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Stories from the Bible have frequently been used in films. There are various reasons for motion picture producers to turn to the Bible as source material. The stories, in the public domain, are already familiar to potential audiences. They contain sweeping, but relatively straightforward, narratives of good versus evil, and feature crowd-pleasing battles, sword fights, natural disasters, and miracles.
The American film industry has been producing movies based on Bible stories since 1897: The Horitz Passion Play (1897) was the first Passion play to be shown in the United States. [1] One of the earliest biblical films was the 1903 production of Samson and Delilah, produced by the French company Pathé. Another early film about a story in the Book of Genesis was the 1904 French film Joseph Vendu Par Ses Frères (Joseph Sold by his Brothers).
Peak years for production of Biblical movies were around 1910. Matthew Page points out that "more biblical films were released in the years from 1909 to 1911 than at any other time". [2] Enrico Guazzoni's 1913 Italian epic Quo Vadis? is often considered the first successful feature-length motion picture and one of the first films with over two hours running time. [3] Cecil B. DeMille specialized in extravagant epics throughout a career that spanned both the silent and sound eras. His 1923 silent version of The Ten Commandments (1923) included spectacular special effects for the parting of the Red Sea. De Mille followed The Ten Commandments in 1927 with King of Kings, a lavish, reverential life of Christ with a climactic resurrection scene in color. King of Kings was re-released in 1931 with a synchronized musical score. [3]
MGM's 1925 silent-era Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ , starring Ramon Novarro was the most expensive film of its time. It included two spectacular scenes: the sea galley battle with pirates and the famous chariot-race. [3] Another "swords and sandals" epic of the 1920s was Noah's Ark which combined title cards with spoken dialogue.
The major studios produced fewer epics during the 1940s due in part to wartime scarcity of resources. After the war, some of Hollywood's highest grossing films were religious epics produced as vehicles for its biggest stars. [4] Samson and Delilah was the biggest moneymaking movie of 1949 and is considered the picture that sparked the biblical-epic film craze of the 1950s. [5] It was followed by two of 1951’s biggest box-office hits, Quo Vadis and David and Bathsheba. Charlton Heston starred in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments and William Wyler's Ben-Hur.
According to author Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, in the 1950s and 1960s, during the era of the production code, "the most acceptable cinematic path for movies to incorporate sex and violence was the biblical epic". [6] Basing a film on the Bible allowed it to be more risqué than would normally have been accepted. Figures like Eve, Delilah, Jezebel and Judith could all be portrayed as seductive temptresses. In tales such as Sodom and Gomorrah and Samson and Delilah, exotic sins could be lavishly portrayed on screen. In his autobiography, DeMille wrote, "I am sometimes accused of gingering up the Bible with large and lavish infusions of sex and violence. I can only wonder if my accusers have ever read certain parts of the Bible." [7]
By the 1950s movies had to compete with television and became more colorful and bigger in story and scope. In 1953, CinemaScope was introduced in The Robe. In 1956 DeMille remade his 1923 film The Ten Commandments. It was the biggest moneymaker of 1956, nominated for seven Academy Awards, and won one for special effects. [5]
Professor Drew Casper, a film historian at the University of Southern California, says that by the mid-1960s several epic-style biblical movies flopped, and were partially blamed for the movie industry's financial troubles at that time. Two major studio attempts to make a film of Jesus' life during this period, The Greatest Story Ever Told and King of Kings were both commercial failures. The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) cost $20 million, and recouped only $1.2 million. [4] With the end of the studio system and the changing social climate, the Bible epic film fell out of favour.
