the first generation born in Canada, while she speaks English as well as Chinese, her parents and Grandmother are Chinese speakers. By choosing the experience of a child, we are given insight into popular religion and its possibilities. The religious elites of the film or the mainstream society are not given final say. Instead ethnic identity with its religious sensibilities is explored in new ways from a marginal perspective. Eve is other. She is born into a working class Chinese immigrant household that derives its identity from its residence in an insular Chinese community. She is female with the mother of all sinners as her namesake.

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Beginnings The film begins by establishing the cosmos in which its story will be set. The title sequence opens with a shot in water from below the surface illuminated by a light centered in the upper left corner of the frame. A cut to Eve, the narrator, in a tree provides an earth-toward-heaven perspective: “God touches everyone in different ways.” Brief comments on her father as unlucky because he has crooked fingers and Grandmother, who is shown pouring tea for the gods, introduce two of the main concerns of the film: luck and ritual performance. Within mainstream film, as well as world religions, water may represent a place of origins, new birth, or the realm of death. Eve, associated with a tree, also references obliquely the biblical Fall story (Gen. 3, refracted through Christian theology). From her narrative voiceover we learn that she was born in 1966, the Chinese Year of the Fire Horse. Children born in such years used to be drowned because they were strong-willed. We see horses struggling in the water, establishing this original blue tone as the realm of death. In keeping with this heaven-earth-water cosmology, an overhead shot of Eve and her sister Karena (Hollie Lo) gives the audience a divine perspective, which supplements the audience’s experience with the focalization of Eve throughout the film. As the film continues, it places us in the position of making choices as to ultimate truth and reality. The opening of the film establishes a color-coding of various cosmic realms. Death, associated with water, is blue. The realm of earthly existence is brown and subdued in tone. The consistency of the palette throughout influences the interpretation of the film, which proceeds to teach us the rules for each realm with the divine perspective in the background.

Miscarriage May-Lin, who is pregnant, chops down an apple tree in the back yard because it is bearing rotten fruit. This leads, as Grandmother fears, to problems. Women are not supposed to do such things traditionally. In fulfillment of the fear, the baby brother is lost to miscarriage. The chopping of the apple tree obliquely refers to the tree of life in the Garden of Eden. Its removal also alludes to the statement of Jesus that an evil tree bears evil fruit (Matt. 7:18; cf. 3:8). Similarly in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), during Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, he chops down an apple tree that bears bad fruit. The visual tradition of Eve and the Fire Horse is that of mainstream film with biblical reference. The possibilities of biblical interpretation in Eve and the Fire Horse are visually introduced despite lack of direct biblical quotations. Eve herself brings a new tree home from school and plants it beside the old stump in an attempt to rebalance the world and ensure her brother’s survival. When the miscarriage occurs in the kitchen, the film cuts directly to the growth of the new plant. Eve is the instrument of rebalancing the ritual and moral universe

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of the family. Violation of tradition results in loss and also a possibility of new hope. Eve supplements the traditional biblical symbol.

Grandmother Dies The slow pace at which the film moves allows the audience to dwell within the world of Chinese immigrant culture. Thereby, we become identified into the film, rather than functioning as spectators beyond the fourth wall of the screen. Since the audience experiences the film from the perspective of Eve, the film establishes her culture as the one to which other cultures, in this case mainstream white-Christian, will be compared as foreign and intrusive. The audience is constructed in identity with Eve as protagonist in the unfolding drama. The Eng family adopts a number of mainstream religious practices (e. g. the viewing of the body at the funeral home) and integrates them with Chinese traditions (e. g. the burning of special paper money for the dead). The idea that the Chinese practices are “superstitions,” is introduced not by whites but by younger members of the Eng family. So Cousin Colleen (Diane Buermans) declares at Grandmother’s seventieth birthday party that the plentiful food could be better shared with those who lack. When Uncle #8 chokes on the long life noodles, the implication is that Colleen has noted a moral imbalance. As with the tree, something happens to balance things. That Eve holds herself responsible for Grandmother’s death emerges after the funeral. Grandmother had persuaded her to let her braid her hair by promising to water the garden for Eve and goes to the hospital immediately after her venture in the garden. Eve’s first vision is of Grandmother washing a shirt in the basement, which she sees as a conviction of her responsibility. Eve learns from her mother that according to tradition the dead show up seven days after death. It has been seven days. Eve’s father earlier had said the dead could come back as a goldfish. May-Lin brings her a goldfish, which later sings one of Grandmother’s favorite Chinese operas for Eve, implying that Grandmother has returned. The importance of this sequence is not limited to the comforting fulfillment of the doctrine of reincarnation, however. When Mother gives her the goldfish, Eve is watching an evangelical African-American baptismal service on television. This baptism will later become the model for Eve’s own. The traditional Chinese view of the sacred world is already being layered with the Christian view by way of integrative expansion of the sacred cosmos for Eve and, through her, the audience. Significantly one minority here speaks to another. We are being regularized into the rules of the filmic world that allow for imaginative expansion of the ideological and ritual world faced with the problems of luck, karma, and sin. Latent images and associations develop that contribute to Eve’s solution.

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Moses and Lord Jesus, Confucius and Lord Buddha The structure of imaginative expansion and ritual order for the emerging world of Eve and her family continues even with the overt introduction of the more restrictive biblical tradition. The sisters convince Mother to go to see The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956), which is showing at the local cinema for Easter; as Eve informs her, Easter is the time for Jesus’ resurrection and chocolate rabbits. The understanding of Moses as a Christian figure by the girls and their mother is a natural one and introduces the Christian concept of the Bible as a Christian book. The Ten Commandments presents the story of Moses as a Christian Bible story.¹ The dominance of the screen by white American actors eradicates any real reference to the experience of Judaism of its most significant myth. The only ethnicity differentiated as other in that movie is that of the Egyptians in the person of Russianborn Yul Brynner as Ramses. This preference in casting continues to dominate mainstream movies generally, in which the overwhelming preponderance of protagonists are white males. Bible-based or themed films fit the overall pattern as Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2014) and Exodus (dir. Ridley Scott, 2014) show. Eve and the Fire Horse withholds this information from the audience. Thereby it prevents audience identity with the mainstream. No scenes are actually shown from The Ten Commandments. Instead, the audience hears the dubbed voice of Moses in Chinese while reading subtitles. Moses is now part of Eve’s world. The conclusion of Mother in dialogue with Auntie #8 following the movie establishes the Chinese view of religion’s place in the home. “I like Moses, he has a very kind face. I think Jesus really teaches you how to be a good person. […] There’s that commandment about honouring the Mother and Father. It’s very Confucian. […] I think two Gods in the household are better than one.” In the last phrase she refers to her own adoption of her deceased mother-in-law’s Buddhism. May-Lin, who has previously established herself as the arbiter of religious tradition by taking up Grandma’s place at the family altar, has pronounced the theological position of the household. She will maintain that expanded sacred understanding throughout the film, positing one option for adaptation to mainstream Christianity. Eve herself is not so sure about the God of Jesus and Moses. She doesn’t understand why God drowned all the Egyptians’ horses. She becomes the first biblical exegete in the film; similar to her namesake Eve, she begins a theological dialogue (Gen. 3:1– 5). Eve’s sister, Karena, unlike the serpent in that story, takes the official religious view when faced with unanswerable questions: “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” Karena, the convert to Christianity, interprets biblical tradition without real engagement with the Bible. Eve, who identifies with the horses, asks about her own identity and security before this new angry biblical God.

 On DeMille’s Christianization of the exodus story, see the comments of Reinhartz in Part II (Pp.  – ) and Koosed in Part I (Pp.  – ).

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The love of Jesus, expressed diagetically in the song “Jesus Loves Me,” serves as a subtle critique of the angry God who drowns horses. It bridges to Sunday school and a discussion of baptism. Eve is afraid of baptism because she cannot swim (she has only seen a baptism on television earlier and knows nothing of the Roman Catholic rite). She inquires if Buddha is a god, like Jesus. Buddha is not a god and you cannot come back as a goldfish, Eve learns. Only Catholics go to heaven. The scene closes with Psalm 1:1 read by Sister Agnes (Wendy Russell), who acts as the authority interpreting the Christian tradition to Eve: “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly […].” The scene shifts to Eve alongside her mother as May-Lin cares for the shrine at the Buddhist temple. The visual image of May-Lin’s devotion, expressed ritually, does not confirm the denunciation expressed by Psalm 1; followers of Lord Buddha are not wicked. The emphasis on ritual action in tandem with moral concern throughout the film expresses a trait of religious systems. They construct a high level of correlation between moral and ritual action. May-Lin expresses this understanding. She says that of course Jesus and the Buddha are friends. Grandma is not in Hell, even if the Bible says so. The Buddha and Jesus teach you the same thing. The following montage illustrates the battle for proper ritual. Mother tries to learn meditation; Karena teaches Eve to pray, but not like a Buddhist. As “O Bless the Lord, My Soul” from Godspell plays on the soundtrack, Mother buys icons from a religious store, Karena puts a cross on the wall in their bedroom and tells the urban legend of the New Testament that saved a soldier’s life. The bullet was stopped in the book of Psalms. When Eve tries to embellish the tale imaginatively, Karena stops her. This is a true story, she says. The Bible is a magical book; in a later scene, Karena tells Eve it can read minds. At the end of the sequence Mother rearranges the family gods on the mantelpiece. A crucifix, the largest icon on the mantel, becomes the center of the grouping. Jesus has taken center stage in the ever-shifting ritual pageant of the film. The scene resolves into a close-up of the Buddha’s round belly with the gaunt crucified form of Jesus in the background. Both figures are compatible in that they concern themselves with suffering, but the shot indicates a divergence in their paths by virtue of this humorous juxtaposition.

Fig. 103: The audience sees Eve dancing with the Buddha and Jesus in Eve and the Fire Horse (2005)

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In the following frame the Buddha and Jesus are no longer on the mantel. The camera is neutral observer. We do not see the scene through Eve’s eyes; instead we see Eve enter the room to find the Buddha and Jesus doing an impromptu waltz. They pick her up and dance with her. The scene establishes that Eve’s visions, while only available to Eve, are shared with the audience as if they too are granted the visions. The effect is not to attribute Eve’s visions to the imaginary world of the child but to the ‘real’ world of the film. In this, the film draws on two cinematic traditions that are not mutually exclusive. One, is the tradition of demythologizing the engagement of the divine realm with the normal world of the film, seen for example in Ingmar Bergman’s Det sjunde inseglet (1957, a.k.a. The Seventh Seal), which includes a natural vision of the Virgin Mother and Child. The second is a type of remythologizing found in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). In any case there is no indication that Eve imagines or dreams the scene. As in Grandmother’s appearance, Eve is established as a true, if lyrical, religious visionary.

Eve, a Special Sinner Karena becomes the good Catholic convert while Eve is designated, like her namesake, as a special sinner. Karena even finds a statue of the Virgin Mother and reports it to Eve as a vision. This cements her leadership of the Christian contingent in the household. Karena assures Eve that Grandmother is not in Hell, but in limbo. They can get her out by doing good. “So it came to pass,” they founded the “Girls of Perpetual Sorrow.” Eve’s narrative voiceover contains allusion to biblical language. In adopting the rituals and icons of Catholicism, they also adopt biblical language and story as part of their self-definition. Eve, however, reinterprets the tradition mediated by Karena. She introduces Jesus to Grandma, a crucifix to a picture. Eve tries to convince Jesus that Grandma is a nice person and should be liberated from the fish bowl. The girls’ appropriation of these new religious concepts introduced by the Church shows on Karena’s side a desire to separate from her traditional society, free herself from superstition, and become acceptable in the mainstream. Eve, designated by her sister and other girls as unacceptable because of her sinful namesake and her own imagination, nevertheless, attempts to expand her traditional world to include the new religious elements. In this sense she is like her mother, but she is further supported by direct divine revelation through vision. Visions come to her within her understanding of her own full identity. A symbol, participates in both that which is symbolized and the one to whom the symbol comes. It is not simply a sign or signifier that can be interchanged. It creates the conduit for meaning between multiple subjects. The film develops this insight. The conviction of Eve as a special, guilty sinner accelerates along with biblical references as the movie moves toward its climax. Karena, the authority for Christian exclusivity, cites the Bible and, by refusing to show respect for the family gods, dis-

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respects Mother. Karena cannot go against the Bible by worshipping false gods. As Mother says, “What would Jesus say to you now? What would Moses say?” (emphasis original). The struggle over faith is a family power struggle between Mother and Karena. Her father punishes her by making her kneel in the living room before the family gods, including Jesus in the center. Karena prays for forgiveness although it is unclear in what way she thinks she has sinned. At Eve’s request, Karena tells her a story about Eve. In the Garden of Eden, Eve is the one condemned by biblical story (Gen. 3). Because of the original Eve, we all have to wear clothes. “Is Eve a bad person?” asks Eve. “Yes, Eve is a bad person,” answers Karena. The interpretation, flawed though it is and indeed humorous to the adult world, resonates as callous and vicious. Karena adopts the same perspective as Becky, one of the girls at choir practice, who earlier told Eve that we are all sinners but especially her because she is Eve. Karena has joined the mainstream and associates Eve, her sister, with the original sin of biblical Eve. The scene reflects a long history of Christian interpretation of Genesis 2– 3. When focused through the misunderstanding of the two sisters, the prejudice is revealed in its destructive fullness. The camera provides a direct overhead shot, a God shot. The audience sees the frame from the divine perspective and judges the sisters from the perspective of the divine. The biblical text now becomes dominant in Eve’s life. She reads excerpts from the Song of Solomon to her classmates: “Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet and thy speech is comely [4:3]. Thy two breasts are like two fawns, twins of the gazelle that feed among the lilies [4:5]. Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits [4:16b]. You have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes [4:9b]. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth for thy love is better… [1:2].” Eve not only reads Bible, in this case for the titillating parts, she also interprets it by selective editing! Throughout the film and increasingly as it continues, the nine-year-old Eve demonstrates the highest level of theological and biblical sophistication of all the characters. Biblical story increasingly forms her reality. When Sally (Jessica Amlee), her friend and eventual convert, braids her hair, Eve, reminded of her Grandmother’s braiding of her hair the day she went to the hospital to die, becomes weak. The act of braiding reminds Eve of the story of Samson (Judg. 16:13 – 17). Eve now interprets her life from biblical perspectives. She reflects on her guilt as violation of God’s rules, sin. The household is overrun by guilt. So much so that the dancing Goddess (Jennifer Cheon) now does plumbing instead of dancing. Her perspective adds to the theological problem of sin as disruptive of the family.

Uncle #8 Needs a Kidney The final complication in the movie comes with the announcement that Uncle #8 needs a kidney and his brother, Frank, is likely to be the best match. May-Lin

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takes the lead in holding Frank to his familial duty. Religious duty is to be a good person, it’s your brother, she says, luck is not in your kidneys. Frank, who provided the goldfish interpretation of reincarnation earlier, also shows insight; this is karma, a good deed will be rewarded. The family responds to new challenges to its sacred order by applying intuitively the treasures of experience and history. Eve adopts the same resilience. By comparison, the sacred tenets of Bible-based religion appear brittle and incomplete. The Goddess notes to Eve that the Buddha and Jesus reconciled, but the latter remains a problem because Jesus likes to think he is the only one here. The divine realm recognizes that the problem is Jesus, the direct symbol of Christianity. Exclusiveness on the part of the mainstream stands in the way of the happy continuation of the family and its sacred space. While the Goddess does not “go for all that fire and brimstone crap,” Frank doesn’t look so good so Eve should go burn some of that paper money in their church just as the family had for Grandmother. The logic of the ritual is apparent to Eve. The irony of the Goddess is apparent to the audience. The suggestion, although humorous, is one of inspired syncretism. The result that Eve almost burns down the church introduces an ironic judgment on the Church; including the minority in your faith demands careful and sensitive integration and respect. Eve has extended family ritual to allow for the invading culture. The film questions the exclusivity of Christianity by irony. The Christian worldview becomes the threatening other. The confrontation with the other Sunday-School girls, led by Becky, reflects the superstition of the mainstream itself. Like Karena, Becky and the others believe the Bible to be a magical book. Confronting Eve as a liar, they challenge her never to lie again after extracting a confession from her. She must swear on the Bible that if she lies again God will strike her down and she will die next year. Eve responds: “Is that year starting in January or Chinese New Year?” They decide the Chinese New Year. Eve shows insight. She is in no danger; Eve’s ironic speech obliquely critiques the girls’ prejudice, just as the Goddess critiqued the Church. As the film builds to its conclusion the three tragedies – miscarriage, death, and transplant – provide the singular problem of sin and theodicy that Eve now must solve, with pressure from Karena. May-Lin, sad from finding a jumper purchased for the new baby, confesses she has been meditating to no effect, while the girls have faith. The girls go with Mother and Papa in the rain to the hospital. The scene is intercut with Mother offering incense at the temple followed by the almost identical act of the girls lighting candles in the Church. The camera shows that religious devotion and action, ritual and moral consciousness, closely correlate. Neither Buddhism nor Catholicism is superstition. Both assert faith in the midst of chaos and pain. The seriousness of the operation and of Eve’s guilt is portrayed to the viewer in these scenes by a shift to a blue-toned palette, associated with death in the film’s opening scenes. This technique, in play from the earliest days of film (e. g. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, dir. Robert Weine, 1920), effectively externalizes the internal strug-

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gle of the protagonist. Eve’s crisis is given universal application and significance by being enlarged on screen. May-Lin called to the hospital in the middle of a storm, the girls decide that Eve, the sinner, must be baptized in order to keep Papa safe. They pattern the bathtub baptism on the African-American service that Eve saw on television earlier. The white nightgowns of both girls match the white tops and scarves of the women from that scene. They did not learn of immersion from Sister Agnes. Karena dictates that Eve has to stay down, the longer the better; Eve needs to die to her sins. The concept is biblically based (cf. Rom. 6:3 – 4), but the film does not reveal how the girls arrived at this interpretation. Onscreen no discussion of the relationship between death and baptism takes place. Immersed once, Eve struggles to sit back up. Karena instructs her she must stay down. We continue to see her struggle. We see the original vision of the drowning fire horses, this time with Eve in their midst. From above left light comes down. We are with Eve in the realm of death. She is still. Karena takes away her hand. The scene not only echoes the film’s opening, it also references Japanese anime film. Ghost in the Shell (dir. Mamouri Oshi, 1995) uses a similar perspective from below and a blue-tone color scheme in an underwater shot to prompt a reflection on death, meaning, and identity by its main character. Paul is also quoted (1 Cor. 13:12): “For now we see in a glass darkly…” The quotation is not completed in the film. Paul’s words, linked with symbols that associate water and death, construct a bridge between the film and the biblical quest for meaning. From this perspective, the Bible can be incorporated seamlessly with an extension of religious culture as part of the overall search for identity. Eve and the Fire Horse provides a further ritual tie. The shot here along with blue water and a human figure shot from below also occurs in mainstream Hollywood film. The Bourne series has almost made a fetish of it. Similar shots recur in all three of the original trilogy (2002– 07) and now also in the new series begun by The Bourne Legacy (dir. Tony Gilroy, 2012). In all instances, the image retains a connection with death and new birth.

Fig. 104: The fire horses comfort Eve during her baptism into death in Eve and the Fire Horse (2005)

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The possibility that Katrina has drowned Eve and turned a lyric movie into an unmitigated tragedy remains for several short scenes. May-Lin waters the plant planted by Eve, a symbol of renewal and rebirth from the death of the unborn brother. The film cuts to Jesus on the cross in the Church. Karena is being baptized. Finally, at the end of a tracking shot, we see Eve and hear her interpretation of her baptism. “That night I died in the bathtub.” Even one second according to Karena still counted. What Eve saw was God; she tells Karena she saw light and a face. As Eve’s voiceover says this, we see her vision of Karena elevated in the church. The priest has declared her to have “put on Christ,” a reference to Galatians 3:27. Paul gets the last biblical word in the movie. Eve sees in her vision the elevation of spirit Karena desires. The divinely-given vision includes Karena as the symbol of ChineseCanadian convert both within the Church and, through Eve, as part of the family. It indicates a fundamental divine perspective imparted to Eve that becomes part of the sacred world that now clearly includes humor and irony. Eve goes on to say that what she saw in the bathtub was neither Jesus nor Buddha, but she saw a light and it was kind and good. This vision and her report of it invite the viewer to her revelation of a God beyond sectarian or religious control. It, the God she saw, manifests goodness and kindness, not judgment and separation. The God here addressed does not belong to any religious tradition, but as the movie has established, it is the presupposition of religious discourse and action. The baptism of Karena could be seen to indicate that the mainstream Church has now absorbed the entire immigrant community, emblemized by the extended Eng family, which is present. To read the film this way, thereby absorbing it into mainstream white religion and sacred space, however, requires reading it against the construction of Eve as the way forward from a Chinese-Canadian perspective. She has mastered the art of biblical interpretation while expanding the sacred vocabulary of her grandmother’s world. The final scene of the film, a vision given to Eve of Grandmother in the laundry room, connects the audience to the first visitation of Grandmother and to her future presence. Eve’s tears reconcile her to Grandmother and symbolically to the tradition Grandmother represents.

Constructing the Other Eve Eng is a working-class, Chinese-Canadian girl, who represents a direct threat to the mainstream religious culture by the construction of an alternative religious discourse linked to practice. She accomplishes this by becoming a superior interpreter of the Bible, the sacred discourse of Christianity. Eve and the Fire Horse uses women, the working class, ethnic groups, and children to construct alternative religious ideologies. All of these character types have classically been used to represent otherness in mainstream film. The plot structure of such film shows the challenge that the other poses and, by climax and resolution, how that challenge is met, neutralized, or assimilated. The challenge and its resolution become the occasion for a reinvigora-

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tion of the mainstream view. In the case of religion, the mainstream sacred order is affirmed as morally and ritually correct. In this context ethnicity has been frequently used in film directly for the spiritual benefit of the mainstream white culture. For example, the film tradition beginning with Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon (1937) and continuing through Scorsese’s Kundun (1997) and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Seven Years in Tibet (1997), constructs otherness in terms of romantic fascination with Tibetan traditions (even though in Lost Horizon Chinese is spoken by the indigenous population). In the case of Kundun the camera, in terms of Hollywood tradition associated with classical Jesus biopics, romanticizes the Dalai Lama as a venerated saint. Tradition that has been lost to the secular world is represented by the exotic other that now imparts spiritual wisdom. By the simple use of well-established mainstream techniques and symbols, Eve and the Fire Horse constructs the white mainstream as threatening other. The focalization of Eve, the use of a neutral camera to show us Eve’s visions, prioritizes the Chinese-Canadian perspective. At the same time, the color-coding of the cosmology and the return to the introduction in the ending, suggest that a resolution has taken place. Multiple pathways for the Chinese-Canadian – exemplified by Grandmother, May-Lin, Frank, Karena, and Eve – suggest to the audience complex interactions between traditional religious culture and the mainstream. In a similar manner to horror film, Eve and the Fire Horse uses the emotional attachments of family as the basis for emotional response to the threat of Christianity; the Christian stands in for the Monster. The film establishes the family and its religious traditions as the unit in which conflict takes place. Eve’s family incorporates the outside threat into their sacred world by expanding their own ritual practices to accommodate the new world in which they find themselves. In this the family comes to equate luck, karma, and sin to varying degrees. The remarkable reversal in this film is that it positions the biblical interpretation of Christianity as the alien other. This is not, however, a horror film in which the monstrous other must be vanquished. Instead it engages in a genuine theological dialogue from the perspective of the Chinese-Canadian community. It also reveals that humor and irony are necessary for understanding the sacred. When forgotten, as represented by Karena, Sister Agnes, and the Sunday school girls, exclusivity threatens the sacred. The film promotes sympathy for Eve and, through her, for Chinese tradition by providing the audience with a choice between her view and Karena’s throughout the film. When Christianity becomes marginal and threatening, the Bible must be interpreted in new ways. Eve and the Fire Horse finds the productive bridge between the cultures in the engagement of symbols common to all. It celebrates the strong correlation between ritual action and the production of new discourse in religious life. Ritual expresses and explores faith. It is the avenue for new associations and inclusions. The structure of the film allows the biblical tradition to provide the symbolic and ritual bridge for religious dialogue and the production of new sets of sym-

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bols. Through this combination, Eve as sinner and Eve as Fire Horse are incorporated into an expanded sacred world. The film leaves open the resolution of the challenge posed to Chinese-Canadian culture by the white Christian society. This is in keeping with the tendency toward ambiguous endings in serious cinema. Good does not always triumph; the moral universe is now forever in question. Eve and the Fire Horse joins the film tradition at a postmodern not modernist moment. It also has the advantage of an independent film; it participates in the mainstream tradition without the necessity of sacrificing its vision to commercial concerns. Eve and the Fire Horse eschews the romanticism that plagues religious films generally and biblically based films particularly. Seen through the eyes of a nine-yearold, religion is shown for what it is, a changing approach to life and identity that includes ideology, practice, and community. All traditions look superstitious; all traditions look moral and ethical. The film suggests that the original biblical Eve may be only an iteration of the original Woman, who can be reincarnated in multiple cultures. The biblical Eve according to the myth of Genesis cannot be regarded as of any ethnicity, but contains them all. Therefore, the Christian claim to her and her story cannot be restricted to the biblical interpretation of the white mainstream Church. Eve Eng gets her interpretation, too. Other incarnations of Eve will retell the story as well.

Further Reading Blizek, William L, ed. 2009. The Continuum Companion to Religion and Film. London: Continuum. Jasper, David and S. Brent Plate, eds. 1999. Imag(in)ing Otherness: Filmic Visions of Living Together. Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press. Pagels, Elaine. 1988. Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. New York: Random House. Plate, S. Brent, ed. 2003. Representing Religion in World Cinema: Filmmaking, Mythmaking, Culture Making. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Trible, Phyllis. 1978. God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Wood, Robin. 1986. Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan. New York: Columbia University.

Films Cited The Bourne Identity (dir. Doug Liman, 2002, Universal, US/DE/CZ). The Bourne Legacy (dir. Tony Gilroy, 2012, Universal, US/JP). The Bourne Supremacy (dir. Paul Greengrass, 2004, Universal, US/DE). The Bourne Ultimatum (dir. Paul Greengrass, 2007, Universal, US/DE). The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (dir. Robert Weine, 1920, Decio-Bioscope, DE). Det sjunde inseglet [a.k.a. The Seventh Seal] (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1957, Svensk, SE). El laberinto del fauno [a.k.a. Pan’s Labyrinth] (dir. Guillermo del Toro, 2006, Estudios Picasso, ES/MX/US). Eve and the Fire Horse (dir. Julia Kwan, 2005, Mongrel Media, CA).

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Exodus: Gods and Kings (dir. Ridley Scott, 2014, Chernin Entertainment, UK/US/ES). Ghost in the Shell (dir. Mamouri Oshi, 1995, Bandai Visual Company, JP). Kundun (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1997, De Fina-Cappa, US). The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988, Universal, US/CA). Lost Horizon (dir. Frank Capra, 1939, Columbia, US). Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2014, Paramount, US). Seven Years in Tibet (dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1997, Mandalay, US/UK). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956, Paramount, US).

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53 A Slave Narrative for the “Post-Racial” Obama Age A dark-skinned woman named Eliza (Adepero Oduye) wails inconsolably on the rough porch of a slave cabin. Over the objections of her fellow captive, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) – known to everyone else as Platt – she insists upon her right to grieve her children, from whom she was forcibly separated at the slave market. Before the scene ends, overlaid upon her maternal sobs, we hear a scripture reading from Eliza’s owner, the kindly Master Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch). “Whosoever, therefore, shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me…” (Matt. 18:4 – 5, KJV). The scene shifts seamlessly to an outdoor arbor where Ford regularly conducts Sabbath services for his household. Wife and children, overseer, and slaves are gathered before this stately figure for the weekly edification of their souls. Now seated with the assembled congregation, Eliza’s wails continue unabated like Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted (cf. Jer. 31:15; Matt. 2:18). Ford turns a deaf ear to her grief, as his wife murmurs sotto voce: “I cannot have that kind of depression about.” The next scene sees Eliza sold.

The 2008 election of the United States’ first biracial president, Barack Obama, coincided with a sudden proliferation of race-themed films, in Hollywood and beyond, that has continued throughout his two terms in office. Given the Bible’s ambivalent role in constructions of African American identity – functioning as both a weapon of oppression and a co-opted resource for liberation – it is unsurprising to find biblical texts and images in many of these films.² However, no other movie can claim such sustained and complex engagement with the Bible as Steve McQueen’s 2013 Academy Award winning picture, 12 Years a Slave, which includes the powerful scene described above. Unlike many other films that have broached issues of race in the United States, the independently financed 12 Years does not soft-pedal the horrors of race-based slavery and its continuing legacy in the twenty-first century. Rooted in the real-life autobiographical slave narrative of Solomon Northup – a free black man, who in 1841 was kidnapped and sold into slavery – McQueen’s film boasts an unflinching historical realism that makes the viewing experience anything but comfortable. It also denies spectators the neat resolution and happy ending traditionally demanded by Hollywood. While Northup is eventually reunited with his family, other primary characters remain enslaved and, as the film’s final words remind us, his kidnappers manage to avoid prosecution. Unlike so many recent race films that end with a note  Many thanks to Ladale Benson, who was an invaluable conversation partner and research assistant during the writing of this chapter.  This era has also witnessed a resurgence of biblical epic films, in which white actors continue to be routinely cast in the roles of Middle Eastern and North African biblical characters. On the white-washing of biblical epic films see, for example, Gafney ().

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of triumphalism, suggesting that Obama’s election signaled an end to the nation’s racial woes,³ 12 Years does not easily allow its spectators to walk away viewing slavery and discrimination as simple problems confined to the historical past. Instead, this film stands over and against the dominant cultural narrative that American media has constructed to characterize the supposedly ‘post-racial’ Obama Age. In this chapter, I first offer a quick overview of representations of blackness in American cinema, in order to illustrate how these images have typically served the prevailing dominant ideology and mostly failed to offer authentic accounts of African American experience. I then examine the film 12 Years a Slave as a subversive response to post-racial ideology, which dismisses or downplays the continuing realities of race-based discrimination and white privilege. My primary focus will be upon an aspect of this film that has thus far received little attention – the way in which its cultural critique is embedded in nuanced scriptural exegesis.

Race and Film in American Culture Uses of the Bible in film to reinforce or, more rarely, to challenge ideologies of race in the United States are inextricably linked to the broader history of cinema’s representation of blackness.⁴ The first films depicting African Americans featured white actors in blackface, pantomiming the dominant culture’s stereotypes of black identity. The most famous blackface film of the silent era, D. W. Griffith’s virulently racist The Birth of a Nation (1915), enshrined a mythic view of the Old South that vilified free blacks and glorified the Ku Klux Klan as Christian heroes of the Reconstruction Era.⁵ When real African Americans eventually appeared onscreen, the limited roles available to them in mainstream films – mainly servants, criminals, and buffoons – perpetuated racist stereotypes (Bogle 2015). Plantation fantasies, epitomized by Victor Fleming’s Gone With the Wind (1939), continued to mythologize the “good old days of slavery” with images of docile, contented slaves and white gentility. Colonial architecture, hoopskirts, and “happy darkies” formed a period backdrop for stories about the lives of the white plantation class. The continued popularity of this genre in the U.S. through the mid 1960s reflected widespread cultural acceptance of racist images and stereotypes, even as it reinforced cultural nostalgia for a mythic antebellum South (Guerrero 2012, 10).

 See, for example, The Butler (dir. Lee Daniels, ), which traces decades of American history and race relations through the eyes of a black member of the White House domestic staff. This film includes a “feel good” Hollywood ending that portrays Obama’s election as the culmination (and, thus, possibly the resolution) of the Civil Rights era.  This history has been documented at length by Bogle (); Holtzman/Sharp (); Smith (); Reid (); Guerrero (); and Diawara (). On theorizing race and film, see the discussions in Izzo (); Sim (); hooks (); Gormley (); and Willis ().  See also Walsh’s discussion of biblical reception in Griffith’s films in Part II (Pp.  – ).

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Biblical and religious references appear only rarely in these films, perhaps best illustrated by the depiction of evening prayers at the Tara plantation where Scarlett O’Hara’s pious mother leads her Roman Catholic family in a prayer of confession (the Conf ìteor), while household slaves kneel silently and reverentially in the background. Slaves are portrayed as sharing their master’s religious practices, interpretation of scripture, and value system. Similarly, in Jezebel (dir. William Wyler, 1938), slaves and white southerners alike demonstrate disdain toward the main character when she defies social propriety by wearing a scandalous red dress to a ball. Both judge the wayward southern belle to be a sinful woman, label her a Jezebel, and participate in her ostracizing. Only rarely have black actors, writers, and directors offered authentic accounts of African American experiences. Outside of the mainstream, an alternative cinema produced low-budget films with black actors for black audiences until it was put out of business by Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s (Brightwell 2010). As Judith Weisenfeld has pointed out, several of these alternative race films included depictions of African American religion.⁶ More commonly, however, white directors and Hollywood film studios controlled the depiction of black religion and its concomitant biblical interpretation, as in Hallelujah (dir. King Vidor, 1929) and The Green Pastures (dir. Marc Connelly/William Keighley, 1936). After World War II, Sidney Poitier became Hollywood’s best-known African American leading man, portraying characters that were intentionally crafted to be perceived as nonthreatening by white audiences.⁷ According to media historians Linda Holtzman and Leon Sharp, Poitier cultivated an onscreen persona that was “intelligent, handsome, spoke standard and elegant English, was respectful and proud, and mostly depicted as asexual” and, at the same time, “so thoroughly assimilated that there was no trace of connection to the African American community or culture” (Holtzman/Sharpe 2014, 237). This respectful and innocuous persona was never more apparent than in Poitier’s Oscar-winning, Bible-quoting role as Homer Smith in Lilies of the Field (dir. Ralph Nelson, 1963). Independent race films experienced a brief resurgence in the 1960s and 70s with the blaxploitation genre, in which defiant black male heroes overcame white villains – sometimes even employing vague biblical subtexts, such as Black Samson (dir. Charles Bail, 1974). Quickly co-opted by Hollywood, however, this genre yielded mostly formulaic films depicting black men as gangsters, pimps, and drug dealers

 For a discussion of how these films present African American religion, see Weisenfeld (,  – ). Also see Jumper’s discussion of African American director Oscar Micheaux in Part II (Pp.  – ).  Lee Daniel’s The Butler () features a dinner table debate over Sidney Poitier’s blackness between the White House domestic staffer, Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker), and his politically active son (David Banner). The elder Gaines admires Poitier as a black man who has achieved success; the younger Gaines disparages him as a sell out.

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and black women as one-dimensional sexual conquests (Holtzman/Sharpe 2014, 237). Films of the conservative Reagan era, which pushed themes of individualism, doit-yourself success, and equal access to the American dream, crafted black characters that appealed to both black and white audiences while ignoring the larger state of race relations.⁸ Aside from the work of directors like Julie Dash and Spike Lee in the 1990s, most American films in the twentieth century, especially those made within the Hollywood system, perpetuated racist stereotypes while underwriting a conservative ideology that resisted attempts to probe the logic and consequences of white privilege. Unsurprisingly, mainstream media interpreted the 2008 election of Barack Obama as tangible evidence that a new epoch in American race relations had dawned (Kaplan 2011, ix). Pundits announced the end of “the old politics of race,” which focused on “Black grievance, victimhood, and protest,” and in its place pronounced a new “color-blind individualism” that denied the continuing existence of widespread, systemic discrimination against African Americans (Logan 2014, 211– 13). Following the logic that America is “past racism,” African American linguist John McWhorter argued in Forbes magazine: It would be a tragedy if any more than a few professional hotheads took this as an opportunity to continue obsessing over racism, rather than conceiving of ways to help the poor. Many suppose the two are the same, and it is precisely that idea that is outdated. […] Obsessing over things that cannot be changed and are not the real problem anyway is of no use to anyone. (McWhorter 2008)

Popular characterizations of Obama’s America as an idyllic “post-racial” society had become commonplace long before his successful 2012 bid for re-election. The cultural zeitgeist constructed following Obama’s election resists identity politics and is uncongenial to honest discussions of the racial inequalities and white privilege that are deeply woven into American society. It masks continuing racism and the lingering human consequences of slavery, which include limited educational opportunities, concentrated poverty, and excessive incarceration for African Americans. These issues were forcibly returned to popular attention during Obama’s second term amid protests surrounding allegations of police misconduct and brutality toward African Americans, including the 2012 tragic shooting death of unarmed African American teenager, Trayvon Martin, during the filming of 12 Years a Slave. Yet the persistent myth of the United States as a post-racial society allows the dominant white culture to dismiss such tragedies as isolated events rather than recognizing  While Steven Spielberg’s  adaptation of African American author Alice Walker’s The Color Purple might seem to pose an exception, the film ultimately converts the novel’s antiracist themes and subversive biblical interpretation into a mainstream vehicle of the dominant ideology. Spielberg’s film excises Walker’s critique of institutionalized racism and its effects on black communities. See the discussion of this film in Lister (, – ) and Holtzman/Sharpe (, ).

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them as symptoms of systemic racial prejudice and inequality. It is within this cultural context that 12 Years a Slave must be examined.

Solomon Northup and the (Sometimes) Good Book The film 12 Years a Slave is based upon the autobiographical slave narrative of Solomon Northup, a freeborn black man who lived in Saratoga, N.Y. with his wife and children until, in 1841 at the age of thirty-two, he was lured away from his home to Washington, D.C. under the pretense of a job offer, kidnapped by his would-be business partners, and sold into bondage. Deprived of his freedom and his identity (being renamed “Platt” by slave traders), he was subjected to physical abuse and transported like livestock to the New Orleans slave market. Both the memoir and the film focus primarily on Northup/Platt’s years of backbreaking, dispiriting servitude as he was passed from the ownership of a “kind master,” named William Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), into the hands of the “nigger breaker,” Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender).⁹ After experiencing and witnessing much brutality, he eventually managed to contact friends in the North who helped secure his freedom and reunite him with his family. Following unsuccessful attempts to prosecute his kidnappers, Northup became active in the abolitionist movement and published an account of his experiences. In the year 1849 – Northup’s eighth year of chattel slavery, as he and millions of other dark-skinned people lived in bondage in the Southern states – two other African Americans, Henry Highland Garnet and Frederick Douglass, engaged in a public debate in New York City over the merits of supplying slaves with contraband Bibles (Callahan 2006, 21– 25). Both Garnet and Douglass had escaped from slavery, and both embraced Christianity; yet they disagreed vehemently over the Bible’s liberating potential for the cause of abolition. For Garnet, an ordained Presbyterian minister, the Bible’s liberating vision was self-evident. Did not the Apostle Paul recognize the full humanity of all races when he declared in Athens that all people descended from the same blood (Acts 17:26)? But Douglass argued from his experience that Southern slavers often wielded a whip in one hand and the Bible in the other. He would later write in his own autobiographical slave narrative: “I have met many religious colored people, at the south, who are under the delusion that God requires them to submit to slavery, and to wear their chains with meekness and humility” (Douglass 1855, 159). According to Allen Dwight Callahan, “African Americans found the Bible to be both healing balm and poison book. They could not lay claim to the balm without braving the poison. The same book was both medicine and malediction” (Callahan

 The film condenses the plot of the slave narrative originally published in , in which Northup/ Platt is purchased or hired out to a succession of other masters in between his years under the ownership of Ford and Epps (Northup ).

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2006, 40). By the mid-nineteenth century, a great many Southern slaves had embraced some form of Christianity, often finding in scripture a “language-world” through which to articulate and protest their experiences (Wimbush 1991, 82). At the same time, the Christian slave rebellions of the early nineteenth century prompted slaveholders to manage more carefully their slaves’ religious instruction and to enact legislation against the spread of literacy among slaves. In the hands of the plantation class, the Bible often became, as Douglass noted, a tool of social control. As historian Albert Raboteau observes, “Inevitably, the slaves’ Christianity contradicted that of their masters. The division was deep; it extended to the fundamental interpretation of the Bible” (Raboteau 1994, 8). This ambiguity is evident both in Northup’s 1853 memoir and in its 2013 cinematic adaptation. Both the film and its literary source are packed with biblical references, although each deploys the Bible in very different ways. Indeed, although the film as a whole is remarkable for its historical realism, McQueen intentionally deviates at times from its source in order to accomplish two tasks: (1) to transform this particular autobiography into a synecdoche for the larger institution of slavery, and (2) to interpret Northup’s nineteenth-century recollections through a modern-day political consciousness. Just as Northup’s slave narrative addressed the racial politics of its day as an abolitionist document, McQueen’s film interrogates its source in ways that are relevant to twenty-first-century audiences. In his autobiography, Northup routinely filters his experiences through a biblical lens, employing the Bible reverentially and, for the most part, uncritically. Biblical images fill many heartfelt prayers for deliverance that helped him resist the temptation of succumbing to despair. He likewise suggests that other slaves found hope and succor in biblical narratives. Northup describes the suffering of his fellow-slave, Patsey (who was sexually exploited by Master Epps and physically abused by his resentful wife), as her “pilgrimage through the wilderness of bondage” with only her dreams of freedom serving as “her cloud by day, her pillar of fire by night” until she could behold “the land of promise” (Northup 2013, 30). Borrowing biblical language, he refers to cruel slavers (in particular, the slave trader Burgess and later Epps) as incarnate devils. Northup’s autobiography also recounts his memories of various Christian masters preaching the Bible to their slaves. Sometimes these episodes are recounted ironically, suggesting that he disagreed (and, therefore, so should his literary audience) with the message of submission he heard proclaimed. However, Northup writes of the Baptist pastor and plantation owner, Ford, with seemingly sincere admiration. Describing the Sundays on which Master Ford would routinely “gather all his slaves about him, and read and expound the Scriptures,” Northup recalls that he would sit before them “surrounded by his man-servants and his maid-servants, who looked earnestly into the good man’s face” as he “spoke of the loving kindness of the Creator, and of the life that is to come” (Northup 2013, 34). He also recalls a slave named Sam being so “deeply convicted” by Ford’s preaching that Mistress Ford gifted him a Bible that he carried with him everywhere, although he could only read it with great

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difficulty. Northup notes that this permissive treatment elicited criticism from other slaveholders, many of whom felt that “a man like Ford, who allowed his slaves to have Bibles, was ‘not fit to own a nigger’” (Northup 2013, 34). Concerning Ford’s Christian character, Northup apologetically comments: In many northern minds, perhaps, the idea of a man holding his brother man in servitude, and the traffic in human flesh, may seem altogether incompatible with their conceptions of a moral or religious life. […] But I was sometime his slave, and had the opportunity of learning well his character and disposition, and it is but simple justice to him when I say, in my opinion, there never was a more kind, noble, candid, Christian man than William Ford. The influences and associations that had always surrounded him, blinded him to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery. He never doubted the moral right of one man holding another in subjection. Looking through the same medium with his fathers before him, he saw things in the same light. Brought up under other circumstances and other influences, his notions would undoubtedly have been different. (Northup 2013, 31)

Whether these generous words express Solomon Northup’s sincere convictions as a black man with a nineteenth-century political consciousness (who even in the course of his free life in Saratoga, N.Y. was not allowed to vote) or were intentionally crafted to appeal to white abolitionist audiences, we cannot know.¹⁰ Perhaps, had Northup himself been “[b]rought up under other circumstances and other influences,” he might have recognized that Ford, regardless of whatever paternalistic kindness he may have shown his slaves, was nonetheless complicit in the system of chattel slavery. He held Northup and others as his property, benefited materially from their slave labor, and sold them at will when it was in his interest to do so. The Bible is equally present, albeit deployed very differently, in the film 12 Years a Slave. The film retains and expands upon Northup’s Sabbath recollections by staging scenes in which first Ford and later Epps deliver sermons before their assembled thralls. In contrast to the memoir’s sympathetic treatment of Ford, however, the film does not allow an entirely positive evaluation of this “good” master. While Ford’s two sermons are beautifully staged and revolve around themes of divine benevolence and love of neighbor, the film overlays the first with vocals from the previous scene in which Tibeats, the cruel carpenter/overseer, sings “Run, Nigger, Run,” a racist song gloating over the capture and lynching of a runaway slave. This vocal overlay lends an ominous quality to the scripture reading, as Ford solemnly intones, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Jacob, and the God of Isaac” (Matt. 22:32). Indeed, the master class exercised a god-like sway over their human property.¹¹

 Despite the fact that Northup was literate, his memoir was composed with the assistance of an amanuensis, a white New York lawyer and minor novelist named David Wilson; see Doherty (, ). This makes it impossible to know with certainty the extent to which the authorial voice of the narrator represents his own perspective on the events reported.  The text of this first sermon is Matthew , which narrates a series of controversy stories in which religious leaders unsuccessfully attempt to get the better of Jesus. Ford’s selective, cobbled reading

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Fig. 105: Master Ford preaches to his household in 12 Years a Slave (2013)

As described above, the tranquility of Ford’s second sermon – ironically on God’s love for “little ones” (Matt. 18:1– 5) – is disturbed by the wailing of the slave, Eliza, who had been forcibly separated from her children (cf. Jer. 31:15; Matt. 2:18). Again this underlines Ford’s hypocrisy, since after a half-hearted and unsuccessful attempt to purchase Eliza’s children at the slave-market, he had literally turned his back on the bereaved mother. Now he consciously ignores her cries while preaching compassion and, soon after, allows his wife to sell the slave woman when her grief becomes too annoying. Thus, the film casts doubt upon any favorable evaluation of Ford as an upstanding Christian man. In other words, the cinematic language of this film overturns the explicit judgment of its literary source as well as the popular Hollywood trope of a benevolent master class in the antebellum South. The film’s artistic critique of the “good master” trope is voiced explicitly between Ford’s two Sabbath sermons. Here the film, expanding on its literary source, inserts an original scene in which Eliza pronounces judgment upon her master. She censures Solomon for luxuriating in Ford’s favor while lacking sympathy for her grief. When he protests that Ford is “a decent man,” she reminds him that their master is a slaver and to him “Platt” is nothing more than prized livestock. Eliza predicts that he would not assist Solomon in regaining his freedom even if he knew of his previous circumstances – a prediction that later proves all too accurate. Although

lifts sentences from two separate stories: a dispute over resurrection (vs.  – ) and a question regarding the greatest commandment (vs.  – ). The film omits selected phrases from these verses, so that Ford pronounces only the italicized portion: “…‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead, but of the living. And when the multitude heard this they were astonished at his doctrine. But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together, then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question tempting him and saying…” (Matt. : – , KJV, italics added). Ford voices the interrogative in verse  as an indicative, perhaps suggesting that the multitude’s astonishment stemmed from a claim to divinity. Few viewers would recognize the film’s tampering with the text or anticipate that the next verses ironically exalt as the greatest commandments the twin duties of loving God and loving one’s neighbor as one’s self (vs.  – ) – a key text for the abolitionist movement.

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Ford prevents “Platt’s” lynching at the hands of Tibeats, he refuses to hear the truth about his past and merely sells him to Epps (thereby recovering his investment in human livestock).

