Word: samson
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...DeMille himself intoning a speech that begins: "Before the dawn of history, ever since the first man discovered his soul . . ." To meet the challenge of building from there, DeMille brings on a seven-day saturnalia in the fleshpots of Timnath; Delilah Lamarr slinking through ten changes of scanty costumes; Samson Mature strangling a lion with his bare hands, killing 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, and pulling the temple down about the ears of the whole company...
...DeMille turned four writers loose on the job of working up a convincing script. They telescoped the Biblical account, invented some new sequences, tinkered with motivations, added characters, threw in some dancing girls. Major change: Delilah became the younger sister of the nameless Philistine woman who was the Biblical Samson's wife. The final adaptation skillfully manages to achieve the most serviceability for the screen with the least violence to Scripture. Its best job is to create conviction in Samson's feats: e.g., his slaughter with the jawbone of an ass looks plausible because the script places...
...Bits of it hew more or less to lines out of the Bible ("If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have answered my riddle"). But most of it is Biblical ersatz with an Edgar Rice Burroughs flavor ("You will bring death to the village. Samson is our warrior"). And sometimes it lapses into pure Hollywood (Samson to his mother: "Ummm, you're the best cook in Zorah, little mother"). A dialogic highpoint of some kind is reached when Samson, handed a javelin to do battle with the lion, cheerily assures Delilah...
...acting in a DeMille picture bears about the same relation to ordinary acting that a DeMille spectacle bears to everyday life. Holding up the florid tradition of black-hearted villainy are George Sanders and Henry Wilcoxon. Mature is suitably curly-haired and big-muscled as Samson. For all her plumage, including a gown of 2,000 peacock feathers (which DeMille ordered retouched for more color), Miss Lamarr's slitherings suggest a small-town belle making like a femme fatale...
DeMille has provided plenty of gorgeous scenery for all the actors to chew on, and has filmed his spectacular scenes with technical virtuosity and boundless gusto. Even lovers of cinematic art who recognize Samson and Delilah as a run-of-DeMille epic should enjoy it as a simple-minded spree. In its way, it is as much fun as a robust, well-organized circus...