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A sprawling. Action-packed epic that sweeps off the pages of the Bible and across the screen recreating one of the most torrid tales of passion ever told, Gregory Peck delivers a commanding performance as David, King of the Israelites, who falls in love with Bathsheba (Susan Hayward), a beautiful woman- and wife of one of his captains. It's a story of sin and redemption, a searing saga of love as burning as the sands of the harsh landscape on which it was consummated. A love that violated the laws of man- and God. David, once the Chosen One, now risks God's wrath, his kingdom, and the life of Bathsheba, who may be stoned to death for his sin!
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4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Above average 50s Biblical epic, April 30 2011
By Trevor Willsmer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: David and Bathsheba (DVD)
There's no shortage of bad dialog in David and Bathsheba - "I was quite a hand with a slingshot," "The King of all Israel out there in the darkness exposing himself to the enemy" (full marks to Dennis Hooey for delivering that one with a straight face), "Go and sit with the concubines." And somehow I doubt a bored David ever told the prophet Nathan "Whatever you say." He even tries the old "My kingdom doesn't understand me" routine on desperate housewife Bathsheba at one point. So it's probably a tribute to Henry King's direction that the film isn't at all bad despite the pitfalls much of the first third provide.Maybe it's to play down the censor-baiting nature of the plot - a married man kills a femme fatale's husband and gets away with it! - but King brings out the growing moral and theological complexities in Phillip Dunne's script rather than upping the sin and sandals hokum. This is the conflicted David on the downhill slope, abandoned by a vengeful God he no longer understands, and the film doesn't back away from the awkward unanswerable questions about why a loving deity would choose to wreak vengeance on the innocent rather than the guilty. It even offers a genuinely surprising criticism of the sexual inequality of the law, where the failings of husbands result in the punishment of their wives.
Unlike King David, which sidelined the king in favor of the admittedly more interesting Saul, David is firmly at the center of the drama and despite an interesting display of shoulder twitching and a frankly gormless overlong close-up when visiting the site of Saul and Jonathan's death, Gregory Peck's performance grows in stature as David shrinks. Susan Hayward is pure Hollywood pro, Raymond Massey is an appropriately theatrical prophet (why be naturalistic when you've got a voice that makes the very heavens quake?) and Kieron Moore's Uriah such an intransigent unreconstructed chauvinist that you can't exactly blame David for putting him in harm's way, but despite threatening to soft peddle the film doesn't allow David a moral get out of jail free card over his death. With surprisingly strong but subdued design and Technicolor photography this is definitely a cut above most 40s-50s Biblical epics.
Fox's Region 1 NTSC DVD is a good transfer, including an incredibly hokey `candid' behind-the-scenes short and a trailer with brief shots deleted from the film's sole battle scene.
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