Fig. 106: Master Epps, wielding the Bible as a weapon in 12 Years a Slave (2013)

Epps is introduced in a close-up shot expounding the Bible in a sermon designed to justify his own absolute authority over his slaves.¹² Verbally underlining the text of Luke 12:47 (KJV) through emphasis and repetition, he identifies himself as the master who is authorized to beat his unfaithful servant: [Reading haltingly from the Bible] “That servant…which knew his lord’s will…which knew his lord’s will…and prepared not himself… prepared not himself…neither did he according to his will…shall be beaten with many stripes.” Do you hear that? Stripes! That nigger don’t obey his lord…That’s his master, do ya see? That there nigger shall be beaten with many stripes! Now “many” signifies a great many…forty, a hundred, hundred-fifty lashes. [Closing the Bible, he holds it aloft.] That’s scripter!

The camera cuts to a stoic assembly of slaves, who clearly recognize these words as the threat that they are intended to be. We later learn that Epps practices what he preaches by routinely whipping slaves who fail to pick their designated quota of cotton. When the cotton flourishes, Epps attributes his economic success to his own “clean living.” When worms decimate his crops, he blames his slaves for bringing upon him what he sees as a biblical plague: “It’s that godless lot. They brought this on me. I brung ‘em God’s word and, heathens they are, they brung me God’s  The film draws this sermon verbatim from Northup’s account (,  – ), where it is not delivered menacingly by Epps, but tongue-in-cheek by another slave owner named Peter Tanner, who is described as a buffoon and whose authority the slaves routinely flouted with little consequence. By changing the tone of these words and reassigning them to Epps, the film simplifies its source narrative and gives the character of Epps a religious dimension that is lacking in Northup’s memoir. It also captures more clearly than its literary source the Bible’s potential to be used as a weapon of the slave system.

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scorn!” Epps’s ability to project guilt for his own moral shortcomings onto racialized Others is demonstrated by the physical abuse he regularly heaps upon Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o), the recipient of his unwanted sexual attentions. In all of these examples of biblical exegesis, we hear the Bible being used by the white plantation class as a tool of oppression to perpetuate the status quo. Both Ford and Epps, each in their own way, employ a self-serving hermeneutic that sacralizes the institution of slavery and undergirds the master’s right to deal as he will with his human property. By self-identifying with the master in Luke 12:47, Epps deifies himself while projecting his own sinful desires upon the racialized Other. Meanwhile, Ford expresses paternalistic concern for his slaves’ spiritual education that does not translate into real concern for their humanity. The film interrogates and critiques this hermeneutic, both explicitly in Eliza’s jeremiad and artistically through formalistic means, such as allowing the audio of one scene to bleed into another.

Fig. 107: The curse of the Pharoahs in 12 Years a Slave (2013)

However, there are also other interpreters of scripture in the film, who appropriate biblical images to articulate judgment and protest. To borrow the words of Callahan, 12 Years presents the Bible in all its ambivalence as both “poison book” and “healing balm” (Callahan 2006, 40). The biblical plague of cotton worms, for example, is anticipated – possibly even announced prophetically – in an earlier scene. Epps’s lust for Patsey is mirrored by that of a neighboring plantation owner and lothario, Master Shaw, for his own female slave whom he has scandalously elevated to the position of wife. Now known as Mistress Shaw (Alfre Woodard), she gloats that she has neither worked the fields nor felt the lash for more years than she can remember.¹³ She has been granted a “higher” position in her master’s plantation regime to gratify

 Eliza reports that she once held a similar position in the plantation regime of her former master, who fathered her younger child. At his untimely death, however, his vindictive elder daughter sold Eliza and her children – leading to their separation at the slave market. Mistress Shaw’s situation is likewise precarious at best. What will happen when Master Shaw tires of her or dies?

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and legitimate his sexual desires. Patsey admires Mistress Shaw, visits her for Sunday tea, and emulates her mannerisms. In turn, Mistress Shaw sympathizes with Patsey’s plight: I know what it like to be the object of Master’s predilections and peculiarities. A lusty visit in the night or a visitation with the whip. Take comfort, Patsey. The good Lord will manage Epps. In His own time, the good Lord will manage ‘em all. The curse of the pharaohs were a poor example of what wait for the plantation class.

Soon after this scene, we (along with Northup) witness Epps force himself upon Patsey and then, overcome by self-loathing that he projects upon her, nearly choke her to death. There is little doubt when the camera next focuses close-up on worms crawling slowly over dead and dying cotton plants that this is a biblical judgment, an interpretation that Epps confirms in voiceover. However, Mistress Shaw’s reference to the “curse of the pharaohs” suggests that, contra Epps’s belief, it is his own sin (not the sin of “that godless lot”) that has brought this plague upon him. Patsey has little choice in accepting Master Epps’s sexual and physical abuse. Nor can she defend herself against the malicious cruelty of Mistress Epps (Sara Paulson), who takes advantage of any opportunity to see her rival punished, whether by gouging Patsey’s cheek with her own fingernails or goading her husband into wielding the lash himself. Whether or not it was the filmmakers’ intention, this relationship invokes a Sarah-Hagar trope that becomes especially evident in one particular scene. When the drunken Epps forces his exhausted slaves to dance for his nocturnal amusement in the plantation house, his wife seizes the opportunity to make an accusation. “You see that?” she shouts. “You seen that look of insolence she gave me? …It was hot hateful scorn. It filled that black face.” She insists that her husband punish Patsey for ostensibly looking with contempt upon her mistress (cf. Gen. 16:5 – 6), which he eventually does just to save face. This biblical intertext (whether consciously employed or not) opens the possibility of a womanist interpretation. We know that Mistress Epps’s complaint is groundless and that Patsey suffers unjustly. Like Hagar, Patsey has little choice about accepting her master’s attention and, as a result, bears the jealousy of her mistress, who is herself both victim and victimizer. That Patsey is also capable of theological reflection is revealed in a scene where she awakens “Platt” and asks him to end her life as “an act of kindness.” He angrily refuses, in part because he fears that to act on such “an ungodly request” would consign his soul to damnation. Thus far in their late-night conversation the characters have been framed in a two-shot or filmed over-the-shoulder of the other. Now the camera frames Patsey in a one-shot to emphasize the words that she speaks slowly and emphatically: “There is God here! God is merciful and he forgive merciful acts. Won’t be no hell for ya.” Although “Platt” refuses Patsey’s plaintive request, she has shown that her own theology operates independently from that of the master class. The slaves’ religious beliefs are highlighted most dramatically at the funeral of Old Uncle Abram, who collapses and dies while picking cotton. Northup and two other

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Fig. 108: A Sarah-Hagar trope in 12 Years a Slave (2013)

slaves dig his grave in a small cemetery. The younger slave says a few simple words of blessing over the body of “a good man” who “always looked out for us ever since we were little. God love him. God bless him. God keep him.” Northup responds “amen” and shovels dirt upon the camera lens that is looking up from the grave itself. The scene cuts immediately to a low-angle, close-up shot of an elderly slave woman’s face. After several silent seconds, she begins to sing: Went down to the River Jordan Where John baptized three, Where I woke the devil in hell, Said Johnny baptize me. I said roll, Jordan, roll…¹⁴

Cutting to the master shot reveals that this woman is not alone; she is one of many slaves assembled along the cemetery fence. Others begin to clap rhythmically and take up the song. Patsey and Northup are among them, but while she claps and sings, he stands silent and aloof. Gradually, Northup begins to lose himself in the rhythm and emotion of the song, he begins to sway, and then his rich voice is added to the others until he is belting out the chorus alongside them. As Ejiofor’s expressive face makes plain, this is a turning point for the character. For the first time, he joins in solidarity with his fellow slaves and (using biblical images) gives voice to the emotions stirred in him by their shared subjugation. This transformation is captured in a long two-minute close-up with Northup’s face centered in the frame – a rare shot, marking the importance of this moment, since McQueen prefers to shoot close-ups off-center. Yet, the meaning of this scene is ambiguous. Was this per While the lyrics of this song were composed for the film (Lindsey ), the title, “Roll, Jordan, Roll,” belongs to an eighteenth-century hymn composed in England by Charles Wesley that became a popular spiritual in America during the Great Awakening. American slaves in the nineteenth century used the song as a coded message of escape. Crossing the Jordan to the Promised Land represented crossing into free states over the Mississippi or Ohio Rivers; see Powers ().

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formance an embodied religious practice denoting a moment of spiritual triumph? Was it an act of resistance that allowed Northup to reestablish his hope and dignity? Or was it merely an outlet for overwhelming emotions? Regardless, this act of solidarity appears to embolden Northup, as the film quickly builds from this moment to its climax and denouement. Here the film makes a near-fatal mistake by casting the celebrity (and film financier) Brad Pitt as Samuel Bass, the Canadian itinerate laborer who helps Northup contact Northern friends.¹⁵ Like the prophet Amos, Bass is an outsider who questions the morality of the ruling class and proclaims a coming reckoning against Epps and men like him. He comes closer than any other character to expressing an abolitionist argument: What right have you to your niggers, when you come down to the point? […T]he law says you have the right to hold a nigger. But, begging the law’s pardon, it lies. […] Laws change, Epps. Universal truths are constant. It is a fact, a plain and simple fact, that whatever is true and right is true and right for all, white and black alike. […I]n the eyes of God, what is the difference?

Epps scoffs, “You might as well ask what the difference is between a white man and a baboon.” However, the film works hard to avoid casting Pitt as Northup’s white savior or allowing his star presence to distract from the film’s main protagonist. Between Bass’s two relatively brief appearances is the emotional climax of the film – the vicious whipping of Patsey. Convinced that she is “cheating on him” with Master Shaw, Epps orders Patsey stripped and tied to the whipping post. Attracted by the commotion, Mistress Epps emerges from the plantation house to watch. Master Epps hesitates before handing the lash to Northup and forcing him to whip to Patsey in his stead. But Mistress Epps complains that Northup is holding back and goads her husband into taking over the whipping himself. The camera does not spare viewers the sight of Patsey’s raw and bleeding back. Shot in one long take, the scene is unflinching in its realism. Northup finally explodes in (King James inspired) righteous anger: “Thou devil! Sooner or later, somewhere in the course of eternal justice, thou shalt answer for this sin!”¹⁶

 Many race-themed films paternalistically create sympathetic white characters (i.e., white saviors) that empathize or identify with the black community and, through an act of individual heroism, help one or more black characters achieve a degree of liberation. Northup himself raises this possibility in the slave pen soon after his kidnapping, but a more experienced slave shoots down his suggestion that they attempt to find “a sympathetic ear.” Likewise, the film systematically disqualifies other possible white savior figures (e. g., Ford and the laborer, Armsby), who raise Northup’s hopes only to disappoint him. Ironically, scandal was sparked when  Years was released in Italy and the distribution company issued posters prominently featuring Pitt and Fassbender with a much smaller image of Ejiofor relegated to a corner. See Rothman ().  The use of King James speech patterns here is unusual for the film (though not for the slave narrative) and seems to indicate a particularly biblical judgment.

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The protagonist himself has become an exegete and theologian – echoing, at great personal risk, the words of judgment spoken earlier by Mistress Shaw and Bass. In the hands of the oppressed and marginalized, biblical language and images become subversively prophetic and liberating, providing a language-world for the slaves to articulate and protest experiences of injustice. While not developed as explicitly as the slaveholder’s status-quo hermeneutic, an opposing hermeneutic of liberation is expressed by Mistress Shaw, Patsey, Northup, the ally Bass, and slave voices lifted together in song. They speak of a God who shows mercy upon the oppressed and visits judgment upon the oppressors. Likewise, the film itself critiques the self-serving hermeneutic of the plantation class, drawing attention to its inherent violence and hypocrisy, while visually and narratively supporting the slaves’ hermeneutic of liberation. Rooted in an autobiographical slave narrative, adapted into a screenplay by an African American writer (John Ridley), and directed by a black British filmmaker (McQueen), 12 Years was hailed by movie critics and historians as “the most realistic account of slavery in a feature film” (Dockterman 2013). Unlike previous movies depicting American slavery, its narrative is focalized through the authentic day-to-day experiences of a historical person. Therefore, it stands in contradistinction to the rosy, sentimentalized images of slavery in plantation-genre films as well as to more recent slavery films that downplay or parody the violence of this system.¹⁷ As David Jones has noted, what makes 12 Years distinctive is “the amount of time, care, and intensity spent in depicting the atrocities that are enabled by the collusion of white supremacy and human slavery” (Jones 2015, 269). At stake in the making and reception of such a film in the Obama Age are the politics of public memory (Lindsey 2014). How will America’s “peculiar institution” and its ongoing legacy be remembered in popular culture? By reclaiming the story of American slavery from fabulists, McQueen’s film functions as a political act that revokes the “privilege of forgetting” typically enjoyed by the dominant culture (Jones 2015). Scene after scene draws uncomfortable spectators into the narrative as McQueen stages Solomon’s brutal first beating, Eliza’s forced separation from her children, Solomon’s near-lynching, and Patsey’s whipping as continuous long takes that blur the line between representation and reality. Without the artificiality and emotional distance offered by editing, these events seem interminable – an impression compounded by the near absence of extra-diegetical music on the film’s soundtrack. For two nearly silent minutes, McQueen offers no visual or auditory distractions from the horror of a choking man suspended by a rope and struggling to maintain a toehold on the muddy ground. For almost five minutes, viewers cringe  Likewise, it compares favorably to the more recent revenge fantasy, Django Unchained (dir. Quentin Tarantino, ), which sacrifices realism for the cinematic conventions of a Spaghetti Western; to O Brother, Where Art Thou? (dir. Coen Brothers, ), which treats the racist legacy of slavery as a textual joke; and even to the landmark miniseries Roots (dir. Marvin Chomsky, et al., ), whose realism was constrained by the television format.

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as a whip flays the flesh from Patsey’s back. The visual and emotional intensity of these scenes causes distant events to seem immediate and makes horrified viewers a part of the history depicted. McQueen uses this cinematic technique and others to implicate the audience in the action that is taking place onscreen. Similarly, in one particularly disturbing early scene as the badly beaten Solomon is just beginning to recognize the gravity of his situation, he weakly grasps the bars of his cell window and cries for help. Once it becomes apparent that his cries will go unheard, the camera pans slowly upward to reveal the dome of the nation’s Capitol, still under construction. Rachel McBride Lindsey (2014) comments that this scene in particular underscores American viewers’ complicity in the film’s narrative and raises a haunting question for moviegoers: “What lurks in the shadow of the Capitol today?” Rather than reinforce the myth of post-racial America, 12 Years guides viewers to confront the ugliness of an era in American history that many would prefer to forget and to consider its continuing consequences for African Americans and U.S. race relations.

Concluding Thoughts In both memoir and film, Solomon Northup functions as a mediating figure between the audience and slavery. The fact that he experienced bondage after having first lived as a free man gives a particular edge to his observations. This fact distinguished his slave narrative from other examples of the genre and enabled him to establish a rapport with his nineteenth-century, predominantly white, middle-class audience, who share in his astonishment and horror as outsiders to the slave system (Doherty 2013, 5). Similarly, twenty-first-century audiences vicariously experience through Solomon what it might be like to be suddenly immersed in a hostile world that denied your personhood in demeaning and brutal ways. What words could only inadequately express is communicated eloquently in the anguished eyes of Ejiofor. Audiences have plenty of time to contemplate those eyes during repeated close-ups of the protagonist’s face as he gazes almost directly into the camera. Such deliberately staged, almost photographic moments invite audiences to empathize and contemplate. The film resists a simplistic happy ending by underplaying Solomon’s reunion with his family and closing with an onscreen reminder that, not only did his kidnappers avoid prosecution, but the stories of countless other kidnap victims did not end as happily. While Solomon joined the abolitionist movement and presumably lived out the remainder of his days with his family, the ultimate fate of Patsey, Eliza, and others like them is unknown. As Jones notes, 12 Years a Slave recognizes that the suffering of a single individual may not (and most often does not) result in systematic change, just as “despite the very real historical significance of President Obama’s election, there is no magic solution to the American dilemma of racism” (Jones 2015, 270)

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Fig. 109: The anguished eyes of Solomon Northup in 12 Years a Slave (2013)

By embedding its cultural critique in scriptural exegesis, the film recognizes ways in which the Bible functioned (then and now) as “both medicine and malediction,” historically playing a complicated role in constructions of African American identity. Both sides of the debate over American slavery appropriated biblical texts and images. By juxtaposing competing hermeneutics, the film acknowledges that biblical interpretation is always ideological. The Bible is a contested document, not a court of final appeal; and interpretations of the Bible are best evaluated by their consequences.

Works Cited Bogle, Donald. 2015. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films [2001]. Exp. ed. New York and London: Bloomsbury. Brightwell, Eric. 2010. “Black Cinema, Part II. Race Movies – The Hollywood Studio Era.” Amoeba (February 27): http://www.amoeba.com/blog/2010/02/eric-s-blog/black-cinema-part-ii-race movies-the-hollywood-studio-era.html; accessed April 10, 2015. Callahan, Allen Dwight. 2006. The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible. London and New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Diawara, Manthia, ed. 1993. Black American Cinema. AFI Film Readers. Los Angeles: American Film Institute. Dockterman, Eliana. 2013. “Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. Talks 12 Years a Slave and The African Americans.” Time (October 22): http://entertainment.time.com/2013/10/22/henry-louis-gatesjrtalks-12-years-a-slave-and-the-african-americans/; accessed April 10, 2015. Doherty, Thomas. 2013. “Bringing the Slave Narrative to Screen: Steve McQueen and John Ridley’s Searing Depiction of America’s ‘Peculiar Institution’.” Cinéaste. 39.1: 4 – 8. Douglas, Frederick. 1855. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. London: H. G. Collins. Gafney, Wil. 2013. “A White Savior Epic of Biblical Proportions.” Flood of Noah. http://www.flood ofnoah.com/#!noah-movie-white-savior-epic/c245r; accessed March 14, 2015. Gormley, Paul. 2005. The New Brutality Film: Race and Affect in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. Bristol: Intellect Books.

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Guerrero, Ed. 1993. Framing Blackness: The African American Image In Film. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Holtzman, Linda, and Leon Sharpe. 2014. Media Messages: What Film, Television, and Popular Music Teach Us about Race, Class, Gender, and Sexual Orientation. 2nd ed. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. hooks, bell. 2008. Reel to Real: Race, Class, and Sex at the Movies. New York and London: Routledge. Izzo, David Garrett, ed. 2015. Movies in the Age of Obama: The Era of Post-Racial and Neo-Racist Cinema. Lanham, Md. and London: Rowman & Littlefield. Jones, David M. 2015. “Revoking the Privilege of Forgetting: White Supremacy Interrogated in 12 Years a Slave.” In Movies in the Age of Obama. Ed. David Garret Izzo. Lanham, Md. and London: Rowman & Littlefield. Pp. 251 – 74. Kaplan, H. Roy. 2011. The Myth of Post-Racial America: Searching for Equality in the Age of Materialism. Lanham, Md. and London: Rowman & Littlefield. Lindsey, Rachel McBride. 2014. “Pulled into the Maze: 12 Years a Slave.” Religion & Politics (February 5): http://religionandpolitics.org/2014/02/05/pulled-into-the-maze-12-years-a-slave/; accessed April 10, 2015. Lister, Rachel. 2010. Alice Walker The Color Purple: A Readers’ Guide to Essential Criticism. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Logan, Enid. 2014. “We Don’t Have to Listen to Al Sharpton Anymore: Obama’s Election and Triumphalist Media Narratives of Post-Racial America.” In Getting Real About Race: Hoodies, Mascots, Model Minorities, and Other Conversations. Ed. Stephanie M. McClure and Cherise A. Harris. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. Pp. 211 – 19. McWhorter, John. 2008. “Racism in America is Over.” Forbes (December 30): http://www.forbes. com/2008/12/30/end-of-racism-oped-cx_jm_1230mcwhorter.html; accessed April 8, 2015. Northup, Solomon. 2013. Twelve Years a Slave [1853]. Edited with Introduction by Sue Eakin. Woodlands, Tex.: Eakin Films and Publishing. Powers, Ann. 2013. “‘12 Years a Slave’ is This Year’s Best Film about Music.” The Record: Music News from NPR (November 13): http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2013/11/12/244851884/ 12-years-a-slave-is-this-years-best-film-about-music; accessed April 10, 2015. Raboteau, Albert J. 1994. “African-Americans, Exodus, and the American Israel.” In African-American Christianity: Essays in History. Ed. Paul E. Johnson. Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press. Reid, Mark A. 1993. Redefining Black Film. Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press. Rothman, Lily. 2014. “Controversial Italian 12 Years a Slave Poster Stirs Debate Over Movies and Race.” Time (January 1): http://entertainment.time.com/2013/12/27/controversial-italian-12years-a-slave-poster-stirs-debate-over-movies-and-race/; accessed April 8, 2015. Sim, Gerald. 2014. The Subject of Film and Race: Retheorizing Politics, Ideology, and Cinema. New York and London: Bloomsbury. Smith, Valerie, ed. 1997. Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Weisenfeld, Judith. 2007. Hollywood Be Thy Name: African American Religion in American Film, 1929 – 1949. Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press. Willis, Sharon. 2002. High Contrast: Race and Gender in Contemporary Hollywood Film [1997]. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Wimbush, Vincent. 1991. “The Bible and African Americans: An Outline of an Interpretive History.” In Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation. Ed. Cain Hope Felder. Minneapolis: Fortress. Pp. 81 – 97.

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Films Cited The Birth of a Nation (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1915, David W. Griffith Corporation, US). Black Samson (dir. Charles Bail, 1974, Omni Pictures, US). The Butler (dir. Lee Daniels, 2013, Follow Through Productions, US). Django Unchained (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2012, The Weinstein Company, US). Gone With the Wind (dir. Victor Fleming, 1939, Selznick International Pictures, US). The Green Pastures (dir. Marc Connelly and William Keighley, 1936, Warner Brothers, US). Hallelujah (dir. King Vidor, 1929, MGM, US). Jezebel (dir. William Wyler, 1938, Warner Brothers, US). O Brother, Where Art Thou? (dir. The Coen Brothers, 2000, Touchstone Pictures, UK/FR/US). Roots (dir. Marvin J. Chomsky, et al., 1977, David L. Wolper Productions, US).

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54 The Temptation of Noah: The Debate about Patriarchal Violence in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah

Imagine being trapped with a genocidal killer who thinks he is righteous and wants to kill your children or grandchildren, who makes escape impossible by firebombing your route, and who impassively responds to any rational or emotional plea with hard righteousness. Or, see Darren Aronofsky’s 2014 film Noah. As film critic A. O. Scott describes it, “Once the waters have covered the earth and the ark is afloat, a clammy fear sets in, for both the audience and the members of Noah’s family: We’re stuck on a boat full of snakes, rats and insects, and Dad’s gone crazy” (Scott 2014). Aronofsky and screenwriter Ari Handel have turned the Noah story into a text of terror and maybe with good reason; allowing, indeed willing, all of humanity to drown is no small moral matter. Is Noah’s domestic abuse related to his decision to allow humanity to perish? Is it connected to his patriarchal control over his family? Indeed, what view of gender relations, social organization, and political action does the depiction of Noah present and where does the film stand on it? In the veritable symphony of critical voices that played to the opening of the film, many commentators asked if it was truly biblical; but few asked if it was truly patriarchal. Perhaps this is because viewers assumed the patriarchal view it presents to be in keeping with ancient norms or, worse, unremarkable according to present standards. Or perhaps there seems to be little question about it. Noah (Russell Crowe) is the decider, he tells his family what to do and how to do it. He is the one who communes with the Creator; he leads his family accordingly. He does not consult. His children and wife, Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), may question him and try to present a counterbalance to his violence, but ultimately Noah makes all decisions on his own. Does the film make any judgment about patriarchy? Certainly it suggests that Noah becomes temporarily unhinged and mistaken about his goals in a spiral into abuse, but whether it presents a critique of patriarchy is another matter. How we judge this question has everything to do with how we think the film judges Noah for watching humanity drown. This query intersects with commentary about the film’s midrashic relation to the biblical story. While the pre-release chatter focused around the film’s departures from the Bible, the post-release discussion – aided by the filmmakers’ own accounts – came to understand that the film was not aiming for strict biblical fidelity. Once Noah hit the silver screen, it became clear – most obviously by the inclusion of the Watchers – that the film drew on extra-biblical accounts of the flood. The filmmakers confirmed that they were reading the Jewish midrashic tradition that elabo Many thanks to Eduardo Gonzalez for his fabulous research assistance on this paper.

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rates the biblical text, retelling it in various ways to make sense of its details. As they said in one interview, “We read a lot. We read Enoch, we read the Jubilees, we read a lot of midrash, we read a lot of different legends, and in midrashic tradition there are tons of competing stories and legends and ideas circulating.”² Importantly in the midrashic tradition, the rabbis comment on Noah’s willingness to see the world drown; Noah’s righteousness is a question that the rabbis debate. While the biblical text itself presents Noah uncritically, later Jewish interpreters have struggled with the implications of the flood story, both for the character of Noah and for the view of God it presents. In this essay, I will suggest that the film (cleverly) allows viewers to come away with competing evaluations of Noah. Thus, while the ending of the film seems especially to present a positive view of patriarchy that would accord relatively well with the ethos of the book of Genesis, the midrashic debate over Noah’s righteousness opens the film to another reading. The composition of the film, and especially its recurring references to the tempter snake in the Garden of Eden can be used to suggest that perhaps Noah’s response to his vision is misguided from the start. What the film presents then is a midrashic debate that encompasses and questions all that is tied up with patriarchy: masculinity, femininity, the treatment of women, as well as gender, modes of governance, and political action. I argue that in many ways, the film puts Noah’s entire vision into question along with the seemingly normative patriarchy of the film’s final scenes.

A Text of Terror On one level, the film seems to buy into filmic conventions and plotlines that support patriarchy. Like many films, Noah’s plot is galvanized by violence to women. To start, the wickedness of the line of Cain – ruled by Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone) – is signified by their practice of capturing girls and trading them for meat. When Noah goes into their city to find wives for his sons Ham (Logan Lerman) and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll), he stands transfixed and shocked watching it all. The violent exploitation of women is a plot device that sends Noah striding back to the ark without wives for his sons, convinced of the total wickedness of humanity and of God’s call to annihilate humankind. Pursuing this goal, he ends up being more cruel to women. Because he wants to ensure the destruction of the human line, and because he is in a hurry to get Ham back to the ark, he leaves Ham’s potential wife, Na’el, to be trampled by the hoards rushing the ark. Then, at the film’s climax, in a murderous pursuit of “justice” for creation, Noah tries to kill his twin granddaughters, the babies of his adopted daughter Ila (Emma Watson) and his son Shem (Douglas Booth). Film critic Richard Corliss calls these scenes the “movie’s two most intimate and shocking sequences,” thus indicating the centrality of abuse in the film (Corliss 2014). In between these two  Chattaway (a); see also Falsani ().

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moments, there is rage and threat. Noah announces his intention to kill any girl baby, upsetting his family. When Ila and Shem try to escape, he blasts their raft with “zohar” – the fictional light and heat-producing mineral – sending it up in flames. Once the babies are born, he responds with cold cruelty to Naameh’s ardent pleas. Even if, at the last second in a flash of love and mercy, he repents and does not kill the babies, violence to women undeniably initiates plot and character development throughout the film: it provokes Noah’s increased obsession, it intensifies the Ham/Noah conflict, and ultimately pushes Noah toward mercy. If patriarchy is the imbalance of power that facilitates these traumatic events, the film’s denouement and ending suggest that patriarchy can be fixed. Patriarchy seems to weather the rough waters and come out the better for it, so to speak. Here’s how that story goes: After the flood abates, Noah is chagrinned over his behavior on the ark. He isolates himself, drinking in his cave, until Ila seeks him out to give him a pep talk. She applauds his choices – both to permit the destruction of the world and to save his family. She implores him to come back to them. “Be a father,” she says, “Be a grandfather. Help us to do better this time. Help us start again.” This impassioned speech, which plays over maternal images of animals and their young, implies that patriarchy would do well to take on the nurturing role of motherhood. As a penultimate closing homily, it would not seem to significantly disrupt patriarchy, only to adjust it slightly. Noah follows Ila’s advice and takes the lead once more, modeling a kinder, gentler patriarchy. When he returns, his abuse is forgotten. He is not held accountable; his only amends appear to be his hours drinking. He is easily reconciled with Naameh. Shem and Japheth seem to bear no grudge. Only Ham rebels; understanding the dangers of his unresolved anger, he decides to leave. In the closing scene, Noah passes on the Creator’s blessing to his sons and to his “grandchildren” (their gender goes unnamed in the blessing). He says, “the Creator made Adam in his image and placed the world in his care. That birthright is passed down to us, to my father and to me, and to my sons: Shem, Japheth, and Ham. That birthright is now passed to you, our grandchildren. This will be your work and your responsibility. So I say to you. Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.” The women – Eve, Naameh and Ila – are notably omitted by these words.³ But mercy allows for the feminine, so his granddaughters are included.⁴ The question is whether the film straightforwardly celebrates this new ideal patriarchy, or whether it contains elements that put this ending into question. The use of violence toward women as a plot device certainly would not belie patriarchy. In order to pursue this query a little further, I turn to the film’s treatment of gender, governance, and political action, to see how patriarchy fares there. A fairly solid case could be made that the film supports patriarchy, perhaps of the Promise Keeper’s va-

 The term “man” is androcentrically used throughout the film to refer to humanity.  For the gendering of mercy and justice in the film, see Brintnall ().

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riety – a patriarchy that values women and works for a little more inclusivity, but imagines a small family unit centered around male leadership as the best model for social organization.

Gender The film’s multiple commentaries about gender also seem to make an argument for adjusted patriarchy. While some feminist scholars commenting on the film have suggested that it at least offers strong women in place of the biblical text’s silence about them,⁵ in my view, the characterization of the women did little to upset normative gender roles. To be sure, there is a clear message that women should be valued, but the film’s female gendering is by no means anti-patriarchal. Naameh is the chief model for femininity. She is clearly secondary to Noah and a support for him, so much so that although named in the casting list according to rabbinic tradition, she is not called by name in the film. She listens, supports, affirms, challenges, and forgives her husband. She cares for and defends her children. True, she argues with Noah; she is able to articulate a “different interpretation of the potential of human love, and refuses to abdicate that interpretation” (Cottrill 2014). But she cannot change his mind. In short, Naameh models a nurturing, submissive, slightly feisty, but ultimately ineffective subjectivity. Ila is more conformist. She tells Noah that Shem needs a real woman, one who can give him children. Even Noah rejects this claim, at least at first. Ila, he says is a gift, regardless of whether she can bear children. At the end of the day, however, the value of women is placed on childbirth. Noah’s blessing to his granddaughters includes the imperative to care for the earth by reproducing. Cottrill asks, “Of all the words of blessing we might offer to a new generation that is saved by the birth of female babies, why must it be about procreation?” (Cotrill 2014). Likewise, at the film’s climax, the scenes are intercut between Noah struggling with Tubal-Cain and Naameh assisting Ila’s childbirth, ending with birth. This editing would seem to support the altered patriarchy of the film’s ending by suggesting that women’s childbirth and nurturing are an important corrective to men’s violence. As queer theorist Kent Brintnall argues, the focus on children in the film is characteristic of heteronormativity (Brintnall 2014). Heteropatriarchy is firmly in place, but made slightly more inclusive. There is a more explicit discourse on masculinity in the film that makes the case that masculinity left alone can go badly awry, femininity must be included. Noah’s view of manhood is partially responsible for his overzealous pursuit of justice and ought to be corrected through finding mercy. As Brintnall points out, the discourse about justice and mercy is strongly gendered in the film: “the bodies that speak those rousing and impassioned calls for mercy and compassion are female bodies,  Cottrill (), Murphy ().

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specifically maternal bodies. Mothers see the good and long to protect; fathers see failings and wield punishing blows” (Brintnall 2014). The need for a corrective to this view of masculinity and justice becomes evident through the male characters’ various statements about what it means to be a man. When Noah tells Ham he will not have a wife, Ham asks, “How am I supposed to be a man?” Noah responds with angry dominance, pushing Ham to the ground, “I am asking you to be a man and do what needs to be done!” Throughout the film, Noah judges Ham as being too much in thrall to his desires, for the beauty of a flower as a child and for sex as an adult. In contrast, Noah’s version of manhood – “Doing what needs to be done” – accords well with his own purpose and with his sense of justice; it might include violence; it might include willful non-intervention. For Noah, “being a man” might require attacking his daughter’s babies; it might mean allowing the world to drown. Tubal-Cain’s view of manhood is more atheistic, but otherwise not so different from Noah’s, although the film frames it more negatively. Stowed away on the ark, Tubal-Cain uses the discourse of manhood to persuade Ham to lead Noah into a trap and to use a weapon if needed. He says, “A man isn’t ruled by the heavens, a man is ruled by his will. So I ask you. Are you a man? Good, because if you’re a man, you can kill.” If, as reviewer Matt Zoller Seitz says, Tubal-Cain “puts the patriarch in ‘patriarchal’,” Noah’s actions also reflect this view of manhood; so much so that Seitz calls the events unfolding in the ark, “a haunted-house psychodrama, with two bad daddies terrorizing women and children in the bowels of a waterborne Hotel Overlook” (Seitz 2014). The similarity between Noah’s righteous obsession and TubalCain’s assertion of dominance provides an implicit critique of Noah’s masculinity, especially as it plays out and is amplified in the climactic moments of the film. There is a sense that his masculine pursuit of justice is wrong headed and, as Ila persuades him in the aftermath, needs a softer more nurturing style.

Governance and Family Values Nonetheless, patriarchy does seem to be held up as a political good in the film, even if finessing of gender roles is required. In particular, the film’s messaging about the environment is embedded in a familiar political discourse that also favors Noah and his mode of social organization. The concern with caring for the earth seems to set Noah’s patriarchally organized family as the ideal political unit. Noah’s family, the only remaining people of the line of Seth, are also the only people who worship the Creator and care for creation. Their unit revolves around Noah, who follows what he believes is the will of the Creator. They take only what they need from the land; they do not eat meat; they do not exploit natural resources.

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In contrast to the line of Seth, the unfaithful line of Cain models the wrong kind of governance and social organization.⁶ This line culminates in Tubal-Cain, who considers himself King of the land, and who believes that the Creator has abandoned humanity. He and his people build cities, hunt animals for food, and mine for the precious light-producing mineral zohar.⁷ They devastate the earth, so that there is not enough food or resources. They do so because Tubal-Cain believes that humans have a God-given superiority over other forms of life. As he tells Ham, “That is the greatness of men. When the Creator finished making [the earth and the animals…] he wasn’t satisfied, he needed something greater, something to take dominion over it, something to subdue it.” Tubal-Cain spits this philosophy at Noah’s father in their confrontation, “Damned if I don’t do everything it takes to survive; damned if I don’t take what I want.” In this he sounds very much like anti-environmentalist dominionist Christians who argue for the God-given right to exploit the earth (see Hendricks 2005). There is an implied negative evaluation here of what Michel Foucault has called the “subject of interest,” that is of political subjectivity motivated by individual economic interest, rather than political collectivity (Foucault 2008, 267– 89).⁸ The opposing environmental message of the filmmakers comes through strongly: willful exploitation of the earth is an evil; people must be stewards of it.⁹ A familiar U.S. political narrative emerges in the contrast between Noah and Tubal-Cain, in which Noah’s style of leadership, political organization and action is highlighted. When Ham first meets Tubal-Cain, he responds to the latter’s demand for allegiance by saying, “My father says there can be no king in the Creator’s garden.” Noah’s small patriarchal unit is pitted against kingship. This encounter implies that top-down governance is corrupting and associated with greed (the contemporary analog might be big business). In a U.S. context, antimonarchical sentiments tend to point against tyranny and toward democracy as an ideal. Noah is subtly aligned with democracy, even if he rules his very small family with a tight fist. There is a sense here that the Bible supports democracy rather than monarchy – following the trend in interpretation that Yvonne Sherwood has called the post-Enlightenment “Liberal Bible” (Sherwood 2008). While the environmental message of the film and the argument against oppressive monarchy and big business would suggest a progressive politics, the focus on

 The film’s depiction of the evil line of Cain may draw loosely on the tradition voiced in Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer  –  that Cain was the son of Eve and Sammael (a fallen angel) who came to Eve riding on the serpent; Seth was the true son of Adam and the father of the righteous.  The idea for this mineral clearly comes from rabbinic explanations of God’s command that Noah make tzohar for the ark (Gen. :). The term tzohar occurs only this once in the Tanakh, so exact meanings are hard to discern; modern interpreters have usually translated it as roof or window. The rabbis, however, considered that it might refer to a precious stone that would light the ark (Gen. Rab. .; Talmud Bavli Sanh b; Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer ).  For more on the subject of interest in relation to film, see Runions (a,  – ).  See, for example, Falsani (); Mooney ().

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the family as the primary political unit makes it somewhat difficult to pin down the film’s political leanings. The view of political subjectivity oriented toward small-scale collectivity, patriarchal political organization, and earth-friendly political values does not quite line up with anything well recognized on the U.S. landscape.¹⁰ The patriarchal family is a model of best governance frequently proposed by many dominionist conservatives (see Runions 2007, 59 – 60). Yet inverse to the usual schema, Noah’s patriarchal unit rejects Tubal-Cain’s dominionist attitude. Likewise, the accusation of a “take what I want” model of political subjectivity, while often leveled by progressives at the wealthy, is also one leveled by conservatives at liberals wanting “entitlements.” The negative portrayal of Tubal-Cain’s excess could be a nod to those who think democracy is corrupting, tyrannical, and sick.¹¹ This political ambivalence might give the film broader appeal; it also might have the effect of imagining a place for “progressive patriarchy.”

Political Action How viewers judge the film’s acceptance of patriarchy as a political form might depend on how they judge Noah as a political actor. Noah begins as someone concerned with justice and becomes increasingly obsessed with it throughout the film. The thematic of justice is presented early on in the film, when Noah tries to protect a wounded animal by fighting and killing its hunters. One of them, cowering before him, asks, “What do you want?” to which he replies, “Justice.” Noah seeks justice for the earth, as should viewers, the film implies. Notably, the call and response, “What do you want? Justice!” is also one frequently heard at political demonstrations. One wonders if there is something being worked out here about the nature of political action. Noah pursues his idea of justice with such a singular sense of righteousness that he becomes genocidal to humanity and murderous to his own family. Film critic Jonathan Romney notes the issue of political action when he calls Noah “a more complex, troubled and troubling figure than the simple agent of heroic deliverance we might expect: an extremist willing to destroy his own family and indeed species for the future of the planet” (Romney 2014, 80). Does the film caution against extremism in the name of justice and righteousness? Against the willingness to destroy all or many of those associated with a problem? One could imagine such a judgment applying to more than one context, including “just” wars, radical environmentalism, and religious conflict. In other words, in his pursuit of justice, is Noah a hero, an antihero, or worse? Does the negative assessment of his obsession extend to his decision to allow everyone (other than his family) to perish in the flood? Film critics disagree on this point.

 Mooney () cites a study that suggests that those who advocate patriarchy tend not to be the same as those who advocate creation care. See also Smith and Leiserowitz ().  See, for example, Runions (a,  –  and b).

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Peter Travers reflects, “It’s not just that Noah denies shelter for his fellow humans. In the name of God, he engages in the slaughter of enemies and innocents. Is he obeying orders or playing God?” (Travers 2014). On the other hand, Justin Chang’s glowing review suggests that viewers are brought “into sympathetic identification with a deeply flawed protagonist; and […forced] to grapple with the very idea of faith and exactly what it’s good for” (Chang 2014). There must be mercy, the film insists. Noah must be moved by love. Love, at least, for his own family – and herein lies the rub. As Brintnall points out, “The family, the enclosed unit of kinship and filiation, may generate care and concern, but, as the film shows us, it is a decidedly limited form of empathy” (Brintnall 2014). Is murderous isolationism being advocated here, or is there a chance that Noah’s whole project is in question? How we judge this question may be dependent on how we judge the film’s ending. If the happy ending of the film smiles upon the patriarchy it presents, it also forgives Noah for killing all of humanity and for being an erstwhile abuser; it suggests that men should be decisive killers and women childbearers; it sides with a pursuit of justice limited only by mercy to one’s own. But if there is something else within the film to counter this narrative, we might arrive at another reading. At this point I turn to the film’s precursor texts to see how they judge Noah’s actions.

A Rabbinic Critique There is a well known questioning of Noah’s righteousness in the Jewish rabbinic tradition. As Aronofsky and Handel indicate in a number of places, they are aware of the rabbinic lack of enthusiasm for Noah. For their part, they are trying to understand righteousness as the right balance between justice and mercy.¹² What do the rabbinic texts say about Noah’s righteousness? As Aryeh Amihay points out, the ancient and medieval rabbis were not agreed on Noah’s righteousness, some argued he was completely righteous, while others found him flawed.¹³ For instance, in the Babylonian Talmud, Rabbi Johanan says that Noah was only righteous in comparison with his own generation, not another (Talmud Bavli San 108a). In Genesis Rabbah, Rabbi Judah makes a similar comparison, saying of Noah, “in the street of the totally blind, the one-eyed man is called clear-sighted, and the infant is called a scholar” (Gen. Rab. 30.9). Others deny Noah’s righteousness altogether and aver that he was only saved because he received grace. Rabbi Hanina says, “Noah possessed less than an ounce [of merit]. If so why was he delivered?” He goes on to agree with Rabbi Abba b. Kahana that “Noah was left only because he found grace; hence, ‘But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord’” (Gen. 6:8;

 See, for example, Bailey (); Chattaway (a, b).  Amihay (,  – ). See also Reed ().

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Gen. Rab. 29.1). This latter interpretation seems to be represented to some degree in the film, with Noah’s turn to mercy. One reason early interpreters questioned Noah’s righteousness was his drunkenness after the flood. Amihay suggests that the rabbis tried to come to terms with “the stark contrast between the hero of the flood, the one named righteous in the beginning of the narrative, and the drunken viticulturist at its conclusion” (Amihay 2010, 198). The filmmakers approach this contrast by showing what caused Noah to become so dissolute: he allows everyone to drown, he swings into a righteous rage, and he abuses his family. The problem is less his drunkenness than the cause of it. A more significant reason to question Noah’s righteousness is that he does not seem to make an effort to save other people. As Naomi Koltun-Fromm points out, some of the rabbis are wary of Noah, because he did not plead with God to save human life (Koltun-Fromm 1997, 63). Where other prophets plead for the people whom God has condemned – as Abraham did for Sodom and Gomorrah or Moses did for the people of Israel – the rabbis note that Noah only saves himself (Gen. Rab. 30.9, 10). In Deuteronomy Rabbah, Moses’ superiority as a prophet is explained in a conversation between Noah and Moses. Noah says to Moses, “I am greater than you because I was delivered from the generation of the Flood.” Moses replies, “I am far superior to you; you saved yourself, but you had not strength to deliver your generation; but I saved both myself and my generation when they were condemned to destruction at the time of the Golden Calf” (Deut. Rab. 11.3). Elie Wiesel turns to this debate about Noah in the midrashic sources in his reflections on the Holocaust. He writes, “The Parsha of Noah —the weekly section which we read on Shabbat—ends with Abraham arriving on stage: his story is also part of our memory. Noah makes you sad? Abraham will make you proud. Noah is quiet, Abraham is not. Noah knows nothing of Jewishness, Abraham is Judaism. What do they have in common? Both experienced collective tragedy” (Wiesel 1984, 20). Tragedy is not something that should be accepted. Wiesel’s words about Noah – shaped by his own experience in the mass destruction of the Holocaust – are harsh, making Noah sound much like the way the film portrays Tubal-Cain: “A man without human passion, without warmth, generosity, imagination, a man without the slightest sense of involvement with society, let alone history, one who thinks only of himself, of his own pleasure and security” (Wiesel 1984, 13). This question about Noah’s righteousness was at issue both for the filmmakers and for viewers. In an interview, Aronofsky and Handel mention and reference the comparison between Noah and Abraham (Chattaway 2014a). Likewise, Noah’s fault in not pleading for humanity is taken up by the famous orthodox Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in his commentary on the film, [Noah] failed in the greatest mission of all. He failed to protect human life. And failed to fight with God when he wanted to take human life. He refuses to wrestle with God. Noah is a fundamentalist. He’s a religious extremist. God says “everyone will die” and Noah says nothing. But this is not what God wants. God wants people with moxie! God wants people with spiritual au-

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dacity! He does not want the obedient man of belief. He wants the defiant man of faith. (Hoffman 2014)

Judaism, Boteach says, teaches that people must “wrestle with God.” Unlike Christianity and Islam, he says, Jewish people are not required simply to submit to God.¹⁴ Likewise, in his assessment of the film, Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel, finds Noah to be lacking in compassion. He refers to a famous passage from the Zohar, one that is also cited by Wiesel. In it, God rebukes Noah for not having pled further to save people: When Noah came out of the ark, he opened his eyes and saw the whole world completely destroyed. He began crying for the world and said: “Master of the Universe! You are called Compassionate, but You have shown compassion for Your Creation?” The Holy Blessed One be He replied, “Foolish shepherd! . . . I lingered with you and spoke to you at length so that you would ask for mercy for the world! But, as soon as you heard that you would be safe in the ark, the evil of the world did not touch your heart. You built the ark and saved yourself. Now that the world has been destroyed, you dare open your mouth to utter questions and pleas?” (Samuel 2014)¹⁵

The Zohar minces no words in condemning Noah’s choice to save only himself. Elsewhere in the Zohar, we find Noah unfavorably compared with Abraham and Moses, for not pleading with God for those condemned. For instance, Rabbi Yehudah says, Come and see: Of Noah it is written, “God said to Noah, ‘End of all flesh has come before Me…’” and he was silent, saying nothing, not pleading for mercy. But Abraham, as soon as the blessed Holy One said to him, “‘How great is the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah! I will go down and see’” (Gen. 18:20 – 21), immediately, “Abraham drew near and said, ‘Will You really sweep away the innocent along with the guilty.’” (Zohar Parashat Va-Yera 1.106a; see also Parashat Noah 1.67b)

The rabbinic conversation continues in this passage to suggest that while “Noah did nothing at all,” Abraham was still not perfect because he only argued for compassion on the basis of innocence. Moses, on the other hand pleaded for the unconditional compassion that is forgiveness and says, “‘If not, please obliterate me from the book that you have written’ (Exod. 32:32).” These interpreters take issue not only with Noah’s actions but also, implicitly, with God and the violence of the flood. As Wiesel puts it, whether or not Noah is righteous doesn’t really matter; it is God who causes the flood; Noah tragically has to survive it and see the aftermath. And why does God cause the flood; why kill every-

 For a blog post collecting this and other Jewish responses to the film, see Chattaway (c). The notion that Noah is an un-Jewish figure pushes back against the supersessionism present in some of the reviews. See, e. g. Chang (); Henderson ().  For this translation of Zohar Hadash a see Matt (, ).

