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

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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 proj-
ect 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 em-
bracing me and my research interests. Students have provided insightful feedback in
my film courses at both institutions. Among my colleagues, I must make special men-
tion 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, milk-
shakes, and French fries over the years.
Finally, special acknowledgement goes to my family: my late father Bob Bur-
nette, 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 al-
ways 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 1

I Biblical Characters and Stories (Hebrew Bible)

Theresa Sanders
1 In the Beginning: Adam and Eve in Film 17

Anton Karl Kozlovic

2 Noah and the Flood: A Cinematic Deluge 35

Peter T. Chattaway
3 It’s All in the Family: The Patriarchs of Genesis in Film 51

Jennifer L. Koosed
4 The Cinematic Moses 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 101

Carl S. Ehrlich
7 Esther in Film 119
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 193

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 237

Terry Lindvall and Chris Lindvall

15 The Word Made Gag: Biblical Reception in Film Comedy 253

R. Christopher Heard
16 Drawing (on) the Text: Biblical Reception in Animated Films 267

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 299

Peter Malone
19 Satan in Cinema 327
 Contents IX

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 391

Tina Pippin
24 This Is the End: Apocalyptic Moments in Cinema 405
List of Illustrations
1 Eve reaches for forbidden fruit in The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966) 19
2 Margaret offers Bud an apple in Pleasantville (1998) 28
3 Animals help build the ark in Michael Curtiz’s Noah’s Ark (1928) 36
4 Animal pairs in The Green Pastures (1936) 37
5 Abraham and Isaac in The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966) 52
6 Leah, Dinah, and Rachel in The Red Tent (2014) 58
7 Potiphar examining Joseph at the slave market in Joseph (1995) 60
8 Moses proclaims liberty in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956) 67
9 An older Moses in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923) 68
10 Goliath issues a challenge to Saul’s camp in David et Goliath (1910) 102
11 Bathsheba bathing on a rooftop in David and Bathsheba (1951) 105
12 Bathsheba bathing on a rooftop in The Bible (2013) 114
13 A romantic sexual audition in Esther (1998) 125
14 Esther’s wedding and coronation in One Night with the King (2006) 128
15 Jael prepares to kill the sleeping Sisera in Jaël et Sisera (1911) 145
16 Betty Blythe in Queen of Sheba (1921) 149
17 The flood destroys Akkad in Noah’s Ark (1928) 155
18 The Bible is featured extensively in The Night of the Hunter (1955) 166
19 Harry Powell’s tattoos explained with reference to Cain and Abel 167
20 Caught in the bulrushes in The Night of the Hunter (1955) 168
21 Moses before Pharaoh in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923) 176
22 Celebrities Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward as David and Bathsheba (1951) 180
23 Title character reading the KJV in The Book of Eli (2010) 229
24 Detective John Smith before a cruciform window in The 23rd Psalm (2007) 231
25 Advertisement for a virtual paradise in Cargo (2009) 247
26 Asha receives a mysterious soil sample in Pumzi (2009) 248
27 Katharine Hepburn learns to pray in Spitfire (1934) 259
28 God and Bruce walk on water in Bruce Almighty (2003) 263
29 A century of animation from 1914 to 2014 268
30 Continuing characters in animated Bible series 273
31 A cross rises in Shin seiki evangelion, shito shinsei (1999) 291
32 “The Story of Noah” in Tezuka Osamu no kyūyakuseisho monogatari (1993) 292
33 Peter O’Toole as God/angel in The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966) 301
34 God and Jesus in La vie et la passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (1902 – 05; 1907) 310
35 Rex Ingram as De Lawd in The Green Pastures (1936) 312
36 Noah as a superhero in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah (2014) 342
37 The DVD cover image of Creation (2009) 343
38 The mystery of creation in Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011) 358
39 Ivan, devastated by Adam’s interpretation of Job in Adam’s Apples (2005) 365
40 Mrs. O’Brien mourns her son’s death in The Tree of Life (2011) 382
41 Fr. Quintana, visiting the poor in To the Wonder (2012) 385
42 Tyler Durden, about to burn the narrator’s hand in Fight Club (1999) 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 United Arab Emirates IT Italy
AR Argentina JP Japan
AT Austria KE Kenya
AU Australia KR South Korea
BE Belgium MA Morocco
BF Burkina Faso ML Mali
BG Bulgaria MT Malta
BR Brazil MX Mexico
BS Bahamas MY Malaysia
CA Canada NL Netherlands
CH Switzerland NO Norway
CN China NZ New Zealand
CU Cuba PH Philippines
CZ Czech Republic PL Poland
DE Germany PS Palestine
DK Denmark PT Portugal
EG Egypt RU Russia
ES Spain SE Sweden
FI Finland SG Singapore
FR France SN Senegal
HK Hong Kong SU Soviet Union
HU Hungary TN Tunisia
ID Indonesia TW Taiwan
IE Ireland UK United Kingdom
IL Israel US United States
IN India YU Yugoslavia
IR Iran ZA South America
IS Iceland

