User reviews

Just a year after his triumph in "Becket", Peter O'Toole is almost unrecognizable but does high class work as the Angel of the Lord--he's **trium in uno**--opposite Abraham and Sarah as portrayed by Ava Gardner and George C. Scott. These two great but very different actors play wonderfully off one another--Scott's earthy energy against the elegant tones and sorrowful eyes of O'Toole--who is on his way to destroy the sin cities of Sodom and Gommorah with all their inhabitants.

The other fine portrayal is of Nimrod, "a mighty hunter before the Lord", by the late actor Steven Boyd. In a single, four minutes scene he captures all the kingly hubris of this biblical figure-- the first in the book of Genesis who does not represent a nation. He who built the Tower of Babel, and saw it destroyed.

Children would be entertained by the carnival of the animals sequence depicting Noah and the Ark.

Spectacular as well as extravagant production of the first part of the book of Genesis and dealing with five of the early stories in the Old Testament .The title is a bit of a misnomer as the film only covers the first 22 chapters of the first book of Genesis . It covers various Biblical episodes and and open with the Creation of the World and arrive at the Garden of Eden with Adam (Michael Parks) and Eve, Cain and Abel (Richard Harris and Franco Nero play brothers-turned-enemies) Noah (John Huston , though Charles Chaplin and Alec Guinness was also offered the role ) and the Flood and the story of Nimrod (Stephen Boyd) , King of Babel and the emergence of man's vanity . Furthermore , Lot (Gabriele Ferzetti) , Lot's Wife (Eleonora Rossi Drago), Sodomah and Gomorra destruction , and three such Heavenly Messengers (Peter O'Toole) appeared in the course of events along with Abraham (George C Scott) , Sarah (Ava Gardner) , his slave Hagar and sons Isaac and Ismael.

This overblown all-star cast Biblical treatment contains emotion , religious feeling , human touch and grandeur events . The best episode results to be Noah tale in which John Huston gives an intelligent as well as sympathetic acting ; when God talks to Noah, that's actually the voice of John Huston speaking to the actor John Huston . Filming of The Tower of Babel sequence was disrupted when Egyptian extras staged a rock-throwing riot . One of the first mainstream American films to feature male and female nudity -albeit artfully filmed in a light-and-shadow style- in the Garden of Eden sequences . Reportedly , neither Michael Parks nor Ulla Bergryd used body doubles for these scenes . Lavishly produced by Dino De Laurentiis , he originally announced that this would be the first in a series of feature films based on the books of the bible ; however it didn't take place . Rousing and extraordinary musical score by Toshirô Mayuzumi and uncredited Ennio Morricone ; though Huston wanted Igor Stravinsky to score the film . As with many epics of the 1950s and 1960s Paul Francis Webster was called in to supply promotional lyrics to the main theme. The song was entitled "Song of the Bible" and Webster devised the following lyrics to fit Mayuzumi's opening theme music . Colorful as well as evocative cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno , Fellini's ordinary ; this was the first film shot in the Dimension 150 process. This process was credited as simply "D-150" .

This luxuriously mounted production was well directed by John Huston who gives the feel of a Cecil B De Mille spectacle . However , French director Robert Bresson was firstly hired in 1964 and wen he shot the deluge, he requested the use of all the animals in Rome city zoo , but the only thing Bresson filmed was the tracks of the animals upon a sandy beach , then Bresson was fired, John Huston took over the project, delaying production a further six month. Rating : 6,5/10 . Well worth watching . Better than average . The movie will appeal to religious and epic films buffs .-

I've always noticed an interesting trend among critics when they review a Biblical movie. Since most critics are of a skeptical nature, they usually carry with them the bias that unless the movie deviates from a traditional telling of what the Bible says it is somehow dull cinema. That somehow there can't be anything compelling in seeing the stories of the Bible dramatized in a straightforward manner with no inane attempts to "humanize" the tales through the lens of a modern, secular society.