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one collectively, rather than punish those responsible? This question is one that remains unanswered (Wiesel 1984, 4– 5, 19). Moreover, the contention that Noah should have argued with God disputes the notion of God’s will as a fixed purpose, as something unchanging to which humans can only adhere. It advocates for inclusion and salvation, criticizing Noah’s concern for his own family only. It subtly condemns the ideal of the atomistic family, ruled, protected, and fortified by the harsh patriarch against the masses. The question of Noah’s righteousness is clearly central to the film and to commentary on it; it is also important to my consideration of where the film stands on patriarchy. Aronofsky and Handel assure one interviewer that they think Noah is righteous, both because he understands God’s wrath and because he finally finds mercy and the worth of humankind (Chattaway 2014b). If we take this suggestion as final, then we would also assume that the film accepts an isolationist, family oriented patriarchy as a good. But if we read the film’s subtext about temptation, violence, and abuse, as it emerges in a closer look at the filmic composition, we might arrive at an interpretation where Noah’s whole project, along with the form of social organization it produces for the new world after the flood, appears to be the problematic result of succumbing to temptation.

The Temptation of Noah If the rabbis are hesitant to praise Noah, is there anything in the film – beyond Noah’s belligerence and violence once he decides all of humanity should die – that might contradict the filmmakers’ avowal of his righteousness? I suggest that the film’s repeated reference to temptation and choice, as it is structured into the narrative, offer the view that perhaps Noah’s response to the flood is a wrong response to temptation. The film opens with Genesis 3, marking temptation and choice as an important thematic. In place of establishing shots, the film gives a sequence of images that repeat throughout the film: a snake, a fruit, and a club raised in violence. In these opening moments, intertitles also appear, reading, “In the beginning there was nothing… Temptation led to sin….” As becomes clear in a later narration, the images represent temptation, wrong choice, and resulting violence. Attention to this recapitulated motif as it occurs throughout the film – a total of five times – offers another narrative about Noah’s righteousness.

Fig. 110: Thematic sequence of images in Noah (2014)

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The sequence occurs prior to Noah’s two visions. The first time Noah sees the impending flood, he is asleep in his tent. The snake, the fruit, and the raised club flash, rousing him into a kind of waking dream about drowning in a flood. His second vision takes place in the cave of his grandfather, Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins). Assisted by a potion from Methuselah, the same images flash just before he enters the world of his vision. With these sequences, the viewer is initially given to understand that the flood is an outcome of the violence caused by the original humans’ mistaken response to temptation. The sequence appears two more times, which are significant and can be retrospectively read back onto these earlier occurrences. The last time it occurs, it is embedded in a longer version of the creation story, which Noah tells his family on the ark to justify his actions. He tells the story just after Ila and Shem have asked whether they might not rescue some of the screaming people who are drowning. To Shem’s protestation that there is room, Noah says, “There is no room for them.” Noah tells the story of creation to explain why the world must be destroyed. His words are accompanied by a CGI visual that shows the evolution of creation and its culmination with humans. The snake appears, in Noah’s telling, at the moment when the Creator gives humans a choice. Humans must either “follow the temptation of darkness” – the snake bares its fangs, opening its mouth wide so that a darker version of itself slides out, leaving its luminescent skin behind – or “hold on to the blessing of light” – the humans bend to pick up the glowing snake shed. But instead, “they ate from the forbidden fruit” – the fruit pulses – so that “sin has walked within us…brother against brother, nation against nation, man against creation. […] Everything that was beautiful, everything that was good, we shattered” – a long sequence of violence. When Noah finishes recounting this story, he tells his family his decision that humans will end with them. Humans, he tells them, failed to make the right choice. The implication is that they failed to “hold on to the blessing of light” and that he understands his choice to be the better one. In this longer retelling of Genesis 1– 3, the glowing snakeskin that is shed by the corrupted evil snake connects with another detail in the film that has puzzled some viewers. At the beginning of the film we see Noah’s father, Lamech, wrapping his arm with a glowing snakeskin, in order to pass a blessing on to Noah. When the young Tubal-Cain kills Lamech, he steals the relic; he still wears it when Noah meets him many years later. Jewish critic and scholar Erica Martin raises an important question about this imagery (Martin 2014): Why the snakeskin tefillin? What business do the filmmakers have in combining a commandment (Deut. 6:5 – 8, 11:18 – 20) with a prohibited unclean animal (Lev. 11:42)? Handel explains in an interview that there is a midrashic tradition that explains this choice: When Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden, it says God gave them a garment of skin – sort of a parting gift from God to mankind as we leave Eden and go out into the world. So we

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wondered what that was – and as we looked at commentaries about it, one of the common ones was that it was the skin of the snake. We wondered why that would be, and it occurred to us that God made the snake. The snake was good, at first. But then, the Tempter arose through it. In our version, we have the snake shed that skin, and the shed skin is the shell of original goodness that the snake left behind when it became the Tempter. It’s a symbol of the Eden that we left behind. It’s a garment to clothe you spiritually. (Huckabee 2014)¹⁶

This narrative is made abundantly clear in the images that accompany Noah’s retelling of the creation story to his family. The glowing snakeskin references a time before the first sin, a time when humans could still choose differently. In contrast, the evil snake appears in the shortest, penultimate version of the image sequence; we see it snarl and hiss in a pivotal moment in the film, when Noah makes a crucial choice. When Noah goes down to visit the city of Tubal-Cain he is outraged, but he is also sees himself as implicated. As he watches an exchange of women for meat, he sees the trader who furtively eats the obtained meat look up at him. In that moment Noah sees his own face morphing into that of the serpent. His own responsibility and proclivity scare him. He sees himself partaking in the literal consumption of animal flesh, in the exchange of women, and in the metaphoric consumption of their flesh. In short, he sees the dangers of patriarchy. The image of the fruit flashes. Shaken Noah returns to the ark, vowing to end all of humanity. His choice to annihilate humanity is based on shame over his own desire.

Fig. 111: Noah’s face morphs into that of the serpent in Noah (2014)

This truncated instance of the repeated sequence suggests that the violence that normally follows bad human choice (the eating of the fruit) is this time Noah’s own violence. Notably the sequence is different here: the snake and the fruit are preceded and followed by shots of Noah’s face (his doppelganger’s and his own) in a kind of inclusio. He then lifts his feet out of the already sodden earth and stands in judgment on the city. In other words, before the image of the raised fist, we see Noah making a judgment. But is it a good one? It is at this point, when he returns and

 Film critics have helpfully pointed to specific midrashic sources. Peter Chattaway (d) points to the midrashic tradition that suggested that Adam and Eve clothed themselves in the sloughed off snakeskin of the serpent (see TPsJ .; PRE ; MidTeh .). Further, Jeff Bradshaw () points out the tradition that Adam’s first garment—of variously ascribed material – was handed down to Noah (see AgBer ; Num. Rab. .; Tan .; PRE ). For more on interpretations of the clothing worn by Adam and Eve, see Lambden ().

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Ham eagerly questions him about a wife, that Noah pushes him to the ground, telling him how to be a man. When Naameh gently follows up with Noah, he says to her, “The wickedness is not just in them, it’s in all of us. I saw it.” She replies “Noah, there is goodness in us, look at our boys” (Ila is not mentioned). He replies by naming their faults. He projects the recognition of his own capacity for evil onto all of humanity. It causes him to begin dealing abusively with his family. It also blinds him to what Martin calls a Jewish anthropology that understands God to have created both goodness and evil in humans. Noah ignores the view, voiced by Naameh (and earlier by Methuselah), that says that humans have to “wrestle with the polarized inclinations, to favor the good and keep the bad in balance” (Martin 2014). When taken together, these appearances of the snake/fruit sequence raise some doubts in the viewer about Noah’s motivations at the start of his building project as well. Why are Noah’s visions preceded by this recapitulating theme? Are the visions a temptation? Is his pursuit of justice misguided? It would seem that his vision presents him with a choice, of which he takes the worst option based on his own selfloathing. His rejection and judgment of humanity may itself be a failure, allowing egregious violence by drowning.

Conclusion If we read the film’s largely visual subtext about temptation alongside the rabbinic critique of Noah’s righteousness, we arrive at a reading of the film that suggests that Noah’s response to his visions and to the flood were wrong choices, as wrong as his decision to end his own family line. He could have instead argued with God or saved others than his own family. How does this apply to the question of whether or not the film endorses patriarchy, then? On one level, as shown, Noah clearly seems to suggest that patriarchy need only admit the healing and feminine powers of reproduction and mercy. But, if we understand the whole outcome of the story – the destruction of the earth and preservation of only Noah’s family – to be a result of a wrong response to temptation and a failure to engage God and fate, then even adjusted patriarchy is found sorely wanting. We start to see difference between a closed, isolationist system of governance that tolerates and begrudgingly accepts difference (in this case the voice of women), and an open one that welcomes debate from the less powerful (e. g. of Noah to God). In many ways this might be the difference between two readings influenced respectively by a Christian insistence on Noah’s righteousness and a Jewish rejection of it (see Koltun-Fromm 1997). The film may be constructed to allow both kinds of readings, especially in the face of the initial controversy over it, and the ongoing debate over its theological

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leanings.¹⁷ If Noah – and God – go uncontested, patriarchy ends up looking good. But, if Noah’s actions are judged more critically we arrive at a negative appraisal not only of patriarchy, but also of the flood, and of righteous violence of any sort.

Works Cited Allen, Charlotte. 2014. “A ‘Noah’ for Our Secular Times.” The Wall Street Journal (April 3): http:// online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303532704579477221314766160; accessed November 4, 2014. Amihay, Aryeh. 2010. “Noah in Rabbinic Literature.” In Noah and His Book(s). Ed. Michael E. Stone, Aryeh Amihay, and Vered Hillel. Leiden: Brill. Pp. 193 – 214. Bailey, Sarah Pulliam. 2014. “Q&A: ‘Noah’ Director Darren Aronofsky on Justice vs. Mercy.” Sojourners (March 24): http://www.sojo.net/blogs/2014/03/24/qa-noah-director-darren-ar onofsky-justice-vs-mercy; accessed November 4, 2014. Bradshaw, Jeff. 2014. “A Noah Like No Other Before: A Look at the Latest Biblical Film from an LDS Perspective.” Deseret News (April 3): http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865600065/ ANoah-like-no-other-before-A-look-at-the-latest-biblical-film-from-an-LDS-perspective.html?pg= all; accessed November 4, 2014. Brintnall, Kent L. 2014. “What Noah Got Right, That ‘Noah’ Got Wrong.” Noah’s Flood. http://www. floodofnoah.com/#!noah-movie-noah-was-right/c1iz9; accessed November 4, 2014. Chang, Justin. 2014. “Why ‘Noah’ Is the Biblical Epic That Christians Deserve.” Variety (March 31): http://variety.com/2014/film/news/noah-is-the-biblical-epic-that-christians-deserve1201150333/; accessed November 4, 2014. Chattaway, Peter. 2014a. “Darren Aronofsky Talks to Christianity Today about ‘Noah.’” Christianity Today (March 25): http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/march-web-only/darren-ar onofsky-interview-noah.html?paging=off; accessed November 4, 2014. Chattaway, Peter. 2014b. “Exclusive: Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel on How They Developed the Script and Where They Really Got the Name for Emma Watson’s Character in Noah.” Patheos (March 25): http://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2014/03/exclusive-darren-aronofsky-andari-handel-on-how-they-developed-the-script-and-where-they-really-got-the-namefor-emma-wat sons-character-in-noah.html; accessed November 4, 2014. Chattaway, Peter. 2014c. “The Jewish Roots of—and Responses to—Noah.” Patheos (March 31): http://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2014/03/the-jewish-roots-of-and-responses-to-noah. html; accessed November 4, 2014. Chattaway, Peter. 2014d. “Be as Wise as Serpents, but Stay Away from Snakeskins.” Patheos (April 4): http://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2014/04/be-as-wise-as-serpents-but-stayaway-from-snakeskins.html#update; accessed November 4, 2014. Corliss, Richard. 2014. “Darren Aronofsky’s Noah Movie: Better Than the Book.” Time (March 27): http://time.com/38365/noah-movie-darren-aronofsky-russell-crowe/; accessed December 1, 2014. Cottrill, Amy C. 2014. “Focusing on the Family: Innovation and Disappointment in “Noah.’” Noah’s Flood. http://www.floodofnoah.com/#!noah-movie-focus-on-the-family/c164 f; accessed November 4, 2014.

 See Allen (); Chattaway (c); Chang (); Michaelson (); Schwartzel and Audi ().

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Falsani, Cathleen. 2014. “The Fallacy of Good v. Evil: A Q&A with ‘Noah’ Writer Ari Handel.” Sojourners (March 27): http://www.sojo.net/blogs/2014/03/27/fallacy-good-v-evil-qa-noahwriter-ari-handel; accessed November 4, 2014. Foucault, Michel. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978 – 1979. Ed. Michel Senellart. Transl. Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Henderson, Eric. 2014. “Noah.” Slant Magazine (March 27): http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/re view/noah; accessed November 4, 2014. Hendricks, Stephenie. 2005. Divine Destruction: Wise Use, Dominion Theology, and the Making of American Environmental Policy. Hoboken, N.J.: Melville House. Hoffman, Jordan. 2014. “Hollywood ‘Noah’ is Kosher, Says Celebrity Rabbi.” The Times of Israel (March 27): http://www.timesofisrael.com/hollywood-noah-is-kosher-says-celebrity-rabbi/#ixz z3AltSF0Jj; accessed November 4, 2014. Huckabee, Tyler. 2014. “Noah’s Co-Writer Explains the Film’s Controversial Theology.” Relevant (April 4): http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/noah%E2%80%99 s-co-writer-explain sfilm%E2%80%99 s-controversial-theology; accessed November 4, 2014. Koltun-Fromm, Naomi. 1997. “Aphrahat and the Rabbis on Noah’s Righteousness in the Light of Jewish-Christian Polemic.” In The Book of Genesis in Jewish and Oriental Christian Interpretation. Ed. Judith Frishman and Lucas Van Rompay. Leuven: Peeters. Pp. 57 – 71. Lambden, Stephen N. 1992. “From Fig Leaves to Fingernails: Some Notes on the Garments of Adam and Eve in the Hebrew Bible and Select Early Postbiblical Jewish Writings.” In A Walk in the Garden: Biblical, Iconographical, and Literary Images of Eden. Ed. Deborah F. Sawyer and Paul Morris. Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Press. Pp. 74 – 90. Martin, Erica L. 2014. “Darren Aronofsky’s ‘Noah’ and Jewish Tradition.” Noah’s Flood. http://www. floodofnoah.com/#!noah-movie-jewish-tradition/c1yem; accessed November 4, 2014. Matt, Daniel Chanan. 1983. Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press. Michaelson, Jay. 2014. “Why Evangelical Christians are Right to Be Angry About ‘Noah.’” The Jewish Daily Forward (April 4): http://forward.com/articles/195386/why-evangelical-christiansareright-to-be-angry-a/; accessed November 4, 2014. Mooney, Chris. 2014. “Watch Live: Darren Aronofsky Discusses ‘Noah’ and Climate Change.” Mother Jones (April 23): http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/04/noah-darren-ar onofsky-faith-environment-dominion; accessed November 4, 2014. Murphy, Kelly J. 2014. “The Wives.” Noah’s Flood. http://www.floodofnoah.com/#!noah-movie-thewives/c14lj; accessed November 4, 2014. Reed, Annette Yoshiko. 2014. “Who Gets to Decide if ‘Noah’ is Biblical.” Religion Dispatches (April 1): http://religiondispatches.org/who-gets-to-decide-if-noah-is-biblical/; accessed November 4, 2014. Romney, Jonathan. 2014. “Noah.” Sight & Sound 24.6: 79 – 80. Runions, Erin. 2007. “Theologico-Political Resonance: Carl Schmitt between the Neocons and the Theonomists.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 18.3 (Fall): 43 – 80. —. 2014a. The Babylon Complex: Theopolitical Fantasies of War, Sex, and Sovereignty. Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press. —. 2014b. “Babel and the Fear of Same-Sex Marriage: Mapping Conservative Constellations.” Journal of Biblical Reception 1.1: 47 – 65. Samuel, Michael Leo. 2014. “‘Noah’ Departs in Many Ways from Biblical Narrative.” San Diego Jewish World (April 4): http://www.sdjewishworld.com/2014/04/04/noah-departs-many-waysbiblical-narrative/; accessed November 4, 2014. Schwartzel, Erich and Tamara Audi. 2014. “Religious Groups Split on ‘Noah’ Film; Hollywood’s First Big Bible Movie in Nearly 50 Years Draws Mixed Reaction.” Wall Street Journal (March 28): http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/ SB10001424052702304026304579453410019385256; accessed November 4, 2014.

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Scott, A. O. 2014. “Rain, Heavy at Times: Russell Crowe Confronts Life’s Nasty Weather in ‘Noah’.” The New York Times (March 27): http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/movies/russell-crowe confronts-lifes-nasty-weather-in-noah.html?_r=0; accessed November 4, 2014. Seitz, Matt Zoller. 2014. “Noah.” RogerEbert.com (March 28): http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ noah-2014; accessed November 4, 2014. Sherwood, Yvonne. 2008. “The God of Abraham and Exceptional States, or The Early Modern Rise of the Whig/Liberal Bible.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 76.2: 312 – 43. Smith, N., and A. Leiserowitz. 2013. “American Evangelicals and Global warming.” Global Environmental Change (October): 1009 – 17. Travers, Peter. 2014. “Noah.” Rolling Stone (March 27): http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/re views/noah-20140327; accessed December 16, 2014. Wiesel, Elie. 1984. “Noah’s Warning.” Religion & Literature 16.1: 3 – 20.

Films Cited Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2014, Paramount, US).

Richard A. Lindsay

55 Gay Male Villains in Biblical Epic Films

Imagine flipping through the television channels on Easter weekend – perhaps with young nieces, nephews, or cousins present – and suddenly happening upon the scene of a grotesque, S&M-style whipping. An older man wearing ornate gold jewelry wraps his whip around the neck of a sweaty, shirtless slave in a leather skirt, strung up by his arms between two columns. The older man then begins whipping him while taunting, “You make no cry…but soon, you will cry for the mercy of death!” as red, bleeding stripes appear on the muscular chest and shoulders of the slave. Would you quickly change the channel for fear of corrupting your young relatives, or settle in for the rest of the film and a night of wholesome family entertainment?

Fig. 112: Baka whips Joshua in The Ten Commandments (1956)

In fact, millions of families tune in every year around Easter and Passover, watching this scene of Baka, the Egyptian slave master (Vincent Price), whipping Joshua, the Hebrew stonecutter (John Derek), as part of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 classic The Ten Commandments. The scene demonstrates how homoerotic characters and situations became part of mainstream entertainment through the Hollywood biblical epic. Far from being anomalies in biblical movies, gay-coded characters are often vital to the pious purpose of these films. The irony is that, in America, biblical epics are films with moral intent, often representing not just prestige films, but the vanguard of the “moral movies” movements. Biblical epics are supposed to be proof that Hollywood “gets it” when it comes to heartland American values. Success with devout moviegoers assures a film’s place

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as a touchstone of religious popular culture, as well as blockbuster box office receipts. At the heart of biblical epics is a contradiction: the very qualities that make a film epic – exotic and sensuous costumes and pagan rituals, broadly-drawn characters representing good and evil, lavish sets, casts of thousands, gaudy spectacle – seem more likely to titillate and amuse than to bring about thoughtful contemplation of the scriptures. It has been the practice of creators of biblical epics that in order to condemn sin, they have to portray sin, and the more spectacular the portrayal of sin, the better. The sinners, villains, and pagans of biblical epics serve as a foil to the biblical heroes, throwing the protagonists’ qualities of virtue and courage into stark relief with their own decadence. When it comes to the male heroes of biblical epics, not only are they virtuous, they are also massive men of action. Charlton Heston’s double-turn as both Moses and the title character in Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959) define the genre. But other figures, from the imposingly fit-at-fifty H. B. Warner as Christ in The King of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1927) to “all-American” Roman soldiers like Fredric March and Robert Taylor in The Sign of the Cross (dir. DeMille, 1932), and Quo Vadis (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1951), respectively, and the gym-toned physique of Jim Caviezel as Jesus Christ in The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004) also embody heroes of a masculine ideal. Coded homosexuality in male villains, therefore, serves both as an ancient vice and a modern “corruption” of standards of gender. Gay male villains create a double contrast to the male protagonists in Hollywood biblical epics: a contrast of missing virtue and negative character, and a contrast of corrupted masculinity. This essay will refer to three notable gay or gay-coded villains in biblical epics, which include Nero, as portrayed by Charles Laughton in The Sign of the Cross and Peter Ustinov in Quo Vadis, Baka, as portrayed by Vincent Price in The Ten Commandments, and Herod Antipas, as played by Josh Mostel in Jesus Christ Superstar (dir. Norman Jewison, 1973) and Luca De Dominicis in The Passion of the Christ. A brief note on how I categorize biblical epics: the question of how to designate these films is whether to delineate them primarily as “biblical” or as “epic.”¹ In this essay I have chosen the latter, genre-based definition, rather than the former, biblical adaptation-based definition. Many of the films that fit the genre of ancient historical epics – Ben-Hur, The Sign of the Cross, Quo Vadis – are only glancingly biblical, dealing with non-scriptural characters interacting with Christ or the Apostles. The response to these “extra-biblical epics” by the religious movie-going public, however, is often as enthusiastically pious as the “actual” biblical epics. Therefore, I base my definition of biblical epics on Bruce Babington and Peter William Evans’ definition: “biblical” refers to the “Old Testament Epic, the Christ Film, and the Roman/Chris-

 See Reinhartz’s discussion of the biblical epic film genre in Part I (Pp. -).

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tian Epic (of the beginnings of post-Christ Christianity)” and “epic” means “connoting grandeur and overwhelming cultural significance” (Babington/Evans 1993, 4).

When in Rome, Don’t Do as the Romans Do In biblical films, Romans, with their “baths, banquets, and boys” offered the most delectable possibilities for contrasting pagan excess against Christian rectitude (Murphy 2004, 3). And no character represented Roman perversity better than the Emperor Nero. One of the first gay Nero characters appeared in DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross, played by Charles Laughton. This was one of DeMille’s most infamous films, mixing a story of Christian martyrdom with decadent displays of Roman excess. The Sign of the Cross features Claudette Colbert frolicking naked in a milk bath, an attempted lesbian seduction of a Christian virgin, and a Coliseum scene with graphic beheadings and the implication of gorilla-on-girl rape. As much as any “Pre-Code” Hollywood film, The Sign of the Cross was responsible for bringing about the studio Production Code, which closely monitored and censored films for the next thirty-five years. The perception among many interpreters of Nero, because of his tyrannical treatment of Christians and the murder of his mother, is that that he must have been a truly twisted and perhaps psychopathic emperor. For Hollywood filmmakers, the suggestion of a character as homosexual has often worked as useful shorthand for villainous perversity. In The Sign of the Cross, Laughton plays Nero as a pouty queen, bored of all the revelry as he lies draped on his massive throne. In the first scene, as Rome burns, he plucks his lyre and shoos away his concerned advisors with a limp wrist. During the Coliseum scene, he eats constantly, licking his fingers as gladiators fight to the death. At one point during the murderous pageant, the camera cuts to him eating the petals off a flower. As if his campiness was not enough to give away Nero as gay, there are other, less subtle signs in the film. In several scenes, a barely-clad slave, played by bodybuilder George Bruggeman, sits chained at Nero’s feet, suggesting Nero’s deviance includes homosexuality. As one of the last films released before the enforcement of the Production Code, The Sign of the Cross could spell out what films in the forties, fifties, and early sixties could only suggest. As Nero says during one scene, remembering the previous night’s orgy with a hungover leer, “Delicious debauchery!” The contrast Nero provides to the protagonists in the film is largely a matter of extravagance versus dullness. The Christian hero of the film is the terribly upright Mercia (Elissa Landi), a Christian virgin who leads her fearful crew of martyrs with unflagging zeal. The hero is Marcus Superbus (Fredric March), a Roman commander who has the love of the Empress Poppea (Claudette Colbert), but is inexplicably drawn to the insufferably pious Mercia. March was no match for the fireworks of Col-

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bert and Laughton. Although he was excellent in later films as a character actor, in this film he plays a bland leading man. This contrast between the sexy, extravagant Romans and the dull, holy Christians was precisely the problem many religious leaders had with the film. Once he got wind of DeMille’s plans for The Sign of the Cross, Father Daniel Lord, a religious advisor on DeMille’s earlier Christ film, The King of Kings, begged the director to make the Christians appealing to the audience: “Don’t make your Romans attractive, warm-blooded, alive human beings and your Christians plaster saints” (Black 1994, 66). His request was in vain: Nero and Poppea were the most mesmerizing characters on the screen. In 1951, MGM and director Mervyn LeRoy released a similar story of Christian martyrdom and Roman decadence, Quo Vadis. This time, Peter Ustinov played Nero, and he seemed to pick up right where Charles Laughton had left off twenty years before. With the Production Code fully in place, however, Nero’s gayness had to be carefully coded through character traits and broadly-played hints. Ustinov plays Nero as a pansy poet, composing odes that he sings in a horrid, tuneless voice. Dressed in purple, with a golden laurel crown that resembles flames springing from his head, Nero is an effeminate, artistic narcissist, with an inflated view of his own talent and importance. In other words: queer. Nero’s fruitiness stands in stark contrast to the “all-American” Roman hero of the film: Vinicius, played by Robert Taylor. Vinicius first appears charging into Rome on his chariot, still dirty from the battles he has been leading on behalf of the Empire. With no patience for palace pomp, Vinicius crashes the Emperor’s throne room and demands that his war-worn men, who are camped outside Rome, be allowed to come into the city. As Vinicius explains, “They are anxious to see their families…their women.” Nero denies his request, as he wants the men to wait to parade into the city in a pageant of victory and worship of their Emperor. They will simply have to suffer for the sake of Nero’s vanity. This confrontation demonstrates the disparity between the manly self-sacrifice of Vinicius and his men and the effeminate selfishness of the Emperor. Ustinov’s portrayal of Nero only takes off from there, becoming more and more campy as the film goes on. He is bored with the spectacle of the Roman soldiers returning from battle, and like a vicious diva, resents the people for their adoration of him. His beautiful wife Poppea (Patricia Laffan) seems mainly to be an emblem of his power. She seduces the “real man” in the film, Vinicius, and Nero later strangles her. Nero’s torture of Christians in the Coliseum offers him no pleasure, as they die singing praises to their God. (“They were smiling! It’s monstrous for them to die smiling!”) At one point, driven to distress, he collects his precious tears in a vessel. His burning of Rome is portrayed as a final, destructive act of artistic malice; he composes odes to its destruction as he watches the people flee the city. The idea of the flamboyant, self-important homosexual, desperate for attention and bored with the petty rules of conventional morality was a durable stereotype for much of the twetieth century. Compare this to Vinicius. He is depicted as a red-blood-

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ed all-American man, an over-sexed heterosexual, and has no patience for ceremony. He embodies the real strength of the Roman Empire. The final clue that Nero is queer is his manner of death. With General Galba’s military coup on its way, and the Roman people having turned on Nero for his burning of the city, he decides he must commit suicide in his palace. His cowardice is so extreme that he requires his female servant to stab him with the knife, rather than committing the act himself. In a dying line reminiscent in its campiness of the Wicked Witch of the West’s “My beautiful wickedness!” Nero exclaims of the Roman people, “How dull, how tasteless their life will be without me!” Such a death is the ultimate penalty for a queer monster like Nero. In his classic study of gays in film, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, Vito Russo described the 1950s as a “kill ‘em or cure ‘em climate” for homosexuals (Russo 1987, 162). With the Hollywood Production Code in place, requiring films to punish “deviant” behavior by the end of the last reel, gay-coded characters suffered all manner of dishonorable deaths, including strangulation, suicide, murder by former lovers, and freakish, divinely initiated accidents. Postwar biblical films may have been historical epics, but their treatment of gay characters as perverse monstrosities who must be destroyed for the good of society was wholly contemporary.

Baka in The Ten Commandments: Master Builder/Master Butcher In DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), Charlton Heston as Moses is up against the entire Egyptian empire. His obvious enemy is the Pharaoh Rameses, played by Yul Brynner, and Moses must also avoid the clutches of a terrible (and terribly entertaining) femme fatale, Princess Nefretiri, played by Ann Baxter. But there is a lesser villain that is part of the mechanism of the state who must also be bested in order for the Chosen People to gain their freedom – Baka, the Master Builder and slave driver of the Hebrews, played by Vincent Price. By the 1950s, whatever the name of the character Vincent Price was playing in a film, he was always playing Vincent Price. His persona as a mincing villain had been set by B horror films like House of Wax (1954) and The Mad Magician (1955). However many layers of makeup he had on or however absurd the costume he wore, his vocal delivery, with its plummy vowels and slight lisp, was unmistakable. From his first interaction with Charlton Heston, Baka throws Moses’ masculinity into sharp relief. Moses is strapping, tan, and shirtless as a Prince of Egypt. Even his Egyptian headdress and skirt don’t take away from his butch grandeur. Baka is dressed in a delicate flowing robe and blue headdress, not unlike a nun’s coif. He and Moses have been brought to the scene of the near crushing of an elderly Hebrew slave whose clothing was stuck under a giant stone monument being hoisted into place. Moses reaches down and cuts the woman free. Baka prissily pulls a silken

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handkerchief from a leather purse he is wearing and wipes his hands, which have not been dirtied at all, before handing it to Moses. Moses wipes his hands and arms before tossing the handkerchief back to Baka, who doesn’t catch it. It falls to the ground and Baka stares daggers at Moses. This bit of campy slapstick plays out while Baka and Moses are discussing the proper treatment of slaves: how hard to work them and how much to feed them. The script depicts a conversation between two powerful men. But the exchange with the handkerchief shows Moses as a man’s man, unafraid to get dirty. Baka, however, is fussy, conceited, and dangerous, since he doesn’t care whether the stones crush old Hebrew slave women or not. “Are you a Master Builder or a Master Butcher?” Moses growls at him. Moses is a strong, noble man and Baka is a perverse weakling. In a later scene, Baka is being borne on a litter across the mud pits where the Hebrews are making bricks. He summons the beautiful water girl Lilia (Debra Paget) to his side, and says he will take her back to his palace as a slave girl. The implication is that he will also use her sexually. Once he has her back in his palace, however, instead of ravishing her immediately, he goes through the strange ritual of dressing her in a fantastic, sparkly Edith Head gown. It is his insistence on dressing up Lilia that gives her boyfriend, Joshua, time to create a diversion and save her from Baka’s clutches. This leads to the infamous whipping scene mentioned at the beginning of this essay. Baka seems to relish every moment of whipping Joshua, but his perverse pleasure is soon interrupted. Moses comes in, this time wearing little more than a loincloth, and strangles Baka with his whip. Again, the ignominious death of the perversely-played character is proof of his queerness. Some viewers or readers of this scene may object that Baka’s whipping of Joshua is a homoerotic moment taken out of context. After all, doesn’t Baka take Lilia back to his lair to take advantage of her? Yes, but this is one of several scenes where the subtext of the character seems to contradict the text of the script. If Baka had wanted to ravish Lilia, perhaps he should not have spent so much time dressing her. In another example, during the whipping scene, Baka taunts Joshua with the pain he is going to cause him. “You’ve seen me drive my chariot! You’ve seen me use my whip!” But the audience hasn’t seen him drive a chariot at all. We’ve seen him being carried on a litter by shirtless slaves. While surveying the scene of the murder with his guards Rameses says, “Baka was a powerful man, it would take strong hands to break him.” Well actually, he didn’t look so much powerful as he looked like a soft, spoiled public official with a taste for fine wine and a detailed knowledge of fine fabrics and perfumes. Baka’s corrupted masculinity, and his love of dressing women and whipping men, sets him up as a queer character, easily dispatched by the far more noble and masculine Moses. Whatever the script says he is, his effeminate character and his role in contrast to Moses are unmistakable.

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“Walk Across My Swimming Pool” – Herod as Fool and Foil to the Masculine Christ In his book, Cinematic Savior: Hollywood’s Making of the American Christ, Stephenson Humphries-Brooks demonstrates that through the distinctly American machinery of Hollywood, films about Jesus Christ tend to construct distinctly American Christs. “Jesus in mainstream Hollywood film is a Cinematic Savior created in an American image,” Humphries-Brooks writes. “That is, he can be seen both as America and as Savior of America, for on film he serves as the projection of America’s selfimage” (Humphries-Brooks 2006, 2). Humphries-Brooks discusses sadism and homosexuality as being of a piece with ancient aristocracy in Hollywood epic films, a tradition that continues in Norman Jewison’s musical Jesus Christ Superstar. Jesus, played by Ted Neely as a rebellious, truth-speaking, rock-n-roll hippie, represents a different kind of masculinity from Charlton Heston, but he is a distinctive form of American man nonetheless. In contrast, Herod is “[an imperialist] who torture[s] honest American manhood” (Humphries-Brooks 2006, 61). Herod, played by Josh Mostel, is a particularly stark example of a homosexual villain. As he sings his taunting ragtime song, he dances on a barge in the Dead Sea surrounded by male and female servants in skimpy bathing suits. Particularly notable are some of his “officials,” who wear massive, goggle-like sunglasses and moan with apparent erotic interest as Herod recounts Jesus’ miracles. Herod makes a seat out of the posteriors of two blond-wigged twinks as he sings. This is also the only scene in an otherwise earnest rock opera that calls for a kick line. Some of Herod’s behavior and dress has been interpreted as antisemitic as well as homophobic. He seems to be dressed like an entertainment mogul on vacation: fat, shirtless and tan, with gold chains around his neck, and hair in a fluffy “Jewfro.” He hurls bagels at Jesus at the end of the piece as he pouts, “Get out of my life!” But it is his lisping, limp-wristed delivery of such lines as “Prove to me that you’re no fool/Walk across my swimming pool,” that has fixed Herod as a homosexual character in the Jesus film genre. He not only contrasts with the silent, brooding masculinity of Jesus, but acts as comic relief in the midst of the confrontation with the much more formidable villain Pilate. The indelibility of Herod as a gay character even carried over into Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. After his initial beating at the hands of the temple guard, Jesus is led into the palace of Herod, which is shown as a decadent den of revelry. Herod comes in wearing heavy makeup and a wig and is attended by giggling male servants. He is immediately dismissive of Christ and his beaten up appearance. Unlike his negotiations with Pilate, to whom he speaks Latin, Jesus refuses even to make eye contact with Herod. This is the proper reaction for a buff, American Jesus to an effeminate fop like Herod.

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Again, as in Superstar, Herod is used as sissy comic relief in the midst of a deadly serious passion play. But his role is much more than an aristocratic minstrel. As Humphries-Brooks suggests, “The Cinematic Savior is the American filmic Christ. He tells us [Americans] who we are and where we are going. Therefore, each new release of a mainstream Hollywood film about Jesus becomes a battlefront for America’s culture wars” (Humphies-Brooks 2006, 3). The Passion of the Christ represents a post-9/11 appropriation of the Christ story to appeal to conservative American political concerns. A significant anxiety of rightwing, red-state, traditional values Americans in the early 2000’s was the rise of the gay liberation movement. Mel Gibson, having developed and funded this film outside of the usual studio machinery, was as much the auteur of The Passion as any director, and, as a celebrity, has become infamous for his homophobic and antisemitic outbursts (Advocate.com 2010). This suggests that the inclusion of a gay Herod was intentional: he represented both a continuing tradition of gay villains in American biblical films, and this director’s specific condemnation of homosexuality perceived as a symptom of decadent American society at the turn of the Millennium.

The Gay Villain Gets the Last Laugh The preceding characters are some of the most obvious examples of gay-coded villains in biblical epics. Their immorality and effeminacy served as a contrast to the holy and noble masculinity of the films’ heroes. These are certainly not the only examples in this colorful genre. Several other examples include Jay Robinson as Caligula in The Robe (dir. Henry Koster, 1953); Charles Laughton as Herod in Salome (dir. William Dieterle, 1953); Jack Palance as Simon the Magician in The Silver Chalice (dir. Victor Saville, 1954); Frank Thring as Pilate in Ben-Hur and Herod in King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961); and Donald Pleasance as Satan in The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1965). Added to this list are numerous eunuch-like servants and flunkies in various moviemade ancient palaces from the silent era on. I have chosen to focus on American films because of the close relationship between Hollywood and the formation of American culture, and the film censorship mechanisms put in place by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Whether or not the phenomenon of effeminate villains carries over into biblical films from other countries and continents would be a matter of further study and examination. In general, the stereotype of the gay villain has represented American societal revulsion towards homosexuality and assumptions about the preferences of American religious filmgoers to see perversity punished. In the end, however, the queer villains may have gotten the last laugh. Simply by existing, they introduced a queer element into what were otherwise considered to be “moral” films. It may be that

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budding gay boys or their adult brethren, living closeted in the cities and towns of America, were more likely to be introduced to the possibility of gay characters and homoerotic situations in biblical films than in any other form of modern entertainment.

Works Cited Advocate.com. 2010. “Mel’s Early Day Antigay Meltdown.” (July 11): http://www.advocate.com/art sentertainment/entertainment-news/2010/07/11/mels-meltdowns-included-antigay-speech; accessed, January 8, 2015. Babington, Bruce, and Peter William Evans. 1993. Biblical Epics: Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Black, Gregory D. 1994. Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Humphries-Brooks, Stephenson. 2006. Cinematic Savior: Hollywood’s Making of the American Christ. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. Murphy, Geraldine. 2004. “Ugly Americans in Togas: Imperial Anxiety in the Cold Ward Hollywood Epic.” Journal of Film and Video 56.3 (Fall 2004): 3 – 19 Russo, Vito. 1987. The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies [1981]. Rev. ed. New York: Harper & Row.

Films Cited Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959, MGM, US). The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1965, United Artists, US). House of Wax (dir. André de Toth, 1954, Bryn Foy Productions, US) Jesus Christ Superstar (dir. Norman Jewison, 1973, Universal, US). The King of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1927, DeMille Pictures Corporation, US). King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961, MGM, US). The Mad Magician (dir. John Brahm, 1955, Columbia Pictures, US). The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004, Icon Productions, US). Quo Vadis (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1951, MGM, US). Salome (dir. William Dieterle, 1953, Columbia Pictures, US). The Sign of the Cross (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1932, Paramount, US). The Silver Chalice (dir. Victor Saville, 1954, Warner Brothers, US). The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956, Paramount, US).

Jeremy Punt

56 Imperialism in New Testament Films In the comedy film, Monty Python’s The Life of Brian (dir. Terry Jones, 1979), a group of Jewish freedom fighters gather together to discuss plans for overthrowing the local Roman establishment. The plan is to kidnap Pilate’s wife and then issue demands for the Romans to withdraw immediately from Judea. As their leader Reg (John Cleese) explains: “We’re giving Pilate two days to dismantle the entire apparatus of the Roman imperialist state, and if he doesn’t agree immediately, we execute her.” Ironically, as the bumbling freedom fighters discuss their plans, talk turns to the benefits that the empire has bestowed upon her subjects: Reg: They bled us white, the bastards. They’ve taken everything we had. And not just from us! From our fathers and from our fathers’ fathers. […] And what have they ever given us in return? Revolutionary 1: The aqueduct. Reg: Oh, yeah, they did give us that, ah, that’s true, yeah. Revolutionary II: And the sanitation. Loretta: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like. Reg: Yeah, all right, I’ll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation, the two things the Romans have done. Matthias: And the roads.

Tongue in cheek, the list continues to include many so-called benefits of imperialism for its subjects.¹ Like many British films, this one pokes fun at administrators and rulers, but without condemning the regime or its regulatory systems. “The gifts of the Romans to the Jews point to the gifts of the British empire to large areas of the planet” (Davies 1998, 411). By contrast, American films hardly ever condone imperialism, which stands in contrast to the reality of America as a country that exercises political influence though military invention. The purpose of this chapter is to consider imperialism in New Testament films. I begin by exploring the often subliminal presence of imperialism in film as well as how films might become imperialistic; then I will move on to consideration of particular films. I will include in this discussion not only traditional Jesus biopics, but also supposedly nonreligious films that were written, in one way or another, with these biblical texts in mind.² The hermeneutical angle that I will pursue here

 But, as Davies (, ) points out, those items identified by the film’s characters as positive spinoffs of imperial rule (e. g. aqueducts, roads, peace, irrigation, wine, baths and education) are somewhat over-optimistic. Irrigation, wine, and education were in Judea before the Romans arrived.  Films in the past have succeeded in subverting an imperialism of a different kind: “The development of popular film coincided historically and geographically with the emancipation of public life from church control and patronage”; see Miles (, ). However, in religious films the “democratic” function of popular media in the interpretation of biblical narrative can sometimes be subverted, overturning the emancipatory effect of popular films. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ () is

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is akin to a cultural studies approach which considers “a film as one voice in a complex social conversation, occurring in a particular historical moment” (Miles 1996, xiii). Moreover, I will investigate the theme of imperialism in New Testament movies from the reciprocal view that films contribute to the interpretation of the Bible as much as the Bible is an important intertext in many films. This position implies, among other things, a break with that part of conventional biblical scholarship that holds onto objective neutrality in interpretative processes and an impoverished semantic position that a text has only one meaning. Interpretation is, of course, never neutral and never exegesis in the absolute sense of the word, as if the opposite is both eisegesis and abhorrent. Different levels and forms of eisegesis are all that exist, situated in ideology. Films rewrite scripture in so far as they can lead viewers to a different understanding of biblical texts; moreover, filmmakers selectively filter biblical texts (or characters or themes from the texts) to be used in their stories (Aichele/Walsh 2002, vii-viii). Imperialism’s subliminal presence in films needs further elaboration. Such elaboration starts with the silent assumptions and the unrecognised influence of the spectator on sense-making or hermeneutical events that can develop into a hegemony of sorts.³ Especially when it comes to comparisons between the Bible and film, it is not only the intertextual embeddedness of both parties concerned that is important, but also the acknowledgement that comparisons are triadic rather than dyadic. As Jonathan Z. Smith explains, comparisons are not only between the two elements compared, but always include an implicit “more than” or “with respect to” component connected most often to the audience or interpreters’ interests (Smith 1990, 51). While a film does not permit an infinite number of interpretations, a spectator makes sense of it according to his or her education and life-experiences as well as a repertoire of film conventions and viewing habits (Miles 1996, 10).

Imperialism, Writ Large…and Small When and how does a film incorporate imperialism or become imperialistic? By now it has become clear that the understanding of imperialism needs some fleshing out. In New Testament films, is imperialism to be broadly conceived on the socio-political level, or also religiously? Is imperialism the description of a situation where everyone conforms to the reigning religious or social conventions? Does imperialism simply

an example of returning to conventional positions, such as a one-sided, biased portrayal of Jews and a spiritualized (unpoliticized) role for Jesus.  Aichele and Walsh (, xi) go as far as claiming that “it is that often reticent, third member of the conversation who actually voices and indeed dominates the conversation.” However, at the same time the interpreter is also an intertext, which like intertexts in textual, material or other forms “includes and interprets myriad other texts.”

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imply the attempt to establish an all-encompassing political system or does it also extend to social structures and conventions? Is imperialism, in the end, a question of allegiance, namely about who agrees or disagrees with the perspective of the insiders or a powerful few? As often asked in postcolonial discourse, are claims about imperialism dependent on whether a specific group is the object of the exertion of power or equally capable of exercising power over themselves as they see fit? Such questions and their answers both depend on and determine (at least in part) one’s notion of imperialism, together with constellations of power and hegemonic frameworks, not to mention the framing of imperialism in film. David Browne explains that narrative plot or narrativity is the engine which drives the audience during the journey on which the film takes them. Underneath the narrative of the film – which is made up of elements such as plot, causality, time and space, range and flow of information, narrative conventions, characters and their development, and so on – is found the ideology of the film (Browne 1997, 16 – 17). At times, as in Life of Brian or The Matrix (dir. Wachowski Siblings, 1999), empire and imperialism are part of the film’s narrative, part of the plot and setting, and impact the characters. In other films, imperialism is subterranean, as the ideological fiber that constructs and drives the narrative. Of course, in certain films imperialism is both ideologically and narratively present. General descriptions of imperialism or empire are a helpful place to start, such as the understanding of imperialism “as massive concentrations of power which permeate all aspects of life and which cannot be controlled by any one actor alone” (Rieger 2007, 4) or even the harsher notion that “[a]t the heart of imperialism is the denial of right and even humanness to those made subject to another’s rule” (Wiley 2007, 55). Modern theory provides some useful categories for thinking about empire. At the same time, caution is advised: “Its [imperialism’s] connotations come from the modern rhetoric of the European nation-state building in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which evoke the polarized categories of ‘colonizers’ and ‘colonized’. These connotations presume ‘imperialism’ to be a single, uniform phenomenon across world history, literature, and geography. But empires are of different kinds, even if not European” (Harrill 2011, 288). Admitting to the diversity and complexity of imperialism, a number of helpful parameters aids our understanding of the notion. The concept of empire is unencumbered by borders as it postulates a regime that effectively encompasses all reality (the civilized world), in the total sense of the word. Empire’s rule extends beyond the material and, therefore, exercises its influence not only on human bodies but on human psychology as well. Empire “creates the very world it inhabits,” which includes the material or external as well as the internal world as ultimate bio-power. And finally, although empire’s practice is “continually bathed in blood,” the concept of empire is always committed to peace, which is a peace that transgresses all conventional boundaries to become “a perpetual and universal peace outside of history” (Hardt/Negri 2000, xv).

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Although these and other broad depictions of imperialism are not without contention, they simultaneously forefront, on the one hand, the complex variety of what is referred to as empire and imperialism and, on the other hand, the appropriateness of including also the notion of hegemony beyond narrow binaries – particularly in the sense pointed out by Antonio Gramsci: hegemony as domination by consent.⁴ When imperialism is understood as negotiated hegemony, a vast array of movies might be implicated, especially given the cultural impact and influence of the Christian Bible and the New Testament on Western culture. Imperialism, in one sense, concerns the presence of Rome and Romans in films of the New Testament period.⁵ But all films are cultural artifacts, and since all culture is ideological, films are inevitably entangled in ideology. This is true of all kinds of films and of films produced in all parts of the world: “in relation to audience, the central dynamic is the relationship of film to culture; or more specifically between cinema and audience/reader and text [viz. the film]” (Browne 1997, 11). The dynamic between film and viewer and the central characteristics of the relationship between them must be acknowledged and understood. The role of ideology becomes pronounced especially in our investigation where the focus is on imperialism. In period films like Caligula (dir. Tinto Brass, 1979) or the older, iconic films like Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959) and Spartacus (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1960), Rome and the Romans are portrayed along stereotypical lines. The binary of oppressor and oppressed is celebrated and often illustrated in appropriately aligned and elaborate casting, costumes, and other external phenomena filling out the binary further with regard to aesthetics, morality, and the like. Another good example, if not a New Testament film per se, is the popular box-office hit Gladiator (dir. Ridley Scott, 2000), which tells a story of a Roman general who fell from grace, only to become a gladiator during the reign of the bumbling Emperor Commodus (180 – 192 C.E.). In all of these films, Rome is an overpowering force, whose influence permeates across a broad spectrum but also to the deepest level of people’s lives, to the furthest-flung corners of Empire. Rome – in the form of its power figures, such as governors and soldiers, but also in social structures such as slavery and economic systems – causes suffering and death with scant regard for the lives of others, especially of non-Romans.  Stephen D. Moore explains the concept of domination by consent as the “active participation of a dominated group in its own subjugation” and regardless of the fact that the subjugated numerically outweighs those exercising power over them, even if the oppressor or army of occupation may have the advantage in terms of instruments of subjugation such as sophisticated weaponry and the like. “In such cases […] the indigene’s desire for self-determination will have been replaced by a discursively inculcated notion of the greater good, couched in such terms as social stability […] and economic and cultural advancement”; see Moore (, ).  But themes of hegemony further include and range from gender patterns such as (hegemonic) masculinity to domination or devastation of the earth to rampant capitalism as economic control. And such themes abound across different film genres, from noir to chick flicks, from blockbuster movies to art-house films.