Television Networks and Film Production Companies

ABC American Broadcasting Company
AFI American Film Institute
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BFI British Film Institute
BSB British Satellite Broadcasting
CBS Columbia Broadcasting System
ICAIC Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos
MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
NBC National Broadcasting Company
OFI Organizzazione Film Internazionali
ORTF Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française
RTI Research Technology International
STPC Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Producción Cinematográfica
XVIII Abbreviations

TBN Trinity Broadcasting Network

TMC The Movie Channel
TMS Tokyo Movie Shinsha
WFD 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 communi-
ties 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 se-
cures 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 pre-
serve 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 contem-
porary life and, at times, attaching new meanings to the received text. A similar proc-
ess is at work in the Christian New Testament. The evangelists each adapt and recon-
textualize 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 pro-
duction and the reception of a text. The concept of a simple, uniform ‘original’ text belies convoluted
2 Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch

mean different things at different times. Interpretive communities have always pro-
duced 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 lit-
erature 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 dis-
semination 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 syna-
gogue, 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 Chris-
tian 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 mov-
ies 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 con-
sideration 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 bib-
lical 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 historical-

processes 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 ‘re-
ceived’ 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 ever-
evolving 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 pic-
tures (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 inter-
pretations 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 op-
erate 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 produc-
tion 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 ac-
tively 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 be-
tween 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 mutu-
ally 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 sub-
ject 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 bib-
lical 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
4 Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch

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 filmmak-
ers mining scripture for its cinematic potential. The apparent rebirth of biblical epic
films has ignited scholarly interest in the ways in which these productions appropri-
ate old canonical texts for new cultural situations.
The films under consideration in the following chapters include not only cos-
tume 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 cin-
ematic genre and the full spectrum of intertextual possibilities between direct adap-
tation and indirect appropriation (Sanders 2006). As early as 1996, Alice Bach pub-
lished a seminal collection of essays exploring interdisciplinary connections between
biblical studies and film studies. Contributors to that volume adopted one of two ob-
jects 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 ele-
ments “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 con-
scious 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 vol-
ume had included essays on films such as Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven () and King Vidor’s Hal-
lelujah () alongside essays on Moses and Magdalene films (Bach ).
 Reinhartz (a, xvi) edited a collection of essays examining twenty-three direct biblical adapta-
tions and twenty-seven other biblically influenced films. She also published a companion mono-
graph, which adopts the binary distinction of the “Bible in film” and the “Bible on film” as its organ-
izational structure (Reinhartz b).
 It should be noted that terms such as ‘original’ and ‘adaptation’ (or ‘text’ and ‘pre-text’) might er-
roneously suggest that influence flows in only one direction. A later adaptation can (re)inflect its pre-
cursor, 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 ar-
rangement 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 schol-
arly community rightly expects reception historians to reflect critically on this “dis-
criminating 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 sim-
ple 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 read-
ers with conceptual hooks on which to hang the essays that follow. In brief, I distin-
guish among cinematic uses of biblical texts based upon the main intertextual strat-
egies that these films employ – spanning the continuum from obvious cinematic
adaptations to more obscure (and perhaps even unintentional) appropriations of bib-
lical 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. De-
Mille’s The Ten Commandments, 1956). Publicity around these works typically focus-
es 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 char-
acters 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 nu-
merous 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 ex-
amples. This model draws on recent work in adaptation studies such as that of Hutcheon (), Cor-
rigan (), 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 ().
6 Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch

