A love story with Biblical history. Victor Mature is awesome in the movie. Good for teaching children about the Bible but adults will enjoy it also. I wish more movies were made like this today.
November 26, 2008Really good. The color was beautiful. I first saw this movie when I was about 10 yrs old in 1949, I enjoyed it now as much as I did then.
September 5, 2008I enjoyed this film. I won't say it's one of the 10 best ever made but the acting is quite good, and the storyline of course is well-known by most people. Llamar looks terrific and Mature makes a great Samson. It's definitely the best version of this tale on film, so if you're a fan of this story, or of Hedy Llamar, this is a good buy.
July 7, 2008 |  | Asian import means poor video quality |  |
One big problem - it's an Asian import, and that means it has the poorest of video quality. If you want to watch a good movie with absolutely awful video quality, then this is your choice. What a shame. Cecil must be spinning in his grave.
March 8, 2008 | | Essential Hedy and Vic, somewhat generic DeMille | |
DeMille was clever at combining sex with religion (see his 1927 "King of Kings" and the way he embellishes the story of Mary Magdalen). In this movie he combines gorgeous Hedy Lamarr with hunk Victor Mature -- two ingenious strokes of casting -- along with enough corn to feed everyone in Canaan. Too many Philistine officials have British accents and the entire cast looks overwhelmingly Western European. The costuming and military gear are a hodgepodge from various cultures, but seem to be generally accurate. That said, the scenes where Mature slaughters a slew of his enemies with a donkey's jawbone and then later brings down the Philistine temple, not to mention the sight of Hedy herself, are themselves worth the price of admission. An earlier action scene in which Mature strangles a lion ("He's only a young lion", Samson says dismissively in the script) just doesn't seem to pack the wallop it should, likely because in many of the quick cuts it's easy to tell that Mature had been replaced by a stunt man. One main selling point of many DeMille movies is spectacle; oddly, the only big spectacle is Samson's destruction of the temple, but it's still a mighty impressive piece of work given the technology of 1949 film making. The movie's plot line diverges wholesale from legend and Biblical scripture. In the movie Samson's bride dies by the spear, but official legend says she was burned -- probably a little too raw for 1949 crowds. In the movie Delilah does the haircutting, contrary to legend, and in the following scenes Mature's shortened hair is a bit too cleverly coiffed for having been cut with a hunting knife. Later, it looks more convincing. Many of the interior scenes look so stagey you have little difficulty guessing how many of the production crew were lurking in the wings and behind the walls. Aside from all this, the movie's major fault for me is that it's about half an hour too long. But for all the movie's flaws, the basic morality tale survives with all its ageless appeal. Mature's performance is unique, unlikely to be equalled by any possible remake. He's especially effective in the latter part of the film. Hedy's performance demonstrates that she had not only beauty but talent, especially in the later scenes. In fact, the film's romantic and psychological interest becomes much more involving after Samson's haircut. The scene in which Hedy first realizes the full effect of Samson's blindness is among her best work, and in many of her scenes that follow you'd almost think she was Garbo. From that point on, the movie and characters are raised almost to a 5-star level. S&D certainly has its moments: I saw its initial release at the age of five and for years recalled many scenes in detail. As for casting young Russ Tamblyn as Saul, well, it helps not to take this film too literally. Afterthought: one reviewer here was disappointed that the DVD isn't in wide-screen format. Sorry, youngster, but wide-screen movies didn't arrive until a few years later.
January 25, 2008More reviews at Amazon.com ...
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