Mel Gibson's controversial The Passion of the Christ (2004), an interpretation of the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus, was extremely profitable, grossing $370 million (domestic). Due to dialogue in Hebrew and Aramaic, it was subtitled. It set a record for the highest-grossing independent film of all time. [8]
 | This section needs additional citations for verification .(November 2013) |
It has long been more popular to make films about the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, than of the New Testament/Christian Bible. Old Testament stories are well suited for epic films. There have been over 100 films based on the Old Testament. These movies were made in great numbers both by Hollywood and the Italian film industry, and many of the biggest films were joint American/Italian productions. During this period most of the major stories in the Old Testament were put on film, some multiple times. Epics such as Sodom and Gomorrah , The Story of Ruth , David and Goliath, Solomon and Sheba , and Esther and the King dominated the box office.
In 1966, 20th Century Fox and Italian producer Dino DeLaurentiis made the first attempt to produce a series of films based on the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation. The Bible: In the Beginning , based largely on the book of Genesis, was to have been the first of these films, but financial challenges cancelled further films. Forty-seven years later, Hearst Corporation and producers Roma Downey and Mark Burnett created their own reimagining of the story via a TV miniseries, The Bible , thus finally fulfilling DeLaurentiis' original 1966 vision.
The box office failure King David , was released in 1985.
 | This section is written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic.(November 2013) |
The New Testament was less frequently turned into major motion pictures. Unlike the Old Testament, the New Testament has few action scenes and little romance. During the 1950s, most of the films recounting Jesus' life were financed by church groups and played in churches. These were often film versions of the traditional Passion Play. At this time there were some successful films that involved Jesus, but they put him at a distance from the central characters and were based on novels rather than the Bible. These included the sequel to 1953's The Robe , Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), and the 1959 remake film Ben-Hur .
In 1966, Pier Paolo Pasolini filmed The Gospel According to St. Matthew in southern Italy with a cast of non-professional actors. Despite Pasolini's atheism and Marxism, the film was praised by the Pope for its faithfulness. The revisionist The Last Temptation of Christ , the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar , and the parody Life of Brian were all major films of the 1970s and 1980s. These films generated controversy, but were financially successful. Film versions of the Book of Revelation such as The Late Great Planet Earth and The Seventh Sign were made, which had been uncommon in an earlier era.
During this period more reverent works were produced, but often appeared as television miniseries or released directly to video. The success of The Passion of the Christ led to new Bible films being commissioned including Mary, Son of Man, Color of the Cross, The Ten Commandments, and Nativity, all of which were scheduled for a 2006 release.
Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director, producer, and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of American cinema and the most commercially successful producer-director in film history. His films were distinguished by their epic scale and by his cinematic showmanship. His silent films included social dramas, comedies, Westerns, farces, morality plays, and historical pageants. He was an active Freemason and member of Prince of Orange Lodge #16 in New York City.
The Ten Commandments is a 1956 American epic religious drama film produced, directed, and narrated by Cecil B. DeMille, shot in VistaVision, and released by Paramount Pictures. The film is based on the 1949 novel Prince of Egypt by Dorothy Clarke Wilson, the 1859 novel Pillar of Fire by J. H. Ingraham, the 1937 novel On Eagle's Wings by A. E. Southon, and the Book of Exodus, found in the Bible. The Ten Commandments dramatizes the biblical story of the life of Moses, an adopted Egyptian prince who becomes the deliverer of his real brethren, the enslaved Hebrews, and thereafter leads the Exodus to Mount Sinai, where he receives, from God, the Ten Commandments. The film stars Charlton Heston in the lead role, Yul Brynner as Rameses, Anne Baxter as Nefretiri, Edward G. Robinson as Dathan, Yvonne De Carlo as Sephora, Debra Paget as Lilia, and John Derek as Joshua; and features Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Seti I, Nina Foch as Bithiah, Martha Scott as Yochabel, Judith Anderson as Memnet, and Vincent Price as Baka, among others.
The Gospel According to St. Matthew is a 1964 Italian biblical drama film in the neorealist style, written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It is a cinematic rendition of the story of Jesus according to the Gospel of Matthew, from the Nativity through the Resurrection. The dialogue is taken directly from the Gospel of Matthew, as Pasolini felt that "images could never reach the poetic heights of the text." He reportedly chose Matthew's Gospel over the others because he had decided that "John was too mystical, Mark too vulgar, and Luke too sentimental."