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 mul-
titude 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 intention-
ally transpose the story’s setting culturally, geographically, or temporally. Literary
critic Gérard Genette describes this kind of adaptation as a “movement of proxima-
tion” because it often brings the source text closer to an audience’s frame of refer-
ence 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, trans-
posed adaptations claim to capture the precursor text’s “timeless spirit,” usually
identified with authorial intention.¹² This allows filmmakers to dress their own polit-
ical 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 evi-
denced by recent biblical epics) genres do change over time, and the boundaries be-
tween 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 sim-
ilarities to Kamilla Elliott’s (,  – ) “psychic” conception of adaptation, which claims to pre-
serve the “spirit” of the literary source rather than the “letter.”
 General Introduction: The Bible and Its Cinematic Reception 7

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 expan-
sions 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. Like-
wise, Roger Young’s The Red Tent (2014) adapts to television Anita Diamant’s mid-
rashic 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 them-
selves 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 adapta-
tions also become pre-texts alongside the Bible and the novel.¹³ This applies, for ex-
ample, 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 cinemati-
cally as an object of ridicule or reverence, a tool of oppression or a symbol of liber-
ation. 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 wrong-
fully convicted Andy Dufresne and a corrupt prison warden in The Shawshank Re-
demption (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.
8 Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch

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 rich-
ness 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 arche-
types – 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 in-
terpretive 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 adapta-
tion, 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 implic-
it 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 ().
 General Introduction: The Bible and Its Cinematic Reception 9

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 con-
versation between the Bible and cinema. Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that cau-
tious identification of biblical paradigms in film has generated a number of convinc-
ing 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 incorpo-
rating 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 sto-
ries 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 be-
cause the producing culture has been broadly influenced by the pre-text (Hollander
1981, 64). The concept of authorial intentionality becomes especially complex in re-
lation 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 (,  – ).
10 Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch

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

Analogues
This raises the possibility of a final category of films that might be considered in re-
lation to the Bible. If meaning is not the sole property of a sacrosanct author/film-
maker, 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 sit-
uated 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’ it-
self might become meaningless. As with Christ-figure analyses, it would be necessary
to exclude interpretations that impose biblical categories without adequate engage-
ment with the film on its own terms. The Bible’s cinematic analogues must be con-
vincingly 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 exe-
gesis 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)com-
position 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 cat-
egory of filmic analogues.
 General Introduction: The Bible and Its Cinematic Reception 11

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 vehi-
cle 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 dis-
cipline of biblical studies. This is evidenced by many telltale signs, such as the up-
surge 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 num-
ber of undergraduate and graduate courses devoted to this topic. Most importantly, it
is evidenced by the wide variety of increasingly sophisticated methodological ap-
proaches 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 connec-
tions to the Bible. All take filmmakers and film-viewers seriously as active partici-
pants 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 he-
gemonic 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 cine-
ma into their discussions. I have also intentionally structured these volumes to in-
clude 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.
12 Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch

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 schol-
ars of Bible and film, representing twelve countries and five continents. I have ar-
ranged their contributions into two parts, each divided into three sections. Part 1 be-
gins 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. Selec-
tivity was required in compiling this list of filmmakers, and no doubt many potential-
ly 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 conver-
sation around issues of racial and ethnic discrimination, patriarchal violence, anti-
semitism, 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 collec-
tion of texts.