Well, I make no apologies for being one of the devout and saying that I prefer my Bible stories straight, without any modernistic elements that are meant to make hidden slams at why the stories are important to begin with. For me, "The Bible" is one of the best Biblical epics precisely because it takes its subject material seriously and only alters a few details (Nimrod for instance is not identified as the king at the time of the Tower of Babel) to get a coherent cinematic presentation in place. Christopher Fry, whose uncredited rewrite of "Ben Hur's" screenplay helped make that film a literate masterpiece of cinema brings the same touch here. And Huston does a fine job of directing.

Those who bash this film, much like those who are given to bashing movies like "The Greatest Story Ever Told" while praising garbage like "The Last Temptation Of Christ" are often saying more about themselves than they are about the film they've just reviewed. What they regard as "boring" I regard as a noble effort to give a visual understanding to the events of the Bible. And "The Bible" despite only covering the first half of the book of Genesis succeeds brilliantly at it.

In her memoirs ,Ava Gardner wrote that she hated some of her lines,notably when she had to tell her servant she would give children to her husband ."I just cannot say that,it's not my style" But the director answered:"my dear,you will".

"The Bible" is par excellence the movie Huston's fans love to hate ;other examples are "the roots of Heaven" or "the barbarian and the geisha " .Hindsight displays its charms:first,it is an accurate rendition of the Genesis (the title reads "in the beginning" and it is exactly what it is).There's more voice over than dialog but if you have read the Bible (and I'm sure you have)you know that the characters have only a few lines to say .

Chapters include the Creation and the wonders of nature ;Adam and Eve;Abel and Cain (should Abel have gone veggie,crime would never happen );Noah 's ark where the animals went in two by two just to get out of the rain and the huge hippopotamus -featured in the movie- did not get stuck in the door ,thanks to the patriarch's watchful eye (played by the director himself);Nemrod (a hardly recognizable Stephen Boyd)and the tower of Babel;Abraham whose segment is the most important in the whole movie (about one hour is given over to his alliance with God,Sara and Agar -the scene of the pieces of dried fruit is worth the price of admission-,Isaac,Jehovah asking the patriarch to kill Him a son );and Loth's adventures in Sodom where the Angel warns him :do not

look back when you escape from the doomed city .Poor wife! The cinematography is splendid ,particularly in the first sequences .But the most satisfying sequences are to be found towards the end: Abraham's sacrifice takes place in the desert among ruins and here Huston seems to transcend his subject whereas in the other segments ,he only makes a picture book.

Compared to Sergio Leone's "Sodom and Gomorrah",is it so bad?

I was impressed by the various settings of the book, and the depicting of various accounts in the Bible, all the way from beginning to end. And as a minister I'm sensitive to this. Seldom if ever have I seen, in particular, the accounts of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, and then the slaying of Abel by Cain. (As Cain, Richard Harris was his hostile, feisty self, perfect for the role of the vindictive brother.) Also, I have never seen any depicting of the flood of Noah, nor of the fall of the tower of Babel. I have seen the depicting of Sodom and Gommorah, but this was unusually well-done here. All the scenes appeared to be authentic.

And I liked the cast. Michael Parks was adept at playing Adam, and his female counterpart was excellent as Eve. I was impressed with, again, the flood of Noah, though in places it maybe was a bit more comical than it was intended to be. John Huston performed well his part of Noah, and he had a good voice, that of God and his narration voice was excellent. Stephen Boyd was as mean as ever as Nimrod. George C. Scott conveyed well an aging Abraham, Peter O'Toole acted well his triple role (that of the three angels who visited Sarah,) and Ava Gardner was her beautiful self as she betrayed to the screen that Sarah was still a beautiful lady even in her older years. But I do have one objection to the production. While I liked the scenes and, again, the manifestation of the various Biblical stories, I frankly thought the acting left something to be desired. I'm not trying to rescind, but while I still think the actors came across well in their individual roles, they seemed to just say their lines and, thus, in places did not put much feeling into what they said.

But overall, it was an outstanding work for Dino DeLaurentiis and John Huston, and is highly recommendable.