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But imperialism cuts deeper, and becomes more complex when the ostensible binaries are collapsed into hegemony by assent. A post-binary view of imperialism does not deny the unevenness of power in the resulting relationship, but shifts the focus to complex power relationships, hybrid identities, and the intricate, yet sustained, intertwined interaction between all those who constitute empire in a specific spatial and temporal context. For example, a long list of popular films portrays churches or “the Church” as imperialistic, even if in different ways. In The Da Vinci Code (dir. Ron Howard, 2006), the Church attempts to cover up the human nature of Jesus, his sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene, and the existence of their progeny. In Agora (dir. Alejandro Amenábar, 2009), the female philosopher Hypathia fights for recognition of the wisdom of the Ancients against the early Christian establishment in fourth-century Roman Alexandria. The Church, however, is portrayed as unscrupulously and even violently protecting its interests by (literally) silencing those voices deemed dangerous to its position. In a film with strong gender undertones, the community of the faithful is presented as ignorant and callous. Die Päpstin (dir. Sönke Wortmann, 2009, a.k.a. Pope Joan) depicts the legend of Johanna who became the ninth-century Pope Johannes Angelicus until the discovery of her gender. This film portrays a medieval Church beset by politicking and strong gender conventions. As for the gender imperialism in these and so many other films, it bears remembering that in the history of the depiction of women in images in the West (influenced by Christianity), it was mostly men that depicted women. Representations were of two opposing kinds, romanticised and glamorized with the Virgin Mary as archetype, or demonized as the daughters of Eve and, thus, the cause of sin, sex, and death (Miles 1996, 136). Scriptural support for such positions is, of course, not difficult to find (e. g., Eccl. 25:24; 1 Tim. 2:14). Among films depicting more recent times, Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves (1996) provides a cynical perspective on the church of a small Scottish highlands community. Unlike Jan and Bess, who choose options beyond their own comfort and satisfaction, the local and devout church community is portrayed as biased, vindictive, and punishing – as well as powerful. The film betrays, not without irony, an appeal to a divine blessing of events in the face of their condemnation by the local church. Finally, hegemony is usually not portrayed as deriving from divine origins. In their avant-garde approach to God in the movies, Albert Bergesen and Andrew Greeley admit to different portrayals of God in films but claim that the general divine image that emerges is of a persistent and loving, passionate, forgiving God frequently framed as female. This image of God stands in stark contrast to a “narrow, punitive, rigid and harsh” God, encountered as male patriarch in churches.⁶ And, in the end,

 Bergesen/Greeley (,  – ). Bergesen and Greeley’s reference and framing of the divine as female is, however, portrayed in male grammar: “The Ground of Being is portrayed as loving, patient,

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they claim that the God of the movies “is the God of the Scriptures – the God of the Hebrew prophets and the God of the Bible – and anyone who doesn’t perceive that doesn’t know the Bible very well.”⁷

Dealing with Imperialism in New Testament Films The nexus between imperialism and New Testament films plays out in many different ways. The next three sections explore particular instances where imperialism and New Testament themes intersect in film: (1) in the relationship between imperialism, Jesus-followers, and Romans; (2) in satirical approaches to imperialism in New Testament films; and (3) in the nexus of imperialism, messianism, and violence.

Paul of Tarsus: Imperialism, Jesus-followers, and Romans A cultural studies approach to film allows the investigation of aspects not generally associated with the medium. For example, film scholars are often reluctant to admit to the spirituality of cinema, as if uncomfortable to discuss religion and films at the same time, and as a result often fail to see how films “embody our dreams, desires, and aspirations” (Bergesen/Greeley 2000, ix). However, with religious films, the scales can tip to the other side when conventions of religion exercise a regulative role on a film’s plot, as often happens in New Testament films. Films that engage on a serious level with religious themes, ever since the countercultural films of the 1970s and the rise of blockbuster movies, have generally failed to succeed at the box office. The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004), “with its unflinching, often gory account of the crucifixion” and antisemitic bent, proved to be an exception by earning $370 million at the box office.⁸ Faith-based films traditionally focus more narrowly on a niche market, of which the three-hour long television film, San Paolo (dir. Roger Young, 2000, a.k.a. Paul the Apostle), in which various imperialist encounters intersect, is a good example. In the first part of the film, focus falls squarely on Roman and Jewish antagonism against the early Jesus-followers. The Roman military (led by Gaius, who later claims “Rome knows everything”), the Jewish high priests, and, to a smaller extent, King Herod Antipas are shown to control, punish, and even kill Jesus-followers. Hegemony is ex-

determined, and passionate, a God who has fallen in love with His creatures and will stop at nothing to win their love in return; an improvising God who never gives up on His creatures no matter how much they have given up on themselves; a seductive God who calls humans out of themselves and begs them to leave the past behind (even when the past is life itself) and to risk the future” ().  Bergesen/Greeley (, ; see also  – ).  Cieply (). Unfortunately, the extravagant Passion of the Christ, with its reconstructed ancient languages and subtitles, celebrated violence to the extreme and exhibited a distinct antisemitic focus that drowned out the film’s ostensible focus on love and hope.

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pressed in various ways, but the first part of the film stresses the power exerted by the Sanhedrin against the Jesus-followers, including the flogging of Peter and John on the temple steps. Saul and his Sadducee-priest friend, Reuben, are very much part of the political and religious elite, who determined the lives of others in the community and the Jesus-followers in particular. Much is made of Saul’s persecution of the early church; he carries a sword for a good part of the film, wielding it against robbers in defence of travellers (Barnabas and his wife, Hagar) but, mostly, in actions against Jesus-followers. In the second part of the film, attention shifts to the portrayal of Saul-turnedPaul after his Damascus road experience. As their former persecutor, Paul initially has to win over the other apostles, who stand incredulous towards him as a Jesusfollower. Both Herod Antipas (until his death) and also the temple-establishment are depicted as political opportunists, posing a risk to the marginalized majority of people. The threats of violence as well as actual physical violence perpetrated by local Roman soldiers – constantly in the background as the focus is on Jewish leaders who act against Jesus-followers – increase and culminate toward the end of the film in the murder of Reuben. Paul and others express explicit criticism towards the Empire (Peter warns Paul that neither the Romans nor the priests can save him from the wrath of God; that the Romans will be defeated; and so on).

Fig. 113: Roman soldier kills Rueben in San Paolo (2000)

On the one hand, San Paolo traces the troubled friendship between Reuben and Paul, tragically lost for reasons of faith (although the subtext of possible jealousy over a woman is not quite resolved). But on the other hand, the film also portrays the intricate and difficult, yet imperially inscribed, relationship between the Roman Empire and Jewish leaders. This is especially well illustrated in the bathhouse scene in which Reuben is physically abused by Roman soldiers, although he is loyal to their cause and, in fact, betraying his friend. Their intimidation underlines both the insecurity typical of imperial agents as well as a subaltern’s willingness to suffer pain and humiliation for the sake of apparent goodwill and reward from empire. As Antipas states in another scene, “the first rule of politics is not so much to please the

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people but to please Rome.” The nascent Christian movement is shown to be formed in the vicissitudes of Roman imperialism and its patronal clients (such as the Sanhedrin), but less frequently perhaps, is depicted as a movement increasingly showing signs of an imperializing mission of its own. As mentioned above, period films like Caligula, Ben-Hur, Spartacus, and more recently Gladiator tend to imbibe and promote a stereotypical portrayal of imperialism, at least as far as the Roman Empire is concerned. Most Jesus films can also be mentioned under this heading of the traditionalist portrayal of the Roman Empire with regard to Jesus and his followers. The stark depiction of oppressor-Empire and oppressed-Jews/believers is equally pronounced in traditional Jesus films such as King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961). Here the story is told against the background of the Empire’s general, Pompey, who sacked Jerusalem in the hunt for treasure, and the enthronement of Herod as vassal king to Rome in the attempt to quell rebellions. The story of Jesus is interwoven with that of imperial occupation, from teenager Jesus’ encounter with the Roman soldiers, to Jesus being passed from Pontius Pilate to Herod Antipas and back, and to his eventual crucifixion. The ubiquity of imperialism in material terms, including soldiers and those in power, is framed in terms of the binary of oppressor and oppressed in King of Kings.

Life of Brian: A Satirical Approach to New Testament Imperialism Few New Testament films have had such a lasting impact as Life of Brian. ⁹ Given the historical research that went into the making of the film, one scholar goes so far as claiming, “I have long been of the conviction that Monty Python’s Life of Brian is an indispensable foundation to any student’s career in New Testament studies.”¹⁰ In the past, scholars have interpreted Life of Brian as Christian, confrontational, and also counter-hegemonic (Dyke 2002, 229 – 50). The film is a satirical look at Brian Cohen’s mistaken messianic identity in a story creatively scripted in the same context that produced the New Testament gospels. Life of Brian tells the story of Brian who grows up resentful of the continuing Roman occupation of Judea, notwithstanding his own lineage (his father was a Roman Centurion, Naughtius Maximus). Yearning for Judith, whom he met at Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and hatred for the Romans lead him to join the People’s Front of Judea, one of a multitude of quarrelling Jewish separatist movements. Brian manages to escape after his graffiti-protest and lands among mystics and prophets,  One way in which this film can be construed as imperialist or at least hegemonic, is its relationship to organized Christian religion. While the film’s screenplay is billed on Amazon.com as “[t]he classic piece of cinematic blasphemy from ”, some scholars believe the film functions as criticism on Christian imperialism. See Dyke (, ); cf Davies (, ).  Davies (, ; also see  – ). Davies restates his claim a few times, see e. g., “Monty Python’s use of the New Testament betrays a more knowledgeable and even sophisticated use of the material than a superficial appreciation of its parodic humour realizes” ().

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but he inadvertently inspires a number of people with some ostensibly religious chatter. The crowd later declares Brian as Messiah, and, in an ironic twist of events, he ends up on a cross even after Pontius Pilate has set him free. The film portrays Jewish diversity and Roman imperialism of the time in unembellished, if comic terms. While this comedy pokes fun at many social, political, and religious issues – probably also at conventions of Jesus films in general – it also raises some important questions about the first-century world, including Judaism and the Roman Empire. However, as far as imperialism is concerned, “[o]verall, by accepting the common sense of Jesus’ divinity and ethical authority, Life of Brian locates itself squarely within the hegemonic network of Christianity” (Dyke 2002, 240). As hinted above, Life of Brian reflects its British producing context, especially as it pertains to imperialism. The film’s insistence on human benevolence and its portrayal of Roman or imperial benevolence attracts attention in itself, but also in contrast to American films with their apathy towards imperial government.¹¹ The Roman powers are portrayed in true satirical style, of course, as rather inept but also benevolent. For example, during his graffiti-protest, Brian is taught the more correct Latin for the phrase he scribbles rather than being arrested; and, the governor actually orders Brian to be released, although through some misplaced support of the crowd he ends up on a cross anyway. Such portrayals underline both a rather awkward Roman benevolence, as well as that imperialism is not a simplistic matter of an oppressoroppressed binary. As far as Roman imperialism is concerned, Life of Brian builds on what is known about first-century Judea. Not only were Jewish feelings towards the Romans rather ambivalent, various Jewish groupings jostled among themselves for control and power (Davies 1998, 401– 3). The film’s portrayal of the clumsiness and, thus, ambivalence of Roman power provides food for thought in assuming a strict oppressor-oppressed binary – which is not, of course, to deny the inequality of power, its use, and the resulting disastrous consequences for the people at large. Brian’s final fate, accompanied by the satirical tune “Look on the bright side of life,” remains a stark reminder that the Empire ultimately exercised the power of the sword. While satire and comedy can numb the presence of hegemony, Life of Brian nonetheless exacerbates its effects and experience.

The Matrix: Imperialism, Messianism, and Violence Moving away from explicit Bible films, the Wachowski Siblings’ 1999 science-fiction thriller The Matrix nonetheless exhibits a striking, if muted, intertextuality – in particular in its use of biblical themes and a strong messianic motif. An ever-deepening messianic role is ascribed to Neo in the movie, from the initial flippant, yet ironical  Ironically, “[t]he American Hollywood movie is American imperialism at its most effective,” according to Davies (,  n. ; emphasis in the original).

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Fig. 114: Brian meets his fate in a forest of crosses in Life of Brian (1979)

identification (“Hallelujah, you’re my saviour man, my own personal Jesus Christ”) to the repeated affirmation of Morpheus (“You are the One”) and his claim that the search is finally over: the returned or reincarnated messiah has been found. Neo starts what resembles messianic training in preparation of the task ahead, reminiscent of the temptation of Jesus-scenes in the synoptic gospels (Matt. 4:1– 11; Mark 1:12– 13; Luke 4:1– 13), and is in the process identified as the genuine “child of Zion.”¹² The Matrix’s abundant biblical, religious and spiritual allusions may not make it a New Testament film in the traditional sense of the word.¹³ However, this violent scifi shoot-‘em-up film’s biblical/messianic echoes and existential concern for what constitutes human life and reality, makes it worthy of discussion under the topic of imperialism in New Testament films. In an unusual way, various interesting elements of biblical and religious allusions surface and are reworked in The Matrix. The crucial choice between two worlds, or (the narrow and broad) paths,¹⁴ is borne out by the prominent use of reflections in the film, and the imperative for the initiates to choose between the red and the blue pill. One choice is aesthetically pleasing but leads to dissatisfaction, continued enslavement, and eventually unconscious death, the unreal as reality. The other choice reveals a world that is dangerous

 See Punt (); and also Punt ().  More is at hand: e. g. names used for characters in the film are suggestive of biblical or Christian references, including Cypher (cf. Lucifer), Trinity falls in love with Neo, Nebuchadnezzar is the name of the hovercraft that hacks into the Matrix computer, Zion is the name of the last human city, and other biblical themes are subtly present: prophecy, belief and faith, the Path, sacrifice, miracle, and revelation. This is not to deny the importance of other influences on the film as well, including Buddhism, Greek mythological allusion, Sophism, and the later Gnostic tradition. See Corliss (); Walsh (,  – ).  In New Testament terms (Matt. : – , Luke :), a choice is to be made, “taking the difficult, ‘narrow path’ [which] symbolizes hearing and carrying out Jesus’ demands, while taking the ‘wide path’ entails the easier but unfruitful option of only hearing them”; see Desjardins (, ). For the difference between knowing and walking the path, see Matt. : – , Luke : – .

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and almost inhabitable, an apocalyptic desert of wasteland, without promise for the future but it is the real reality. Faith or convictions are central to rise above the here and now of make-believe. Initially belief serves the purpose of escaping one’s precarious position in the all too real world. But in the longer run, belief facilitates achievement of the fullness of life, which presupposes a different world order. “The One” (signalled already in the lead character’s anagram-alias Neo) plays the central role in The Matrix, but his person is from the outset involved in violence. This subtle messianic allusion and the concomitant violence clothed in futuristic metaphor and popular frame of reference emphasize rather than erase the biblical allusions in the film. The movement from one world to another, from enslavement to liberation, is mediated by the messianic or savior figure. The messiah plays a facilitating role in both calling upon people to break with living the lie as well as showing, and in this way, inaugurating, a different world and a different life – two elements typical of messianism, at least in the history of Christianity (Freyne 1993). But questions important to imperialism arise from the at times ambiguous portrayal of The Matrix’s messianic Neo: Does a messiah require a violent setting to operate, or is the messiah’s role related to the subversion of violence? Does the appearance of a messiah initiate or increase existing violence? Are messianic followers prone to and on the receiving end of violence, or do they inflict violence on the messiah, and if indeed, why? In other words, in The Matrix the messianic link with violence reappears and addresses the crucial question concerned with the trends of violent behavior in the relationship between messiahs and their followers.¹⁵ In brief comparison, Son of Man (2006), directed by South African filmmaker Mark Dornford-May, tells a modern-day version of the life of Jesus in a context reminiscent of the townships of contemporary South Africa. It shows how the relationship between imperialism, messianism, and violence can be framed differently. In this film, the New Testament story of Jesus is transplanted to a contemporary, decidedly African, yet fictive war-torn Republic of Judea. It portrays Jesus as a member of a nonviolent resistance movement. Son of Man does not downplay the harsh realities of life in modern Africa. Dirt-strewn, dilapidated township shacks are framed against the natural splendor of the land. The depiction of a dominant regime, imposing in various ways on the inhabitants of the land, emphasizes the imperialist theme from the outset and underlies the film’s plot. The annunciation to Mary takes place in a school where she could have been a teacher, and she narrowly avoids being massacred with her students. Imperialist excesses and abuses see children murdered, villages threatened, and Jesus killed; and, on the people’s side, there is both violent resistance against the regime as well as peaceful protest (including laying down their babies in the street). The brutality of power and the various reactions to it are highlighted; Empire is accompanied by violence. The film invites its viewers to consider whether they are look-

 See also Punt ( and ).

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ing at a first-century gospel plot or whether they are experiencing a modern story of ambition and imperialist endeavor, involving clashing human aspirations in a powerhungry world. Notwithstanding the film’s sometimes awkward treatment of the gospels’ narrative structures, Son of Man gives new meaning to the contextual portrayal of biblical narratives.¹⁶ The nuanced intertextual plays on the biblical themes and narrative in The Matrix and Son of Man highlight the imperialism that permeates the plots of both films, albeit in different ways. The Matrix explores what seems to be the inevitable link between Messiah and violence in an imperialist setting while Son of Man characterizes the Jesus narrative as one written on the canvas of empire but with a non-violent Jesus intent on establishing true peace in the world – and suffering violence for this stance. With the relationship between messianism, imperialism, and violence in focus in both films, they come to different conclusions regarding the nature and impact of that relationship.

Conclusion Imperialism is an enduring aspect in New Testament films, with many popular films also exploring the link between religion and hierarchies of control. Films about Jesus and the early church stereotypically depict the oppressor-oppressed as stark binary. Satirical approaches to the gospel story, such as Life of Brian, tend to both subvert and reinforce imperialism, revealing the ambivalence of power and how hegemony can often be domination by consent. Messianism plays itself out within a context of imperialism, but a complex range of factors seems to determine the direction and nature of the violence involved. Much more work remains to be done to understand the complex relationships and structures of imperial power in its various guises in film.

Works Cited Aichele, George, and Richard Walsh. 2002. “Introduction. Scripture as Precursor.” In Screening Scripture. Intertextual Connections between Scripture and Film. Eds. George Aichele and Richard Walsh. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Pp. vii-xvi. Bergesen, Albert J., and Andrew M. Greeley. 2000. God in the Movies. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Browne, David. 1997. “Film, Movies, Meanings.” In Explorations in Theology and Film. Movies and Meaning. Eds. C. Marsh and G. Ortiz. Oxford: Blackwell. Pp. 9 – 19.

 See also the rich collection of essays on various aspects of Son of Man in Walsh, Staley, and Reinhartz ().

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Cieply, Michael. 2014. “Can God make it in Hollywood?” The New York Times (February 22): http:// www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/sunday-review/can-god-make-it-in-hollywood.html?_r=0; accessed February 27, 2014. Corliss, Richard. 1999. “Popular metaphysics.” Time (April 11): http://content.time.com/time/mag azine/article/0,9171,22971,00.html; accessed June 16, 2015. Davies, Philip R. 1998. “Life of Brian Research.” In Biblical Studies/Cultural Studies. The Third Sheffield Colloquium. Eds. J. Cheryl Exum and Stephen D. Moore. Gender, Culture, Theory. Vol. 7. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Pp. 400 – 14. Desjardins, Michael. 1997. Peace, Violence and the New Testament. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Dyke, Carl. 2002. “Learning From the Life of Brian. Saviors for Seminars.” In Screening Scripture. Intertextual Connections between Scripture and Film. Eds. George Aichele and Richard Walsh. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Pp. 229 – 50. Freyne, Seàn. 1993. “Editorial: The Messiah in History.” Concilium 1: vii-xiv. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Harrill, J. Albert. 2011. “Paul and Empire: Studying Roman Identity after the Cultural Turn.” Early Christianity 2.3: 281 – 311. Miles, Margaret R. 1996. Seeing and Believing. Religion and Values in the Movies. Boston: Beacon. Moore, Stephen D. 2006. Empire and Apocalypse. Postcolonialism and the New Testament. The Bible in the Modern World. Vol. 12. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Punt, Jeremy. 2002. “Empire, Messiah and Violence: A Contemporary View.” Scriptura 80: 259 – 74. —. 2003. “Messianic Victims or Victimized Messiah? Biblical allusion and violence in The Matrix.” In Sanctified Aggression. Legacies of Biblical and Post-biblical Vocabularies of Violence. Eds. J.J. Bekkenkamp and Y. Sherwood. London: T&T Clark International. Pp. 139 – 55. Rieger, J. 2007. “Christian Theologies and Empires.” In Empire and the Christian Tradition: New Readings of Classical Theologians. Eds. D.H. Compier, Pui-lan Kwok and J. Rieger. Minneapolis: Fortress. Pp. 1 – 13. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1990. Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Walsh, Richard. 2013. “A Modest Proposal for Christ-Figure Interpretations: Explicated with Two Test Cases.” Relegere 3.1: 79 – 97; https://relegere.org/relegere/article/viewFile/569/636; accessed March 15, 2015. Walsh, Richard, Jeffrey L. Staley, and Adele Reinhartz, eds. 2013. Son of Man. Reflections on a “South African Jesus” Movie. The Bible in the Modern World 53. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Wiley, T. 2007. “Paul and Early Christianity.” In Empire and the Christian Tradition: New Readings of Classical Theologians. Eds. D.H. Compier, Pui-lan Kwok, and J. Rieger. Minneapolis: Fortress. Pp. 47 – 61.

Films Cited Agora (dir. Alejandro Amenábar, 2009, Mod Producciones, ES). Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959, MGM, US). The Bible Collection [San Paulo; a.k.a. Paul the Apostle; TV miniseries] (dir. Roger Young, 2000, Lux Vide, IT/CZ/DE).

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Breaking the Waves (dir. Lars von Trier, 1996, Argus Film, DK/SE/FR/NL/NO/IS/ES). Caligula (dir. Tinto Brass, 1979, Penthouse Films International, IT/US). The Da Vinci Code (dir. Ron Howard, 2006, Columbia Pictures, US/MT/FR/UK). Die Päpstin [a.k.a. Pope Joan] (dir. Sönke Wortmann, 2009, Constantin Film, DE/UK/IT/ES). Gladiator (dir. Ridley Scott, 2000, DreamWorks, US/UK). King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961, MGM, US). Life of Brian [a.k.a. Monty Python’s Life of Brian] (dir. Terry Jones, 1979, Handmade Films, UK). The Matrix (dir. Wachowski Siblings, 1999, Warner Brothers, US/AU). The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004, Icon Productions, US). Son of Man (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2006, Spier Films, ZA). Spartacus (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1960, Bryna Productions, US).

Film Index 3:10 to Yuma (dir. James Mangold, 2007, Lionsgate, US). 197, 206, 867 8½ (dir. Federico Fellini, 1963, Cineriz, IT/FR). 634, 639, 640, 647, 867 The 11th Hour (dir. Leila Conners and Nadia Conners, 2007, Appian Way, US). 350, 351, 353, 867 21 Grams (dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2003, This Is That Productions, US). 372, 376, 867 The 23rd Psalm (dir. Christopher C. Odom, 2007, Odom-Booker Entertainment, US). XI, 231, 234, 867 The 23rd Psalm: Redemption (dir. Christopher C. Odom and Cornelius Booker III, 2011, Odom-Booker Entertainment, US). 231, 234, 867 28 Days Later… (dir. Danny Boyle, 2002 DNA Films, UK). 415, 867 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968, MGM, US/UK). IX, 241, 243, 249, 250, 344, 345, 346, 352, 353, 668, 669, 670, 672, 867 2012 (dir. Roland Emmerich, 2009, Columbia Pictures, US). 42, 49, 234, 408, 409, 411, 415, 867 A.D. (dir. Stuart Cooper, 1985, Vincenzo Labella, IT/FR/US). 503, 506, 508, 514, 867 Abraham [TV miniseries; see The Bible Collection: Abraham]. Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter (dir. Timur Bekmambetov, 2012, Abraham Productions, US). 229, 230, 234, 867 Abraham: The Friend of God [see Ibraheem, the Friend of God]. Absalon [a.k.a. Absalom] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1912, Pathé Frères, FR). 103, 116, 867 Acts [see The Visual Bible: Acts]. Acts of the Apostles [see Atti degli apostoli]. The Acts of the Apostles [see The Living Bible Collection: The Acts of the Apostles]. Adam and Eve (dir. Unknown, 1912, Vitagraph, US). 17, 33, 867 Adam and Eve [see Adán y Eva, 1956]. Adam and Eve Versus Cannibals [see Adamo ed Eva, la prima storia d’amore].

Adam and Steve (dir. Craig Chester, 2005, Funny Boy Films, US). 26, 33, 867 Adamo ed Eva, la prima storia d’amore [a.k.a. Adam and Eve or Adam and Eve Versus Cannibals] (dir. Enzo Doria and Luigi Russo, 1983, Alex Film International, IT/ ES). 21, 33, 867 Adams æbler [a.k.a. Adam’s Apples] (dir. Anders Thomas Jensen, 2005, M&M Productions, DK/DE). XI, 260, 265, 317, 325, 361, 363, 364, 365, 374, 376, 867 Adam’s Apples [see Adams æbler]. Adán y Eva [a.k.a. Adam and Eve] (dir. Alberto Gout, 1956, Adam & Eve Productions, MX). The Adjustment Bureau (dir. George Nolfi, 2011, Universal, US). 318, 325, 867 The Adventures of Dollee (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1908, American Mutoscope/Biograph, US). 537, 538, 542, 867 The African Queen (dir. John Huston, 1951, Romulus Films, US/UK). 649, 661, 867 After Many Years (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1908 American Mutoscope/Biograph, US). 535, 542, 867 After Six Days [see La Bibbia]. Agora (dir. Alejandro Amenábar, 2009, Mod Producciones, ES). 510, 514, 857, 865, 867 Agostino d’Ippona [a.k.a. Augustine of Hippo] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1972, Orizzonte 2000, IT). 631, 634, 867, 869 Akahige [a.k.a. Red Beard] (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1965, Kurosawa Production Company, JP). 376, 867, 888 Akedat Yitzhak [“The Binding of Isaac”] (dir. Students, 2014, The Hebrew R’eali School in Haifa, IL). 764, 765, 774, 868, 877 Akira (dir. Katsuhiro Ōtomo, 1988, TMS Entertainment, JP). 285, 286, 287, 290, 291, 292, 294, 867 Al-mohager [a.k.a. The Emigrant] (dir. Youssef Chahine, 1994, Films A2, EG/FR). 59, 63, 867, 874 Alias Nick Beal (dir. John Farrow, 1949, Paramount, US). 224, 234, 331, 338, 867 Alien (dir. Ridley Scott, 1979, Brandywine Productions, US/UK). 240, 242, 244, 250, 345, 347, 353, 867

868

Film Index

Alien3 (dir. David Fincher, 1992, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 345, 346, 353, 867 Alien: Resurrection (dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997 Twentieth Century Fox, US). 345, 346, 353, 867 Aliens (dir. James Cameron, 1986, Twentieth Century Fox, US/UK). 353, 867 All About Eve (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 23, 24, 33, 867 All That Jazz (dir. Bob Fosse, 1979, Columbia, US). 391, 396, 402, 867 All That Money Can Buy [a.k.a. The Devil and Daniel Webster] (dir. William Dieterle, 1941, William Dieterle Productions, US). 331, 338, 867, 873 All the President’s Men (dir. Alan J. Pakula, 1976, Warner Brothers, US). 109, 110, 116, 868 Always (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1989, Universal, US). 396, 397, 399, 402, 868 Amarcord [“I Remember”] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1973, F.C. Produzioni, IT/FR). 643, 644, 647, 868 Amateur Night on the Ark (dir. Harry Bailey, John Foster, Frank Moser, and Jerry Shields, 1923, Aesops Fables Studio, US). 279, 282, 868 Amator [a.k.a. Camera Buff] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1979, Film Polski, PL). 676, 689, 868, 871 American Violet (dir. Tim Disney, 2008, Uncommon Productions, US). 110, 116, 868 Amore [see L’amore]. Amore in città [a.k.a. Love in the City, omnibus project; Un agenzia matrimoniale; a.k.a. Matrimonial Agency] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1953, Faro Film, IT). 637, 647, 868, 884, 893 Amores perros [“Love’s a Bitch”] (dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2000, Altavista Films, MX). 372, 376, 868 Ancient Aliens (dir. Kevin Burns, David Silver, Susan Leventhal, 2009- , Prometheus Entertainment, US). 245, 250, 868 And the Ship Sails On [see E la nave va]. Andrei Rublev [see Andrey Rublyov]. Andrey Rublyov [a.k.a. Andrei Rublev] (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966, Mosfilm, SU). 355, 376, 868

Angel Heart (dir. Alan Parker, 1987, Carolco International, US/CA/UK). 331, 338, 868 Angels of Sin [see Les anges du péché]. Angels in the Outfield (dir. Clarence Brown, 1951, MGM, US). 256, 265, 868 Animaniacs [“Noah’s Lark” Season 1, Episode 33] (dir. Greg Reyna, 1993, Warner Brothers Animation, US/JP). 267, 280, 282, 868 The Animated Kid’s Bible (dir. Frantz Kantor, 2005, PIPS Premiere, AU). 277, 282, 868 Animated Stories from the Bible [“Elijah”; video] (dir. Richard Rich, 1993, NEST Family Entertainment, US). 278, 282, 868 – [“Ruth”; video] (dir. Richard Rich, 1994, NEST Family Entertainment, US). 278, 282, 868 Animated Stories from the New Testament [video series] (dir. Richard Rich, 1988 – 2005, NEST Family Entertainment, US). 270, 282, 868 – [“The Good Samaritan”; video] (dir. Richard Rich, 1989, NEST Family Entertainment, US). 276, 282, 868 – [“Miracles of Jesus”; video] (dir. Richard Rich, 1988, NEST Family Entertainment, US). 282, 868 – [“The Parables of Jesus”; video] (dir. Richard Rich, 2003, NEST Family Entertainment, US). 276, 282, 868 – [“The Prodigal Son”; video] (dir. Richard Rich, 1989, NEST Family Entertainment, US). 276, 282, 868 Animated Stories from the Old Testament [video series] (dir. Richard Rich, 1992 – 93, NEST Family Entertainment, US). 270, 282, 868 Anime oyako gekijo [a.k.a. Superbook; TV series] (dir. Ryôji Fujiwara, et al., 1981 – 1982, Christian Broadcasting Network, JP). 272, 282, 868, 891 Antichrist (dir. Lars von Trier, 2009, Zentropia Entertainments, DK/DE/FR/SE/IT/PL). 518, 523, 531, 868 Any Given Sunday (dir. Oliver Stone, 1999, Warner Brothers, US). 109, 116, 868 Apache! (dir. Robert Aldrich, 1954, Hecht-Lancaster Productions, US). 196, 206, 868 Apocalypse (dir. Peter Garretsen, 1998, Cloud Ten Pictures, CA). 231, 234, 868 The Apocalypse [TV miniseries; see The Bible Collection: San Giovanni – L’apocalisse].

Film Index

The Apostle (dir. Robert Duvall, 1997, Butcher’s Run Films, US). 223, 224, 234, 505, 506, 514, 868 Apostle Peter and the Last Supper (dir. Gabriel Sacloff, 2012, Pure Flix Entertainment, US). 507, 514, 868 Apparitions (dir. Joe Ahearne and John Strickland, 2008, BBC, UK). 337, 338, 868 The Ark [see El arca]. Armageddon (dir. Michael Bay, 1998, Touchstone Pictures, US). 225, 234, 868 The Asphalt Jungle (dir. John Huston, 1950, MGM, US). 649, 661, 868 The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (dir. Andrew Dominik, 2007, Warner Brothers, US/CA/UK). 197, 206, 869 Astro Boy [TV series; see Tetsuwan Atom]. Atash [a.k.a. Thirst] (dir. Tawfik Abu Wael, 2004, Ness Communication & Productions Ltd., IL/PS). 768, 774, 869, 892 Atti degli apostoli [a.k.a. Acts of the Apostles] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1969, Orizzonte 2000, IT/ES/FR/DE/TN). 502, 503, 514, 623, 624, 629, 634, 867, 869 Au hasard Balthazar (dir. Robert Bresson, 1966, Argos Films, FR/CH) 609, 614, 615, 616, 620, 869 Augustine of Hippo [see Agostino d’Ippona]. Augustus [TV miniseries; see Imperium: Augustus]. Avatar (dir. James Cameron, 2009, Twentieth Century Fox, US/UK). 179, 191, 351, 353, 869 The Avengers (dir. Josh Whedon, 2012, Marvel Studios, US). 258, 265, 869 Ba’al hahalomot [a.k.a. Joseph the Dreamer] (dir. Alina and Yoram Gross, 1962, Yoram Gross films, IL). 59, 63, 869 Babel (dir. Alejandro Gonzáles Iñarritu, 2006, Paramount, FR/MX/US). 541, 542, 869 Bachelor in Paradise (dir. Jack Arnold, 1961, MGM, US). 25, 33, 869 Bad Lieutenant (dir. Abel Ferrara, 1992, Bad Lt. Productions, US). 355, 376, 869 Bad Little Angel (dir. Wilhelm Thiele, 1939, MGM, US). 259, 260, 265, 869

869

Bakha satang [a.k.a. Peppermint Candy] (dir. Lee Chang-dong, 1999, East Film Company, KR/JP). 713, 719, 869, 887 Banned from the Bible I [a.k.a. Time Machine: Banned from the Bible] (prod. Bram Roos, 2003, US). 234, 235, 869, 892 Banned from the Bible II (dir. Geoffrey Madeja, 2006, History Channel, US). 234, 869 Barabbas (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1961, Columbia Pictures, IT/US). 178, 191, 428, 432, 442, 506, 507, 514, 869 Barry Lyndon (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1975, Peregrine, UK/US). 665, 672, 869 Barton Fink (dir. The Coen Brothers, 1991, Circle Films, US/UK). X, 730, 731, 737, 869 The Battle at Elderbush Gulch (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1914, Biograph, US). 196, 206, 869 Bàttu (dir. Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 2000, British Screen, SN/FR/UK). 703, 712, 869 Beaufort (dir. Joseph Cedar, 2006, United King, IL). 768, 774, 869 Bedazzled (dir. Stanley Donen, 1967, Stanley Donen Films, UK). 331, 338, 869 Bedazzled (dir. Harold Ramis, 2000, Twentieth Century Fox, US/DE) 332, 869 Being There (dir. Hal Ashby, 1979, BSB, US). 8, 14, 869 The Believer (dir. Henry Bean, 2001, Fuller Films, US). 54, 63, 869 The Bells of St. Mary’s (dir. Leo McCarey, 1945, Rainbow Productions, US). 611, 620, 869 Ben Hur (dir. Sidney Olcott, Harry T. Morey, and Frank Rose, 1907, Kalem, US). 101, 116, 177, 191, 514, 549, 555, 869 Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (dir. Fred Niblo, 1925, MGM, US). 177, 191, 514, 869 Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959, MGM, US). 191, 514, 665, 869 Ben Hur (dir. Bill Kowalchuk, 2003, Agamemnon Films, US/CA). 514, 869 Ben Hur (dir. Steve Shill, 2010, Akkord Film Produktion GmbH, UK/DE/ES/CA). 514, 869 Bet-lehem [a.k.a. Bethlehem] (dir. Yuval Adler, 2013, Entre Chien et Loup, IL/DE/BE). 764, 774, 869 Bethlehem [see Bet-lehem]. Beyond the Door [see Chi sei?].

870

Film Index

Bez konca [a.k.a. No End] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1984, P.P. Film Polski, PL). 676, 869, 886 The Bible (prod. Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, 2013, Lightworkers Media, US/UK). 33, 51, 54, 63, 94, 95, 99, 114, 116, 232, 234, 301, 302, 325, 459, 461, 507, 514, 869 The Bible: In the Beginning… (dir. John Huston, 1966, Dino de Laurentiis, US/IT). XI, 18, 19, 33, 36, 49, 51, 52, 63, 177, 191, 301, 325, 342, 353, 661, 869 The Bible Collection [Abraham; TV miniseries] (dir. Joseph Sargent, 1993, Lux Vide, DE/ IT/US/CZ/FR). 51, 53, 63, 302, 325, 867, 869 – [David; TV miniseries] (dir. Robert Markowitz, 1997, Lux Vide, US/IT/DE). 112, 113, 116, 869, 872 – [Jacob; TV miniseries] (dir. Peter Hall, 1994, Lux Vide, CZ/FR/UK/IT/DE/US/NL). 57, 63, 869, 872 – [Jesus; TV miniseries] (dir. Roger Young, 1999, Lux Vide, CZ/IT/DE/US). 338, 443, 461, 481, 507, 514, 869, 880 – [Joseph; TV miniseries] (dir. Roger Young, 1995, Lux Vide, IT/US/DE). 59, 63, 869, 880 – [Moses; TV miniseries] (dir. Roger Young, 1995, Lux Vide, US/CZ/UK/FR/IT/DE/ES). 82, 305, 325, 869, 885 – [San Giovanni – L’apocalisse; a.k.a. The Apocalypse; TV miniseries] (dir. Raffaele Mertes, 2002, Lux Vide, IT/FR/DE/UK). 507, 514, 868, 870, 889 – [San Paulo; a.k.a. Paul the Apostle; TV miniseries] (dir. Roger Young, 2000, Lux Vide, IT/CZ/DE). 507, 514, 865, 870, 889 Biceps of Steel (dir. Julien Temple, 1980, GTO Films, UK). 99, 870 Big Eden (dir. Thomas Bezucha, 2000, Chaiken Films, US). 26, 27, 33, 870 The Big Fisherman (dir. Frank Borzage, 1959, Walt Disney, US). 178, 191, 870 The Big Heat (dir. Fritz Lang, 1953, Columbia Pictures, US). 161, 166, 173, 870 Big Mamma’s House (dir. Raja Gosnell, 2000, Twentieth Century Fox, US/DE). 258, 265, 870 The Big Show (dir. James B. Clark, 1961, Associated Producers, US). 62, 63, 870

The Big Sleep (dir. Howard Hawks, 1946, Warner Brothers, US). 171, 173, 870 The Big Trail (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1930, Fox Film Corporation, US). 196, 206, 870 Bigger Than Life (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1956, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 54, 63, 870 The Birth of a Nation (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1915, David W. Griffith Corporation, US). 536, 538, 539, 540, 541, 542, 557, 568, 808, 824, 870 The Black Moses (dir. Travolta Cooper, 2013, Black Apple International, BS). 66, 82, 870 Black Samson (dir. Charles Bail, 1974, Omni Pictures, US). 809, 810, 824, 870 Blackout in Rome [see Era note a Roma]. Blade af Satans Bog [a.k.a. Leaves from Satan’s Book] (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1920, Nordisk Film, DK). 330, 338, 463, 481, 587, 598, 870 Blade Runner (dir. Ridley Scott, 1982, The Ladd Company, US). 240, 244, 250, 317, 318, 325, 870 Blaise Pascal (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1972, Orizzonte 2000, IT/FR). 429, 631, 634, 870 Blazing Saddles (dir. Mel Brooks, US, 1974, Crossbow Productions, US). 197, 206, 870 Blind Chance [see Przypadek]. Blizna [a.k.a. The Scar] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1976, Film Polski, PL). 676, 689, 870, 889 Block-notes di un regista [a.k.a. A Director’s Notebook] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1969, NBC, IT). 647, 870, 873 The Blood of Jesus (dir. Spencer Williams, 1941, Amegro Films, US). 331, 338, 870 Boccaccio 70 [omnibus project; La tentazione del dottor Antonio, a.k.a. The Temptation of Dr. Antonio] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1962, Cieriz, IT/FR). 635, 639, 647, 870, 882, 892 The Body (dir. Jonas McCord, 2001, Avalanche Films, US/IL/DE). 224, 234, 870 Book of Genesis [see The New Media Bible: Book of Genesis]. The Book of Eli (dir. The Hughes Brothers, 2010, Alcon Entertainment, US). XI, 228, 229, 234, 406, 408, 415, 870

Film Index

The Book of Esther (dir. David A. R. White, 2013, Pure Flix Entertainment, US). 130, 131, 136, 870 The Book of Life (dir. Hal Hartley, 1998, Haut et Court, FR/US). 412, 415, 870 The Boondock Saints (dir. Troy Duffy, 1999, Franchise Pictures, CA/US). 321, 325, 870 Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (dir. Larry Charles, 2006, Four by Two, US/UK). 257, 265, 870 Born to Kill (dir. Robert Wise, 1947, RKO Radio Pictures, US). 166, 173, 870 The Bourne Identity (dir. Doug Liman, 2002, Universal, US/DE/CZ). 804, 870 The Bourne Legacy (dir. Tony Gilroy, 2012, Universal, US/JP). 801, 804, 870 The Bourne Supremacy (dir. Paul Greengrass, 2004, Universal, US/DE). 804, 870 The Bourne Ultimatum (dir. Paul Greengrass, 2007, Universal, US/DE). 804, 870 Bowling for Columbine (dir. Michael Moore, 2002, Alliance Atlantis, CA/US/DE). 389, 870 A Boy and His Dog (dir. L. Q. Jones, 1975, LQ/ JAF, US). 408, 415, 870 Breaking the Waves (dir. Lars von Trier, 1996, Argus Film, DK/SE/FR/NL/NO/IS/ES). 316, 317, 325, 376, 857, 866, 870 Breath Umphefumlo (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2015, Advantage Entertainment, ZA). 721, 723, 728, 870 Brighton Rock [a.k.a. Young Scarface] (dir. John Boulting, 1947, Charter Film Productions, UK). 170, 173, 870, 894 Broken Blossoms [a.k.a. The Yellow Man and the Girl] (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1919, D. W. Griffith Productions, US). 542, 870, 894 Broken Lance (dir. Edward Dmytryk, 1954, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 62, 63, 870 Broncho Billy (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1980, Warner Brothers, US). 197, 206, 870 Bruce Almighty (dir. Tom Shadyac, 2003, Spyglass Entertainment, US). XI, 262, 265, 271, 282, 314, 315, 316, 325, 361, 362, 363, 365, 374, 376, 871 Bucking Broadway (dir. John Ford, 1917, Universal Film Manufacturing Company, US). 196, 206, 871

871

Butch Cassidy and the Sunday Kid (dir. George Roy Hill, 1969, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 197, 206, 871 The Butler (dir. Lee Daniels, 2013, Follow Through Productions, US). 808, 809, 824, 871 C’era una volta il West [a.k.a. Once Upon a Time in the West] (dir. Sergio Leone, 1968, Finanzia San Marco, IT/ES/US). 197, 206, 871, 887 The Cabbage Fairy [see La fée aux choux]. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (dir. Robert Weine, 1920, Decio-Bioscope, DE). 800, 804, 871 Caïn et Abel [“Cain and Abel”] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1911, Pathé Frères, FR). 144, 158, 871 Caligula (dir. Tinto Brass, 1979, Penthouse Films International, IT/US). 856, 866, 871 The Calm [see Spokój]. Camera Buff [see Amator]. The Canterbury Tales [see I racconti di Canterbury]. Cape Fear (dir. J. Lee Thompson, 1962, MelvinTalbot Productions, US). 171, 173, 376, 871 Cape Fear (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1991, Amblin Entertainment, US). 46, 49, 371, 372, 376, 871 Capitalism: A Love Story (dir. Michael Moore, 2009, Dog Eat Dog Films, US). 389, 871 Cargo (dir. Ivan Engler and Ralph Etter, 2009, Atlantis Pictures, CH). XI, 241, 246, 247, 250, 871 Carrie (dir. Brian De Palma, 1976, United Artists, US). 23, 33, 225, 227, 231, 234, 871 Carrie (dir. Kimberly Peirce, 2013, MGM, US). 33, 225, 231, 234, 871 The Cars That Ate Paris [a.k.a. The Cars That Eat People] (dir. Peter Weir, 1974, Australian Film Development Corporation, AU). 691, 699, 871 The Cars That Eat People [see The Cars That Ate Paris]. Casablanca (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1942, Warner Brothers, US). 726, 728, 871 Cet obscur objet du désir [a.k.a. That Obscure Object of Desire]. (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1977, Greenwich Film Productions, FR/ES). 600, 608, 871, 892

872

Film Index

Chasing Ice (dir. Jeff Orlowski, 2012, Exposure, US). 351, 353, 871 Chi sei? [a.k.a. Beyond the Door] (dir. Ovido Assonitis and Robert Barrett, 1974, Film Ventures International, IT/US). 338, 869, 871 A Child Called Jesus [see Un bambino di nome Gesù]. Children of the Corn (dir. Fritz Kiersch, 1984, Angeles Entertainment Group, US). 224, 234, 871 Children of Eve (dir. John H. Collins, 1915, Edison Company, US). 17, 33, 871 Children of Men (dir. Alfonso Cuarón, 2007, Universal, US/UK). 415, 871 The China Syndrome (dir. James Bridges, 1979, Columbia Pictures, US). 351, 353, 871 Chinatown (dir. Roman Polanski, 1974, Paramount, US). XI, 649, 650, 652, 655, 656, 657, 658, 659, 660, 661, 871 Chorok mulkogi [a.k.a. Green Fish] (dir. Lee Chang-dong, 1997, CJ Entertainment, KR). 713, 719, 871, 877 The Chosen Prince [a.k.a. The Friendship of David and Jonathan] (dir. William V. Mong, 1917, The Crest Picture Company, US). 103, 116, 176, 191, 871, 875 Christmas Vacation [a.k.a. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation] (dir. Jeremiah S. Chechik, 1989, Warner Brothers, US). 261, 265, 871, 886 Christus (dir. Guilio Antamoro, 1916, Cines, IT). 177, 191, 871 Cinderella Man (dir. Ron Howard, 2005, Universal, US). 109, 116, 871 City of Women [see La città delle donne]. A Clockwork Orange (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1971, Warner Brothers, UK/US). XI, 663, 664, 672, 871 Close Encounters of the Third Kind (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1977, Columbia, US). 240, 250, 871 Close to Jesus: Joseph of Nazareth [see Gli amici di Gesù – Giuseppe di Nazareth]. Close to Jesus: Judas [see Gli amici di Gesù – Giuda]. Close to Jesus: Mary Magdalene [see Gli amici di Gesù – Maria Magdalena]. Close to Jesus: Thomas [see Gli amici di Gesù – Tommaso].