Works Cited
Aragay, Mireia, ed. 2005. Books in Motion: Adaptation, Intertextuality, and Authorship. Amsterdam
and New York: Rodopi.
 General Introduction: The Bible and Its Cinematic Reception 13

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.
14 Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch

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 re-
leased: 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 Cu-
rate (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 char-
acters 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, diso-
bedience, 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 procla-
mation 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 exam-
ple, 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 fe-
maleness. One early Jewish commentator, for example, explained, “Many of the physical and psychi-
cal 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 ad-
dition, 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 ).
18 Theresa Sanders

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 exam-
ple, 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 writ-
ten.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.  – ).
 1 In the Beginning: Adam and Eve in Film 19

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)
20 Theresa Sanders

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 Sec-
ond 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 per-
suading her mate to disobey as well. See “On the Apparel of Women,” in Kvam, Schearing, and Zie-
gler (, ). 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. :).
 1 In the Beginning: Adam and Eve in Film 21

For his part, Adam is utterly innocent and does not even know the difference be-
tween men and women. Gabriel has to watch him closely and gives him a stern warn-
ing: “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 sex-
ually 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 acquis-
itive.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 ser-
endipitously 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.
22 Theresa Sanders

the acquisition of things. However, in the movie, as often occurs in life, money is in-
separable 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 sex-
uality 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 laugh-
ingly 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 cop-
ulation, they look at each other with sadness. Suddenly, fascist police invade the gar-
den 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 writ-
ing, 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 Nor-
dic white,” though he does not explain why. See Figgis (, xi). In Western films, Adam and Eve are
nearly always white.
 1 In the Beginning: Adam and Eve in Film 23

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, some-
one 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 in-
side 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 el-
ements of the Genesis story into their plots. Such elements might include, for exam-
ple, 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 teen-
ager 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 con-
tinues, “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!”
24 Theresa Sanders

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 whore-
house.
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 disreputa-
ble 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 Gen-
esis 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, how-
ever, 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 dis-
aster 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 re-
venge 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 (,  – ).

 1 In the Beginning: Adam and Eve in Film 25

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 under-
stand 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 under-
stand, 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 de-
liberate 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 remar-
riage” 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 com-
panion” (Dods , ). Thomas Aquinas concurs and cites Augustine’s opinion that Adam “con-
sented 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 (, ) imag-
ines that Adam eats because he has been “fondly overcome with Female charm.” A less flattering por-
trayal can be found in the movie Young Adam (dir. David Mackenzie, ).
26 Theresa Sanders

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 con-
cerns 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.
 1 In the Beginning: Adam and Eve in Film 27

Utopian Dreams
Big Eden’s portrayal of communal support for homosexual romance is so unrealisti-
cally 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, in-
cluding 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 trans-
ported 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 al-
ways 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, in-
cluding the flowers. While it is true that Pleasantville lacks all the ills of our contem-
porary 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 knowl-
edge of sexual pleasure and of foreign concepts such as “rain.” Women stop slavish-
ly 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 ap-
pearing 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 allego-
ry” (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
28 Theresa Sanders

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 Pleasant-
ville. 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 transgres-
sion. 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 appear-
ance, thought, and opinion. This is not, implies the movie, a bad thing. When his girl-
friend 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.”
 1 In the Beginning: Adam and Eve in Film 29

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 com-
forts 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 some-
thing to be measured against an imagined ideal but is a messy, unpredictable proc-
ess 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 over-
seen 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 Pleas-
antville; perhaps now the town can be restored to its original innocence. This inter-
pretation is undercut, however, by a subsequent shot of two of Pleasantville’s resi-
dents 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 citi-
zens 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 broth-
er 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 high-
jacked by an explorer who hopes to find the planet Eden. The explorer has the un-
canny 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
30 Theresa Sanders

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 ex-
plorer 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 astro-
naut 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.
 1 In the Beginning: Adam and Eve in Film 31

Monkeyshines
Finally, no consideration of Adam and Eve in film would be complete without men-
tion of the 1960 movie Inherit the Wind (dir. Stanley Kramer, remake dir. Daniel Pet-
rie, 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 Hills-
boro 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 rela-
tion 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 mov-
ie’s counterpart to real-life defender Clarence Darrow), actor Spencer Tracy is power-
ful 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 de-
mands, “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. Horn-
beck, 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 caus-
tic 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.
32 Theresa Sanders