John Huston directed it and played Noah, yep. John Huston you know, the director of The Treasure Of Sierra Madre and The Maltese Falcon and his atheism shouldn't be an excuse for the embarrassment of The Bible...In the Beginning. Pier Paolo Pasolini was a Marxist, atheist, homosexual who made one of the greatest religious films of all time with The Gospel According To St Matthew. No, here, I suspect, the mastermind behind this super production is Dino De Laurentiis, the producer, the first name in the opening titles. Huge. Famous for very expensive movies with dubious results and intentions. Fortunately this - Highlights from Genesis and beyond - have a narration trying to explain the inexplicable. De Laurentiis believed in a cast of big names - like Harvey Weinstein - yes that's the laziest way to put together a production. Michael Parks is a beautiful 1960's Adam and so is Ulla Bergryd, his Eve. Richard Harris is Cain and Franco Nero Abel, George C Scott is Abraham, Ava Gardner, Sarah. and the film is now nearly forgotten. Pasolini used an unknown in the lead of his Gospel According to St Matthew, Enrique Irazoqui as Jesus and it became a classic. Commercial operations are one thing, great movies quite another.

Whatever religious beliefs John Huston did or did not have, he treated the Scriptures with a great deal of respect. I don't see why an atheist would do a movie like this in the first place. I would think he wouldn't have wanted to touch it. But the beauty and poetry of this film is simply awesome. I would have given it ten stars, but he did take some artistic license with Scripture and he did kind of ham it up in the Noah's Ark sequence. Also, he left out the part where Noah got drunk after the flood and cursed one of his sons because they made fun of his nakedness. Otherwise, this is a beautiful film. It reminded me a little bit of HOW THE WEST WAS WON, in that he chronicled a few generations in this story, and many of the actors had little more than cameo appearances. The Creation scenes were absolutely gorgeous. I read somewhere that he didn't want to use animation drawings for the Creation, because he felt that the world was in a constant state of creation, and he had a crew film some of the wonders of the world at work. The results are stunning. The world really looks fresh and new in this film. You can tell he put a lot of care in making this film.

As a musician, I have to comment on the music in this film. It is as beautiful as the film. Too bad the soundtrack is out of print now. I had the album when I was younger and I played it nearly every chance I got. I never knew until I saw on this site that Ennio Morricone had a hand in writing some of this score (don't know which parts) but was uncredited. Instead, a Japanese composer named Toshiro Mayuzumi did most of this score, a composer I haven't heard of since.

Until PASSION OF THE Christ, this was the last of the big Bible epics and is an underrated masterpiece worth seeing. (THE LAST TEMPTATION OF Christ doesn't count because it took the Scriptures and butchered them.) 9 out of 10.

More of an anthology film than one feature length narrative, The Bible: In the Beginning... is one of those occasional outlets from John Huston where he really does try to stretch himself cinematically. Derided at the time for a certain esoteric air about it, the telling of the major events of the first twenty-two chapters of Genesis is something of a mix between an art film, a religious film, and John Huston film, soaring high for stretches before kind of bumbling through its largest segment without any real sense of structure to end it all.

The major stories from the opening book of the Bible told in the film are the creation, the expulsion from Paradise, the murder of Abel, Noah, the Tower of Babel, and then as much of Abraham as possible. My favorite of the major short films is Cain (Richard Harris) murdering Abel (Franco Nero), which also happens to be the second shortest of them at about ten minutes. My least favorite is Abraham (George C. Scott), and it really amounts to the fact that so much gets told and without any real eye towards narrative structure. We end up lurching back and forth from one major storyline to the next without any real contextualizing adhesive to make them relate to each other on any deeper level than they're all happening around the same guy.

And I think that points to the one main issue with the film, a film that I overall appreciate. The film is at war with itself as to whether it is a cinematic adaptation of the source material, as evidenced most strongly in the early creation montage, or a more literal translation of the Bible's events like the telling of Abraham's story. I think it only fully commits to the cinematic side of things in that Cain and Abel story, most of it hinging on Harris' tortured performance as Cain, screaming to the skies as John Huston as the Voice of God asks where his brother has gone.

