Word: delilah
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Samson and Delilah (Paramount) bedizens the Biblical story with all that $3,000,000 can buy: Hedy Lamarr, Victor Mature, 600 extras and eye-crashing Technicolor, mixed by the lavish, lily-gilding hand of Cecil B. DeMille. The result may not be quite Old Testament, but it is Bible story shrewdly blended with sex, spectacle, and the merest suggestion of social comment to keep it abreast of current Hollywood trends. It is unlikely to tarnish Producer-Director DeMille's reputation for consistently making (as well as spending) more money on pictures than anybody else...
...earth whirling in space, and the voice of Creator 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...
...original story that seemed, for movie purposes, to be nothing but fragments and figments, 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...
...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: "I won't need it. He's a young lion...
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...