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 them-
selves 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 mo-
tives. By using particular actors to portray the biblical couple, movies convey some-
times subtle messages about ideal manhood and womanhood, messages that can re-
inforce 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.
 1 In the Beginning: Adam and Eve in Film 33

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).
34 Theresa Sanders

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 (Chatt-
away 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 intermin-
gling biblical stories with (sometimes incredulous) poetic license and other plot ex-
trapolations 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 forty-
day worldwide inundation. Beached upon Mount Ararat, Noah builds an altar and
gives thanks, whereupon God’s rainbow physicalizes his covenant to never again de-
stroy 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 mys-
tical 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).

36 Anton Karl Kozlovic

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” (Ka-
minsky 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 ani-
mals (tediously trained off-set to walk in two-by-two) enticed by Noah’s piped piper-
like 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 recre-
ates 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 Antonut-
ti). 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, ),
 2 Noah and the Flood: A Cinematic Deluge 37

Pastures (dir. Marc Connelly/William Keighley, 1936) features an all-black cast wear-
ing westernized clothing. “De Lawd” visiting Earth decides to destroy wicked hu-
manity 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 com-
ically 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 fin-
ger-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.
38 Anton Karl Kozlovic

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 con-
troversy with its non-canonical embellishments incorporating the ancient Jewish
books of Enoch and Jubilees, rabbinic commentaries, and midrashic retellings (Hei-
negg 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’; anes-
thetized 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 dis-
turbing water visions and taking ten years to build his ark (with multiple Watcher
assistance!). Thematically speaking, Aronofsky’s flood is brought about by environ-
mental 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 after-
thought. Overall, monster movie imagination overwhelms mainstream canonical
scripture.

Science Fiction Disaster Films: Deadly Designs

This speculative genre frequently contains tales of devastating disaster utilizing bib-
lical 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 au-

thor’s imaginative flight. We the producers present it now purely for your entertainment, remem-
bering 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 Bible-
thumper preaches: “Jehovah said. ‘I will destroy man whom I have created
 2 Noah and the Flood: A Cinematic Deluge 39

[Gen. 6:7].’ Repent, repent before me. All things must repent,” followed by a truncat-
ed 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 calli-
graphic 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 self-
ish 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, avalanch-
es, 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 star-
ring 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 Cru-
soe’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
40 Anton Karl Kozlovic

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 ark-
like military life-raft beaching upon the shore (analogously, Mount Ararat); where-
upon 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, re-
ligion, 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-by-
two…Noah’s ark” (cf. Gen. 7:9, 15), he then watches them disembarking (two-by-
two) 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 “blas-
phemy!” 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 hous-
es selected humans and dispatches sign-seeking Jet Ski “doves.” Dryland is eventu-
ally discovered—a lush, green mountaintop protruding through the expansive wa-
ters.
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, an-
imals, 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). Simultane-
ously, the self-sacrificing crew of the spaceship, “The Messiah,” achieves salvation
by destroying most of the comet, although deadly fragments hit Earth causing mas-
sive tidal waves that devastate the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty, and sur-
roundings. 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
 2 Noah and the Flood: A Cinematic Deluge 41

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 burn-
ing fossil fuels—mankind’s environmental hubris. Scientists and cost-conscious gov-
ernments 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 Sre-
brev) loading his ark-sail ship with a wooden box that imprisons a creature control-
led 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 stu-
dents discover an ancient clay jar containing “the last Dead Sea Scroll,” an “unab-
ridged 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 cur-
rent 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 commercial-
ly-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 ().
42 Anton Karl Kozlovic

seabed). Inside the re-discovered ark is a locked gopherwood box containing the still-
living 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), dramat-
ically depicts California sliding into the sea and the Himalayas flooded due to mas-
sive 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 seg-
ments 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 nat-
ural 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 del-
uge 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 bomb-
er 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’” where-
upon 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 construc-
tion contractor, Norman Waters (Tony Danza), as a Noah-figure commissioned by
 2 Noah and the Flood: A Cinematic Deluge 43