Cloud Atlas (dir. Tom Twyker and the Wachowski Siblings, 2012, Cloud Atlas Productions. DE/US/HK/SG). 541, 542, 871 The Clowns [see I clowns]. Color of the Cross (dir. Jean Claude La Marre, 2006, Nu-Lite Entertainment, US). 451, 452, 456, 461, 464, 477, 478, 481, 872 The Confession (dir. David Hugh Jones, 1999, El Dorado Pictures, US). 321, 325, 872 Constantine (dir. Francis Lawrence, 2005, Warner Brothers, US/DE). 223, 225, 234, 335, 338, 391, 393, 394, 396, 401, 402, 872 Contact (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1997, Warner Brothers, US). 239, 241, 242, 243, 250, 320, 325, 344, 353, 872 Cool Runnings (dir. Jon Turteltaub, 1993, Walt Disney, US). 109, 116, 872 Copii: The 1st Entry [see The Devil Incarnate]. A Corner in Wheat (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1909, Biograph, US). 535, 542, 872 The Covered Wagon (dir. James Cruze, 1923, Paramount, US). 196, 206, 872 Cowboys & Aliens (dir. Jon Favreau, 2011, Universal, US). 197, 206, 872 Creation (dir. Jon Amiel, 2009, Recorded Picture Company, UK). 319, 325, 343, 353, 872 The Creation of the World [see Stvoření světa]. Creature from the Black Lagoon (dir. Jack Arnold, 1954, Universal, US). 344, 353, 872 The Cradle of God [see Le berceau de dieu]. Crimes and Misdemeanors (dir. Woody Allen, 1989, Jack Rollins & Charles H. Joffe Productions, US). 54, 63, 321, 322, 325, 872 Crown of Thorns [see I.N.R.I.]. The Crusades (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1935, Paramount, US). 571, 586, 872 A Cuban Fight Against Demons [see Una pelea cubana contra los demonios]. Curriculum Vita [see Życiorys]. D. H. Lawrence’s Samson and Delilah (dir. Mark Peploe, 1985, Flamingo Pictures, UK). 99, 872 The Da Vinci Code (dir. Ron Howard, 2006, Columbia Pictures, US/MT/FR/UK). 234, 459, 461, 501, 514, 857, 866, 872 Damien: Omen II (dir. Don Taylor, 1978, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 333, 334, 338, 872

Film Index

Damn Yankees! (dir. George Abbott and Stanley Donen, 1958, Warner Brothers, US) 331, 338, 872 The Dance of the Seven Veils [see Salomé]. Dances with Wolves (dir. Kevin Costner, 1990, Tig Productions, US/UK). 197, 206, 872 Daniel dans la fosse aux lions [“Daniel in the Lions’ Den”] (dir. Lucient Nonguet (?), 1904 – 05, Pathé Frères, FR). 141, 158, 872 Dark City (dir. Alex Proyas, 1998, Mystery Clock Cinema, US). 241, 247, 250, 872 Das arche Noah prinzip [a.k.a. The Noah’s Ark Principle] (dir. Roland Emmerich, 1984, Centropolis Film Productions, DE). 41, 49, 872 David [a.k.a. The Seventh Commandment] (dir. Harry Southwell, 1924, Anglo-Australian Films, AU/UK/BE). 103, 116, 872, 890 David [TV miniseries; see The Bible Collection: David]. David (dir. Unknown, 1912, IT). 872 David, A King of Israel (dir. Edward Dew, 1958, Concordia Films, US). 106, 116, 872 David, A Young Hero (dir. Edward Dew, 1958, Concordia Films, US). 106, 116, 872 David and Bathsheba (dir. Henry King, 1951, Twentieth Century Fox, US). XI, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 114, 116, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182, 188, 191, 304, 325, 695, 782, 783, 791, 872 David and Goliath (dir. Rajeev Nath, 2013, Sal Roza Motion Pictures, IN). 114, 116, 872 David and Goliath (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1908, Kalem Company, US). 101, 116, 872 David e Golia [a.k.a. David and Goliath] (dir. Richard Pottier and Ferdinando Baldi, 1959, Ansa, IT). 107, 116, 872 David et Goliath [“David and Goliath”] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1910, Pathé Frères, FR). XI, 101, 102, 103, 116, 144, 158, 872 David et Saül [“David and Saul”] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1912, Pathé Frères, FR). 102, 103, 116, 144, 159, 872 David, King of Israel (dir. Unknown, 1912, US). 103, 116, 872 David’s War with Absalom [a.k.a. The Siege of Hebron] (dir. Unknown, 1912, New York Picture Company, US). 103, 116, 872

873

The Day After Tomorrow (dir. Roland Emmerich, 2004, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 41, 49, 351, 353, 408, 411, 415, 872 Day of Wrath [see Vredens dag]. The Day the Earth Stood Still (dir. Robert Wise, 1951, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 240, 251, 872 The Day the Earth Stood Still (dir. Scott Derrickson, 2008, Twentieth Century Fox, US/CA). 225, 229, 234, 873 Daya Sagar [see Karunamayudu]. Dayamayudu (dir. Vijay Chander, 1987, Privately funded, IN) 753, 761, 873 The Days of ‘61 (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1908, Kalem, US). 555, 873 Days of Heaven (dir. Terrence Malick, 1978, Paramount, US). 54, 63, 873 Day of Triumph (dir. John T. Coyle and Irving Pichel, 1954, Century Films, US). 427, 443, 463, 475, 481, 873 The Dead (dir. John Huston, 1987, Channel 4, US/UK/IE). 649, 650, 661, 873 Dead Man (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 1995, Pandora Film Produktion, US/DE/JP). 197, 206, 873 Dead Poets Society (dir. Peter Weir, 1989, Touchstone Pictures, US). 696, 699, 873 Dead Reckoning (dir. John Cromwell, 1947, Columbia Pictures, US). 166, 173, 873 Death of a Bureaucrat [see La muerte de un burócrata]. The Decalogue [see Dekalog]. Deconstructing Harry (dir. Woody Allen, 1998, Sweetland Films, US). 332, 338, 873 Deep Impact (dir. Mimi Leder, 1998, Paramount, US). 40, 49, 225, 229, 234, 873 Defending Your Life (dir. Albert Brooks, 1991, Geffen Pictures, US). 391, 392, 395, 396, 402, 873 Dekalog [a.k.a. The Decalogue] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1989 – 90, Sender Freies Berlin, PL/DE). Deliver us from Evil (dir. Scott Derrickson, 2014, Screen Gems, US). 336, 337, 339, 873 The Deluge (dir. Unknown, 1911, Vitagraph, US). 35, 49, 873 Deluge (dir. Felix E. Feist, 1933, K.B.S. Productions, US). 38, 39, 873

874

Film Index

Demetrius and the Gladiators (dir. Delmer Daves, 1954 Twentieth Century Fox, US). 178, 191, 511, 514, 873 Der himmel über Berlin [a.k.a. Wings of Desire] (dir. Wim Wenders, 1988, Road Movies Filmproduktion, DE/FR). 75, 82, 873 Det sjunde inseglet [a.k.a. The Seventh Seal] (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1957, Svensk, SE). XI, 415, 518, 522, 523, 524, 530, 531, 798, 804, 873, 890 Deutschland im Jahre Null [a.k.a. Germany Year Zero] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1947, Tevere Film, IT/FR/DE). 624, 634, 873, 876 The Devil and Daniel Webster [see All That Money Can Buy]. The Devil Incarnate [a.k.a. Copii: The 1st Entry] (dir. L. Gustavo Cooper, 2013, Raven Banner, US). The Devil Inside (dir. William Brent Bell, 2012, Prototype, US). 336, 339, 873 The Devil, Probably [see Le diable probablement]. Devil’s Advocate (dir. Taylor Hackford, 1997, Warner Brothers, US/DE). 334, 335, 339, 873 Diary of a Country Priest [see Journal d’un curé de compagne]. Die gezeichneten [“The Stigmatized,” a.k.a. Love One Another] (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1921, Primus Film, DE). 596, 598, 873, 884 Die päpstin [a.k.a. Pope Joan] (dir. Sönke Wortmann, 2009, Constantin Film, DE/UK/IT/ ES). 857, 866, 873, 887 Die sklavenkönigin [a.k.a. The Moon of Israel] (dir Michael Curtiz, 1924, Sascha-Film; AT/ UK). 82, 159, 873, 885 A Director’s Notebook [see Block-notes di un regista]. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie [see Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie]. Django Unchained (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2012, The Weinstein Company, US). 197, 206, 820, 824, 873 Doctor Zhivago (dir. David Lean, 1965, MGM, US/IT/UK). 653, 661, 873 Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (dir. Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2004, Twentieth Century Fox, US/DE). 109, 116, 873

Dogma (dir. Kevin Smith, 1999, View Askew Productions, US). 315, 325, 333, 339, 415, 873 Dogville (dir. Lars von Trier, 2003, Zentropa Entertainments, DK/SE/UK/FR/DE/NL/NO/FI/ IT). 133, 135, 136, 873 Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (dir. Paul Schrader, 2005, Morgan Creek Productions, US). 336, 339, 873 The Double Life of Veronique [see La double die de Véronique]. Drifting Clouds [see Kauas pilvet karkaavat]. Drums Along the Mohawk (dir. John Ford, 1939, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 196, 206, 873 Dr. Bull (dir. John Ford, 1933, Fox Film Corporation, US). 196, 206, 873 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1964, Columbia Pictures, US/UK). 257, 267, 408, 409, 415, 873 E la nave va [a.k.a. And the Ship Sails On] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1984, Rai 1, IT/FR). 644, 647, 868, 874 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1982, Universal, US). 240, 251, 351, 353, 874 Ecce Homo [a.k.a. Golgotha; 1937 English dubbed version] (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1935, Ichtys Film, FR). 426, 443, 449, 461, 463, 467, 471, 473, 481, 874, 877 El angel exterminador [a.k.a. The Exterminating Angel]. (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1962, Producciones Gustavo Alatriste, MX). 608, 874, 875 El arca [a.k.a. The Ark] (dir. Juan Pablo Buscarini, 2007, Patagonik Film Group, AR/IT). 45, 49, 272, 282, 868, 874 El laberinto del fauno [a.k.a. Pan’s Labyrinth] (dir. Guillermo del Toro, 2006, Estudios Picasso, ES/MX/US). 798, 804, 874, 887 El lince perdido [a.k.a. The Missing Lynx] (dir. Raul Garcia and Manuel Sicilia, 2008, Kandor Graphics, ES). 45, 49, 874, 885 El mártir del Calvario [a.k.a. The Martyr of Calvary] (dir. Miguel Morayta, 1952, Oro Films, MX). 427, 443, 451, 461, 463, 481, 874, 884

Film Index

El pecado de Adán y Eva [a.k.a. The Sin of Adam and Eve] (dir. Miguel Zacarías, 1969, Azteca Films, MX). 20, 33, 874 The Emigrant [see Al-mohager]. The Emissary: A Biblical Epic [see Paul the Emissary]. The End of the Affair (dir. Neil Jordan, 1999, Sony Pictures, UK/US). 380, 389, 874 End of Days (dir. Peter Hyams, 1999, Beacon Communications, US). XI, 225, 234, 334, 339, 410, 414, 415, 520, 526, 527, 528, 529, 530, 531, 874 The End of Evangelion [see Shin seiki evangelion: air, magokoro o kimini]. Enthiran [a.k.a. Robot] (dir. S. Shankar, 2010, Sun Pictures, IN). 243, 251, 874, 888 Era note a Roma [“It Was Night in Rome”; a.k.a. Blackout in Rome or Escape by Night] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1960, International Goldstar, IT/FR). 628, 634, 870, 874 Erin Brockovich (dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2000 Universal, US). 109, 110, 116, 874 Escape by Night [see Era note a Roma]. Esther (dir. Louis Feuillade, 1910, Gaumont, FR). 120, 136, 143, 158, 874 Esther (dir. Henri Andréani, 1913, Pathé Frères, FR). 120, 136, 146, 159, 874 Esther (dir. Amos Gitai, 1986, Agav Films, AT/ IL/UK). 122, 123, 124, 133, 136, 874 Esther (dir. Raffaele Mertes, 1999, Five Mile River Films, IT/DE/US). 124, 125, 126, 136, 874 Esther and the King (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1960, Galatea Film, IT/US). 120, 121, 122, 133, 136, 874 Esther of the People [see The Undertow]. Europa ’51 [a.k.a. Europe ’51] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1952, Ponti-De Laurentiis Cinematografica, IT). 626, 634, 874 Evan Almighty (dir. Tom Shadyac, 2007, Universal, US). 43, 49, 571, 283, 314, 325, 847 Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone [see Evangelion shin gekijoban: jo]. Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance [see Evangelion shin gekijoban: ha]. Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo [see Evangelion shin gekijoban: q]. Evangelion: Death & Rebirth [see Shin seiki evangelion shito shinsei].

875

Evangelion shin gekijoban: ha [a.k.a. Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance] (dir. Hideaki Anno, 2009, Gainax, JP). 292, 294, 874 Evangelion shin gekijoban: jo [a.k.a. Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone] (dir. Hideaki Anno, 2007, Gainax, JP). 292, 294, 874 Evangelion shin gekijoban: q [a.k.a. Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo] (dir. Hideaki Anno, 2012, Gainax, JP). 292, 294, 874 Eve and the Fire Horse (dir. Julia Kwan, 2005, Mongrel Media, CA). VII, X, 793, 794, 795, 796, 797, 798, 799, 800, 801, 802, 803, 804, 874 Eve and the Nervous Curate (dir. J. L. V. Leigh, 1918, Gaumont, UK). 33, 874 Eve Assists the Censor (dir. J. L. V. Leigh, 1918, Gaumont, UK). 17, 33, 874 Event Horizon (dir. Paul W. S. Anderson, 1997, Golar Productions, US). 241, 242, 251, 874 The Evil Dead (dir. Sam Raimi, 1981, Renaissance Pictures, US). 729, 737, 874 Exodus (dir. Otto Preminger, 1960, Carlyle Productions, US). 653, 661, 665, 672, 874 Exodus: Gods and Kings (dir. Ridley Scott, 2014, Chernin Entertainment, UK/US/ES). 65, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 151, 157, 179, 191, 300, 306, 325, 805, 875 The Exorcism of Emily Rose (dir. Scott Derrickson, 2005, Screen Gems, US). 336, 339, 875 The Exorcist (dir. William Friedkin, 1973, Warner Brothers, US). 336, 338, 339, 518, 519, 526, 529, 530, 531, 875 Exorcist II: The Heretic (dir. John Boorman, 1976, Warner Brothers, US). 336, 339, 875 The Exorcist III (dir. William Peter Blatty, 1990, Morgan Creek Productions, US). 336, 339, 875 Exorcist: The Beginning (dir. Renny Harlin, 2004, Morgan Creek Productions, US). 336, 339, 875 The Exterminating Angel [see El angel exterminador]. Eyes Wide Shut (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1999, Warner Brothers, US/UK). 663, 672, 875

876

Film Index

Fahrenheit 9/11 (dir. Michael Moore, 2004, Dog Eat Dog Films, US). 389, 875 The Fallen Idol (dir. Carol Reed, 1948, London Film Productions, UK). 169, 173, 875 Fantasia 2000 (dir. Francis Glebas, 1999, Walt Disney, US). 44, 49, 268, 280, 283, 875 Father Noah’s Ark (dir. Wilfred Jackson, 1933, Walt Disney, US). 44, 49, 279, 283, 875 Fear and Desire (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1953, Kubrick Family, US). 663, 672, 875 Fearless (dir. Peter Weir, 1993, Spring Creek Productions, US). 697, 699, 875 Fellini’s Casanova [see Il casanova di Fellini]. Fellini’s Roma [see Roma]. Fellini’s Satyricon (dir. Federico Fellini, 1969, Produzioni Europee Associati, IT). 642, 647, 875 Festin de Balthazar [“The Feast of Balthazzar”] (dir. Louis Feuillade, 1910, Gaumont, FR). 143, 158, 875 A Few Dollars More [see Per qualche dollaro in più]. Fiddler on the Roof (dir. Norman Jewison, 1971, Mirisch Production Company, US). 253, 265, 875 Field of Dreams (dir. Phil Alden Robinson, 1989, Gordon Company, US). 347, 348, 352, 353, 391, 398, 400, 402, 875 The Fifth Element (dir. Luc Bresson, 2007, Gaumont, FR). 238, 245, 251, 875 Fig Leaves (dir. Howard Hawks, 1926, Fox Film Corporation, US). 21, 22, 32, 33, 840, 875 Fight Club (dir. David Fincher, 1999, Fox 2000 Pictures, US/DE). XI, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 875 Fill the Void [see Lemale et ha’halal]. Finzan (dir. Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 1989, Kora Films, ML). 703, 712, 875 A Fistful of Dollars [see Per un pugno di dollari]. Flatliners (dir. Joel Schumacher, 1990, Columbia, US). 392, 393, 402, 875 The Flood [see Mabul]. Flowers for St. Francis [see Francesco giullare di Dio]. For Love, Only For Love [see Per amore, solo per amore]. Forbidden Fruit (dir. Ivan Abramson, 1915, Ivan Film Productions, US). 17, 33, 875

Fort Apache (dir. John Ford, 1948, Argosy Pictures, US). 196, 206, 875 The Fountain (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2006, Warner Brothers, US/CA). 30, 34, 875 Frailty (dir. Bill Paxton, 2001, David Krischner Productions, US/DE). 54, 63, 875 Francesco giullare di Dio [“Francis, God’s Jester”; a.k.a. Flowers for St. Francis] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1950, Cineriz, IT). 634, 875 Frankenstein (dir. Searly Dawley, 1910, Edison Manufacturing Company, US). 242, 318, 351, 353, 875 Fresa y chocolate [a.k.a. Strawberry and Chocolate] (dir. Tomas Gutiérrez Alea, 1994, ICAIC, CU/MX/ES/US). 740, 749, 875, 891 Friends and Heroes [TV series] (dir. Dave Osborne, 2007 – 2009, Friends and Heroes Productions, UK/CA). 270, 273, 274, 275, 278, 283, 875 Friends of Jesus: Joseph of Nazareth [see Gli amici di Gesú– Giuseppe di Nazareth]. Friends of Jesus: Judas [see Gli amici di Gesù – Giuda]. Friends of Jesus: Mary Magdalene [see Gli amici di Gesù – Maria Magdalena]. Friends of Jesus: Thomas [see Gli amici di Gesù – Tommaso]. The Friendship of David and Jonathan [see The Chosen Prince]. From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians (dir. William Cran, 1998, Frontline Video, US). 215, 221, 875 From the Manger to the Cross [a.k.a. Jesus of Nazareth] (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1912, Kalem, US). XI, 101, 116, 421, 524, 425, 443, 455, 461, 463, 465, 466, 467, 468, 469, 470, 471, 472, 481, 548, 549, 550, 551, 553, 554, 555, 875, 880 Fruitvale Station (dir. Ryan Coogler, 2013, Forest Whitaker’s Significant Productions, US). 389, 875 Full Metal Jacket (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1987, Natant, UK/US). 665, 673, 876 Fury (dir. Fritz Lang, 1936, MGM, US). 164, 173, 876

Film Index

Gallipoli (dir. Peter Weir, 1981, Australian Film Commission, AU). 694, 699, 876 The Garden of Eden (dir. Lewis Milestone, 1928, Feature Productions, US). 26, 34, 876 Garden of Eden (dir. Max Nosseck, 1954, Excelsior Pictures, US). 17, 34, 876 Garden State (dir. Zach Braff, 2004, Camelot Pictures, US). 47, 49, 876 The Gaucho (dir. F. Richard Jones, 1927, Elton Corporation, US). 255, 256, 265, 876 General Della Rovere [see Il generale Della Rovere]. Genesi: la creazione e il diluvio [a.k.a. Genesis: The Creation and the Flood] (dir. Ermanno Olmi, 1994, Lux Vide, IT/DE). 36, 49, 876 Genesis: The Creation and the Flood [see Genesi: la creazione e il diluvio]. A Gentle Woman [see La femme douce]. Germany Year Zero [see Deutschland im Jahre Null]. Gertie the Dinosaur (dir. Winsor McCay, 1914, Vitagraph, US). 267, 268, 279, 283, 876 Gertrud (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964, Palladium, DK). 587, 598, 876 Geu seome gago shibda [a.k.a. To the Starry Island] (dir. Park Kwang-su, 1993, Park Kwang-su Films KR). 713, 719, 876, 892 Ghost (dir. Jerry Zucker, 1990, Paramount, US). 391, 392, 402, 876 Ghost in the Shell (dir. Mamouri Oshi, 1995, Bandai Visual Company, JP). 801, 805, 876 Ghostbusters (dir. Ivan Reitman, 1984, Black Rhino Productions, US). 256, 265, 518, 519, 531, 876 Giacobbe, l’uomo che lotto con Dio [a.k.a. Jacob: The Man Who Fought with God] (dir. Marcello Baldi, 1963, San Paolo Films, IT). 57, 63, 876, 879 Gideon and Samson [see I grande condottieri]. Ginger e Fred [a.k.a. Ginger and Fred] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1986, Produzioni Europee Associati, IT/FR/DE). 637, 645, 647, 876 Giovanna d’Arco al rogo [a.k.a. Joan of Arc at the Stake] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1954, Produzioni Cinematografiche Associate, IT/ FR). XI, 627, 628, 634, 876, 880 Giulietta degli spiriti [a.k.a. Juliet of the Spirits] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1965, Rizzoli Film, IT/ FR). 641, 647, 876, 880

877

Giuseppe ebreo [a.k.a. Joseph in Egypt] (dir. Unknown, 1911, Società Italiana Cines, IT). 59, 63, 876, 880 Giuseppe venduto dei fratelli [a.k.a. Joseph and His Brethren] (dir. Irving Rapper, 1960, Cosmopolis, YU/IT). 59, 63, 876, 880 Giv’a 24 eina ona [a.k.a. Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer] (dir. Thorold Dickinson, 1955, Israel Motion Picture Studios, IL). 768, 774, 876 Gladiator (dir. Ridley Scott, 2000, DreamWorks, UK/US). 179, 191, 508, 514, 856, 860, 866, 876 Gli amici di Gesù – Giuda [a.k.a. Close to (Friends of) Jesus: Judas] (dir. Raffaele Mertes and Elisabetta Marchetti, 2001, Lux Vide, IT). 501, 871, 875 Gli amici di Gesú – Giuseppe di Nazareth [a.k.a. Close to (Friends of) Jesus: Joseph of Nazareth] (dir. Raffaele Mertes, 2000, Lux Vide, IT). 507, 871, 875 Gli amici di Gesù – Maria Magdalena [a.k.a. Close to (Friends of) Jesus: Mary Magdalene] (dir. Raffaele Mertes and Elisabetta Marchetti, 2000, Lux Vide, IT/DE). 507, 514, 871, 875 Gli amici di Gesù – Tommaso [a.k.a. Close to (Friends of) Jesus: Thomas] (dir. Raffaele Mertes and Elisabetta Marchetti, 2001, Lux Vide, IT). 507, 514, 871, 875 Go West (dir. Edward Buzzell, 1940, MGM, US). 196, 206, 876 The God Complex (dir. Mark Pirro, 2009, Pirromount Pictures, US). 313, 325, 876 God Has a Rap Sheet (dir. Kamal Ahmed, 2003, Score on Four Productions, US). 315, 325, 876 God on Trial (dir. Andy De Emmony, 2008, Hat Trick Productions, UK). 322, 325, 380, 390, 876 The Godless Girl (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1929, DeMille Pictures, US). 571, 586, 876 God’s Not Dead (dir. Harold Cronk, 2014, Pure Flix Production, US). 320, 321, 325, 876 Godspell: A Musical Based on the Gospel According to St. Matthew (dir. David Greene, 1973, Columbia Pictures, US). 265, 438, 443, 464, 478, 481, 514, 791, 876 Going My Way (dir. Leo McCarey, 1944, Paramount, US). 611, 620, 877 Golgotha [see Ecce Homo].

878

Film Index

Goliath and the Dragon [see La vendetta di Ercole]. Gomorra [a.k.a. Gomorrah] (dir. Matteo Garrone, 2008, Fandango, IT). 56, 63, 877 Gomorrah [see Gomorra]. Gone With the Wind (dir. Victor Fleming, 1939, Selznick International Pictures, US). 808, 824, 877 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly [see Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo]. The Gospel According to Matthew [see The Visual Bible: The Gospel According to Matthew]. The Gospel According to St. Matthew [see Il vangelo secondo Matteo]. The Gospel of John [see The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John]. Gospel Road: The Story of Jesus (dir. Robert Elfstrom, 1973, Twentieth Century Fox, US). The Grandmother (dir. Gene Gauntier, 1909, Biograph, US). 549, 555, 877 The Great Dictator (dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1941, Charles Chaplin Productions, US). 259, 265, 877 The Great Gatsby (dir. Baz Luhrmann, 2013, Warner Brothers, AT/US). 348, 349, 353, 877 The Great Train Robbery (dir. Edwin S. Porter, 1903, Edison, US). 195, 206, 535, 542, 877 The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible [video series] (dir. Ray Patterson and Don Lusk, Hanna-Barbera, 1986 – 1992, US). 272, 283, 877 – [“Noah’s Ark”; video] (dir. Ray Patterson, 1986, Hanna-Barbera, US). 279, 283, 877 The Greatest Heroes of the Bible [“Abraham’s Sacrifice”; Season 1, Episode 1] (dir. Jack Hively, 1979, Sunn Classic Pictures, US). 53, 63, 877 – [“David and Goliath”; Season 1, Episode 1] (dir. James L. Conway, 1978, Sunn Classic Pictures, US). 116, 877 – [“Joseph in Egypt”; Season 1, Episode 10] (dir. James L. Conway, 1978, Sunn Classic Pictures, US). 63, 877 – [“Samson and Delilah”; Season 1, Episode 2] (dir. James L. Conway, 1978, Sunn Classic Productions, US). 99, 877

– [“Sodom and Gomorrah”; Season 2, Episode 7] (dir. Jack Hively, 1979, Sunn Classic Pictures, US). 53, 63, 877 The Greatest Story Ever Told (dir. George Stevens, 1965, United Artists, US). XI, 177, 178, 182, 189, 191, 310, 325, 328, 339, 427, 428, 443, 449, 453, 461, 464, 476, 477, 481, 484, 487, 494, 498, 500, 501, 514, 850, 851, 877 Green Card (dir. Peter Weir, 1990, Touchstone Pictures, FR/AU/US). 696, 699, 877 Green Fish [see Chorok mulkogi]. The Green Pastures (dir. Marc Connelly and William Keighley, 1936, Warner Brothers, US). XI, 37, 49, 63, 176, 183, 191, 312, 315, 325, 809, 824, 877 Guadalupe (dir. Santiago Parra, 2006, Dos Corazones Films, MX/ES). X, 744, 745, 746, 749, 877 Guimba, un tyran, une époque [a.k.a. Guimba the Tyrant] (dir. Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 1995, Centre National de la Cinématographie du Mali, ML/BF/DE). 703, 712, 877 The Gunfighter (dir. Henry King, 1950, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 196, 207, 877 A Guy Named Joe (dir. Victor Fleming, 1943, MGM, US). 399, 402, 877 Hail Mary [see Je vous salue, Marie]. Hallelujah (dir. King Vidor, 1929, MGM, US). 809, 824, 877 The Handmaid’s Tale (dir. Volker Schlöndorff, 1990, Bioskop, US/DE). 239, 251, 877 Hang ’em High (dir. Ted Post, 1968, Leonard Freeman Productions, US). 197, 207, 877 Hannibal Rising (dir. Peter Webber, 2007, Young Hannibal Productions, UK/CZ/FR/ IT). 54, 64, 877 Hatufim [a.k.a. Prisoners of War] (dir. Gideon Raff, 2009 – 12, Keshet Media Group, IL). 770, 771, 772, 774, 877, 887 Häxan [a.k.a. Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages] (dir. Benjamin Christensen, 1922, Aljosha Production Company, SE). 331, 339, 877 HaYehudim ba’im [a.k.a. The Jews Are Coming, TV series] (dir. Kobi Havia, 2014 – 15, Yoav Gross Productions, IL). 765, 774, 877, 880 HaYehudim ba’im [“Akedat Yithak” or “The Binding of Isaac,” Season 1, Episode 1]

Film Index

(dir. Kobi Havia, 2014, Yoav Gross Productions, IL). 765, 774, 877 He Walked Through the Fields [see Hou halach basad’ot]. Heaven (dir. Tom Tykwer, 2002, Miramax, DE/ IT/US/FR/UK). 685, 689, 877 Heaven Can Wait (dir. Ernst Lubitsch, 1943, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 331, 339, 878 Heaven Can Wait (dir. Warren Beatty and Buck Henry, 1978, Paramount, US). 390, 391, 395, 403, 878 Heaven Is for Real (dir. Randall Wallace, 2014, Tristar Pictures, US). 391, 396, 401, 403, 878 Heavens Above! (dir. John and Roy Boulting, 1963, Charter Film Productions, UK). 254, 265, 878 Hell [see L’enfer]. Hereafter (dir. Clint Eastwood, 2010, Warner Brothers, US). 391, 395, 403, 878 High Noon (dir. Fred Zinnemann, 1952, Stanley Kramer Productions, US). 196, 205, 207, 878 High Plains Drifter (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1973, Universal, US). 197, 207, 878 Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer [see Giv’a 24 eina ona]. Hiob [“Job”] (dir. Kurt Matull, 1918, Ideal-Film GmbH, DE). 369, 370, 376, 878 Hiob [a.k.a. Job] (dir. Michael Kehlmann, 1977, Fernsehfilmproduktion Dr. Heinz Schneiderbauer, AT). 376, 878 Hiob [“Job”] (dir. Peter Schönhofer, 2009, 3 Sat, DE). 376, 878 History of the World Part I (dir. Mel Brooks, 1981, Brooksfilms, US). 182, 191, 878 Hofshat Kaits [a.k.a. My Father My Lord] (dir. David Volach, 2007, Cinema Project, IL). 764, 765, 768, 772, 774, 878, 887 Hole in the Moon [see Hor b’levana]. Holocaust 2000 (dir. Albert De Martino, 1977, Aston Film, UK/IT). 225, 234, 336, 339, 878 The Holy Family [see La sacra famiglia]. Homeland (prod. Alex Gansa and Howard Gordan, 2011-, Teakwood Lane Productions, US). 94, 95, 770, 774, 878 Homesdale (dir. Peter Weir, 1971, Experimental Film and Television Fund, AU). 699, 878

879

The Homesteader (dir. Oscar Micheaux, 1919, Micheaux Book & Film Company, US). 557, 560, 568, 878 Hondo (dir. John Farrow, 1953, Warner Brothers, US). 196, 207, 878 Hoosiers (dir. David Anspaugh, 1986, De Haven Productions, UK/US). 109, 116, 878 Hor b’levana [a.k.a. Hole in the Moon] (dir. Uri Zohar, 1964, Geva Films Ltd., IL). 774, 878 The Höritz Passion Play (prod. William Freeman, 1897, Klaw & Erlanger, US). 65, 82, 157, 177, 191, 423, 443, 878 Hou halach basad’ot [a.k.a. He Walked Through the Fields] (dir. Yosef Millo, 1967, Meroz Films, IL). 768, 773, 774, 877, 878 House of Exorcism (dir. Mario Bava and Alfredo Leone, 1975, Euro America Produzioni Cinematografiche, IT/DE/ES). 336, 339, 878 House of Strangers (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1949, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 62, 64, 878 House of Wax (dir. André de Toth, 1954, Bryn Foy Productions, US) 847, 851, 878 How the West Was Won (dir. John Ford, 1962, MGM, US). 196, 207, 878 The Human Voice [see Una voce umana]. Humanité [see L’humanité]. I Am Legend (dir. Francis Lawrence, 2007, Warner Brothers, US). 225, 228, 229, 232, 234, 878 I Beheld His Glory (dir. John T. Coyle, 1952, Cathedral Films, US). 463, 474, 481, 878 I Can Do Bad All by Myself (dir. Tyler Perry, 2009, Tyler Perry Company, US). 258, 263, 265, 878 I clowns [a.k.a. The Clowns] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1970, RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana, IT/ FR/DE). 647, 872, 878 I grande condottieri [a.k.a. Gideon and Samson] (dir. Marcello Baldi and Francisco Pérez-Dolz, 1965, San Pablo Films, IT/ES). 107, 116, 876, 878 I.N.R.I. [a.k.a. Crown of Thorns] (dir. Robert Wiene, 1923, Neumann Productions, DE). 159, 177, 191, 872, 878 I, Paul (dir. Domenic A. Arbusto, 1980, Leodus and Arbusto, US). 506, 514, 878 I racconti di Canterbury [a.k.a. The Canterbury Tales] (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1972, Les

880

Film Index

Productions Artistes Associés, IT/FR). 333, 339, 871, 878 ITV Play of the Week [“The Stories of D. H. Lawrence #4: Samson and Delilah,” Season 11, Episode 21] (dir. Peter Plummer, 1966, Granada Television, UK). 99, 878 I vitelloni [a.k.a. The Young and the Passionate] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1953, Cité Films, IT/ FR). 647, 878, 894 Ibraheem, the Friend of God [a.k.a. Abraham: The Friend of God] (dir. Mohammad Reza Varzi, 2008, IR). 64, 867, 878 If I Stay (dir. R.J. Cutler, 2014; Dinovi Pictures, US). 391, 395, 396, 398, 401, 403, 878 Il bidone [“The Swindle”] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1955, Titanus, IT/FR). 637, 647, 878 Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo [a.k.a. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly] (dir. Sergio Leone, 1966, Produzioni Europee Associati, IT/ES/ DE/US). 197, 207, 877, 879 Il casanova di Fellini [a.k.a. Fellini’s Casanova] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1976, Produzioni Europee Associati, IT/US). 644, 647, 875, 879 Il generale Della Rovere [a.k.a. General Della Rovere] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1959, Zebra Film, IT/FR). 628, 629, 634, 876, 879 Il messia [a.k.a. The Messiah] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1975, Orizzonte 2000, IT/FR). XI, 427, 429, 443, 458, 461, 623, 630, 631, 633, 634, 780, 791, 879, 885 Il miracolo [a.k.a. The Miracle] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1948, Finecine, IT). 624, 634, 879, 885 Il piccolo diavolo [a.k.a. Little Devil] (dir. Roberto Benigni, 1989, Yarno Cinematografia, IT). 332, 339, 879, 883 Il vangelo secondo Matteo [a.k.a. The Gospel According to St. Matthew] (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964, Arco Film, IT/FR). XI, 434, 435, 443, 450, 461, 464, 477, 481, 485, 494, 501, 505, 514, 787, 791, 877, 879 Imperium [Augustus; TV miniseries] (dir. Roger Young, 2003, Lux Vide, DE/IT/ES/AT/FR/ UK). 506, 514, 869, 879 Imperium [Nerone; a.k.a. Imperium: Nero; TV miniseries] (dir. Paul Marcus, 2004, Lux Vide, IT/ES/UK). 514, 879, 886

Imperium [San Pietro; a.k.a. Imperium: Saint Peter; TV miniseries] (dir. Giulio Base, 2005, Lux Vide, IT). 506, 514, 879, 889 In The Beginning [TV series; see Tezuka Osamu no Kyūyakuseisho monogatari]. In the Beginning (dir. Kevin Connor, 2000, Hallmark Entertainment, US). 54, 64, 879 In the Valley of Elah (dir. Paul Haggis, 2007, Warner Independent Pictures, US). 8, 14, 110, 116, 879 In Search of Noah’s Ark (dir. James L. Conway, 1976, Schick Sun Classic Pictures, US). 36, 49, 879 An Inconvenient Truth (dir. Davis Guggenheim, 2006, Lawrence Bender Productions, US). 350, 351, 353, 879 The Incredible Discovery of Noah’s Ark (dir. Henning Schellerup, 1993, Charles E. Sellier Productions, US). 36, 49, 879 Independence Day (dir. Roland Emmerich, 1996, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 225, 234, 406, 879 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (dir. Steven Spielberg, 2008, Paramount, US). 245, 251, 879 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1989, Paramount, US). 265, 879 Inherit the Wind (dir. Stanley Kramer, 1960, Stanley Kramer Productions, US). 31, 34, 319, 325, 879 Inherit the Wind (dir. Daniel Petrie, 1999, MGM Television, US). 34, 879 Inland Empire (dir. David Lynch, 2006, StudioCanal, FR/FI/US). 518, 520, 531, 879 The Insider (dir. Michael Mann, 1999, Blue Lion Entertainment, US). 110, 116, 879 Interstellar (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2014, Paramount, US). 241, 242, 251, 879 Interview [see Intervista]. Intervista [a.k.a. Interview] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1987, Aljosha, IT). Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1916, Triangle Film Corporation, US). 159, 443, 494, 542, 598, 791, 879 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (dir. Don Siegel, 1956, Walter Wanger Productions, US). 240, 251, 879

Film Index

Io sono con te [a.k.a. Let It Be] (dir. Guido Chiesa, 2010, Colorado Film Production/Magda Film, IT). 455, 456, 461, 879, 883 The Iron Horse (dir. John Ford, 1924, Fox Film Corporation, US). 196, 207, 879 The Island (dir. Michael Bay, 2005, DreamWorks/Warner Brothers, US). 30, 34, 879 It’s A Disaster (dir. Todd Berger, 2013, Vacationer Productions, US). 415, 879 Jacob [TV miniseries; see The Bible Collection: Jacob]. Jacob: The Man Who Fought with God [see Giacobbe, l’uomo che lotto con Dio]. Jacob’s Ladder (dir. Adrian Lyne, 1990, Carolco Pictures, US). 58, 64, 391, 394, 403, 879 Jaël et Sisera [“Jael and Sisera”] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1911, Pathé Frères, FR). XI, 144, 145, 158, 879 Janguru taitei [a.k.a. Kimba the White Lion; TV series] (dir. Eiichi Yamamoto, et al., 1965 – 66, Mushi Productions, JP). 289, 294, 879, 881 Je vous salue, Marie [a.k.a. Hail Mary] (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1985 Sara Films, Pégase Films, JLG Films, FR/CH/UK). 454, 460, 461, 877 Jephthah’s Daughter: A Biblical Tragedy (dir. Stuart Blackton, 1909, Vitagraph, US). 142, 158, 879 Jesus (dir. P. A. Thomas, 1973, Shaji Movies, IN). 753, 761, 880 Jesus [a.k.a. The Jesus Film] (dirs. John Krish and Peter Sykes, 1979, Jesus Film Project, US). 339, 443, 461, 500, 501, 506, 514, 751, 761, 880 Jesus [TV miniseries, 1999; see The Bible Collection: Jesus]. Jesus Christ Superstar (dir. Norman Jewison, 1973, Universal, US). XI, 6, 14, 310, 311, 325, 421, 438, 439, 443, 458, 461, 464, 477, 478, 480, 481, 498, 500, 501, 514, 844, 849, 851, 880 Jésus de Montréal [a.k.a. Jesus of Montreal] (dir. Denys Arcand, 1989, Centre National de la Cinématographie, CA/FR). 310, 325, 443, 461, 494, 514, 791, 880 The Jesus Film [see Jesus, 1979].

881

Jesus, Nuestro Señor [“Jesus, Our Lord”] (dir. Miquel Zacarías, 1972, Panorama Films, MX). 481, 880 Jesus of Montreal [see Jésus de Montréal]. Jesus of Nazareth [see From the Manger to the Cross, 1912]. Jesus of Nazareth (dir. Franco Zeffirelli, 1977, Incorporated Television Company, IT/UK). XI, 427, 430, 431, 432, 443, 453, 455, 456, 457, 458, 461, 464, 477, 478, 481, 486, 494, 499, 500, 501, 503, 506, 514, 780, 784, 791, 880 Jesus, the Spirit of God [see Mesih]. The Jews Are Coming [TV series; see HaYehudim ba’im]. Jezebel (dir. William Wyler, 1938, Warner Brothers, US). 809, 824, 880 Joan the Woman (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1917, Cardinal Film, US). 571, 586, 880 Joan of Arc at the Stake [see Giovanna d’Arco al rogo]. Job [see Hiob]. Joseph [TV miniseries; see The Bible Collection: Joseph]. Joseph and His Brethren [see Joseph vendu par ses frères, 1909]. Joseph and His Brethren [see Giuseppe venduto dei fratelli, 1960]. Joseph, fils de Jacob [a.k.a. Joseph’s Trials in Egypt] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1913, Pathé Frères, FR). 64, 880 Joseph in Egypt [see Giuseppe ebreo]. Joseph in the Land of Egypt (dir. Eugene Moore, 1914, Thanhouser Film Corporation, US). 59, 64, 880 Joseph, King of Dreams (dir. Rob LaDuca and Robert Ramirez, 2000, DreamWorks, US). 61, 64, 880 Joseph the Dreamer [see Ba’al hahalomot]. Joseph the Prophet [see Yousuf-e-payambar]. Joseph Sold by His Brethren [see Joseph vendu par ses frères]. Joseph vendu par ses frères [a.k.a. Joseph Sold by His Brethren] (dir. Vincent Lorant-Heilbronn, 1904, Pathé Frères, FR). 64, 158, 880 Joseph vendu par ses frères [a.k.a. Joseph and His Brethren] (dir. Georges Berr and Paul Gavault, 1909, Pathé Frères, FR). 59, 64, 141, 880

882

Film Index

Joseph’s Trials in Egypt [see Joseph, fils de Jacob]. Journal d’un curé de compagne [a.k.a. Diary of a Country Priest] (dir. Robert Bresson, 1951, Union Générale Cinématographique, FR). 609, 611, 612, 617, 620, 873, 880 Journey to Italy [see Viaggio in Italia]. Judas (dir. Charles Robert Carner, 2004, Fatima Productions, US). 501, 514, 880 Judge Priest (dir. John Ford, 1934, Fox Film Corporation, US). 196, 207, 880 The Judgment of Solomon (dir. Stuart Blackton, 1909.Vitagraph, US). 142, 158, 880, 882 Judith et Holophernes [“Judith and Holofernes”] (dir. Louis Feuillade, 1909, Gaumont, FR). 158, 880 Judith of Bethulia (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1914, Biograph, US). 103, 116, 146, 147, 159, 509, 514, 236, 538, 539, 541, 542, 880 Juliet of the Spirits [see Giulietta degli spiriti]. Jurassic Park (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1993, Universal, US). 237, 243, 251, 880 The Karate Kid (dir. John G. Avildsen, 1984, Columbia Pictures, US). 109, 116, 880 Karunamayudu [“Man of Compassion,” a.k.a. Daya Sagar or Ocean of Mercy] (dir. A. Bheem Singh, 1978, Dayspring International, IN). X, 431, 432, 442, 443, 451, 461, 751, 752, 753, 754, 755, 756, 757, 758, 759, 760, 761, 873, 880, 886 Kauas pilvet karkaavat [a.k.a. Drifting Clouds] (dir. Aki Kaurismädi, 1996, Sputnik, FI). 361, 362, 365, 373, 374, 376, 873, 880 Kaze no tani no Naushika [a.k.a. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind] (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 1984, Hakuhodo, JP). 287, 290, 294, 880, 886 Keeping Mum (dir. Niall Johnson, 2005, Summit Entertainment, US). 260, 261, 265, 880 Key Largo (dir. John Huston, 1948, Warner Brothers, US). 649, 661, 880 Kimba the White Lion [TV series; see Janguru taitei]. King David (dir. Bruce Beresford, 1985, Paramount, UK/US). 111, 112, 116, 304, 305, 325, 341, 881 King Kong (dir. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933, RKO Radio Picutres, US). 268, 281, 283, 881

The King of Kings (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1927, DeMille Pictures Corporation, US). XI, 154, 155, 156, 159, 177, 182, 191, 422, 425, 426, 443, 449, 452, 457, 458, 461, 465, 466, 467, 468, 469, 471, 472, 473, 474, 482, 487, 494, 498, 500, 501, 510, 514, 569, 570, 575, 576, 577, 583, 586, 751, 752, 761,777, 779, 783, 788, 791, 844, 846, 851, 881 King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961, MGM, US). 175, 178, 191, 325, 420, 427, 443, 461, 464, 476, 482, 485, 494, 499, 514, 788, 789, 791, 850, 851, 860, 866, 881 King of the Cowboys (dir. Joseph Kane, 1943, Republic Pictures, US). 196, 207, 881 Kings (dir. Francis Lawrence, 2009, Universal Media Studios, US). 116, 881 Kiss Me Deadly (dir. Robert Aldrich, 1955, Parklane Pictures, US). 656, 661, 881 Koyaanisqatsi (dir. Geoffrey Reggio, 1982, IRE Productions, US). 350, 353, 881 Krótki film o milosci [a.k.a. A Short Film About Love] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1988, Zespol Filmowy, PL). 689, 881, 890 Krótki film o zabijaniu [a.k.a. A Short Film About Killing] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1988, Zespol Filmowy, PL). 689, 881, 890 Kundun (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1997, De FinaCappa, US). 803, 805, 881 L’âge d’or [“The Golden Age”] (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1930, Vicomte de Noailles, FR). 599, 602, 603, 608, 881 L’amore [a.k.a. Amore or Ways of Love] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1948, Finecine, IT). 624, 634, 868, 881, 894 L’argent [“Money”] (dir. Robert Bresson, 1983, Eôs Films, FR/CH). 609, 610, 618, 619, 620, 881 L’assassin habite…au 21 [a.k.a. The Murderer Lives at Number 21] (dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1942, Continental Films, FR). 261, 265, 881, 885 L’aveugle de Jérusalem [“The Blind in Jerusalem”] (dir. Louis Feuillade, 1909, Gaumont, FR). 143, 158, 881 L’enfer [a.k.a. Hell] (dir. Danis Tanović, 2005, Asap Films, FR/IT/BE/JP). 685, 689, 878, 881

Film Index

L’exode [“The Exodus”] (dir. Louis Feuillade, 1910, Gaumont, FR). 82, 144, 158, 881 L’humanité [a.k.a. Humanité] (dir. Bruno Dumont, 1999, 3B Productions, FR). 355, 376, 878, 881 L’uomo dalla croce [a.k.a. The Man with a Cross] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1943, Continentalcine, IT). 623, 624, 634, 881 La Bibbia [a.k.a. After Six Days] (dir. Pier Antonio Gariazzo and Armando Vey, 1920, Appia Nuova, IT). 17, 34, 867, 881 La città delle donne [a.k.a. City of Women] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1980, Gaumont, IT/FR). 644, 647, 871, 881 La dolce vita [“The Sweet Life”] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1960, Riama Film, IT/FR). XI, 639, 646, 647, 881 La double die de Véronique [a.k.a. The Double Life of Veronique] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1991, Sidéral Productions, FR/PL/NO). 683, 689, 873, 881 La fée aux choux [a.k.a. The Cabbage Fairy] (dir. Alice Guy, 1896, Gaumont, FR). 544, 555, 871, 881 La femme douce [a.k.a. A Gentle Woman] (dir. Robert Bresson, 1972, Marianne Productions, FR). 609, 620, 876, 881 La fille de Jephté [“The Daughter of Jephthah”] (dir. Léonce Perret, 1910, Gaumont, FR). 158, 881 La fille de Jephté [“The Daughter of Jephthah”] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1913, Pathé Frères, FR). 159, 881 La genèse [“Genesis”] (dir. Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 1999, Kora Films, FR/ML). XI, 57, 59, 64, 702, 703, 704, 705, 706, 707, 708, 709, 710, 711, 712, 881 La macchina ammazzacattivi [a.k.a. The Machine to Kill Bad People] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1952, Tevere Film, IT). 625, 634, 881 La muerte de un burócrata [a.k.a. Death of a Bureaucrat] (dir. Tomas Gutiérrez Alea, 1966, ICAIC, CU). 740, 749, 873, 881 La mort de Saül [“The Death of Saul”] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1912, Pathé Frères, FR). 103, 104, 116, 144, 159, 881 La naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ [see La vie du Christ]. La passion [see La passion du Christ].