Samson was the last of the judges of the ancient Israelites mentioned in the Book of Judges and one of the last leaders who "judged" Israel before the institution of the monarchy. He is sometimes considered as an Israelite version of the popular Near Eastern folk hero also embodied by the Sumerian Gilgamesh and Enkidu and the Greek Heracles.
Samson and Delilah is a 1949 American romantic biblical drama film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille and released by Paramount Pictures. It depicts the biblical story of Samson, a strongman whose secret lies in his uncut hair, and his love for Delilah, the woman who seduces him, discovers his secret, and then betrays him to the Philistines. It stars Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr in the title roles, George Sanders as the Saran, Angela Lansbury as Semadar, and Henry Wilcoxon as Prince Ahtur.
Delilah is a woman mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Judges in the Hebrew Bible. She is loved by Samson, a Nazirite who possesses great strength and serves as the final Judge of Israel. Delilah is bribed by the lords of the Philistines to discover the source of his strength. After three failed attempts at doing so, she finally goads Samson into telling her that his vigor is derived from his hair. As he sleeps, Delilah orders a servant to cut Samson's hair, thereby enabling her to turn him over to the Philistines.
Enrico Sabbatini was an Italian costume designer and production designer for the theater and cinema industries.
The Ten Commandments is a 1923 American silent religious epic film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Written by Jeanie MacPherson, the film is divided into two parts: a prologue recreating the biblical story of the Exodus and a modern story concerning two brothers and their respective views of the Ten Commandments.
The Prodigal is a 1955 Eastmancolor biblical epic CinemaScope film made by MGM starring Lana Turner and Edmund Purdom. It was based on the New Testament parable about a selfish son who leaves his family to pursue a life of pleasure. The film also features James Mitchell, Louis Calhern, Joseph Wiseman, Cecil Kellaway, Audrey Dalton, and Walter Hampden. Dancer Taina Elg made her film debut in The Prodigal.
Women in the Bible are wives, mothers and daughters, servants, slaves and prostitutes. As both victors and victims, some women in the Bible change the course of important events while others are powerless to affect even their own destinies. The majority of women in the Bible are anonymous and unnamed. Individual portraits of various women in the Bible show women in a variety of roles. The New Testament refers to a number of women in Jesus' inner circle, and he is generally seen by scholars as dealing with women with respect and even equality.
The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible is an animated direct-to-video film series produced by Hanna-Barbera that tells of three young adventurers who travel back in time to watch biblical events take place. Thirteen videos were released between 1985 and 1992.
Jewish mythology is the body of myths associated with Judaism. Elements of Jewish mythology have had a profound influence on Christian mythology and on Islamic mythology, as well as on Abrahamic culture in general. Christian mythology directly inherited many of the narratives from the Jewish people, sharing in common the narratives from the Old Testament. Islamic mythology also shares many of the same stories; for instance, a creation-account spaced out over six periods, the legend of Abraham, the stories of Moses and the Israelites, and many more.
Apocalypse or The Apocalypse is a biblical telefilm produced for European television released in 2002 starring Richard Harris and co-starring Bruce Payne.
The term Bible fiction refers to works of fiction which use characters, settings and events taken from the Bible. The degree of fictionalization in these works varies and, although they are often written by Christians or Jews, this is not always the case.
The Bible is a television miniseries based on the Bible. It was produced by Roma Downey and Mark Burnett and was broadcast weekly between March 3 and 31, 2013 on History channel. It has since been adapted for release to theaters as a feature film, the 2014 American epic biblical drama Son of God.
The Bible Collection is a series of films produced for the TNT television network, starting with Abraham in April 1994 and ending with Thomas in April 2001. The Bible Collection consists of a 27-part miniseries in 17 volumes.
The Book of Clarence is an upcoming American epic film written and directed by Jeymes Samuel. The film is due for release on September 22, 2023.