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. Os-
tracized 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 Nor-
man/Noah selflessly saves. When Zack mentions the family-only policy, Norman re-
torts: “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 Nor-
man can spend more time with his children.
The B-grade spoof, Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls (dir. Bryan Michael Stol-
ler, 2004), features Noah’s intact ark on a remote island whereupon beauty contest-
ants 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 rain-
bow 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. congress-
man 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-4-
wood”) needed for a “September 22, midday” flood. Evan reluctantly succumbs
after repeatedly confronting God, being stalked by animal pairs, and multiple “Gen-
esis 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
44 Anton Karl Kozlovic

because I love you,” and “ARK” actually means “Acts of Random Kindness,” which
dramatically contrasts with traditional theological concerns with wickedness, disap-
pointment, 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 an-
imals’ perspective and identifies missing (mythological?) species. For example, The
Tale of the Ark (dir. Arthur M. Cooper, 1909) interpolates live-action with puppet ani-
mation, 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 an-
imals 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 com-
missions 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 relo-
cated 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 An-
other” (except Harry-the-philandering-hippo). Eventually the rains end, a dove-with-
olive 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 prevent-
ing 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 de-
fended 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 be-
hind laughing. A massive wave forces the ark sealed, with a depressed Donald think-
ing that his girlfriend, Daisy, missed the boat. The rain stops, its dove-with-olive-
branch returns, and animal love blossoms onboard. When the waters recede, the
 2 Noah and the Flood: A Cinematic Deluge 45

ark beaches upon a mountain with rainbow present, and the animals disembark
(two-by-two); except the disheartened Donald who unexpectedly (and joyously) re-
connects with Daisy.
In El arca (dir. Juan Pablo Buscarini, 2007, a.k.a. Noah’s Ark), a black God unhap-
py with human wickedness warns the righteous (and bespectacled) Noah of a forth-
coming 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 for-
est, 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 sala-
cious 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) to-
wards Noah’s ark. However, Bigfoot, the unicorn, and the dragon mistrust the apoc-
alyptic 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 her-
bivores 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, indicat-
ing 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 allu-
sions or cultural echoes. For example, the Australian aboriginal story, The Last Wave
46 Anton Karl Kozlovic

(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 hu-
manity. 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 un-
doing. 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 subtextu-
ally.
The fanciful film, Northfork (dir. Michael Polish, 2003), features the 1955 Monta-
na community of Northfork being evacuated so that its valley can be flooded for hy-
droelectric 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 repo-
sition 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 re-
ligious 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 ark-
ship’s wheel.
The Noachian theme is reinforced further by the Stallings’ home decoration con-
taining two chirping caged canaries, and a menagerie of mounted wall animals dis-
played 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
 2 Noah and the Flood: A Cinematic Deluge 47

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 sud-
denly 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 de-
scribing 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 em-
ployed 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 chil-
dren in animal costumes (paired two-by-two), with the family of Noah (James Dem-
ler) aboard a stylized ark inside St. Jack’s Church. However, their scheduled 1965 pro-
duction 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 diegeti-
cally (onscreen story) and non-digetically (offscreen mood-setting).
48 Anton Karl Kozlovic

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 ac-
curacy issues in via negativa fashion, and to explore their impact on the public’s re-
ception 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 contrib-
utes 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-KIT-
Mabul2.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.
 2 Noah and the Flood: A Cinematic Deluge 49

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).
50 Anton Karl Kozlovic

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 col-
lection 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 continu-
ing 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 circumci-
sion 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 charac-
terized 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 Abra-
ham 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.
52 Peter T. Chattaway

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 Pas-
tures (dir. Marc Connelly/William Keighley, 1936), which dramatizes various Bible sto-
ries 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).
 3 It’s All in the Family: The Patriarchs of Genesis in Film 53