883

La passion de Jeanne d’Arc [a.k.a. The Passion of Joan of Arc] (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1927, Société générale des films, FR). 587, 598, 881, 887 La passion du Christ [a.k.a. La passion] (dir. Albert Kirchner/Léar, 1897, La Bonne Presse, FR). 881 La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV [a.k.a. The Rise of Louis XIV] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1966, ORTF, FR). 629, 634, 881, 888 La sacra famiglia [a.k.a. The Holy Family] (dir. Raffaele Mertes, 2006, Fidia Film/RTI, IT). 456, 461, 878 La strada [“The Road”] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1954, Ponti-De Laurentiis, IT). 637, 638, 647, 881 La tentazione del dottor Antonio [see Boccaccio 70, omnibus project]. La última cena [a.k.a. The Last Supper] (dir. Tomas Gutiérrez Alea, 1976, ICAIC, CU). 740, 741, 749, 882 La vendetta di Ercole [“The Revenge of Hercules”; a.k.a. Goliath and the Dragon] (dir. Vittorio Cottafavi, 1960, Achille Piazza Produzioni Cinematografica, IT/FR). 107, 117, 877, 882 La vergine di Babylonia [a.k.a. The Virgin of Babylon] (dir. Luigi Maggi, 1910, Società Anonima Ambrosio, IT). 132, 136, 882 La vida de nuestro señor Jesucristo [a.k.a. The Life of Jesus Christ] (dir. Miguel Zacarias, 1980, Panorama Films/Zach Motion Pictures Inc., MX). 456, 461, 882, 883 La vie de Moïse [“Life of Moses”] (dir. Unknown, 1905, Pathé Frères, FR). 82, 141, 882 La vie du Christ [“The Life of Christ”; a.k.a. La naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ; “The Birth, Life, and Death of Christ”] (dir. Alice Guy, 1906, Gaumont, FR). 158, 482, 544, 555, 882 La vie et la passion de Jésus-Christ [“The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ”] (dir. George Hatot, 1898, Lumières, FR). 157, 882 La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur JésusChrist [a.k.a. The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ] (dir. Ferdinand Zecca and Lucien Nonguet, 1902 – 05, 1907, Pathé Frères, FR) 158, 309, 310, 325, 463, 467, 472, 482, 514, 882, 883

884

Film Index

La vie et passion du Christ [“The Life and Passion of Christ”] (dir. Gaston Breteau, 1899 – 1900, Pathé Frères, FR). 158, 882 La voce della luna [a.k.a. The Voice of the Moon] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1990, Cecchi Gori Group Tiger, IT/FR). 635, 646, 647, 882, 894 La voie lactée [a.k.a. The Milky Way] (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1969, Fraia Film, FR/IT). 599, 608, 882, 885 The Lad From Old Ireland (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1910, Kalem, US). 549, 555, 882 The Lady Eve (dir. Preston Sturges, 1941, Paramount, US). 24, 25, 34, 255, 265, 882 The Ladykillers (dir. The Coen Brothers, 2004, Touchstone, US). 729, 733, 737, 882 Lagaan [a.k.a. Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India] (dir. Ashutosh Gowariker, 2001, Aamir Khan Productions, IN). 109, 117, 882 The Last Days of Pompeii (dir. Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1935, RKO Radio Pictures, US). 177, 191, 882 The Last Exorcism (dir. Daniel Stamm, 2010, Strike Entertainment, US/FR). 336, 339, 882 The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark (dir. Charles Jarrott, 1980, Walt Disney, US). 42, 49, 882 Last Night (dir. Don McKellar, 1998, Rhombus Media, CA/FR). 408, 415, 882 The Last Supper [see La última cena]. The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988, Universal, US/CA). XI, 7, 13, 14, 117, 175, 191, 311, 324, 325, 328, 339, 380, 390, 422, 436, 437, 442, 443, 457, 458, 459, 460, 462, 464, 477, 482, 483, 487, 494, 495, 500, 501, 505, 515, 780, 791, 805, 882, 883 The Last Wave (dir. Peter Weir, 1977, Australian Film Commission, AU). 45, 46, 49, 692, 693, 699, 882 The Late Great Planet Earth (dir. Robert Amram/Rolf Forsberg, 1979, Amran, US). 518, 521, 523, 531, 882 Lawrence of Arabia (dir. David Lean, 1962, Horizon Pictures, UK). 191, 653, 661, 882 Le baiser de Judas [“The Kiss of Judas”] (dir. Armand Bour, 1908, Film d’Art, FR). 143, 158, 822

Le berceau de dieu [a.k.a. The Cradle of God] (dir. Fred Leroy-Granville, 1926, Productions Markus, FR). 103, 117, 872, 882 Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie [a.k.a. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie] (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1972, Greenwich Film Productions, FR). 599, 603, 608, 873, 882 Le diable probablement [a.k.a. The Devil, Probably] (dir. Robert Bresson, 1977, Sunchild Productions, FR). 376, 610, 618, 620, 873 Le festin de Balthazar [“The Feast of Balthazzar”] (dir. Unknown, 1904 – 05, Pathé Frères, FR). 141, 158, 882 Le jugement de Salomon [“The Judgment of Solomon”] (dir. Unknown, 1904 – 05, Pathé Frères, FR). 141, 158, 882 Le jugement de Salomon [“The Judgment of Solomon”] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1912, Pathé Frères, FR). 144, 159, 882 Le martyre de Saint Etienne [“The Martyrdom of St. Stephen”] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1912, Pathé Frères, FR). 144, 158, 882 Le notte di Cabiria [a.k.a. Nights of Cabiria] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1957, Dino de Laurentiis, IT/FR). 647, 882, 886 Le people migrateur [a.k.a. Winged Migration] (dir. Jacques Perrin, 2001, Bac Films, FR/ DE/IT/ES/CH). 353, 882, 894 Le sacrifice d’Abraham [“The Sacrifice of Abraham”] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1912, Pathé Frères, FR). 52, 64, 144, 158, 883 Le sacrifice d’Absalon [“The Sacrifice of Absalom”] (dir. Gérard Bourgeois, 1911, Lux Compagnie Cinematographique de France, FR). 103, 117, 883 Le sacrifice d’Ismaël [“The Sacrifice of Ishmael”] (dir. Henri Andréani, 1912, Pathé Frères, FR). 52, 64, 883 Leaves from Satan’s Book [see Blade af Satans Bog]. Left Behind [a.k.a. Left Behind: The Movie] (dir. Vic Sarin, 2000, Cloud Ten Pictures, CA). 224, 225, 234, 407, 410, 412, 415, 518, 521, 523, 530, 531, 883 Left Behind (dir. Vic Armstrong, 2014, Stony Lake Entertainment, US). 406, 410, 412, 415, 883 Left Behind II: Tribulation Force (dir. Bill Corcoran, 2002, Cloud Ten Pictures, US/CA). 224, 225, 234, 410, 412, 415, 883

Film Index

Left Behind: World at War (dir. Craig R. Baxley, 2005, Cloud Ten Pictures, US/CA). 224, 225, 234, 410, 412, 415, 883 Legion (dir. Scott Stewart, 2010, Bold Films, US). 415, 883 Lemale et ha’halal [a.k.a. Fill the Void] (dir. Rama Burshtein, 2012, Avi Chai Fund, IL). 132, 135, 136, 875, 883 Les anges du péché [a.k.a. Angels of Sin] (dir. Robert Bresson, 1943, Synops, FR). 609, 610, 620, 868, 883 Les Misérables (dir. Tom Hooper, 2012, Universal, US/UK). 391, 403, 883 Les sept pêchés capitaux. [“The Seven Deadly Sins”] (dir. Louis Feuillade, 1910, Gaumont, FR). 144, 158, 883 Let It Be [see Io sono con te]. Let There Be Light (dir. John Huston, 1946, US Army Pictorial Services, US). 649, 661, 883 The Librarian 3: The Curse of the Judas Chalice (Jonathan Frakes, 2008, Electric Entertainment, US). 49, 883 The Life and Flight of the Reverend Buck Shotte (dir. Peter Weir, 1968, 7 Network, AU). 691, 699, 883 The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ [see La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur JésusChrist]. The Life of a Cowboy (dir. Edwin S. Porter, Edison, 1906, US) 196, 207, 883 Life of Brian [a.k.a. Monty Python’s Life of Brian] (dir. Terry Jones, 1979, Handmade Films, UK). X, 6, 7, 14, 182, 191, 249, 251, 263, 265, 271, 283, 420, 440, 441, 443, 492, 494, 495, 853, 855, 860, 861, 862, 864, 865, 866, 883, 885 The Life of Jesus Christ [see La vida de nuestro señor Jesucristo]. The Life of Moses (dir. J. Stuart Blackton, 1909, Vitagraph, US). 82, 142, 143, 158, 883 Life of Pi (dir. Ang Lee, 2012, Fox 2000 Pictures, US/TW/UK/CA). 373, 377, 883 Life of St. Paul (dir. Norman Walker, 1938, G.H. W. Productions, UK). 504, 515, 883 Life of St. Paul Series (dir. John T. Coyle, 1949, Cathedral Films, US). 504, 515, 883 Life Story [see Życiorys]. Lincoln (dir. Steven Spielberg, 2012, DreamWorks, US). 537, 542, 883

885

The Lion of Judah (dir. Deryck Broom and Roger Hawkins, 2011, Animated Family Films, US). 280, 283, 425, 883 The Little American (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1917, Mary Pcikford Company, US). 571, 586, 883 Little Big Man (dir. Arthur Penn, 1970, Cinema Center Films, US). 256, 265, 883 Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931, First National Pictures, US). 164, 173, 883 Little Devil [see Il piccolo diavolo]. The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988, Universal, US/CA). XI, 7, 14, 117, 175, 191, 311, 325, 328, 339, 380, 390, 422, 437, 443, 457, 458, 459, 462, 464, 477, 482, 483, 484, 486, 487, 494, 495, 500, 501, 505, 515, 780, 791, 805, 882, 883 Little Nicky (dir. Steven Brill, 2000, Avery Pix, US). 332, 339, 883 The Living Bible Collection [The Acts of the Apostles; a.k.a. The Book of Acts Series; video] (dir. Eddie Dew, 1957, Broadman Films, US). 332, 867, 883 Lo sceicco bianco [a.k.a. The White Sheikh] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1952, OFI, IT). 636, 637, 648, 883, 894 Lola rennt [a.k.a. Run Lola Run] (dir. Tom Tykwer, 1998, X-Filme Creative Pool, DE). 384, 390, 883, 889 The Lone Ranger (dir. Gore Verbinski, 2013, Walt Disney, US). 197, 207, 883 The Lonedale Operator (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1911, Biograph, US). 535, 542, 883 The Lonely Villa (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1909, Biograph, US). 535, 542, 883 Lonesome Dove (dir. Simon Wincer, 1989, Motown Productions, US). 197, 207, 883 Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby (dir. Sam O’Steen, 1976, The Culzean Corporation, US). 336, 339, 883 The Loss of Sexual Innocence (dir. Mike Figgis, 1999, Newmarket Capital Group, US/UK). 22, 34, 883 The Lost Gospels (dir. Annie Azzariti, 2008, Discovery Channel, US). 227, 234, 883 Lost Horizon (dir. Frank Capra, 1939, Columbia, US). 803, 805, 883 Lost Souls (dir. Januzs Kaminski, 2000, Avery Pix, US). 225, 227, 234, 884

886

Film Index

The Lost Tomb of Jesus (dir. Simcha Jacobovici, 2007, Discovery Channel, US). 227, 234, 884 Lot in Sodom (dir. James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber, 1933, Watson, Wilder, Webber, Wood, and O’Brien; US). 55, 64, 176, 191, 884 Love and Death (dir. Woody Allen, 1975, Rollins-Joffe Productions, FR/US). 254, 265, 884 Love in the City [see Amore in città, omnibus project]. Love One Another [see Die gezeichneten]. The Lovely Bones (dir. Peter Jackson, 2009, DreamWorks, US/UK/NZ). 396, 397, 403, 884 Luci del varietà [a.k.a. Variety Lights] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1950, Capitolium, IT). 635, 637, 648, 884, 893 Mababangong bangungot [a.k.a. Perfumed Nightmare] (dir. Kidlat Tahimik, 1976, Privately funded, PH). 749, 884, 887 Mabul [a.k.a. The Flood] (dir. Guy Nattiv, 2010, United Channel Movies, IL). 47, 48, 49, 875, 884 The Machine to Kill Bad People [see La macchina ammazzacattivi]. The Mad Magician (dir. John Brahm, 1955, Columbia Pictures, US). 647, 851, 884 Mad Max (dir. George Miller, 1979, Kennedy Miller, AU). 408, 415, 884 Magnolia (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999 Ghoulardi Film Company, US). 9, 13, 14, 377, 410, 415, 884 The Making of ‘…And God Spoke’ (dir. Arthur Borman, 1994, Brookwood Entertainment, US). 257, 265, 884 Makom be-Gan Eden [a.k.a. A Place in Heaven] (dir. Joseph Madmony, 2013, Avi Chai Fund, IL). 58, 64, 884, 887 The Maltese Falcon (dir. John Huston, 1941, Warner Brothers, US). 162, 164, 173, 649, 650, 656, 661, 884 Mama (dir. Andrés Muschietti, 2013, Universal, CA/ES). 230, 234, 884 A Man Escaped [see Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut]. Man of Steel (dir. Zack Snyder, 2012, Warner Brothers, US/CA/UK). 353, 884

The Man with a Cross [see L’uomo dalla croce]. Manhunter (dir. Michael Mann, 1986, De Laurentiis Entertainment, US). 225, 226, 231, 234, 884 Maria, Daughter of Her Son [see Maria, figlia del suo figlio]. Maria di Nazaret [a.k.a. Mary of Nazareth] (dir. Giacomo Campiotti, 2012, Lux Vide, DE/ IT). 7, 14, 451, 454, 455, 456, 457, 462, 884 Maria, figlia del suo figlio [a.k.a. Maria, Daughter of Her Son] (dir. Fabrizio Costa, 2000, Canale 5, IT). 453, 454, 456, 462, 884 María Magdalena, pecadora de Magdala [a.k.a. Mary Magdalene, Sinner of Magdala] (dir. Miguel Contreras Torres, 1946, Hispano Continental Films, MX). 453, 462, 463, 469, 472, 884 Marie de Nazareth [a.k.a. Mary of Nazareth] (dir. Jean Delannoy, 1995, Belvision, FR/ BE/MA). 454, 455, 456, 457, 462, 884 The Martyr of Calvary [see El mártir del Calvario]. Mary of Nazareth [see Marie de Nazareth]. Mary (dir. Abel Ferrera, 2005, Wild Bunch, IT/ FR/US). 462, 884 Mary and Joseph, A Story of Faith (dir. Eric Till, Lorimar Productions, 1979, CA/DE/IL). 462, 884 Mary Magdalene, Sinner of Magdala [see María Magdalena, pecadora de Magdala]. Mary, Mother of Jesus (dir. Kevin Connor, 1999, Hallmark Entertainment, US). 455, 462, 884 Mary of Nazareth [see Maria di Nazaret]. M*A*S*H (dir. Robert Altman, 1970, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 257, 265, 884 The Massacre (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1912, Biograph, US). 542, 884 Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (US, dir. Peter Weir, 2003, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 698, 699, 884 Mater Dei [“Mother of God”] (dir. Emilio Cordero, 1950, Incar, IT). 456, 457, 460, 462, 884 Matrimonial Agency [see Amore in città, omnibus project; Un Agenzia matrimoniale].

Film Index

The Matrix (dir. Wachowski Siblings, 1999, Warner Brothers, US/AU). 8, 14, 251, 406, 415, 855, 861, 862, 863, 866, 884 The Matrix: Reloaded (dir. Wachowski Siblings, 2003, Warner Brothers, US). 251, 884 The Matrix: Revolutions (dir. Wachowski Siblings, 2003, Warner Brothers, US). 251, 884 Mean Streets (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1973, Warner Brothers, US). 726, 728, 884 The Meaning of Life [a.k.a. Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life] (dir. Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam, 1983, Celandine Films, UK). 265, 884 Meet the Parents (dir. Jay Roach, 2000, Universal, US). 255, 265, 885 Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 (dir. Brian Trenchard-Smith, 2001, Code Productions, US). 231, 234, 415, 885 Melancholia (dir. Lars von Trier, 2011, Zentropa Entertainments, DK/SE/FR/DE). 415, 885 Memorias del subdesarollo [a.k.a. Memories of Underdevelopment] (dir. Tomas Gutiérrez Alea, 1968, Cuban State Film, CU). 740, 749, 885 Memories of Underdevelopment [see Memorias del subdesarollo]. Mephisto (dir. István Szabó, 1981, Mafilm, DE/ HU/AT). 331, 339, 885 Mesih [a.k.a. The Messiah or Jesus, the Spirit of God] (dir. Nader Talebzedah, 2007, Abdollah Saeedi, IR). 53, 64, 441, 443, 880, 885 The Messiah [see Il messia, 1975]. The Messiah [see Mesih, 2007]. Metropolis (dir. Fritz Lang, 1927, Universum Film, DE). 239, 240, 241, 251, 288, 289, 294, 518, 528, 530, 531, 539, 885 The Mexican (dir. Gore Verbinski, 2001, DreamWorks, US). 133, 136, 885 Michael Clayton (dir. Tony Gilroy, 2007, Castle Rock Entertainment, US). 110, 117, 885 The Milky Way [see La voie lactée]. Milyang [a.k.a. Secret Sunshine] (dir. Lee Chang-dong, 2007, CJ Entertainment, KR). 713, 716, 719, 885, 890 The Ministry of Fear (dir. Fritz Lang, 1944, Paramount, US). 169, 173, 885 The Miracle [see Il miracolo].

887

The Miracle Maker (dir. Derek W. Hayes and Stanislav Sokolov, 2000, BBC, RU/UK). 271, 275, 278, 283, 432, 443, 459, 462, 498, 500, 501, 515, 779, 784, 791, 885 Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls (dir. Bryan Michael Stoller, 2004, Island Productions, US). 43, 49, 885 The Missing Lynx [see El lince perdido]. The Mission (dir. Roland Joffé, 1986, Warner Brothers, UK). 350, 353, 885 Mission Impossible (dir. Brian de Palma, 1996, Paramount, US). 372, 377, 885 Moby Dick (dir. John Huston, 1956, Moulin Productions, US). 373, 651, 661, 885 Moïse sauvé des eaux [“Finding of Moses”] (dir, Henri Andréani, 1911, Pathé Frères, FR). 82, 144, 158, 885 Mon cas [“My Case”] (dir. Manoel de Oliveira, 1986, Les Films du Passage, FR/PT). 369, 377, 885 Moneyball (dir. Bennett Miller, 2011, Columbia Pictures, US). 109, 117, 885 Monster Ark (dir. Declan O’Brien, 2008, Sci Fi Pictures, US). 41, 49, 885 Monty Python’s Life of Brian [see Life of Brian]. Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life [see The Meaning of Life]. Moon (dir. Duncan Jones, 2009, Liberty Films, UK). 251, 885 The Moon of Israel [see Die sklavenkönigin]. Moonraker (dir. Lewis Gilbert, 1979, Les Productions Artistes Associés, UK/FR). 40, 49, 885 Moonrise Kingdom (dir. Wes Anderson, 2012, Indian Paintbrush, US). 47, 49, 885 Moses [TV miniseries; see The Bible Collection: Moses]. Moses in the Bullrushes (dir. Unknown, 1903, British Gaumont, UK). 82, 885 Moses the Lawgiver (dir. Gianfranco De Bosio, 1974, Associated Television, UK/IT). 65, 82, 306, 307, 325, 503, 515, 572, 885 The Mosquito Coast (dir. Peter Weir, 1986, The Saul Zaentz Company, US). IX, 695, 699, 885 Mouchette (dir. Robert Bresson, 1967, Argos Films, FR). 609, 610, 616, 617, 618, 620, 885 Moulin Rouge (dir. John Huston, 1952, Romulus Films, UK). 649, 661, 885

888

Film Index

Mr. North (dir. Danny Huston, 1988, Heritage Entertainment, US). 650, 661, 885 Mulla Kireetam (dir. Raja Reddy, 2006, IN). 753, 761, 885 The Murderer Lives at Number 21 [see L’assassin habite…au 21]. My Father My Lord [see Hofshat Kaits]. My Voyage to Italy (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2001, MediaTrade, IT/US). 628, 634, 885 Mysteries of the Bible [“Cain and Abel: A Murder Mystery,” season 4, episode 6] (dir. Roberta Grossman, 1994 – 98, A & E Television Network, US). VIII, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 221, 885 – [“Apocalypse: The Puzzle of Revelation,” season 2, episode 3] (dir. Roberta Grossman, 1994 – 98, A & E Television Network, US). VIII, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 221, 885 The Naked Kiss (dir. Samuel Fuller, 1964, Leon Fromkess-Sam Firks Productions, US). 164, 174, 885 National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation [see Christmas Vacation]. The Nativity (dir. Bernard L. Kowalski, 1978, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 454, 462, 886 The Nativity (dir. Coky Giedroyc, 2010, Red Planet Pictures, US/CA). 454, 462, 886 The Nativity Story (dir. Catherine Hardwicke, 2006, New Line Cinema, US). 451, 452, 454, 455, 456, 462, 886 Nattvardsgästerna [a.k.a. Winter Light] (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1963, Svensk Filmindustri, SE). 377, 886, 894 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind [see Kaze no tani no Naushika]. Nazarín (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1959, Producciones Barbachano Ponce, MX). 355, 377, 599, 603, 604, 605, 608, 886 Nell (dir. Michael Apted, 1994, Egg Pictures, US). 262, 265, 886 Neon Genesis Evangelion [see Shin seiki evangerion]. Nero [TV miniseries; see Imperium: Nerone]. Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (dir. Jules Rankin and Arthur Bass, 1977, Rankin-Bass Productions, US). 280, 283, 886 The New Adam and Eve (dir. Richard Garrick, 1915, Gaumont, US). 17, 34, 886

The New Media Bible: Book of Genesis (prod. John Heyman, 1979, The Genesis Project, US). 64, 870, 886 The Next Voice You Hear… (dir. William A. Wellman, 1950, MGM, US). 316, 325, 886 Nights of Cabiria [see Le notte di Cabiria]. The Night of the Hunter (dir. Charles Laughton, 1955, Paul Gregory Productions, US). XI, 166, 168, 172, 174, 886 The Night of the Iguana (dir. John Huston,1964, MGM, US). 651, 661, 886 Night of the Living Dead (dir. George A. Romero, 1968, Image Ten, US). 415, 886 The Ninth Gate (dir. Roman Polanski, 1999, Artisan Entertainment, ES/FR/US). 335, 339, 886 No Country for Old Men (dir. The Coen Brothers, 2007, Paramount Vantage, US). 197, 207, 736, 737, 886 No End [see Bez konca]. The Noah (dir. Daniel Bourla, 1975, The Noah Production Company, US). 39, 49, 886 Noah (dir. Ken Kwapis, 1998, Walt Disney, US). 42, 49, 886 Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2014, Paramount, US). VII, XI, 38, 49, 64, 179, 192, 232, 234, 268, 283, 300, 325, 341, 353, 408, 412, 415, 805, 825, 841, 886 Noah’s Ark (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1928, Warner Brothers, US). XI, 35, 49, 84, 154, 155, 159, 176, 192, 325, 886 Noah’s Ark (dir. Bill Justice, 1959, Walt Disney, US). 44, 50, 886 Noah’s Ark (dir. John Irvin, 1999, Babelsberg International Film Produktion, DE/US). 37, 50, 55, 64, 886 The Noah’s Ark Principle [see Das arche Noah prinzip]. Noah’s Lark (dir. Dave Fleischer, 1929, Fleischer Studios, US). 267, 273, 274, 279, 280, 283, 886 Northfork (dir. Michael Polish, 2003, Paramount Classics, US). 46, 47, 50, 886 Nostalghia [a.k.a. Nostalgia] (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983, Opera Film Produzione, SU/ IT). 355, 377, 886 Noye’s Fludde – Unogumbe (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2013, Film and Music Entertainment, ZA). 721, 722, 723, 726, 728, 886

Film Index

Nyamanton [“Garbage Boys”] (dir. Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 1987, Centre National de la Cinématographie du Mali, ML). 702, 703, 712, 886 O Brother, Where Art Thou? (dir. The Coen Brothers, 2000, Touchstone Pictures, UK/ FR/US). 256, 265, 731, 732, 737, 820, 824, 886 Oasiseu [a.k.a. Oasis] (dir. Lee Chang-dong, 2002, Dream Venture Capital, KR). 713, 719, 886 Ocean of Mercy [see Karunamayudu]. Oh, God! (dir. Carl Reiner, 1977, Warner Brothers, US). 314, 316, 325, 333, 339, 694, 886 Oh, God! You Devil (dir. Paul Bogart, 1984, Warner Brothers, US). 333, 339, 886 The Omega Code (dir. Robert Marcarelli, 1999, Code Productions, US). 231, 234, 407, 411, 412, 415, 886 The Omen (dir. Richard Donner, 1976, Twentieth Century Fox, US/UK). 224, 234, 333, 339, 518, 523, 531, 886 The Omen (dir. John Moore, 2006, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 334, 339, 886 The Omen III: The Final Conflict (dir. Graham Baker, 1981, Twentieth Century Fox, US/ UK). 227, 234, 333, 339, 886 Omen IV: The Awakening (dir. Jorge Montesi/ Dominique Othenin-Girard, 1991, FNM Films, US/CA). 339, 886 The Omen Legacy (dir. Brent Zacky, 2001, American Movie Classics, US). 518, 531, 886 On the Beach (dir. Stanley Kramer, 1959, Stanley Kramer Productions, US). 408, 409, 415, 886 Onat haduvdevanim [a.k.a. Time of the Cherries] (dir. Haim Bouzaglo, 1991, Contact Productions, IL). 768, 774, 886, 892 Once Upon a Stable (dir. Chris Schoultz, 2004, Animated Family Films, ZA). 280, 283, 886 Once Upon a Time in the West [see C’era una volta il West]. One Night with the King (dir. Michael O. Sajbel, 2006, Gener8Xion Entertainment, US). XI, 119, 126, 127, 128, 129, 133, 134, 136, 887 Orchestra Rehearsal [see Prova di orchestre].

889

Ordet [“The Word”] (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1954, Palladium, DK). XI, 587, 588, 591, 595, 596, 597, 598, 887 The Others (dir. Alejandro Amenábar, 2001, Cruise and Wagner Productions, US/ES/ FR/IT). 226, 230, 234, 887 Out West (dir. Roscoe Arbuckle, 1918, Comique Film Company, US). 196, 207, 887 The Outlaw Jose Wales (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1976, Warner Brothers, US). 197, 207, 887 Paisà [a.k.a. Paisan] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1946, Organizzazione Film Internazionali, IT). 624, 634, 887 Pale Rider (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1985, The Malpaso Company, US). 193, 194, 197, 201, 207, 887 Pan’s Labyrinth [see El laberinto del fauno]. The Passion (dir. Michael Offer, 2008, BBC, UK). 449, 462, 887 The Passion of the Christ (dir. Mel Gibson, 2004, Icon Productions, US). IX, X, 3, 14, 130, 136, 311, 325, 329, 338, 339, 341, 422, 432, 433, 442, 443, 449, 450, 451, 453, 458, 459, 462, 464, 479, 489, 495, 498, 500, 501, 515, 751, 761, 781, 787, 788, 791, 844, 849, 850, 851, 853, 858, 866, 887 The Passion Play (dir. Siegmund Lubin, 1898, Lubin Films, US). 157, 423, 887 The Passion Play of Oberammergau (dir. Henry C. Vincent, 1898, Eden Musee, US). 157, 177, 192, 423, 424, 443, 887 The Passion of Joan of Arc [see La passion de Jeanne d’Arc]. Paul the Apostle [TV miniseries; see The Bible Series: San Paulo]. Paul the Emissary [a.k.a. The Emissary: A Biblical Epic] (dir. Robert Marcarelli, 1997, TBN Films, US). 504, 515, 874, 887 The Paymaster (dir. Sidney Olcott, 1906, American Mutoscope & Biograph, US). 548, 555, 887 The Peacemaker (dir. Mimi Leder, 1997, Dreamworks, US). 409, 415, 887 Peeping Tom (dir. Michael Powell, 1960, Michael Powell Theatre, UK). 656, 661, 887 Peppermint Candy [see Bakha satang].

890

Film Index

Per amore, solo per amore [a.k.a. For Love, Only For Love] (dir. Giovanni Veronesi, 1993, Filmauro, IT). 462, 875, 887 Per qualche dollaro in più [a.k.a. A Few Dollars More] (dir. Sergio Leone, 1965, Produzioni Europee Associati, IT/ES/DE). 207, 875, 887 Per un pugno di dollari [a.k.a. A Fistful of Dollars] (dir. Sergio Leone, 1964, Constantin Film Produktion, IT/ES/DE). 197, 207, 875, 887 Perfumed Nightmare [see Mababangong bangungot]. Personel [a.k.a. Personnel] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1975, Zespol Filmowy, PL). 676, 689, 887 Peter and Paul (dir. Robert Day, 1981, Universal TV, US). 503, 515, 887 Pi (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 1998, Harvest Filmworks, US). 239, 251, 887 Pickpocket (dir. Robert Bresson, 1959, Compagnie Cinématographique, FR). 619, 620, 887 Picnic at Hanging Rock (dir. Peter Weir, 1975, Australian Film Commission, AU). 692, 700, 887 Pietà (dir. Kim Ki-duk, 2013, Good Film, KR). 458, 462, 887 The Pilgrim (dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1923, Charles Chaplin Productions, US). 254, 265, 887 A Place in Heaven [see Makom be-Gan Eden]. Planet of the Apes (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, APJAC Productions, 1968, US). 344, 353, 887 Pleasantville (dir. Gary Ross, 1998, New Line Cinema, US). XI, 27, 28, 29, 33, 34, 318, 324, 326, 349, 350, 353, 887 The Plumber (dir. Peter Weir, 1979, Australian Film Commission, AU). 693, 700, 887 Poetry [see Shi]. Pope Joan [see Die päpstin]. The Possession (dir. Ole Bornedal, 2012, Ghost House Pictures, US/CA). 230, 234, 887 The Postman Always Rings Twice (dir. Tay Garnett, 1946 MGM, US). 163, 169, 174, 887 The Power of the Resurrection (dir. Harold Schuster, 1958, Family Films, US). 506, 515, 887 Praesidenten (a.k.a. The President) (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1919, Nodisk Film, DK). 587, 589, 598, 887

The Prince of Egypt (dir. Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, and Simon Wells, 1998, Dreamworks Animation, US). 65, 77, 81, 82, 175, 192, 267, 269, 270, 271, 276, 277, 283, 293, 294, 305, 326, 887 Prisoners of War [see Hatufim]. The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (dir. Mickey Rooney and Albert Zugsmith, 1960, Albert Zugsmith Productions, US). 18, 34, 888 Prizzi’s Honor (dir. John Huston, 1985, ABC, US). 649, 650, 661, 888 Prometheus (dir. Ridley Scott, 2012, Twentieh Century Fox, US). 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 251, 345, 346, 347, 353, 888 The Prophecy (dir. Gregory Widen, 1995, First Look Pictures, US). 226, 227, 230, 234, 415, 888 The Prophecy V: Forsaken (dir. Joel Soisson, 2005, Castel Film Romania, US). 227, 235, 888 Prova di orchestre [a.k.a. Orchestra Rehearsal] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1979, Daimo Cinematografica, IT/DE). 637, 648, 887, 888 Przypadek [a.k.a. Blind Chance] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1981, P.P. Film Polski, PL). 676, 689, 870, 888 Psycho (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1960, Shamley Productions, US). 656, 661, 888 Pulp Fiction (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 1994, Miramax, US). 256, 265, 888 Pumzi (dir. Wanuri Kahiu, 2009, Inspired Minority Pictures, KE/ZA). XI, 248, 251, 888 Queen Esther (dir. John T. Coyle, 1948, Cathedral Films, US). 120, 132, 136, 888 The Queen of Sheba (dir. Gordon Edwards, Fox, 1918, US). 159, 888 Queen of Sin [see Sodom und Gommorha]. The Quiet Man (dir. John Ford, 1952, Argosy Pictures, US). 258, 265, 888 Quo Vadis? (dir. Ferdinand Zecca and Lucien Nonguet, 1902, Pathé Frères, FR). 515, 888 Quo Vadis? (dir. Enrico Guazzoni, 1913, Cines, IT). 159, 177, 192, 509, 515, 888 Quo Vadis? (dir. Gabriellino D’Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, 1925, Unione Cinematografic Italiana, IT). 192, 515, 888 Quo Vadis (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1951, MGM, US). 192, 515, 888

Film Index

Quo Vadis? (dir. Franco Rossi, 1985, Rai 1, IT/ FR/ES/CH/UK/DE). 515, 888 Quo Vadis (dir. Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 2001, Chronos Film, PL/US). 515, 888 The Rapture (dir. Michael Tolkin, 1991, New Line Cinema, US). 225, 231, 235, 415, 888 Rapture-Palooza (dir. Paul Middleditch, 2013, Lions Gate, US). 415, 888 The Real Old Testament (dir. Curtis and Paul Hannum, 2003, PCH Films, US). 313, 326, 888 Rébecca (dir. Henri Andréani, Pathé Frères, 1913, FR). 52, 64, 145, 159, 888 Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (dir. Marshall Neilan, 1917, Mary Pickford Company, US). 260, 265, 888 The Red Badge of Courage (dir. John Huston, 1951, MGM, US). 649, 661, 888 Red Beard [see Akahige]. Red Dragon (dir. Brett Ratner, 2002, Universal, US/DE). 225, 231, 235, 888 Red River (dir. Howard Hawks and Arthur Rosen, 1948, Charles K. Feldman Group, US). 196, 207, 888 The Red Tent (dir. Roger Young, 2014, KabashFilm Tanger, US). XI, 7, 14, 58, 64, 888 Rei Davi [“King David”] (dir. Edson Spinello, 2012, Rede Record, BR). 113, 117, 888 Requiem (dir. Hans-Christian Schmid, 2006, 23/5 Filmproduktion GmbH, DE). 339, 888 Resurrection (dir. Daniel Petrie, 1980, Universal, US). 391, 395, 401, 403, 888 Resurrection (dir. Russell Mulcahy, 1999, Baldwin/Cohen Productions, US/CA). 226, 235, 888 Revelation (dir. André van Heerden, 1999, Jack Van Impe Ministries, US/CA). 231, 235, 888 Revenge of the Electric Car (dir. Chris Paine, 2009, Papercut Films, US). 350, 353, 888 Rio Bravo (dir. Howard Hawks, 1959, Warner Brothers, US). 196, 207, 888 Rio Grande (dir. John Ford, 1950, Argosy Pictures, US). 196, 207, 888 The Rise of Louis XIV [see La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV]. The Rite (dir. Mikael Håfström, 2011, New Line Cinema, US/HU/IT). 336, 339, 888

891

Rivers and Tides (dir. Thomas Reidelsheimer, 2001, Mediopolis, DE/FI/UK/CA). 350, 353, 888 The Road (dir. John Hillcoat, 2009, Dimension Films, US). 377, 408, 415, 888 The Robe (dir. Henry Koster, 1953, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 178, 181, 185, 186, 187, 188, 192, 420, 436, 444, 510, 511, 515, 783, 791, 850, 888 Robinson Crusoe (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1954, Producciones Tepeyac, MX). 608, 888 Robot [see Enthiran]. Rocky (dir. John G. Avildsen, 1976, United Artists, US). 109, 117, 888 Roger & Me (dir. Michael Moore, 1989, Dog Eat Dog Films, US). 389, 390, 888 Roma [a.k.a. Fellini’s Roma] (dir. Federico Fellini, 1972, Ulta Film, IT/FR). 643, 648, 875, 888 Roma, città aperta [a.k.a. Rome, Open City] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1945, Excelsa Film, IT). 623, 624, 634, 889 The Romance of Happy Valley (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1919, D. W. Griffith Productions, US). 561, 568, 889 Rome, Open City [see Roma, città aperta]. Romero (dir. John Duigan, 1989, Paulist Pictures, US). 322, 326, 889 Roots (dir. Marvin J. Chomsky, et al., 1977, David L. Wolper Productions, US). 824, 889 The Rose of Kentucky (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1911, Biograph, US). 537, 542, 889 Rose of the Rancho (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1914, Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, US). 571, 586, 889 Rosemary’s Baby (dir. Roman Polanski, 1968, William Castle Productions, US). 333, 336, 339, 518, 519, 530, 531, 659, 889 Run Lola Run [see Lola rennt]. Saint Peter [TV miniseries; see Imperium: San Pietro]. Saint-Saëns, Camille. Samson et Dalila. Badisches Staatstheater, Karlsruhe. Conducted by Jochem Hochstenbach, with José Cura and Julia Gertseva. Recorded 2010. Dir.

892

Film Index

José Cura, 2011, DVD). 84, 85, 95, 96, 97, 98, 100, 889 – Samson et Dalila. Flanders Opera Company, Antwerp. Conducted by Tomá Netopil. With Torsten Kerl and Marinna Tarasova. Recorded 2009. Dir. Willy Vanduren, 2011, DVD. 100, 889 – Samson et Dalila. La Scala, Milan. Conducted by Gary Bertini, with Placido Domingo and Olga Borodina. Recorded 2002. Dir. Pierre Cavassilas, 2002, DVD. 100, 889 – Samson et Dalila. Metropolitan Opera, New York. Conducted by James Levine, with Placido Domingo and Olga Borodina. Recorded 1998. Dir. Unknown, 2004 DVD. 100, 889 – Samson et Dalila. Opera Spanga, Amsterdam. Conducted by Unknown with Charles Alvez da Cruz and Klara Uleman,. Recorded 2006. Dir. Corina Van Eijk, 2008, DVD. 100, 889 – Samson et Dalila. The Royal Opera Covent Garden, London. Conducted by Colin Davis, with Jon Vickers and Shirley Verrett. Recorded 1981. Dir. Unknown, 2011, DVD. 100, 889 – Samson et Dalila. San Francisco Opera, San Francisco. Conducted by Julius Rudel, with Placido Domingo and Shirley Verrett. Recorded 1981. Dir. Nicolas Joel, 2001, DVD. 100, 889 Salomé (dir. J. Gordon Edwards, 1918, Fox Film Corporation, US). 450, 462, 889 Salome (dir. William Dieterle, 1953, Columbia Pictures, US). 105, 117, 462, 889 Salomé (dir. Al Pacino, 2013, Salome Productions, US). 450, 462, 889 Salomé [a.k.a. The Dance of the Seven Veils] (dir. Stuart Blackton, 1908, Vitagraph, US). 158, 872, 889 Samson (dir. Albert Capellani, 1908, Pathé Frères, FR). 84, 100, 141, 158, 889 Samson and Delilah (dir. Edwin J. Collins, 1922, Master Film Company, UK). 84, 100, 176, 192, 889 Samson and Delilah (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1949, Paramount, US). 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 93, 100, 104, 117, 120, 177, 192, 567, 571, 578, 579, 580, 581, 582, 586, 889

Samson and Delilah (prod. Donald Mcwhinnie, 1959, BBC Television, UK). 97, 100, 889 Samson and Delilah (dir. Lee Philips, 1984 Cornworld Productions, US). 89, 90, 91, 100, 889 Samson and Delilah (dir. Nicolas Roeg, 1996, Lux Vide, IT/DE/US). 91, 92, 93, 94, 100, 889 Samson and Delilah (dir. Warwick Thornton, 2009, CAAMA Productions, AU). 97, 100, 889 Samson et Dalila [“Samson and Delilah”] (dir. Ferdinand Zecca, 1902, Pathé Frères, FR). 84, 100, 158, 889 Samson und Dalila [“Samson and Delilah”] (dir. Alexander Korda, 1922, Corda Film, AT). 84, 100, 159, 889 San Giovanni – L’apocalisse [TV miniseries; see The Bible Collection: San Giovanni – L’apocalisse]. San Paulo [TV miniseries; see The Bible Collection: San Paulo]. San Pietro [TV miniseries; see Imperium: San Pietro]. Såsom I en spegel [a.k.a. Through a Glass Darkly] (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1961, Svensk Filmindustri, SE). 316, 326, 889 Satan’s Triangle (dir. Sutton Roley, 1975, American Broadcasting Company, US). 336, 339, 889 Saul and David (dir. J. Stuart Blackton, 1909, Vitagraph, US). 101, 104, 117, 142, 144, 158, 889 Saul e David [a.k.a. Saul and David] (dir. Marcello Baldi, 1964, San Pablo Films, IT/ES). 108, 117, 889 The Scar [see Blizna]. Scarface (dir. Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson, 1932, Caddo Company, US). 164, 170, 174, 889 The Scorpion King (dir. Chuck Russell, 2002, Universal, US/DE/BE). 56, 64, 889 Seabiscuit (dir. Gary Ross, 2003, Universal, US). 109, 117, 889 Seasons of Gray (dir. Paul Stehlik Jr., 2013, Watermark Films, US). 62, 64, 890 Sécheresse et exode rural [“Drought and the Rural Exodus”] (dir. Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 1985, Centre National de la Cinématographie du Mali, ML/FR). 702, 712, 890

Film Index

Secret Sunshine [see Milyang]. Second Time Lucky (dir. Michael Anderson, 1984, Broadbank Investments, NZ). 21, 34, 890 Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (dir. Lorene Scafaria, 2012, Focus Features, US/ SG/MY/ID). 408, 415, 890 Selma (dir. Ava DuVernay, 2014, Cloud Eight Films, UK/US). 389, 390, 890 Semper idem (dir. Nachman Picovsky, 2014, Sam Spiegel, IL). 774, 890 A Serious Man (dir. The Coen Brothers, 2009, Focus Features, US/UK/FR). 260, 265, 361, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 373, 377, 382, 390, 729, 733, 734, 735, 737, 890 Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (dir. Stanley Donen, 1954, MGM, US). 196, 207, 255, 265, 890 Seven Years in Tibet (dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1997, Mandalay, US/UK). 803, 805, 890 The Seventh Commandment [see David]. The Seventh Seal [see Det sjunde inseglet]. The Seventh Sign (dir. Carl Schulz, 1988, Tristar Pictures, US). 225, 235, 415, 518, 525, 527, 528, 530, 531, 890 Shadowlands (dir. Richard Attenborough, 1993, Price Entertainment, UK). 322, 326, 890 Shane (dir. George Stevens, 1953, Paramount, US). 193, 194, 195, 196, 200, 201, 202, 207, 890 Shanghai Express (dir. Joseph von Sternberg, 1932, Paramount, US). 164, 174, 890 Shanti Sandesham (dir. P. C. Reddy, 2004, IN). X, 752, 753, 761, 890 The Shawshank Redemption (dir. Frank Darabont, 1994, Castle Rock Entertainment, US). 14, 265, 618, 621, 890 She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (dir. John Ford, 1949, Argosy Pictures, US). 196, 207, 890 The Shepherd King (dir. J. Gordon Edwards, 1923, Fox Film Corporation, US). 101, 104, 117, 142, 148, 159, 890 Shi [a.k.a. Poetry] (dir. Lee Chang-dong, 2010, UniKorea Pictures, KR). 713, 719, 887, 890 Shin seiki evangerion [a.k.a. Neon Genesis Evangelion] (dir. Hideaki Anno, 1995 – 96, Gainax, JP). 241, 251, 286, 287, 291, 294, 866, 890 Shin seiki evangelion: air, magokoro o kimini [a.k.a. The End of Evangelion] (dir. Hideaki

893

Anno, 1997, Gainax, JP). 292, 294, 874, 890 Shin seiki evangelion shito shinsei [a.k.a. Evangelion: Death & Rebirth] (dir. Hideaki Anno, 1997, Gainax, JP). 292, 295, 874 The Shining (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1980, Warner Brothers, UK/US). 666, 667, 668, 673, 890 Shlosha yamim v’yeled [“Three Days and a Child”] (dir. Uri Zohar, 1968, A. Deshe, IL). 766, 774, 890 The Shootist (dir. Don Siegel, 1976, Paramount, US). 197, 207, 890 A Short Film About Killing [see Krótki film o zabijaniu]. A Short Film About Love [see Krótki film o milosci]. The Siege of Hebron [see David’s War with Absalom]. The Sign of the Cross (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1932, Paramount, US). 156, 177, 192, 508, 509, 515, 571, 586, 844, 845, 846, 851, 890 Sicko (dir. Michael Moore, 2007, Dog Eat Dog Films US). 389, 390, 890 Signs (dir. M. Night Shyamalan, 2002, Touchstone Pictures, US). 317, 326, 380, 390, 890 The Silence [see Tystnaden]. Silent Running (dir. Douglas Trumbull, 1972, Universal, US). 351, 353, 890 The Silver Chalice (dir. Victor Saville, 1954, Warner Bros, US). 178, 192, 850, 851, 890 Simón del desierto [a.k.a. Simon of the Desert] (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1965, STPC, MX). 599, 608, 890 Simon of the Desert [see Simón del desierto]. The Sin of Adam and Eve [see El pecado de Adán y Eva]. Sins of Jezebel (dir. Reginald Le Borg, 1953, Sigmund Neufeld Productions, US). 342, 353, 890 Sister Act (dir. Emile Ardolino, 1992, Touchstone Pictures, US). 261, 265, 890 The Sixth Sense (dir. M. Night Shyamalan, 1999, Hollywood Pictures, US). 391, 397, 399, 403, 890 Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (dir. Kerry Conran, 2004, Paramount, US/UK/ IT). 40, 50, 890

894

Film Index

Slave of Dreams (dir. Robert M. Young, 1995, Dino de Laurentiis, US/IT). 61, 64, 890 Slaves of Babylon (dir. William Castle, 1953, Columbia Pictures, US). 62, 64, 890 Sling Blade (dir. Billy Bob Thornton, 1996, Miramax, US). 7, 14, 890 Slipping Wives (dir. Fred Guiol, 1927, Hal Roach Studios, US). 254, 265, 891 The Small One (dir. Don Bluth, 1978, Walt Disney, US). 280, 283, 891 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (dir. William Cotrell, et al., 1937, Walt Disney, US). 285, 295, 891 Snowpiercer (dir. Bong Joon-ho, 2014, Moho Films, KR/CZ). 408, 415, 891 Socrate [a.k.a. Socrates] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1971, Orizzonte 2000, IT/ES/FR). 429, 631, 634, 891 Sodom and Gomorrah (dir. Robert Aldrich, 1962, Titanus, US/IT/FR). 55, 64, 891 Sodom und Gommorha [a.k.a. Queen of Sin] (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1922, Sascha Film, DE/AT). 64, 151, 152, 159, 888, 891 Solaris [see Solyaris]. Solomon, A Man of Wisdom (dir. Edward Dew, 1958, Concordia Films, US). 106, 117, 891 Solomon and Sheba (dir. King Vidor, 1959, Edward Small Productions, US). 177, 179, 180, 185, 188, 192, 791, 891 Solyaris [a.k.a. Solaris] (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972, Creative Unit of Writers and Cinema Workers/Kinostudiya, SU). 241, 251, 891 Son of God (dir. Christopher Spencer, 2014, Lightworkers Media, US). 179, 232, 235, 432, 433, 444, 751, 752, 761, 891 Son of Man (dir. Mark Dornford-May, 2006, Spier Films, ZA). VII, 6, 14, 311, 329, 420, 440, 444, 451, 459, 462, 498, 515, 721, 722, 723, 724, 725, 727, 728, 747, 748, 749, 863, 866, 891 South Park [“Cartmanland,” Season 5, Episode 6] (dir. Trey Parker, 2001, Braniff, US). 369, 370, 374, 377, 891 Soylent Green (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1973, MGM, US). 351, 353, 891 Spartacus (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1960, Bryna Productions, US). 179, 192, 510, 665, 666, 673, 856, 860, 866, 891

Spellbound (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1945, Selznick International Pictures, US). 106, 117, 891 Spirits of the Dead [see Tre Passi nel delirio, omnibus project]. Spitfire (dir. John Cromwell, 1934, RKO Radio Pictures, US). XI, 259, 265, 891 Spriggan (dir. Hirotsugu Kawasaki, 1998, Banai Visual Company, JP). 44, 50, 891 Spokój [a.k.a. The Calm] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1976, Polish TV, PL). 676, 689, 871, 891 Stagecoach (dir. John Ford, 1939, Walter Wanger Productions, US). 196, 207, 891 Stalker (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979, Kinostudiya Mosfilm, SU). 243, 244, 245, 246, 251, 891 Star Trek: The Motion Picture (dir. Robert Wise, 1979, Paramount, US). 344, 353, 891 Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (dir. William Shatner, 1989, Paramount, US). 29, 34, 891 Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (dir. George Lucas, 1977, Lucasfilm, US). 251, 891 Stardust Memories (dir. Woody Allen, 1980, Rollins-Joffe Productions, US). 254, 266, 891 Stargate (dir. Roland Emmerich, 1994, Canal+, FR/US). 245, 246, 251, 891 Steamboat Round the Bend (dir. John Ford, 1935 Fox Film Corporation, US). 196, 207, 891 Stigmata (dir. Rupert Wainwright, 1999, MGM, US). 226, 230, 235, 527, 531, 891 A Story of David [a.k.a. A Story of David: The Hunted] (dir. Bob McNaught, 1961, Scoton, UK/IL). 108, 117, 891 The Story of David (dir. David Lowell Rich and Alex Segal, 1976, Columbia Pictures Television, US). 111, 117, 891 The Story of Dr. Wassell (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1944, Paramount, US). 571, 586, 891 The Story of Jacob and Joseph (dir. Michael Cacoyannis, 1974, Milberg Theatrical Productions, US). 57, 64, 891 The Story of Ruth (dir. Henry Koster, 1960, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 177, 188, 189, 192, 779, 782, 791, 891

Film Index

The Stranger on the Third Floor (dir. Boris Ingster, 1940, RKO Radio Pictures, US). 164, 174, 891 Strawberry and Chocolate [see Fresa y chocolate]. Stromboli [a.k.a. Stromboli, terra di dio; “Stromboli, Land of God”] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1950, Berit Films, IT/US). 377, 625, 634, 891 Stvoření světa [a.k.a. The Creation of the World] (dir. Eduard Hofman, 1958, Ceskoslovakiá Televize, CZ/FR). 276, 283, 872, 891 Su Re [“The King”] (dir. Giovanni Columbu, 2012, Luches Film, IT). 445, 446, 447, 891 Sullivan’s Travels (dir. Preston Sturges, 1941, Paramount, US). 255, 266, 891 The Sum of All Fears (dir. Phil Alden Robinson, 2002, Paramount, US/DE). 409, 410, 415, 891 Sunshine (dir. Danny Boyle, 2007, DNA Films, UK). 241, 242, 251, 891 Superbook [TV series; see Anime oyako gekijo, 1981 – 1982]. Superbook [TV series] (dir. Bryant Paul Richardson, Tom Bancroft, and Robert O. Corley, 2009 – 2013, Christian Broadcasting Network, US). 283, 891 Supernatural [“Sympathy for the Devil,” season 5, episode 1] (dir. Robert Singer, 2013, Warner Brothers, US). 531, 892 Take Shelter (dir. Jeff Nichols, 2011, Hydraulx, US). 408, 409, 412, 415, 892 The Tale of the Ark (dir. Arthur M. Cooper, Alpha Trading Company, 1909, UK). 44, 50, 892 Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (dir. Adam McCay, 2006, Columbia Pictures, US). 266, 892 The Temptation of Dr. Antonio [see Boccaccio 70, omnibus project]. The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1923, Paramount, US). X, XI, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 81, 82, 84, 117, 148, 151, 152, 153, 154, 159, 176, 177, 192, 270, 305, 326, 510, 515, 567, 570, 572, 572, 573, 574, 586, 782, 783, 791, 892 The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1956, Paramount, US). X, XI, 5, 14, 62, 64, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 81, 82, 94, 175, 178,

895

179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 186, 187, 192, 269, 270, 283, 305, 326, 582, 583, 584, 586, 665, 666, 673, 761, 782, 785, 791, 796, 805, 843, 844, 847, 851, 892 Terebi Meisaku Anime Gekijō [“Theater of Famous TV Anime”; TV series] (1969 – 97, Mushi Production, JP). 285, 892 The Terminator (dir. James Cameron, 1984, Hemdale Film, UK/US). 240, 251, 351, 353, 892 Terminator 2: Judgment Day (dir. James Cameron, 1991, Carolco Pictures, US). 240, 251, 351, 353, 892 Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines (dir. Jonathan Mostow, 2003, C-2 Pictures, US/ DE/UK). 353, 892 Terminator Genisys (dir. Alan Taylor, 2015, Paramount, US). 353, 412, 892 Terminator Salvation (dir. McG, 2009, Halcyon Company, US/DE/UK/IT). 353, 892 Testament: The Bible in Animation [“Abraham,” Season 1, Episode 6] (dir. Nataliya Dabizha, 1996, Sianel 4 Cymru, UK). 53, 64, 892 Testament: The Bible in Animation [“Creation and the Flood”; Season 1, Episode 5] (dir. Yuri Kulakov, 1996, Sianel 4 Cymru, UK). 278, 283, 892 Testament: The Bible in Animation [“David and Saul”; Season 1, Episode 9] (dir. Gary Hurst, 1996, Sianel 4 Cymru, UK). 117, 892 Testament: The Bible in Animation [“Joseph,” Season 1, Episode 7] (dir. Aida Ziabliokva, 1996, Sianel 4 Cymru, UK). 64, 892 Testimony of the Ark (dir. Rebecca Truaiaire, 2006, Carl Eric Tengesdal, US). 216, 217, 219, 221, 892 Tetsuwan Atom [“Mighty Atom”; a.k.a. Astro Boy; TV series] (dir. Osamu Tezuka, et al., 1963 – 66, Mushi Productions, JP). 286, 295, 869, 892 Tezuka Osamu no Kyūyakuseisho monogatari [a.k.a. In The Beginning; TV series] (dir. Osamu Dezaki, 1993, Tezuka Productions and Radiotelevisione Italiana, JP). 286, 295, 879, 892 That Obscure Object of Desire [see Cet obscur objet du désir]. Them! (dir. Gordon M. Douglas, 1954, Warner Brothers, US). 351, 353, 892

896

Film Index

Theodora Goes Wild (dir. Richard Boleslawski, 1936, Columbia Pictures, US). 255, 266, 892 There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007, Paramount Vantage, US). 197, 207, 892 The Third Man (dir. Carol Reed, 1949, London Film Productions, UK). 162, 169, 170, 174, 892 Thirst [see Atash]. This Gun for Hire (dir. Frank Tuttle, 1942, Paramount, US). 169, 174, 892 This Is Sodom [see Zohi Sdom]. This is the End (dir. Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, 2013, Columbia Pictures, US). 232, 235, 256, 266, 412, 415, 525, 892 Three Colors: Blue [see Trois Couleurs: Bleu]. Three Colors: Red [see Trois Couleurs: Rouge]. Three Colors: White [see Trois Couleurs: Blanc]. Through a Glass Darkly [see Såsom I en spegel]. Time of the Cherries [see Onat haduvdevanim]. Time Machine: Banned from the Bible [see Banned from the Bible I]. To the Starry Island [see Geu seome gago shibda]. To the Wonder (dir. Terrence Malick, 2012, Brothers K Productions, US). XI, 381, 383, 383, 385, 388, 390, 892 Toby Dammit [see Tre Passi nel delirio, omnibus project]. Tol’able David (dir. Henry King, 1921, Inspiration Pictures, US). 109, 117, 892 Tom Sawyer (dir. Unknown, 1907, Kalem, US). 548, 555, 892 Tombstone (dir. George P. Cosmatos and Kevin Jarre, 1993, Cinergi Entertainment, US). 197, 207, 892 Total Recall (dir. Paul Verhoeven, 1990, Carolco Pictures, US). 247, 251, 892 Touch of Evil (dir. Orson Welles, 1958, Universal, US). 107, 117, 164, 174, 893 Trainspotting (dir. Danny Boyle, 1996, Channel Four Films, UK). 726, 728, 893 Transcendence (dir. Wally Pfister, 2014, Alcon Entertainment, UK/CN/US). 318, 326, 893 Trashed (dir. Candida Brady, 2012, Blenheim Films, US). 351, 353, 893 Tre Passi nel delirio [a.k.a. Spirits of the Dead, omnibus project; Toby Dammit] (dir. Feder-

ico Fellini, 1968, Les Films Marceau, FR/ IT). 648, 891, 892, 893 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (dir. John Huston, 1948, Warner Brothers, US). 649, 661, 893 The Tree of Knowledge (dir. George L. Cox, 1912, Selig Polyscope Company, US). 17, 34, 893 The Tree of Life (dir. Terrence Malick, 2011, Cottonwood Pictures, US). XI, 30, 34, 348, 349, 354, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 374, 377, 381, 382, 383, 385, 390, 400, 893 Tribulation (dir. André van Heerden, 2000, Cloud Ten Pictures, CA). 235, 893 Trois Couleurs: Blanc [a.k.a. Three Colors: White] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1994 MK2 Productions, FR/PL/CH). 683, 688, 689, 892 Trois Couleurs: Bleu [a.k.a. Three Colors: Blue] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1993, MK2 Productions, FR/PL/CH). 683, 684, 688, 689, 892 Trois Couleurs: Rouge [a.k.a. Three Colors: Red] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1994, MK2 Productions, FR/PL/CH) 683, 684, 685, 688, 689, 892 True Grit (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1969, Paramount, US). 197, 207, 893 True Grit (dir. The Coen Brothers, 2010, Paramount, US). 193, 197, 207, 735, 737, 893 Truly, Madly, Deeply (dir. Anthony Minghella, 1990, BBC, UK). 399, 400, 403, 893 The Truman Show (dir. Peter Weir, 1998, Paramount, US). 30, 34, 318, 326, 349, 354, 697, 698, 700, 893 Tystnaden [a.k.a. The Silence] (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1963, Svensk Filmindustri, SE). 377, 890, 893 U-Carmen eKhayelitsha (dir. Mark DornfordMay, 2005, Spier Films, ZA). 721, 723, 727, 728, 893 Un agenzia matrimoniale [see Amore in città, omnibus project]. Un bambino di nome Gesù [a.k.a. A Child Called Jesus] (dir. Franco Rossi, 1987, Reteitalia, IT/DE). 456, 462, 871, 893 Un chien andalou [“An Andalusian Dog”] (dir. Luis Buñuel and Dalí, Salvador, 1928. Privately financed, FR). 601, 602, 608, 893

Film Index

Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut [a.k.a. A Man Escaped] (dir. Robert Bresson, 1956, Gaumont, FR/ DE). 609, 613, 614, 616, 618, 620, 621, 884, 893 Una pelea cubana contra los demonios [a.k.a. A Cuban Fight Against Demons] (dir. Tomas Gutiérrez Alea 1971, ICAIC, CU). 740, 741, 742, 749, 872, 893 Una voce umana [a.k.a. The Human Voice] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1948, Finecine, IT). 624, 634, 878 Under the Volcano (dir. John Huston, 1984, Conacite Uno, US/MX). 651, 661, 893 The Undertow [a.k.a. Esther of the People] (dir. Frank Thorne, 1916, American Film Company, US,). 132, 136, 874, 893 Unforgiven (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1992, Warner Brothers, US). 4, 197, 200, 201, 203, 207, 893 The Unforgiven (dir. John Huston, 1960, HillHecht-Lancaster Productions, US). 196, 201, 202, 207, 893 Union Pacific (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1939, Paramount, US). 196, 207, 893 The Vanishing American (dir. George Seitz, 1925, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, US). Variety Lights [see Luci del varietà]. VeggieTales [TV and video series] (prod. Mike Nawrocki and Phil Vischer, 1993–present, Big Idea Productions, US). 270, 283, 893 – [“The Little House that Stood”; video] (dir. Brian Roberts, 2013, Big Idea Productions, US). 283, 893 – [“Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Noah’s Umbrella”; video] (dir. Mike Nawrocki and John Wahba, 2009, Big Idea Productions, US). 278, 283, 893 – [“Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Samson’s Hairbrush”; Season 1, Episode 3] (dir. Mike Nawrocki and John Wahba, 2006, Big Idea Productions, US). 283, 893 – [“Moe and the Big Exit”; video] (dir. Brian Roberts, 2007, Big Idea Productions, US). 273, 283, 893 – [“The Wonderful Wizard of Ha’s”; video] (dir. Brian Roberts, 2007, Big Idea Productions, US). 274, 283, 893

897

VeggieTales: Esther, The Girl Who Became Queen (dir Mike Nawrocki, 2000, Big Idea Entertainment, US). 14, 130, 131, 132, 133, 136, 893 Viaggio in Italia [a.k.a. Journey to Italy] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1953, Italia Films, IT/ FR). 627, 634, 880, 893 The Virgin of Babylon [see La vergine di Babylonia]. Viridiana (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1961, Unión Industial Cinematográfica, ES/MX). XI, 599, 604, 605, 608, 894 The Visual Bible: Acts (dir. Regardt van den Bergh, 1994, Visual Bible, US). 502, 515, 867 The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John (dir. Philip Saville, 2003, Visual Bible, CA/UK). 310, 436, 444, 457,462, 501, 515, 787, 791, 877, 894 The Visual Bible: The Gospel According to Matthew (dir. Regardt van den Bergh, 1993, Visual Bible, ZA). 436, 444, 459, 462, 894 The Voice of the Moon [see La voce della luna]. Vredens dag [a.k.a. Day of Wrath] (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943, Palladium, DK). 355, 377, 588, 598, 872 A Walk with Love and Death (dir. John Huston, 1969, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 661, 894 Walker, Texas Ranger (prod. Aaron Norris, 1993 – 2001, CBS, US). 197, 207, 894 Wall-E (dir. Andrew Stanton, 2008, Walt Disney /Pixar, US). 30, 34, 45, 50, 894 Waterworld (dir. Kevin Reynolds, 1995, Universal, US). 40, 50, 894 The Way Back (dir. Peter Weir, 2010, Exclusive Films, US/AE/PL). 698, 700, 894 Way Down East (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1920, D. W. Griffith Productions, US). 541, 542, 894 Ways of Love [see L’amore]. The Wedding Crashers (dir. David Dobkin, 2005, New Line Cinema, US). 259, 266, 894 Welt am draht [a.k.a. World on a Wire] (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, DE). 241, 251, 894 Whatever Happened to Green Valley? (dir. Peter Weir, 1973, Film Australia, AU). 691, 692, 700, 894

898

Film Index

When Noah’s Ark Embarked (dir. John C. Terry, 1917, Powers Picture Plays, US). 279, 283, 894 When Worlds Collide (dir. Rudolph Maté, 1951, Paramount, US). 39, 50, 894 The White Sheikh [see Lo sceicco bianco]. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1988, Touchstone Pictures, US). 268, 283, 894 Who Killed The Electric Car? (dir. Chris Paine, 2006, Plinyminor, US). 350, 354, 894 Wholly Moses! (dir. Gary Weis, 1980, Columbia Pictures, US). 55, 64, 894 Why Girls Leave Home (dir. Unknown, 1907, Kalem, US). 548, 555, 894 Winged Migration [see Le people migrateur]. Wings of Desire [see Der himmel über Berlin]. Winter Light [see Nattvardsgästerna]. Wise Blood (dir. John Huston, 1979, Anthea, US). 651, 661, 894 Within Our Gates (dir. Oscar Micheaux, 1920, Micheaux Book & Film Company, US). VI, XI, 557, 558, 559, 561, 562, 563, 564, 565, 566, 568, 894 Witness (dir. Peter Weir, 1985 McElroy & McElroy, US). 694, 695, 700, 894 World on a Wire [see Welt am draht]. World War Z (dir. Marc Forster, 2013, Paramount, US/MT). 231, 232, 235, 894 The Wrestler (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2008, Wild Bunch, US/FR). 54, 64, 894

The Year of Living Dangerously (dir. Peter Weir, 1982, McElroy & McElroy, US/AU). 694, 700, 894 Year One (dir. Harold Ramis, 2009, Columbia Pictures, US). 53, 56, 64, 894 The Yellow Man and the Girl [see Broken Blossoms]. Yogi’s Ark Lark (dir. Joseph Barbera and William Hanna, 1972, Filmation Associates, US). 277, 280, 283, 894 Yogi’s Gang [TV series] (dir. Charles A. Nichols, 1973 – 1975, Hanna-Barbera, US). 277, 283, 894 Young Adam (dir. David Mackenzie, 2003, Recorded Picture Company, UK/FR). 25, 34, 894 The Young and the Passionate [see I vitelloni]. Young Avraham (dir. Todd Shafer, 2011, Big Bang Digital Studios, CA). 54, 64, 894 Young Mr. Lincoln (dir. John Ford, 1939, Twentieth Century Fox, US). 207, 894 Young Scarface [see Brighton Rock]. Yousuf-e-payambar [a.k.a. Joseph the Prophet] (dir. Farajullah Salahshur, 2008, IR). 61, 64, 894 Zohi Sdom [a.k.a. This Is Sodom] (dir. Muli Segev and Adam Sanderson, 2010, United King Films, IL/BG). 56, 64, 182, 192, 892, 894 Życiorys [a.k.a. Life Story or Curriculum Vita] (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1975, WFD, PL). 689, 894

Scripture Index Genesis 1 – 11 1–4 1–3 1–2 1 1:1 – 2:3 1:1 – 3 1:1 1:3 1:26 1:27 1:31 2–3 2 2:2 – 3 2:7 2:8 2:18 3 3:1 3:1 – 5 3:5 3:7 3:10 3:14 – 15 3:15 3:23 – 24 3:23 4 4:1 – 16 4:4 – 5 4:9 4:11 – 16 6–9 6–8 6 6:1 – 2 6:4 6:5 6:6 – 7 6:7 6:8 6:11 6:12 – 13 6:12 6:13 6:14

52, 348 308 277, 669, 836 342, 344 18, 19, 239, 342, 343, 357, 627, 731 670 32, 277, 669, 836 71, 731 19, 671, 748 347 342 17, 18, 19, 168, 318, 346, 698, 799 18, 277, 241 316 19 696 696 277, 328, 327, 329, 794, 799, 835 20 796 697 669 314 329 311 696 615 168, 658 214 313 112 527 35, 44, 245, 347, 408 47 39 318 245 38, 41, 653 40 39 47, 832 38 39 39 41 43

6:15 6:16 6:19 7:9 7:11 7:12 7:15 7:18 7:23 8:2 8:4 8:8 8:10 – 12 8:13 8:21 9 9:11 9:12 – 13 9:13 9:15 – 16 9:20 – 24 9:21 9:25 – 27 10 11 12 – 50 12:10 – 20 15 16:5 – 6 17 17:1 17:5 18 18:20 – 21 18:25 19 19:26 22 22:2 22:6 22:9 22:16 22:17 24 25 – 28 25 25:29-24 25:29 – 31

36 830 39, 43 40 38 35 40 654 23 38 39 42 45 39 35 654 38, 409 349 35 46 38 37 707 655 35, 240, 288, 347, 658 348 54 301 817 244 303 230 301, 309 834 303 151 37 51, 302, 313, 666, 667, 668, 763 763 666 614 56 659 145, 709 705 244, 566, 309 664

900

Scripture Index

25:29 – 34 28:10 – 17 28:10 – 18 28:10 – 22 28:12 28:17 30 30:1 – 4 30:31 – 43 31:4 – 13 32 32 – 33 32:22 – 31 32:22 – 32 32:25 33 34 34:13 34:30 37 – 50 37 37:2 37:10 38 38:1 – 5 50:25

565, 566, 709, 770 395 668 58 697 348 244 239 57 57 112, 668 705 709 304, 731 670 57 57, 705 707 708 120, 360 57 61 61 709 707 62

Exodus 1 – 15 1 1:10 1:11 1:13 – 14 1:15 – 22 1:16 1:22 2:1 – 10 2:11 – 12 2:15 3 3 – 40 3:1 – 15 3:13 – 14 5:2 5:8 – 9 7:16 8:2 – 6 12:12 12:29 12:29 – 30

273, 360 169, 582 65 65 572 305 582 582 168 580 580 183, 239 66 580 306 696 572 255 692 572 572 572

12:31 – 32 12:38 12:41 – 36 13:19 14:7 14:10 14:13 14:19 – 20 14:21 14:22 14:23 15 – 16 15:2 15:16 17:14 19:1 – 2 573 19:16 19:18 19:19 20:1 – 6 20:7 20:8 – 11 20:9 – 10 20:12 20:13 20:14 20:15 20:16 20:17 20:18 21:22 – 25 22:29 – 30 24:17 24:18 31:18 32 32:1 32:4 32:19 32:25 32:28 32:30 – 33 32:32 33:17 – 23 33:18 – 23 34:28 35:2 Leviticus 11:42

572 665 572 62 572 572 572 572 572, 783 572 572 572 573 69 247 692 692 779 677 678 678 166 679 679 679 574, 680 681 681, 682 573 667 667 573 573 573 35 573 69 573 69, 573 70, 152, 574 309 834 305 112, 686 75 313

836

Scripture Index

18:21 19:33 20:1 – 5 23:24 25:9 25:10

667 561 667 779 779 66

Numbers 12 12:10 14:20 – 35 16:34 – 45 21:7

152 70 74 573 309

Deuteronomy 5:6 – 10 5:11 5:12 – 15 5:15 5:16 5:17 5:18 5:19 5:20 5:21 6:5 – 8 9:7 9:8 – 21 10:19 11:18 – 20 12:31 13:13 14:21 18:10 33:27 34:4 – 5 Judges 3:12 – 30 4–5 6 7 11 11:35 13 – 16 13:5 13:16 14 – 15 14:1 – 3 14:3

667 678 678 618 679 679 679 680 681 681, 682 836 573 309 561 836 667 239 561 667 735 580

203, 204 171, 172 83 696 144 145 83 83, 578, 580 579 92 578 94

14:4 – 21 14:4 14:6 14:17 14:19 15:1 – 6 15:2 15:3 – 8 15:4 – 5 15:7 15:10 – 14 15:13 – 14 15:14 – 15 8 15:14 15:15 15:18 – 19 16:1 16:1 – 3 16:1 – 4 16:4 16:13 – 17 16:18 – 21 16:20 16:20 – 21 16:21 16:28 – 30 16:30 19 Ruth 1:4 1:16 1:16 – 17 3:12 1 Samuel 1 8 15: 8, 9, 20, 32, 33 17:2 17:19 17:49 26 28 28:14 28:15-19 28:19 2 Samuel 6

901

83 83, 88 88 578 83, 580 94 86 580 86 95 95 578 3 89 95, 670 88 578 84 92 578 789 578 93 578 35 83, 88, 89, 579 578, 579,580 83

782 182 782 782

144 631 127 110 110 109 107

103

304

902

6:7 11 3 11:2

Scripture Index

106, 304 04 695

1 Kings 1:3 3 18 – 21

778 172 395

2 Kings 3:27 21:2 – 6

667 667

Ezra 9 – 10

124

Esther 2:7 2:8 3:1 3:10 4:14 8:3 8:5 9:24

119 143 127 127 120 127 127 127

Job 1–2 1:1 – 2:10 1:6 – 22 1:19 2:1 – 10 2:3 3 – 37 3:14 16 23:8 – 9 38:1 38:2 38:4 38:7 40:4 – 5 40:25 – 41:26 40:25 ff 42:2 – 3 42:7b 42:8b Psalms 1

327 370 382 368 382 370 366 372 616 356 357, 794 357 356, 357, 381, 382 356, 381, 382 357 374 373, 375 357, 373 383 383

1:1 13 22 22:1 23 23:4 27:7 – 9 74:14 88 90 91 104:26 106:37 – 38 121:1 – 2 126 Proverbs 6:25 22:6 23:27b – 28 25:28 28:1

379 112, 379 186 571 304 374

374 667 193 256

605 735 168 651 735

Ecclesiastes 1:2 – 3 1:9 1:14 3:1 – 8 3:7 7:26 11:8 12:6 12:12 25:24

736 736 170, 736 124 131 166 170 56 695 857

Song of Songs (Song of Solomon) 1:2 4:1 4:3 4:5 4:9b 4:16b 6:4 7:2 8:6

799 260 799 260, 799 799 799 262 261 56

Isaiah 11:6 14:13 – 14 25:6 – 10

168 327 362

Scripture Index

27:1 34 34:10 34:11 34:12 34:13 40 40:3 40:21 40:22 40:23 40:24 40:29 – 31 43:5 53 53:2 53:3 53:4 – 9 55:8 61 65:1 66:24 Jeremiah 7:30 – 34 31:15 48:24 48:41 Ezekiel 16:6 16:20 – 21 16:36 – 38 20:31 25:17 37 38:15 39 – 40 40 – 48 44:5 Daniel 1–6 2:5 5 6 7 – 12 7:8 7:9 – 10 8:9

374 303 303 303 303 303 52, 303 610 303 303 303 303 256 714 431, 432, 437, 446, 502 613 732 469 260 429 625 327

667 807, 814 474 474

223 667 667 667 256 656 348 327 245 584

120 730 540, 733 132 224 394 300 394

903

10 – 11

327

Hosea 1:1 – 9

606

Amos 2:2

474

Jonah 1:8 4:9 – 11 6:8

698 610 226

Micah 6:8

618

Matthew 1:18 2:1 – 11 2:2 2:13 – 23 2:9 – 12 2:16 2:16 – 18 2:18 3:1 3:1 – 12 3:3 3:5 – 6 3:8 4:1 – 11 4:5 – 6 4:24 5–7 5 5:1 – 12 5:3 – 12 5:5 5:8 5:27 6:9 – 13 6:10 6:14 – 15 7:5 7:6 7:13 – 14 7:15 7:18 7:21 – 23 8:2 – 3

745 169 582 72 493 582 725 807, 814 580 476 610 580 794 230, 327, 429, 862 167 578 429, 434 431 610, 617 488, 493 171, 696 167, 453 680 626, 698 612 393 262 255 862 493 794 862 152, 70

904

8:3 8:12 8:17 9:16 – 17 10:1 – 4 10:34 11:19 11:20 – 24 12:46 – 50 13:12 13:15 13:24 – 30 13:41 – 42 14:22 – 33 15:26 15:28 16:1 16:15 16:16 – 20 16:26 17:24 – 27 18 18:1 – 5 18:2 18:4 – 5 18:12 19:24 19:30 20:29 – 34 22 22:1 – 14 22:13 – 14 22:21 22:32 22:32 – 35 22:36 – 40 22:39 23 24:4 – 5 25:24 – 26 25:31 – 46 25:32 – 33 25:41 26:6 – 16 26:14 – 16 26:21 – 25 26:23 26:24 26:26 – 28 26:26 – 29

Scripture Index

152, 452 327 469 xix 463 607 485, 539 402 457 606 584 430 520 263 484 593 742 434 575 576 439 814

26:30 26:36 – 46 26:39 26:46 – 56 26:51 26:66 27:2 27:3 – 10 27:5 27:19 27:25 27:26 27:27 – 50 27:42 27:45 27:46 27:51 27:55 – 56 27:61 28:1 28:1 – 10 28:7 28:20

473 610 241 463 742 786 578 463 254 449 430, 547 743 578 487 425 379, 186 425 748 748 547 748 547 432

807 256 362 695 425 813 362 327 132, 576 813 814 257 477 430, 785 493 786 384, 538 692 327 463 463 463 470 470 473, 784 740

Mark 1:1 – 8 1:2 – 3 1:3 1:6 1:9 – 11 1:12 – 13 1:40 – 41 1:40 – 42 2:1 – 12 3: 13 – 19a 3:22 – 30 3:31 – 35 5:25 6:3 6:5 – 6 6:16 – 28 7:27 8:27 8:31 8:33 8:38 9:31 9:47 – 48 10:13 – 16 10:14

476 579 580 580 579 862 70 575 425 463 330 457 449 574 594 580 484 742 537 329 537 537 327 576 539, 576

Scripture Index

10:17 – 31 10:33 – 34 11:32 12:31 13:26 – 27 13:35a 14:3 – 9 14:10 – 11 14:17 – 21 14:18 14:20 14:21 14:22 – 25 14:26 14:36 14:41 – 50 14: 43 14:47 14:62 14:63 15:15 15:34 15:40 – 41 15:47 16:1 – 8 16:1 16:8 16:9 16:15 Luke 1:7 1:26 – 38 1:28 1:34 – 35 1:42 1:44 1:46 – 55 1:52 2 2:21 2:26 2:35 3:1 – 20 3:10 4 4:1 – 30 4:1 – 13 4:1 – 12 4:8

429 537 579 626 537 261 463 463 463 470 470 470 740 473 463 742 537 786 743 112, 379, 380 748 748 748 547 379 452 570, 584

226 725, 745 583 745 583 455 455, 583, 610, 617, 619, 725, 745 726 780 780 583 456, 780 476 694 429 506 862 429 576

4:16 – 21 4:21 5:1 – 11 5:12 – 15 6 6:12 – 16 6:36 7 7:11 – 17 7:30 – 51 7:36 – 50 8:1 – 2 8:2 8:19 – 21 9:16 – 17 9:20 10 10:13 – 15 10:25 – 37 10:27 10:30 – 36 10:38 – 42 12:47 12:51 13:24 13:25 – 27 13:30 14:15 – 24 15 15:11 – 32 15:32 16 16:8 16:19 – 31 17:11 – 19 17:21 18 18:9 – 14 18:10 – 14 19:1 – 10 22:1 – 6 22:2 – 6 22:3 22:14 – 20 22:19 22:20 22:21 22:21 – 23 22:33 – 37 22:35 – 38

905

578 476 506 70 431 463 618 500 425 499 452 452 426, 577 457 453 742 439 327 430 254 697 425, 552 815, 816 607 862 862 695 362 439 311 697 439 379 327, 402, 430 493 259 439 539 485, 506 362 463 578 327 740 552 474 470 463 489 463

906

22:39 – 46 22:44 – 49 22:47 – 53 22:48 22:50 – 51 22:62 23:16 23:32 23:34 23:35 23:40 – 43 23:42 – 43 23:43 23:46 23:48 23:49 23:55 – 56 24:1 – 5 24:1 – 12 24:13 – 25 24:16 24:39 24:42 – 43 John 1:1 1:1 – 5 1:5 1:23 2 2:1 2:1 – 10 2:1 – 11 2:1 – 12 2:1 – 13 3:1 – 21 3:3 3:16 3:16 – 17 3:17 3:19 4:22 5:2 5:46 – 47 6:1 6:15 6:19 6:22 6:64 – 71 6:70 – 71

Scripture Index

610 489 463 475 742 506 743 743 172, 492, 576, 625 583 619 402 743 379, 579 431 748 748 547 748 503 397 397 397

428, 484, 569 73 610 780 485 425, 457, 539 175 780 614 614 42, 425 435 525, 627 593 489 438 582 780 488 697 226 463 327

7:19 7:53 – 8:11 8:1 – 11 8:2 – 11 8:7 8:12 8:31 8:32 8:44 8:45 10 10:9 10:11 11 11:49 – 52 11:50 12:1 – 8 12:1 12:4 – 5 12:5 12:27 12:31 – 32 12:46 13 – 17 13 13:1 – 17 13:2 13:18 – 29 13:26 – 27 13:26 – 30 13:27 13:27 – 30 13:33 13:34 – 35 14:2 15:13 16:33 17:12 17:12 – 16 18:2 – 9 18:10 – 11 18:14 19 19:1 19:5 19:6 19:12 19:25 – 27 19:30 19:34

786 485, 539 304, 453, 500 106 576 697 790 698, 724 329, 786, 787, 327 697 733 696 579 175, 425 786, 788 438 463 780 485 311 724 576 429, 436 741 590, 327 463 590 477 471, 590 327 593 431 696 628, 694 487 394 463 463 742 438 335 743 426 577 786 458, 748 380 697

Scripture Index

20:1 20:1 – 2 20:8 20:11 – 18 20:14 – 18 20:26 20:27 20:31 27

547 748 500 547, 748 458 397 397 583

Acts 1:9 1:16 – 20 3:3 5:35 – 37 6 7–9 8:32 – 35 9:1 – 19 13:45 – 51 14:2 – 6 14:19 – 20 15 17:5 17:13 17:26 18:6 18:12 19 20:18 – 35 23:12 – 15 24 28:25 – 38 28:31

698 463 226 488 502 505 469 504 504 504 504 503 504 504 811 504 504 629 506 504 629 504 506

Romans 5:12 – 21 6:3 – 4 10:20 12:19 13:10

330 801 625 172 561

1 Corinthians 2:27 11:25 11:27 – 29 13 13:12 13:13 15:35 – 58

626 474 472 683, 684 801 684 402

907

15:42 – 44

399

2 Corinthians 5:1 6:17 11:14

402 695 328

Galatians 1:4 2 2:11 – 14 3 3:13 3:27 6:11

583 503 503 172 684 802 226

Ephesians 6:5

741

Philippians 3:4 – 6

505

Colossians 1:16 3:12 3:22 – 25

698 260 741

1 Thessalonians 4:13 – 18 4:17 – 18

402 401

2 Thessalonians 2:3 2:4

394 327

1 Timothy 2:14

857

2 Timothy 1:9

697

Hebrews 2:14 – 17 11:32

579 578

James 4:14

696

1 Peter 2:18 – 25

741

908

Scripture Index

2:22 – 25

469

2 Peter 2:4

394

1 John 2:22 4:8

327 696

3 John 1:5

561

Revelation (The Apocalypse of John) 2:20 5 5:6 6:1 – 8 6:9 6:11 393, 6:12 256, 7 7:12 8:1 8:5 8:7 9:1 – 2 9:18 10:10 12 – 13 12:1 – 9 12:13 – 17 13

395 538 525 193, 525 525 525, 526 319, 526 327 256, 519 522, 525 409 409 520 409 224 327 410 226 518

13:1 15 16:8 17 – 18 17 17:1 17:1 – 2 18 18:7 19:11 – 16 19:16 19:20 20 20:4 20:7 – 8 20:10 20:11 – 15 20:12 20:14 f 21 21:1 – 27 21:2 21:4 21:8 21:10 21:18 21:21 22:1 – 5 22:10 22:13 22:18 – 19

519 327 409 169 256, 528 581 581 528, 540 226 538 425 409 256 525 410 393, 409 393, 402 392 409 396 402 393 393 409 393 396 393, 396 393 407 43, 721 412

Subject Index Aaron 69, 74, 78, 177, 197, 207, 347, 352, 572, 894 Abraham 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 62, 63, 64, 124, 140, 144, 145, 158, 226, 229, 230, 234, 253, 263, 301, 302, 303, 304, 313, 322, 325, 342, 474, 480, 659, 666, 667, 721, 764, 765, 767, 768, 770, 772, 773, 813, 814, 833, 834, 841, 867, 869, 877, 878, 883, 892 Absalom 103, 112, 113, 116, 117, 304, 867, 872, 883, 890 Adam vii, xi, 8, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 42, 52, 56, 64, 140, 180, 186, 201, 230, 255, 260, 265, 277, 291, 311, 312, 313, 317, 323, 325, 327, 330, 341, 342, 343, 347, 348, 350, 361, 363, 364, 365, 374, 376, 424, 524, 615, 697, 804, 827, 830, 836, 837, 840, 867, 874, 886, 888, 890, 894 Adam-figure 8, 524 afterlife ix, 12, 58, 226, 245, 383, 391, 392, 393, 396, 397, 399, 400, 401, 402, 403 Ahasuerus 119, 120, 121, 125, 132, 134, 143 Akedah 54, 302, 309, 389, 665, 666, 670, 766, 773 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey 146, 156 Allen, Woody 54, 63, 253, 254, 255, 257, 264, 265, 266, 321, 325, 332, 338, 872, 873, 884, 891 Andréani, Henri 52, 59, 60, 61, 64, 82, 101, 103, 116, 120, 136, 143, 144, 145, 146, 158, 159, 867, 871, 872, 874, 879, 880, 881, 882, 883, 885, 888 angel ix, x, xi, 20, 38, 43, 52, 55, 56, 58, 75, 84, 141, 179, 186, 226, 227, 231, 232, 241, 255, 256, 259, 265, 276, 291, 300, 301, 302, 304, 306, 310, 313, 322, 328, 330, 331, 333, 335, 337, 338, 343, 348, 391, 393, 394, 395, 396, 401, 405, 413, 434, 435, 437, 438, 443, 450, 454, 455, 469, 520, 527, 529, 547, 583, 608, 609, 615, 617, 620, 627, 628, 666, 668, 670, 692, 697, 709, 710, 718, 722, 725, 726, 745, 747, 748, 755, 764, 765, 830, 857, 868, 869, 874, 875, 883 animation xi, 12, 44, 53, 64, 82, 112, 117, 175, 267, 268, 269, 272, 273, 275, 278, 279,

280, 281, 282, 283, 285, 286, 293, 294, 326, 868, 887, 892 anime viii, 44, 272, 282, 285, 286, 287, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 801, 868, 891 Anno, Hideaki 241, 251, 286, 292, 294, 295, 874, 890 Antichrist 115, 224, 225, 227, 316, 327, 334, 336, 406, 412, 509, 518, 520, 523, 524, 527, 530, 531, 868 anti-Judaism (see antisemitism, anti-Judaism) antisemitism, anti-Judaism vii, 12, 130, 175, 178, 327, 338, 422, 430, 434, 464, 466, 476, 479, 480, 483, 504, 590, 596, 597, 777, 779, 781, 783, 785, 786, 787, 788, 789, 790, 791 apostles 292, 328, 458, 471, 481, 488, 497, 498, 499, 500, 501, 502, 503, 506, 507, 508, 511, 513, 514, 514, 547, 552, 623, 629, 630, 631, 634, 844, 859, 867, 869 apocalypse, eschatology 42, 47, 213, 214, 221, 225, 228, 231, 232, 233, 234, 256, 287, 289, 290, 341, 402, 405, 406, 407, 409, 410, 411, 412, 413, 414, 415, 507, 508, 514, 521, 528, 529, 531, 538, 560, 693, 865, 868, 870, 885 Arcand, Denys 310, 325, 420, 422, 440, 441, 443, 458, 461, 488, 489, 494, 498, 514, 779, 791, 880 ark, Noah’s xi, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 55, 64, 84, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 176, 192, 217, 246, 268, 274, 276, 279, 280, 282, 283, 305, 325, 654, 872, 875, 877, 879, 882, 886, 894 ark of the covenant 106, 217, 257, 583, 584 Aronofsky, Darren vii, xi, 30, 34, 38, 48, 49, 54, 64, 179, 192, 232, 234, 239, 251, 268, 276, 277, 279, 283, 300, 308, 309, 325, 341, 342, 343, 351, 352, 353, 408, 412, 414, 415, 796, 805, 825, 832, 833, 835, 839, 840, 841, 875, 886, 887, 894 atheist, atheism vi, 42, 76, 170, 187, 233, 238, 300, 314, 319, 320, 332, 527, 574, 594, 599, 601, 603, 605, 607, 608, 609, 611, 613, 615, 617, 619, 621, 649, 650, 651, 652, 653, 655, 657, 659, 660, 661, 829, Atwood, Margaret 239, 249

910

Subject Index

Augustine of Hippo 21, 25, 32, 257, 473, 631, 634, 867, 869 Babel (see Tower of Babel) Babylon, Babylonian Empire ix, x, 35, 53, 62, 64, 124, 132, 136, 143, 146, 147, 169, 233, 312, 484, 518, 528, 539, 540, 578, 580, 581, 584, 589, 730, 731, 832, 840, 882, 890, 894 baptism x, 215, 256, 431, 505, 580, 614, 678, 793, 795, 797, 801, 802 Bara, Theda 147, 148, 156, 450 Barabbas 178, 191, 428, 432, 436, 437, 442, 443, 485, 506, 510, 513, 514, 869 Bathsheba xi, 101, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 114, 115, 116, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182, 185, 188, 189, 191, 304, 325, 695, 782, 791, 872 beatitudes 431, 488, 493, 610, 617 Belshazzar 144, 147, 539, 540 Beresford, Bruce 111, 116, 257, 304, 325, 341, 881 Bergman, Ingmar 316, 323, 326, 355, 377, 415, 518, 531, 798, 804, 873, 886, 889, 893 Bible, bibles v, vii, viii, xi, xv, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 23, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 63, 64, 67, 69, 70, 71, 74, 75, 81, 82, 83, 88, 94, 95, 98, 99, 101, 105, 106, 108, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119, 122, 126, 130, 133, 134, 135, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 147, 152, 153, 157, 161, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 191, 193, 194, 195, 197, 198, 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 207, 209, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 249, 250, 251, 253, 254, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 285, 286, 287, 289, 291, 293, 294, 295, 300, 301, 302, 305, 309, 310, 311, 314, 317, 320, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327, 331, 334, 335, 338, 341, 342, 348, 352, 353, 356, 363, 364, 368, 371, 372, 374, 375, 376, 379, 380, 389, 394, 405, 407, 411, 413, 414, 419, 421, 423, 436,

440, 442, 443, 444, 449, 459, 461, 462, 474, 479, 480, 481, 494, 501, 502, 504, 506, 507, 508, 513, 514, 515, 517, 518, 519, 520, 535, 537, 539, 541, 542, 543, 545, 550, 554, 557, 562, 563, 567, 569, 570, 571, 572, 573, 574, 575, 585, 590, 599, 602, 607, 608, 613, 620, 623, 625, 626, 630, 633, 650, 652, 653, 659, 660, 661, 663, 664, 665, 669, 671, 672, 675, 677, 679, 681, 683, 685, 687, 688, 689, 691, 693, 695, 696, 698, 704, 712, 713, 718, 721, 722, 723, 724, 727, 728, 730, 731, 733, 735, 736, 737, 739, 740, 742, 747, 748, 749, 751, 755, 764, 767, 773, 777, 778, 779, 781, 782, 783, 784, 785, 787, 788, 789, 790, 791, 793, 796, 797, 798, 799, 800, 801, 802, 803, 807, 808, 809, 811, 812, 813, 815, 816, 822, 823, 825, 830, 840, 841, 854, 856, 858, 861, 865, 867, 868, 869, 870, 872, 877, 879, 880, 883, 885, 886, 887, 889, 892, 894 Blackton, Stuart 82, 101, 104, 117, 141, 142, 144, 158, 879, 880, 883, 889 Bradford, Roark 186, 312, 323 Bresson, Robert vi, 190, 356, 376, 588, 597, 609, 610, 611, 613, 614, 615, 616, 617, 618, 619, 620, 869, 880, 881, 882, 883, 885, 887, 893 Brooks, Mel 182, 191, 197, 206, 232, 254, 258, 265, 870, 878, Brown, Dan 232, 460 Buñuel, Luis vi, 355, 377, 599, 601, 603, 605, 607, 608, 871, 874, 881, 882, 886, 888, 890, 893, 894 Burnett, Mark 33, 51, 54, 63, 94, 99, 114, 116, 232, 234, 301, 325, 459, 461, 507, 514, 576, 869 Burns, George 314, 315, 333 Cain and Abel, story of xi, 33, 144, 158, 167, 168, 214, 221, 244, 372, 669, 871, 885 Caligula 181, 185, 186, 187, 510, 511, 850, 856, 860, 866, 871 Cameron, James 179, 191, 240, 251, 351, 353, 406, 415, 867, 869, 892 Carrey, Jim 262, 318, 362, 697 Chaplin, Charlie 254, 259, 265, 652, 877, 887 Catholicism, Catholic Church vi, xii, xiii, 420, 423, 433, 435, 440, 442, 450, 453, 454, 456, 457, 460, 472, 476, 478, 480, 489,

Subject Index

501, 506, 519, 522, 526, 543, 545, 546, 550, 551, 585, 599, 600, 601, 602, 603, 604, 607, 608, 623, 624, 633, 635, 636, 637, 638, 639, 640, 641, 642, 643, 645, 646, 647, 649, 666, 675, 676, 677, 685, 697, 717, 744, 752, 754, 758, 760, 779, 786, 797, 798, 800, 809, 851 Chahine, Youssef 59, 61, 63, 867 Christ-figure 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 74, 81, 108, 116, 225, 228, 230, 232, 240, 317, 334, 440, 442, 494, 498, 526, 527, 537, 538, 539, 540, 541, 553, 572, 574, 575, 576, 578, 579, 580, 582, 583, 602, 603, 623, 637, 696, 697, 714, 718, 719, 865 Claudia, wife of Pilate ix, 449, 450 Claudius 511 clergy (see priest, post-biblical) Coen, Joel and Ethan vii, 193, 197, 207, 256, 260, 265, 361, 365, 366, 368, 369, 373, 377, 382, 390, 729, 730, 731, 732, 733, 735, 736, 737, 820, 824, 869, 882, 886, 890, 893 Cold War 74, 178, 186, 187, 188, 190, 196, 197, 199, 200, 204, 344, 409, 428, 519, 522, 665, 672, 790, 851 Columbu, Giovanni 445, 446, 447, 891 comedy viii, 6, 20, 25, 26, 32, 42, 53, 55, 56, 182, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 300, 311, 314, 332, 349, 359, 360, 361, 362, 366, 375, 376, 440, 492, 582, 602, 625, 691, 696, 703, 705, 708, 853, 861 Connelly, Marc 37, 49, 52, 63, 176, 186, 191, 809, 824, 825, 877 cosmic origins (see creation, cosmic origins) creation, environment 95, 119, 122, 154, 178, 202, 229, 238, 242, 271, 277, 278, 280, 308, 318, 319, 344, 351, 353, 374, 381, 382, 397, 423, 438, 519, 524, 537, 614, 627, 653, 654, 657, 789, 826, 829, 831, 836, 872 creation, cosmic origins ix, xi, 13, 17, 18, 19, 23, 31, 32, 36, 49, 169, 180, 186, 242, 243, 245, 247, 248, 268, 276, 277, 281, 282, 283, 312, 313, 317, 319, 320, 325, 341, 342, 343, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 350, 357, 358, 359, 367, 373, 381, 408, 646, 655, 668, 669, 670, 706, 708, 721, 834, 836, 837, 891, 892