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 detail-
ing 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 polythe-
ism 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 dis-
obey – 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 Gen-
esis, 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 pro-
tagonists 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-
54 Peter T. Chattaway

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 Josh-
ua. 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 Pax-
ton, 2001) have played on the notion that anyone who would do what Abraham al-
most 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 ar-
gued 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 sac-
rificed 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 ob-
servers 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 inher-
itance. 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 filmmak-
ers 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 televi-
sion, see the chapter by Zanger in Part II (Pp.  – ).
 3 It’s All in the Family: The Patriarchs of Genesis in Film 55

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. Re-
putedly 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 mul-
tiple 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, Hus-
ton’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 pro-
longed sequence in which Lot not only offers his daughter to the men but tries to con-
vince 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 paral-
lels 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 re-
turns as a pirate who tries to take over the Ark.
56 Peter T. Chattaway

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 widow-
er, 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 mul-
tiple 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 syndi-
cate who said “time has come to stop being a Gomorrah.”
 3 It’s All in the Family: The Patriarchs of Genesis in Film 57

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 de-
ceive even the people you love to get it?”
These films sometimes play up the religious element beyond what the text de-
mands. 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 rearrang-
es 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 an-
imals. 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 chap-
ter on Cheick Oumar Sissoko in Part II (Pp. -).
58 Peter T. Chattaway

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 por-
trayed as a genuine romance, rather than a rape, which makes the mass murder com-
mitted 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,
 3 It’s All in the Family: The Patriarchs of Genesis in Film 59

just as Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a bit of soup. The film also briefly re-en-
acts 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-Heil-
bronn, 1904) and Film d’Art (dir. Georges Berr/Paul Gavault, 1909). These were fol-
lowed by Giuseppe ebreo (prod. Cines, 1911), Joseph, fils de Jacob (dir. Henri Andréa-
ni, 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 Giu-
seppe 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 ani-
mated feature film made in Israel.
Three decades later, controversy erupted around an Egyptian film that was loose-
ly 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 inter-
pret 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 out-
standing 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 Si-
meon 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 , ).
60 Peter T. Chattaway

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 murder-
ous 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 Ben-
jamin, 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 pris-
on 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 Jo-
seph to prison, he actively connects Joseph with the baker and cupbearer who are
 3 It’s All in the Family: The Patriarchs of Genesis in Film 61

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 Poti-
phar’s wife by suggesting that her husband either cannot or does not fulfill her sex-
ually. (In Chahine’s film, Potiphar is a eunuch; in Rapper’s film, Potiphar’s wife la-
ments 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 Jo-
seph’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 fam-
ily 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 broth-
ers 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 Jo-
seph, 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 broth-
ers 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 Proph-
et, 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.
62 Peter T. Chattaway

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 Italian-
American 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 adapt-
ed for the screen twice more as Broken Lance (dir. Edward Dmytryk, 1954) – a West-
ern 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 some-
times 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 tradi-
tional interpretations. Sometimes this takes the form of outright satire, and some-
times it takes the form of humanizing the characters by allowing for – and even em-
phasizing – their flaws. At times filmmakers have even offered sympathetic
portrayals of characters who were previously denounced as predators, from Poti-
phar’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 con-
templating 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.
 3 It’s All in the Family: The Patriarchs of Genesis in Film 63

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).
64 Peter T. Chattaway

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 tradi-
tion, 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 Command-
ments (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, nei-
ther 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 cre-
ate 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 filmmak-
ers, 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
66 Jennifer L. Koosed

as adults. And it is not uncommon for other aspects of identity highlighted in narra-
tives of Moses’ life, like class status and religious affiliation, to change from child-
hood to adulthood. Moses’ particular situation may be highly unusual but his expe-
riences 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 ac-
curate portrayal of biblical story. In the American context especially, these events be-
come the vehicles of affirming the values of liberty and freedom. After all, the con-
nection 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 ide-
als 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 interconnec-
tions between Moses’ story and the American story are made the most explicit in De-
Mille’s 1956 film. In fact, in some of the promotional materials for The Ten Command-
ments, 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 lib-
eration.
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 compli-
cated 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 circu-
lated through several international film festivals and had a major theatrical run in
Paris. Rather than any moral absolutes, each film explores ambiguous situations
 4 The Cinematic Moses 67