911

cross, cruciform images ix, x, 101, 116, 131, 156, 177, 192, 217, 233, 238, 240, 241, 244, 245, 249, 263, 264, 291, 293, 310, 311, 317, 328, 329, 347, 371, 379, 380, 424, 425, 427, 428, 431, 433, 435, 437, 438, 441, 457, 465, 485, 486, 487, 489, 490, 492, 498, 501, 502, 505, 508, 510, 512, 537, 538, 539, 540, 546, 547, 552, 571, 572, 597, 605, 611, 612, 619, 625, 632, 638, 658, 666, 687, 691, 692, 693, 694, 696, 697, 698, 708, 713, 716, 722, 723, 724, 725, 726, 743, 748, 783, 797, 802, 861, 862 cruciform images (see cross, cruciform images) Curtiz, Michael xi, 35, 36, 49, 55, 56, 64, 82, 84, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 159, 192, 325, 726, 728, 871, 873, 886, 891 Cyrus 134, 147, 539, 540 Dalí, Salvador 600, 601, 608, 893 Daniel 120, 132, 141, 147, 158, 224, 253, 276, 331, 340, 407, 730, 731, 846, 867, 872, 873 David, King of Israel vii, 8, 14, 63, 81, 94, 98, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119, 122, 128, 130, 135, 142, 144, 148, 158, 159, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182, 184, 185, 188, 189, 191, 206, 245, 254, 257, 272, 276, 304, 305, 312, 320, 325, 341, 491, 778, 782, 783, 789, 791, 869, 871, 872, 875, 877, 881, 888, 889, 890, 891, 892 David and Goliath, story of 8, 101, 102, 109, 110, 111, 114, 116, 158, 254, 276, 320, 872, 877 David-figure 108, 109, 110 De Laurentiis, Dino 52, 63, 224, 634, 647, 652, 661, 869, 874, 881, 882, 884, 890 death, mortality ix, x, xi, 12, 29, 30, 39, 40, 41, 56, 57, 60, 63, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79, 81, 86, 90, 95, 103, 104, 105, 106, 110, 116, 122, 132, 144, 147, 152, 158, 159, 162, 166, 169, 181, 186, 188, 193, 205, 217, 228, 245, 248, 249, 253, 254, 255, 257, 262, 265, 267, 289, 290, 292, 293, 295, 304, 305, 306, 309, 311, 313, 317, 318, 319, 321, 322, 323, 329, 330, 333, 335, 336, 348, 357, 359, 360, 361, 369, 370, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383, 384, 386, 387, 391,

912

Subject Index

392, 393, 394, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399, 400, 401, 402, 403, 406, 407, 414, 425, 427, 430, 431, 434, 435, 437, 438, 439, 441, 445, 453, 459, 466, 469, 471, 476, 477, 478, 482, 488, 489, 499, 503, 505, 507, 509, 510, 511, 512, 522, 523, 524, 525, 526, 528, 536, 537, 540, 550, 555, 570, 571, 572, 575, 579, 582, 583, 591, 592, 595, 597, 599, 600, 610, 612, 613, 614, 615, 616, 624, 628, 632, 633, 637, 639, 641, 642, 649, 650, 654, 656, 659, 661, 665, 666, 667, 670, 676, 677, 679, 683, 685, 686, 691, 692, 693, 694, 697, 716, 724, 725, 735, 740, 747, 748, 749, 760, 765, 767, 769, 771, 777, 778, 779, 783, 784, 786, 788, 794, 795, 800, 801, 802, 810, 816, 817, 843, 845, 847, 848, 856, 857, 859, 862, 873, 874, 881, 882, 884, 890, 894 Decalogue ix, 66, 68, 71, 75, 76, 77, 81, 82, 183, 184, 585, 677, 681, 682, 683, 684, 685, 686, 687, 688, 689, 782, 873 Delilah ix, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 104, 117, 119, 120, 141, 144, 158, 159, 171, 176, 177, 181, 192, 203, 205, 254, 569, 571, 572, 578, 579, 580, 581, 585, 586, 872, 877, 878, 889 DeMille, Cecil B. vi, x, 14, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 98, 99, 100, 104, 117, 120, 148, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 159, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183, 186, 187, 190, 191, 192, 196, 207, 269, 283, 305, 314, 326, 422, 425, 426, 443, 449, 452, 457, 458, 461, 463, 466, 472, 473, 474, 482, 487, 490, 491, 492, 494, 498, 508, 514, 515, 569, 570, 571, 572, 573, 574, 575, 576, 577, 578, 579, 580, 581, 582, 583, 584, 585, 586, 665, 673, 751, 761, 777, 782, 783, 785, 788, 791, 796, 805, 843, 844, 845, 846, 847, 851, 872, 876, 880, 881, 883, 889, 890, 891, 892, 893 demon, demonic x, 88, 114, 154, 223, 224, 226, 230, 256, 327, 335, 336, 338, 391, 393, 394, 401, 407, 433, 470, 489, 500, 519, 525, 526, 529, 530, 535, 613, 625, 740, 744, 749, 787, 788, 857, 872, 893 devil (see satan, the devil)

Dew, Edward 106, 116, 117, 515, 872, 883, 891 Diamant, Anita 7, 13, 58, 63 diaspora 120, 124, 134, 135 Dieterle, William 105, 117, 331, 338, 450, 462, 850, 851, 867, 889 Dinah ix, xi, 7, 57, 58, 59, 504, 705, 706, 707, 708, 709, 710 documentary viii, 66, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 331, 351, 434, 436, 476, 502, 521, 624, 649, 684, 702, 740, 779 Domitian 507 Doré, Gustave 180, 697 Dornford-May, Mark vii, 6, 14, 311, 329, 420, 440, 444, 451, 459, 462, 498, 515, 721, 722, 723, 724, 725, 726, 727, 728, 747, 749, 863, 866, 870, 886, 891, 893 Douglas, Lloyd C. 420, 436, 442 Downey, Roma 33, 51, 54, 63, 94, 99, 114, 116, 232, 234, 301, 325, 459, 461, 508, 514, 869 Dreyer, Carl Theodor vi, 190, 330, 338, 355, 377, 462, 467, 481, 587, 588, 589, 590, 591, 592, 593, 594, 595, 596, 597, 598, 620, 870, 873, 876, 881, 887, 894 Duvivier, Julien 426, 443, 449, 461, 463, 471, 481, 874 Eastwood, Clint 4, 193, 194, 197, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 391, 395, 403, 870, 878, 887, 893 Eden, edenic setting 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33, 34, 38, 46, 58, 64, 318, 327, 330, 341, 342, 347, 348, 349, 350, 352, 397, 619, 669, 692, 695, 696, 794, 799, 826, 836, 837, 840, 870, 874, 876, 884, 887 Edwards, Gordon 117, 147, 148, 150, 151, 159, 450, 462, 888, 889, 890 Egypt ix, xv, 51, 52, 53, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 69, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 86, 87, 121, 123, 148, 151, 152, 153, 175, 176, 190, 192, 259, 267, 269, 270, 271, 276, 277, 278, 282, 283, 293, 294, 305, 306, 307, 313, 323, 326, 421, 424, 456, 474, 548, 550, 562, 572, 573, 580, 582, 583, 584, 665, 677, 694, 710, 781, 783, 784, 796, 843, 847, 876, 877, 880, 887, Elijah 91, 278, 282, 342, 469, 868

Subject Index

Emmerich, Roland 41, 42, 49, 225, 228, 234, 245, 251, 351, 353, 406, 408, 415, 867, 872, 879, 891 empire, imperialism 21, 78, 134, 143, 182, 187, 215, 223, 290, 410, 508, 509, 511, 512, 518, 519, 520, 531, 538, 539, 560, 585, 589, 596, 706, 747, 846, 847, 853, 855, 856, 857, 859, 860, 861, 863, 864, 865, 879 environment (see creation, environment) epic, biblical vii, viii, 3, 4, 6, 12, 13, 18, 38, 51, 55, 65, 71, 73, 81, 85, 99, 104, 106, 111, 115, 120, 121, 122, 133, 156, 157, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 232, 300, 301, 306, 311, 329, 341, 342, 402, 420, 427, 429, 434, 436, 483, 488, 491, 493, 494, 497, 503, 504, 506, 507, 508, 509, 510, 512, 513, 515, 536, 539, 569, 570, 571, 576, 584, 585, 629, 630, 653, 695, 703, 753, 777, 782, 783, 788, 790, 807, 822, 839, 843, 844, 845, 847, 849, 850, 851, 874, 887 eschatology (see apocalypse, eschatology) Esther vii, xi, 6, 14, 45, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 143, 144, 146, 158, 159, 276, 369, 371, 414, 767, 783, 870, 874, 888, 893 ethnicity vii, 131, 190, 278, 279, 451, 663, 671, 782, 793, 795, 796, 797, 799, 801, 803, 804, 805 Eucharist (see Last Supper, Eucharist) Eve vii, x, xi, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 52, 140, 168, 225, 255, 263, 265, 277, 327, 332, 341, 342, 343, 347, 348, 350, 401, 424, 524, 605, 615, 625, 672, 697, 793, 794, 795, 796, 797, 798, 799, 800, 801, 802, 803, 804, 805, 827, 830, 836, 837, 840, 857, 867, 871, 874, 882, 886, 888, 890 Eve-figure 524 evolution 31, 104, 139, 143, 148, 157, 199, 200, 204, 205, 319, 324, 344, 382, 474, 479, 669, 836 exile x, 28, 73, 79, 121, 122, 124, 130, 143, 615, 730, 731 Exodus 9, 54, 65, 66, 67, 69, 71, 73, 76, 78, 81, 82, 148, 151, 152, 153, 157, 158, 166, 169, 177, 179, 181, 183, 186, 187, 189, 191,

913

239, 246, 255, 270, 273, 276, 300, 306, 324, 325, 474, 478, 572, 573, 574, 580, 582, 653, 661, 665, 672, 696, 702, 712, 783, 796, 805, 823, 874, 875, 881, 890 exorcism 223, 230, 316, 331, 336, 337, 338, 339, 498, 744, 875, 878, 882 Ezra 124, 125, 126, 597 fantasy x, 3, 38, 98, 237, 250, 315, 317, 319, 407, 410, 422, 492, 505, 545, 637, 642, 643, 715, 820 Fellini, Federico vi, 635, 636, 637, 638, 639, 640, 641, 642, 643, 644, 645, 646, 647, 648, 867, 868, 870, 874, 875, 876, 878, 879, 881, 882, 883, 884, 888, 893 Feuillade, Louis 82, 120, 136, 143, 144, 156, 158, 874, 875, 880, 881, 883 film noir viii, 85, 106, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 650, 656 Fincher, David 346, 353, 385, 389, 867, 875 Fleischer, Richard 178, 191, 351, 353, 443, 506, 510, 514, 869, 891 flood vii, xi, 13, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 55, 154, 155, 232, 245, 246, 248, 272, 278, 280, 283, 292, 293, 294, 308, 314, 315, 322, 341, 343, 347, 351, 385, 406, 406, 408, 409, 413, 414, 558, 653, 654, 658, 659, 692, 701, 705, 708, 723, 732, 822, 825, 826, 827, 831, 833, 834, 835, 836, 838, 839, 840, 875, 876, 884, 892 forbidden fruit xi, 17, 19, 20, 21, 24, 33, 875 Ford, John 196, 197, 201, 202, 206, 207, 258, 265, 871, 873, 875, 878, 879, 880, 888, 890, 891, 894 four horsemen 193, 214 Fox, William 147, 148 Francis of Assisi 351, 626, 634, 875 Freeman, Morgan 40, 314, 315, 362 Freeman, William 64, 82, 157, 191, 423, 443, 878 Gaumont, Leon 141, 143, 144, 145, 544, 545 Gauntier, Gene v, 425, 543, 545, 547, 548, 549, 550, 551, 552, 553, 554, 555, 877 gender, gender identity xiii, 17, 32, 33, 70, 84, 85, 98, 99, 135, 166, 171, 178, 184, 185, 196, 200, 202, 203, 220, 277, 278, 279, 293, 459, 543, 553, 557, 823, 825, 827, 828, 829, 844, 856, 857, 865

914

Subject Index

ghost, spirit 108, 227, 230, 234, 301, 347, 391, 392, 397, 399, 402, 524, 642, 693, 697, 763, 801, 804, 876, Gibson, Mel 3, 14, 130, 136, 311, 325, 329, 338, 339, 341, 380, 422, 432, 433, 434, 442, 443, 449, 451, 453, 458, 462, 464, 479, 489, 490, 494, 495, 498, 515, 694, 751, 761, 781, 787, 788, 791, 844, 849, 850, 851, 853, 858, 866, 887 Gitai, Amos 122, 123, 124, 133, 134, 135, 136, 773, 874 God vi, viii, ix, xi, 8, 12, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 112, 117, 120, 127, 129, 130, 131, 132, 147, 151, 153, 157, 169, 170, 179, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 193, 212, 217, 226, 232, 233, 235, 237, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 246, 248, 249, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 262, 263, 264, 265, 270, 274, 276, 288, 289, 294, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 327, 328, 330, 331, 333, 334, 335, 337, 339, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 350, 351, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 362, 363, 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372, 372, 374, 375, 377, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 394, 395, 401, 406, 407, 409, 412, 423, 425, 427, 428, 430, 432, 434, 437, 438, 439, 442, 443, 444, 452, 453, 454, 455, 466, 469, 474, 475,476, 477, 481, 484, 485, 487, 488, 491, 510, 520, 522, 523, 524, 525, 526, 527, 528, 529, 536, 538, 550, 551, 563, 565, 572, 573, 574, 575, 576, 577, 579, 582, 583, 584, 589, 592, 594, 597, 599, 601, 603, 605, 606, 607, 608, 610, 611, 612, 614, 615, 617, 623, 624, 625, 626, 627, 631, 633, 634, 646, 649, 651, 653, 654, 658, 659, 660, 666, 667, 668, 669, 670, 671, 676, 677, 678, 679, 684, 686, 692, 694, 695, 696, 697, 698, 706, 707,

709, 710, 714, 715, 718, 721, 726, 731, 732, 733, 734, 735, 736, 737, 741, 742, 745, 746, 747, 748, 752, 760, 761, 764, 765, 767, 771, 772, 782, 783, 784, 785, 794, 796, 797, 799, 800, 802, 804, 805, 811, 813, 814, 815, 817, 818, 819, 820, 826, 830, 832, 833, 834, 835, 836, 837, 838, 839, 841, 846, 857, 858, 859, 864, 865, 867, 872, 875, 876, 878, 879, 880, 882, 884, 885, 886, 891 God-figure 8, 40, 238, 242, 243, 244, 317, 318, 319, 345, 357, 363, 367, 427, 670 Godard, Jean-Luc 454, 459, 460, 461, 609, 879 golden calf 67, 69, 73, 74, 151, 177, 573, 833 Golgotha 155, 329, 426, 432, 443, 449, 461, 463, 481, 489, 539, 632, 874, 877 Greene, David 255, 265, 438, 443, 464, 478, 481, 498, 514, 781, 791, 876 Greene, Graham 163, 169, 170, 173 Griffith, David Wark v, 55, 103, 116, 146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 157, 159, 196, 206, 269, 422, 443, 484, 485, 490, 491, 494, 509, 514, 535, 536, 537, 538, 539, 540, 541, 542, 557, 560, 561, 562, 563, 564, 568, 589, 598, 777, 791, 808, 824, 867, 869, 870, 872, 879, 880, 883, 884, 889, 894 Guazzoni, Enrico 146, 159, 177, 192, 515, 888 Gutiérrez Alea, Tomas 740, 743, 749, 875, 881, 882, 885, 893 Guy, Alice Blanché v, 141, 142, 157, 158, 463, 482, 543, 544, 545, 547, 548, 550, 553, 554, 555, 881, 882 Hagar x, 52, 764, 817, 818, 859 Haman 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 131, 144 Hayward, Susan xi, 104, 179, 180, 304 heaven ix, 18, 38, 39, 52, 58, 69, 84, 141, 187, 227, 238, 240, 253, 257, 290, 303, 305, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 317, 330, 346, 348, 356, 362, 363, 381, 383, 391, 392, 393, 394, 395, 396, 398, 400, 402, 425, 426, 432, 434, 441, 454, 478, 507, 520, 522, 539, 573, 577, 584, 593, 611, 612, 615, 627, 628, 654, 658, 659, 668, 669, 697, 698, 718, 765, 767, 794, 797, 807, 829 hell 170, 193, 226, 227, 233, 238, 240, 242, 317, 320, 322, 323, 327, 330, 332, 335,

Subject Index

387, 391, 392, 393, 394, 401, 402, 434, 517, 518, 520, 521, 522, 523, 524, 525, 529, 530, 566, 569, 664, 685, 689, 696, 797, 798, 817, 818, 878, 881 Henderson-Bland, Robert 425, 551, 554 Herod Antipas 438, 485, 844, 859, 860 Herod the Great 427 Herodias 148, 425, 450 Heston, Charlton 40, 66, 72, 178, 179, 182, 183, 305, 582, 584, 585, 844, 847, 849 Heyman, John 64, 435, 886 Hollaman, Richard 140, 424 Hollywood vi, xiv, 11, 13, 32, 33, 55, 65, 67, 69, 73, 74, 81, 87, 99, 107, 115, 119, 120, 157, 161, 164, 165, 169, 172, 175, 190, 191, 205, 206, 228, 233, 253, 255, 256, 264, 281, 282, 324, 325, 332, 351, 363, 375, 384, 391, 401, 402, 403, 411, 413, 414, 420, 427, 442, 451, 459, 460, 491, 494, 512, 513, 540, 541, 554, 564, 567, 569, 570, 571, 581, 584, 585, 630, 649, 657, 659, 661, 687, 691, 699, 711, 730, 731, 739, 757, 778, 790, 801, 803, 804, 807, 808, 809, 810, 814, 822, 823, 840, 843, 844, 845, 847, 849, 850, 851, 861, 865, 890 Holocaust 123, 178, 225, 234, 303, 321, 322, 336, 339, 476, 478, 479, 480, 481, 490, 663, 764, 777, 787, 788, 789, 833, 878 Holofernes 143, 144, 158, 536, 880 Holy Spirit 217, 431, 454, 473, 583, 745 homosexuality 844, 845, 847, 849, 850, 851 Horeb (see Sinai, Horeb) horror viii, 3, 7, 23, 54, 68, 214, 223, 224, 225, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 237, 242, 302, 307, 324, 327, 329, 330, 331, 333, 335, 336, 338, 391, 407, 411, 433, 474, 490, 518, 520, 522, 530, 536, 545, 563, 610, 618, 681, 691, 692, 725, 803, 807, 820, 821, 847 Huston, John vi, ix, 18, 33, 36, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 56, 63, 162, 173, 177, 191, 196, 201, 202, 207, 301, 302, 325, 342, 343, 344, 353, 649, 650, 651, 652, 653, 654, 655, 656, 657, 658, 659, 660, 661, 867, 868, 869, 873, 880, 883, 884, 885, 886, 888, 893, 894 imperialism (see empire, imperialism) Indian cinema 12, 432, 442, 751, 752, 753, 754, 755, 756, 758, 760, 761

915

Ingram, Rex xi, 312, 313, 315 Isaac x, xi, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 62, 145, 224, 253, 263, 276, 302, 303, 306, 375, 441, 614, 659, 666, 667, 671, 709, 763, 764, 765, 766, 767, 768, 769, 770, 771, 772, 773, 774, 813, 814, 868, 877 Ishmael 52, 53, 64, 159, 441, 764, 768, 772, 883 Israeli cinema 12, 54, 302, 764, 765, 768, 772 Jacob ix, 51, 52, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 112, 127, 254, 263, 304, 322, 337, 348, 349, 391, 394, 395, 403, 664, 668, 670, 671, 704, 705, 706, 707, 708, 709, 710, 711, 770, 813, 814, 869, 876, 879, 880, 891 Jael xi, 145, 158, 171, 879 Jaynes, Roderick 729, 733 Jenkins, B. Jerry 225, 521, 531 Jensen, Anders Thomas 184, 260, 265, 317, 325, 361, 376, 867 Jephthah’s daughter 142, 144, 145, 158, 159, 879, 881 Jesus v, vi, x, xi, 1, 3, 6, 13, 14, 53, 64, 65, 70, 72, 74, 107, 114, 116, 119, 129, 132, 139, 146, 152, 154, 157, 158, 167, 175, 177, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 205, 206, 211, 213, 215, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 226, 227, 230, 232, 234, 240, 254, 255, 257, 258, 260, 263, 270, 272, 276, 280, 281, 282, 299, 302, 309, 310, 311, 313, 315, 324, 325, 327, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 335, 338, 339, 379, 380, 384, 385, 388, 391, 396, 397, 399, 402, 405, 414, 419, 420, 421, 422, 423, 424, 425, 426, 427, 428, 429, 430, 431, 432, 433, 434, 435, 436, 437, 438, 439, 440, 441, 442, 443, 445, 446, 449, 450, 451, 452, 453, 455, 456, 457, 458, 459, 460, 461, 462, 463, 464, 465, 466, 467, 468, 469, 470, 471, 472, 473, 474, 475, 476, 477, 478, 479, 480, 481, 482, 483, 484, 485, 486, 487, 488, 489, 490, 491, 492, 493, 494, 497, 498, 499, 500, 501, 503, 505, 506, 507, 508, 509, 511, 512, 513, 514, 525, 526, 528, 539, 540, 541, 542, 543, 545, 547, 548, 549, 550, 551, 552, 553, 554, 555, 562, 570, 571, 572, 574, 575, 576, 577, 578, 579, 582, 583, 587, 588, 589, 590, 591, 592, 593, 594, 595, 596, 597, 598, 602, 603, 604, 606,

916

Subject Index

607, 609, 610, 611, 615, 625, 626, 629, 631, 632, 633, 639, 641, 644, 651, 664, 680, 691, 693, 694, 697, 714, 716, 717, 718, 719, 721, 722, 723, 724, 725, 726, 727, 728, 733, 740, 741, 742, 743, 745, 747, 748, 751, 752, 753, 754, 755, 756, 758, 759, 760, 761, 777, 778, 779, 780, 781, 783, 784, 785, 786, 787, 788, 789, 790, 791, 794, 796, 797, 798, 799, 800, 802, 803, 813, 844, 849, 850, 851, 853, 854, 857, 858, 859, 860, 861, 862, 863, 864, 865, 868, 869, 870, 871, 875, 876, 880, 883, 884, 885, 893 Jewison, Norman 6, 14, 253, 265, 310, 325, 421, 438, 443, 458, 461, 464, 481, 498, 514, 844, 851, 875, 880 Jezebel 225, 342, 352, 353, 395, 809, 824, 880, 890 Job ix, xi, 8, 129, 172, 260, 262, 314, 315, 317, 327, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 361, 362, 363, 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 374, 375, 376, 381, 382, 383, 616, 618, 714, 719, 733, 734, 735, 878, 880 Job-figure 8, 356, 358, 359, 363, 364, 374, 382 John the Apostle 457 John the Baptist 105, 148, 438, 453, 507, 580, 631, 694, 745 Jonah 226, 258, 263, 610, 645, 698 Jonathan 102, 103, 108, 112, 113, 116, 176, 191, 871, 875 Joseph, son of Jacob ix, xi, 51, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 127, 140, 141, 158, 360, 706, 710, 869, 876, 877, 880, 891, 892 Joseph of Nazareth 280, 454, 455, 456, 461, 462, 507, 631, 780, 871, 876, 884 Josephus, Flavius 71, 73, 74, 77, 148, 427, 450, 486 Joshua x, 73, 74, 94, 233, 240, 307, 503, 582, 583, 584, 791, 843, 848 Judah and Tamar, story of 709, 59 Judaism v, vii, 135, 178, 189, 327, 473, 474, 475, 476, 478, 479, 480, 483, 485, 486, 487, 489, 490, 491, 493, 494, 504, 505, 508, 531, 550, 570, 596, 630, 671, 777, 778, 779, 781, 782, 783, 784, 785, 787, 788, 790, 796, 833, 834, 861 Judas v, xi, 8, 36, 49, 140, 143, 158, 177, 181, 226, 327, 329, 330, 331, 380, 394, 425, 426, 427, 431, 432, 437, 438, 439, 441,

446, 452, 463, 464, 465, 466, 467, 468, 469, 470, 471, 472, 473, 474, 475, 476, 477, 478, 479, 480, 481, 484, 488, 489, 499, 500, 501, 505, 507, 509, 513, 514, 545, 552, 578, 589, 590, 596, 597, 694, 696, 698, 748, 785, 786, 787, 871, 875, 876, 880, 882, 883 Judas-figure 8, 694, 696, 698 Judith 103, 116, 143, 144, 146, 147, 156, 158, 159, 191, 509, 514, 536, 538, 539, 541, 542, 860, 880 Kazantzakis, Nikos 7, 13, 324, 380, 436, 437, 442, 460, 487, 494, 505, 513 Keighley, William 37, 49, 52, 63, 176, 191, 312, 325, 809, 824, 877 Kieślowski, Krzysztof 77, 81 King, Henry 104, 109, 115, 116, 117, 177, 191, 196, 207, 304, 325, 782, 791, 872, 877, 892 King, Stephen 23, 33, 225, 667, 672 Kingsley, Ben 60, 305, 321 Kirchner, Albert (Léar) 139, 157, 443, 881 Korda, Alexander 84, 85, 99, 100, 149, 150, 151, 159, 889 Koster, Henry 177, 178, 192, 420, 444, 510, 515, 779, 783, 791, 850, 888, 891 Kubrick, Stanley vi, 179, 192, 241, 243, 249, 250, 257, 265, 344, 345, 346, 353, 408, 409, 415, 663, 664, 665, 666, 667, 668, 669, 671, 672, 673, 856, 866, 867, 869, 871, 873, 875, 876, 890, 891 Kwan, Julia 793, 804, 874 Lagerkvist, Pär 436, 442 Lamarr, Hedy 85, 86, 98, 578, 581 lament ix, 12, 134, 170, 193, 278, 299, 306, 307, 310, 356, 357, 359, 363, 368, 369, 373, 374, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 425, 432, 478, 708, 735 Lang, Fritz 161, 164, 166, 169, 173, 196, 239, 251, 288, 294, 518, 528, 531, 601, 870, 876, 885 Last Supper, Eucharist ix, x, 154, 180, 182, 254, 330, 421, 457, 463, 464, 465, 467, 468, 469, 470, 471, 472, 473, 474, 477, 478, 480, 486, 507, 514, 545, 551, 552, 590, 604, 610, 632, 740, 741, 742, 743, 749, 781, 784, 868, 882

Subject Index

Laughton, Charles 166, 174, 844, 845, 846, 850, 886 Lawrence, Alma-Tadema 144 Leah xi, 57, 58, 127, 706, 707 Léar (see Kirchner, Albert) Lee Chang-dong vi, 713, 719, 869, 871, 885, 886, 890 Lee Chung-joon (Yi Chong-jun) 716 LeHaye, Tim 225 LeRoy, Mervyn 103, 164, 173, 178, 192, 420, 436, 443, 509, 510, 515, 783, 791, 844, 846, 851, 883, 888 Lindsey, Hal 519, 521, 531 Lorimer, Wright 101, 104, 142 Lubin, Siegmund 140, 141, 156, 157, 887 Malefane, Pauline ix, 420, 451, 721, 723, 724, 725, 726 Malick, Terrence xi, 30, 34, 54, 63, 348, 354, 356, 357, 358, 359, 374, 375, 377, 381, 382, 383, 390, 398, 403, 873, 892, 893 martyr, martyrdom ix, 105, 141, 144, 147, 155, 158, 189, 233, 413, 443, 461, 464, 481, 489, 497, 502, 503, 506, 508, 509, 510, 511, 512, 524, 525, 526, 527, 528, 537, 538, 641, 666, 694, 723, 767, 769, 845, 846, 874, 882, 884 mark of the beast (666) 233, 520 Mary and Martha, story of 425, 429 Mary Magdalene 7, 154, 177, 181, 185, 328, 425, 432, 438, 450, 452, 453, 458, 460, 461, 462, 482, 487, 498, 499, 500, 501, 507, 508, 514, 547, 551, 552, 553, 575, 577, 781, 857, 871, 875, 876, 884 Mary, mother of Jesus 450, 453, 546, 551, 724 Mature, Victor 85, 86, 90, 92, 98, 578 Mertes, Raffaele 124, 136, 453, 455, 456, 461, 501, 507, 514, 870, 874, 876, 881 Michal 101, 102, 108, 111, 112, 142, 304 Micheaux, Oscar vi, 557, 558, 559, 560, 561, 562, 563, 564, 565, 566, 567, 568, 809, 878, 894 Michelangelo 42, 72, 101, 180, 343, 458, 741 miracle, sign ix, x, 80, 81, 140, 154, 231, 270, 271, 272, 275, 278, 282, 283, 307, 310, 314, 315, 317, 362, 425, 430, 432, 440, 441, 443, 453, 459, 462, 475, 488, 491, 498, 499, 500, 501, 502, 503, 505, 506, 511, 515, 522, 545, 547, 551, 592, 594, 595, 603, 612, 624, 625, 627, 630, 631, 633,

917

634, 636, 637, 638, 639, 645, 646, 678, 718, 732, 758, 779, 780, 784, 791, 849, 862, 868, 879, 885 Miriam 35, 70, 74, 78, 79, 87, 88, 151, 152, 185, 267, 277, 573, 575, 581 Monty Python 6, 14, 182, 191, 251, 260, 263, 265, 283, 420, 440, 443, 492, 495, 853, 860, 866, 883, 884, 885 Mordecai 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 130, 131, 132, 143, 144 mortality (see death, mortality) Moses vii, viii, iv, xi, 4, 8, 40, 51, 54, 55, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 91, 108, 119, 140, 142, 143, 144, 148, 151, 153, 155, 158, 168, 169, 176, 177, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 189, 191, 230, 237, 240, 248, 255, 258, 267, 270, 273, 277, 300, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 312, 315, 324, 325, 352, 360, 478, 503, 515, 536, 572, 573, 575, 578, 580, 582, 583, 584, 585, 631, 665, 677, 696, 780, 782, 783, 785, 796, 799, 833, 834, 844, 847, 848, 869, 870, 882, 883, 885, 894 Moses-figure 8,108, 230, 240, 578, 580 Nehemiah 124, 126 neo-realism 429, 434, 502, 623 Nero 187, 189, 436, 442, 497, 503, 506, 508, 509, 510, 513, 514, 844, 845, 846, 847, 879, 886 Niblo, Fred 177, 191, 508, 514, 869 Noah vi, vii, x, xi, 13, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 54, 55, 64, 84, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 176, 179, 192, 217, 232, 234, 246, 263, 267, 268, 273, 274, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 282, 283, 287, 288, 292, 300, 305, 308, 309, 312, 314, 325, 341, 342, 343, 351, 352, 353, 408, 409, 412, 413, 414, 415, 585, 649, 652, 653, 654, 655, 656, 657, 658, 659, 705, 707, 721, 723, 726, 796, 805, 822, 825, 826, 827, 828, 829, 830, 831, 832, 833, 834, 835, 836, 837, 838, 839, 840, 841, 868, 872, 875, 877, 879, 882, 886, 893, 894 noir (see film noir) Nonguet, Lucien 158, 309, 325, 449, 462, 467, 482, 500, 514, 515, 872, 882, 888

918

Subject Index

O’Connor, Flannery 651, 660 Olcott, Sidney 101, 116, 177, 191, 421, 424, 425, 443, 455, 461, 463, 467, 474, 481, 514, 548, 549, 550, 555, 869, 872, 873, 875, 882, 887 Parra, Santiago 744, 749, 877 Pasolini, Pier Paolo 333, 339, 420, 434, 435, 436, 442, 443, 450, 457, 461, 464, 477, 481, 485, 494, 501, 504, 505, 513, 514, 646, 647, 787, 791, 878, 879 passion play 65, 82, 140, 141, 142, 157, 177, 191, 192, 422, 423, 424, 426, 438, 440, 441, 443, 488, 498, 545, 722, 779, 850, 878, 887 Pathé 52, 59, 64, 82, 100, 101, 102, 116, 136, 141, 144, 145, 146, 156, 157, 158, 159, 300, 325, 462, 482, 514, 515, 867, 871, 872, 874, 879, 880, 881, 882, 888, 889 patriarchy, sexism 293, 564, 565, 825, 826, 827, 828, 829, 831, 832, 835, 837, 838, 839 Paul the Apostle 504, 507, 514, 858, 865, 870, 887 Peck, Gregory xi, 104, 106, 179, 180, 204 Pentecost 263, 506, 508 peplum 107, 187, 781, 784 Perret, Léonce 158, 881 Perry, Tyler 258, 263, 265, 878 Peter the Apostle 458 pharaoh xi, 54, 60, 61, 65, 66, 68, 69, 72, 73, 74, 77, 78, 80, 152, 153, 168, 176, 177, 179, 187, 188, 270, 305, 306, 307, 572, 580, 582, 696, 817, 847 pharisees 435, 485, 490, 492, 493, 504, 539, 590, 785, 787, 790, 814 Philistines 83, 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 102, 103, 141, 578, 580 pietà 180, 583 Pilate xi, 139, 328, 426, 427, 428, 430, 431, 434, 438, 445, 449, 485, 486, 487, 490, 491, 597, 632, 633, 755, 779, 786, 788, 849, 845, 853, 860, 861 plague 67, 69, 73, 74, 78, 80, 89, 223, 232, 270, 304, 305, 306, 307, 317, 321, 322, 347, 408, 412, 522, 524, 525, 572, 582, 804, 815, 816, 817 Polanski, Roman 333, 335, 339, 518, 531, 649, 650, 652, 655, 657, 659, 660, 661, 871, 886, 889

Potiphar and his wife, story of xi, 60, 61 prayer 77, 88, 89, 147, 186, 187, 188, 189, 193, 255, 256, 258, 259, 261, 262, 304, 313, 321, 356, 357, 359, 362, 374, 383, 385, 430, 474, 478, 505, 528, 536, 539, 551, 553, 571, 605, 612, 613, 626, 632, 677, 687, 692, 698, 714, 715, 758, 759, 766, 767, 778, 780, 782, 809, 812 Price, Vincent 582, 843, 844, 847 priest, biblical 72, 79, 96, 150, 151, 152, 154, 169, 187, 278, 306, 434, 438, 465, 466, 539, 540, 859 priest, post-biblical (clergy) 56, 154, 166, 169, 171, 226, 238, 239, 256, 332, 336, 337, 350, 375, 380, 385, 422, 433, 434, 435, 438, 446, 465, 466, 472, 473, 487, 488, 489, 491, 504, 505, 523, 526, 527, 539, 540, 552, 597, 603, 606, 607, 609, 611, 612, 613, 617, 623, 627, 639, 643, 651, 679, 698, 741, 742, 785, 786, 787, 788, 802, 858, 859, 873, 880 promised land 62, 66, 77, 80, 81, 187, 246, 247, 474, 580, 584, 696, 818 Qur’an, quranic influence 229, 441, 702, 704 rabbi 71, 84, 150, 151, 152, 230, 321, 367, 368, 373, 483, 492, 667, 671, 733, 734, 765, 766, 773, 783, 785, 826, 830, 832, 833, 834, 835, 840 rabbinic literature 38, 826, 828, 830, 832, 834, 838, 839 race 17, 32, 40, 94, 190, 196, 198, 238, 240, 244, 277, 279, 315, 330, 408, 451, 455, 474, 537, 557, 559, 561, 565, 566, 567, 658, 694, 807, 808, 809, 810, 811, 819, 821, 822, 823 racism 536, 558, 563, 564, 706, 810, 821, 823 Rachel xi, 57, 58, 60, 127, 807 rapture 225, 228, 231, 232, 233, 235, 357, 405, 412, 415, 521, 525, 531, 888 Ray, Nicholas 54, 63, 175, 178, 190, 191, 310, 325, 420, 427, 429, 443, 449, 450, 451, 453, 457, 461, 464, 476, 482, 485, 486, 489, 491, 492, 494, 499, 514, 788, 791, 850, 851, 860, 866, 870, 881 Rebekah 145 Reeves, Arnold 101, 104, 142 resuscitation 106, 392

Subject Index

resurrection 156, 224, 235, 353, 360, 387, 391, 395, 399, 401, 403, 423, 424, 425, 427, 430, 432, 434, 435, 437, 441, 445, 446, 447, 458, 498, 499, 500, 506, 508, 515, 547, 550, 551, 594, 595, 597, 600, 614, 633, 696, 748, 760, 796, 814, 867, 887, 888 Roberts, Theodore 68, 72, 572, 582 Roman Catholicism (see Catholicism) Rome, Roman Empire 23, 186, 187, 189, 191, 226, 274, 278, 427, 431, 484, 487, 488, 492, 502, 503, 504, 505, 506, 508, 509, 510, 511, 512, 630, 631, 642, 643, 778, 789, 845, 856, 860 Rossellini, Roberto vi, 355, 377, 427, 429, 430, 431, 443, 458, 461, 502, 514, 623, 624, 625, 626, 627, 628, 629, 630, 631, 632, 633, 634, 780, 791, 867, 869, 870, 873, 874, 875, 876, 879, 881, 887, 889, 891, 893 Roth, Joseph 370 Ruth 177, 182, 188, 189, 192, 278, 282, 779, 782, 791, 868, 891 Sagan, Carl 239, 250, 320, 324 Saint-Saëns, Camille 84, 85, 95, 100, 889 Salome 105, 117, 450, 460, 462, 547, 553, 850, 851, 889 Samson vii, ix, 35, 51, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 104, 107, 116, 117, 120, 141, 149. 150, 151, 152, 158, 159, 171, 176, 177, 181, 192, 254, 274, 276, 283, 375, 569, 571, 572, 578, 579, 580, 581, 585, 586, 670, 799, 809, 824, 870, 872, 876, 877, 878, 889, 893 Samuel 101, 102, 103, 107, 108, 111, 112, 113, 142, 144, 157, 182, 397, 631 Sarah 52, 53, 54, 253, 264, 301, 303, 364, 395, 767 satan, the devil viii, ix, 12, 20, 21, 55, 223, 224, 226, 227, 257, 276, 311, 316, 327, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 364, 369, 370, 371, 374, 393, 394, 429, 431, 433, 434, 441, 463, 465, 466, 467, 469, 471, 473, 479, 481, 489, 494, 501, 519, 520, 523, 524, 527, 528, 530, 531, 576, 587, 589, 590, 591, 595, 596, 597, 598, 605, 616, 617, 692, 850, 870, 883, 889

919

Saul, King of Israel xi, 87, 88, 101, 102, 103, 104, 107, 108, 111, 112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 127, 142, 144, 158, 159, 375, 397, 671, 872, 889, 892 science fiction 30, 237, 248, 317, 319, 344, 351, 407, 413 Scorsese, Martin 7, 14, 46, 49, 114, 117, 171, 172, 173, 175, 191, 311, 325, 328, 339, 371, 372, 376, 380, 390, 422, 423, 437, 443, 457, 458, 459, 462, 464, 477, 482, 483, 484, 487, 494, 495, 500, 505, 515, 628, 634, 726, 728, 780, 791, 794, 803, 805, 871, 881, 882, 883, 884, 885 Scott, George C. 52, 301, 302 Scott, Ridley 65, 78, 80, 82, 151, 157, 179, 191, 240, 241, 244, 250, 251, 300, 306, 308, 317, 324, 325, 345, 346, 347, 353, 508, 514, 796, 805, 856, 866, 867, 870, 875, 876, 888 serpent, snake x, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 31, 38, 277, 308, 311, 327, 328, 329, 332, 348, 349, 431, 580, 796, 804, 830, 837, 839 seven deadly sins 158, 426, 452, 577, 615, 883 sex xi, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 32, 34, 59, 69, 73, 84, 86, 90, 92, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98, 119, 121, 125, 127, 134, 148, 171, 197, 227, 233, 239, 253, 260, 286, 324, 332, 349, 384, 392, 420, 437, 562, 563, 564, 570, 571, 574, 576, 581, 600, 607, 644, 645, 657, 664, 680, 810, 812, 816, 817, 823, 829, 840, 847, 857, 883 sexuality 22, 26, 55, 60, 61, 86, 92, 120, 151, 167, 178, 179, 196, 256, 276, 459, 557, 578, 582, 600, 602, 612, 616, 619, 642, 643, 645, 679, 680, 791, 804, 847, 848, 857, 883 sexism (see patriarchy, sexism) Shadyac, Tom 43, 49, 262, 265, 271, 282, 283, 314, 325, 361, 362, 363, 376, 871, 874 Sienkiewicz, Henryk 420, 436, 442, 509, 513 sign (see miracle, sign) silent film, silent era viii, 12, 14, 61, 63, 65, 81, 84, 99, 101, 115, 135, 139, 157, 176, 177, 254, 324, 330, 331, 369, 421, 442, 464, 465, 467, 470, 543, 547, 554, 587, 783, 788 Sinai, Horeb 66, 67, 72, 73, 91, 151, 152, 177, 183, 258, 305, 308, 480, 573, 692, 779, 782, 784 Singh, A. Bheem 431, 443, 451, 461, 761, 880

920

Subject Index

Sisera xi, 144, 145, 158, 879 Sissoko, Cheick Oumar vi, 57, 59, 64, 701, 702, 703, 704, 705, 707, 708, 710, 711, 712, 869, 875, 877, 881, 886, 980 slavery 51, 55, 59, 61, 66, 67, 90, 230, 306, 307, 559, 654, 655, 781, 784, 807, 808, 810, 811, 812, 813, 816, 820, 821, 822, 856 snake (see serpent, snake) Sodom and Gomorrah 37, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 62, 63, 64, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155, 159, 176, 182, 191, 192, 232, 301, 302, 303, 602, 695, 833, 834, 877, 884, 888, 891, 892, 894 Solomon x, 106, 112, 117, 142, 158, 159, 172, 177, 179, 180, 181, 184, 185, 188, 189, 192, 260, 262, 304, 671, 778, 791, 799, 880, 882, 891 spectacle 3, 51, 54, 63, 65, 81, 84, 85, 99, 104, 115, 123, 135, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 177, 178, 179, 190, 264, 279, 301, 305, 314, 381, 407, 425, 502, 509, 523, 535, 536, 539, 540, 541, 619, 711, 748, 780, 844, 846 Spielberg, Steven 237, 240, 243, 245, 250, 251, 255, 257, 257, 263, 265, 351, 353, 396, 402, 537, 542, 810, 868, 871, 874, 879, 880, 883 spirit (see ghost, spirit) Stephen the Martyr 144, 155, 158, 502, 630 Stevens, George 178, 191, 193, 205, 207, 310, 325, 328, 339, 428, 429, 443, 449, 453, 461, 464, 476, 477, 481, 484, 487, 488, 489, 491, 494, 498, 514, 537, 850, 851, 877, 890 Sturges, Preston 24, 34, 255, 265, 266, 585, 882, 891 Sydow, Max von xi, 89, 428, 484, 522 synagogue 67, 122, 209, 213, 367, 429, 430, 476, 484, 489, 504, 729, 766, 767, 779, 780, 790, 791 Tahimik, Kidlat 742, 743, 749, 884 Tamar (see Judah and Tamar, story of) Tarkovsky, Andrei 244, 250, 251, 355, 356, 376, 377, 868, 886, 891 Temple, Jerusalem 241, 454, 456, 465, 485, 487, 773, 781, 788 Ten Commandments (see Decalogue)

Tezuka, Osamu xi, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 292, 294, 295, 879, 892 theodicy ix, 12, 276, 299, 301, 322, 355, 356, 357, 358, 366, 372, 373, 793, 800 Third Cinema vii, 701, 739, 740, 742, 744, 748, 749 Tissot, James 141, 180, 421, 545, 550, 552, 554 Tower of Babel 35, 52, 240, 287, 288, 347, 541, 542, 654, 840, 869 Tree of Life xi, 30, 34, 348, 349, 354, 356, 358, 359, 374, 375, 377, 381, 382, 383, 385, 388, 390, 398, 400, 403, 525, 893 Tzipporah (see Zipporah) Ustinov, Peter 509, 844, 846 VeggieTales 6, 14, 130, 133, 136, 253, 270, 273, 274, 278, 280, 281, 282, 283, 893 Vidor, King 4, 177, 192, 778, 791, 809, 824, 877, 891 Vincent, Henry C. 157, 177, 192, 423, 443, 887 von Trier, Lars 133, 136, 316, 325, 355, 376, 415, 518, 523, 524, 525, 531, 857, 866, 868, 870, 873, 885 Wallace, Lew 7, 14, 419, 443, 491, 492, 494, 509, 513, 549 Warner, H. B. 426, 570, 576, 583, 844 Weir, Peter vi, 30, 34, 46, 49, 318, 326, 349, 354, 691, 692, 693, 694, 696, 697, 698, 699, 700, 871, 873, 875, 876, 877, 878, 882, 883, 884, 885, 887, 893, 894 Welles, Orson 107, 117, 164, 174, 427, 521, 789, 893, Western viii, 3, 5, 12, 22, 33, 37, 106, 165, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 223, 273, 277, 278, 281, 319, 320, 338, 341, 346, 347, 350, 393, 396, 402, 407, 408, 413, 451, 483, 488, 489, 491, 498, 505, 522, 523, 545, 559, 571, 641, 675, 693, 701, 704, 708, 711, 714, 718, 721, 722, 723, 727, 735, 751, 752, 753, 757, 758, 820, 856, Whore of Babylon xi, 518, 528 Wilde, Oscar 7, 14, 148, 450 wilderness 22, 38, 78, 81, 305, 308, 350, 368, 431, 610, 665, 794, 812 World War I 21, 34, 55, 68, 97, 154, 329, 369, 370, 561, 599, 694

Subject Index

World War II 42, 74, 104, 161, 176, 181, 185, 190, 199, 285, 409, 427, 429, 474, 476, 491, 517, 522, 571, 585, 591, 596, 623, 649, 698, 730, 789, 809, Wyler, William 175, 178, 191, 271, 282, 419, 420, 443, 491, 492, 494, 498, 508, 514, 664, 672, 777, 791, 809, 824, 844, 851, 856, 865, 869, 880 Xerxes (see Ahasuerus) Yi Chong-jun (see Lee Chung-Joon) Young, Roger 7, 14, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 82, 305, 306, 325, 328, 338, 427, 443,

921

456, 458, 461, 464, 477, 481, 498, 504, 506, 507, 514, 858, 865, 869, 870, 879, 888 Zanuck, Darryl F. 155 Zecca, Ferdinand 84, 100, 141, 142, 158, 309, 325, 449, 462, 463, 467, 482, 500, 514, 515, 882, 888, 889 Zeffirelli, Franco 427, 429, 430, 431, 432, 434, 443, 453, 455, 456, 457, 461, 464, 477, 481, 486, 494, 499, 514, 780, 784, 791, 880 Zemeckis, Robert 239, 250, 268, 283, 344, 353, 872, 894 Zipporah 78, 79, 270, 277, 307