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 tra-
ditions 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
68 Jennifer L. Koosed

crossing of the Red Sea and the giving of the commandments, were particularly stun-
ning 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
 4 The Cinematic Moses 69

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 Phar-
aoh 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 quo-
tation 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 Exo-
dus, 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 cele-
bration 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 ac-
curacy 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 light-
ning, 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 re-
corded, 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 com-
mandments 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
70 Jennifer L. Koosed

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—Mir-
iam 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 com-
mandments. 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 ex-
posed; 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 ex-
posed 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 command-
ments, some 3000 years later. DeMille chose his subject matter after asking the pub-
lic 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.
 4 The Cinematic Moses 71

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 extrav-
aganza that met critical and popular acclaim¹ and is the paradigmatic cinematic por-
trayal 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 the-
ater 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 be-
tween his address of the audience and the beginning of the film. The credits are pep-
pered with the titles of written sources, novels by laity and clergy, lists of scholar-
and 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 .
72 Jennifer L. Koosed

The movie finally moves to the situation at hand: the enslavement of the He-
brews 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 be-
cause “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 la-
dies-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 hid-
den 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 al-
ready 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 Cas-
sidy. 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 (Or-
rison 1999, 56 – 57). Henry Wilcoxon, the associate producer of the film, first suggest-
ed 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 (Or-
rison 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 thou-
sands of people out of Egypt or argue with God face-to-face on Mount Sinai?” (Orri-
 4 The Cinematic Moses 73

son 1999, 66). DeMille’s Moses embodies America’s twentieth-century masculine ide-
als. He is young, handsome, strong, powerful, sexy, wise, and courageous.²
Moses was raised as a prince, alongside Rameses, and their rivalry forms a sig-
nificant 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 Ne-
fretiri). Immediately, he leaves the temptations of the Egyptian court behind, volun-
tarily 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 discov-
ered 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 remain-
der of the Torah, from the plagues in Exodus to Moses’ death at the end of Deuteron-
omy. 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 let-
ters 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 un-
leashes 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 con-
struction of masculinity in The Ten Commandments and other biblical epic films, see Lindsay’s chap-
ter in Part II (Pp.  – ).
74 Jennifer L. Koosed

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 con-
text (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 total-
itarian regimes everywhere (Pardes 1996, 19). After Moses speaks these inspiring
words, he turns and strides strongly to a solitary death, his stance echoing the sil-
houette 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 de-
clares 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 Israel-
ites as God does in the Bible. And through it all, Moses cuts a striking figure, a sin-
gular 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 pres-
ent 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 sour-
ces: Philo, Josephus, Midrash, Louis Ginzberg’s The Legends of the Jews, the New Tes-
tament, novels such as Prince of Egypt (1949) by Dorothy Clarke Wilson, archeolog-
ical 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 con-
structs 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.
 4 The Cinematic Moses 75

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 Fes-
tival 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 exam-
ple, 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 com-
mandments should be divided and counted. In many ways, The Decalogue draws at-
tention to the ways in which these commandments are anything but simple, straight-
forward, and universal.
The films (all directed by Kieślowski) are set in the same Polish apartment build-
ing 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 engen-
ders 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 imagina-
tion. But in the biblical text, Moses rarely speaks and acts on his own; rather he func-
tions 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.  – ).
76 Jennifer L. Koosed

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 Cath-
olic ordering), but none of the films are a straightforward rendition of the command-
ment. 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 an-
swer all of his questions. When he sees a dead dog, his father explains death scien-
tifically. 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 recommenda-
tion 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 seem-
ingly 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 chil-
dren. 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 sim-
ple 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 circum-
stance 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 Phar-
aoh, 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,