The story that strikes the best balance between the two is the story of Noah. Keeping dialogue largely to a minimum, it shows Noah (Huston again) as the patriarch of his family organizing the construction of the ark, the procession of animals, the torrential rainstorm (water miniatures are hard to do, and this film does them quite well), and the waiting for hitting land. It's a documentation of the events with enough cinematic flare to keep it from feeling stodgy.

I do wish that he had kept the voiceover out of the opening thirty minutes or so, showing creation (if you gave a student editor 10 hours of stock footage and told him to make creation, this is about what he would have come up with) and Adam (Michael Parks) and Eve (Ulla Bergryd) eating from the Tree of Knowledge. The voiceover makes it feel like translation where, I kept imagining it without the voiceover, it could have been something more purely cinematic without it. I kept thinking that no one was ever going to come to this movie as a substitute for the Holy Book, so why no trust the audience to know it well enough to be able to follow along without Huston's sonorous voice making it more obvious. I was reminded more than once of Terrence Malick's creation of the cosmos sequence in The Tree of Life. Visually, Eden reminded me heavily of John Boorman's Excalibur as well, though I assume that they just had the same predecessor influences rather than this being inspiration for the King Arthur film.

The Tower of Babel is a short sequence, but it was obviously very expensive with huge crowd shots and one very large set (Noah's Ark was also a very large set, so is the later Sodom set...this was obviously filmed in Italy). It's interesting to watch.

And then there's Abraham. Now, I don't think that any one part of the Abraham story is all that bad, it's just everything without any sense of structure. There's his relationship with Sarah (Ava Gardner), her inability to have children, her Egyptian slave Hagar (Zoe Sallis) that bears Abraham's first child Ishmael, Abraham going to war to free his nephew Lot (Gabriele Ferzetti), Lot's taking up residence in Sodom, the visitation of God through three angels (Peter O'Toole), Abraham's begging for the saving of Sodom should there be found ten righteous men, the destruction of Sodom, Lot's wife turning to salt, Sarah finally being able to bear a child, the birth of Isaac and the beginning of circumcision to mark the beginning of the Covenant, and then the sacrifice of Isaac.

I get why Huston, Christopher Fry (the screenwriter), and Dino Di Laurentiis decided to include it all, but it's enough for its own feature length film, keeping it at the back of this film doesn't help things, and then having it be this structureless mess (presumably) because that's how it appears in the Bible was a mistake. The fairly high highs of the first half are undone by the dragging second, and that's really its only problem: its structure poorly so it drags. Scott is good as Abraham. Gardner is good as Sarah. O'Toole is a nice addition to the cast.

Overall, I'm not sure I'd recommend the whole thing as a viewing experience. There isn't a whole lot narratively connecting one bit from the next (though one of the bridging sequences, a bit showing Noah's descendants in silhouette, looks really good), so all you have is that they all come from the same book. It's not really how you gain and sustain interest in filmed entertainment, and I wish more had been done to address that. I would probably recommend the individual pieces, though, especially the Cain and Abel and Noah segments. Maybe watch Malick's Creation of the Cosmos and then start this with the creation of Adam (a very interesting series of dissolves that I really liked).

So, on the one hand, this is Huston pushing himself while well-utilizing a huge budget from Italian sources for 20th Century Fox. On the other, he's too loyal to the source, dragging it down as a film. I did like the film and enjoyed the experience on the whole, but I still feel like it could have been more.

John Huston takes us to Sunday school in this overlong biblical epic that covers the first 22 chapters of Genesis. Huston directs and narrates as the voice of Sominex...I mean, God. Opening creation/Adam & Eve segment is boring and not the best way to start the movie. The next part is Cain and Abel's story, which is okay but short. Richard Harris' overacting as Cain would have been interesting to see for a little longer. Then we have the story of Noah, played by John Huston. This is the most light-hearted part of the movie and also the best. The Tower of Babel part that follows is interesting but too brief. The final, and longest, story is that of Abraham. This includes Sodom & Gomorrah and Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac. This segment is worth watching solely for the hilarious love scene between George C. Scott and Ava Gardner.

Huston seems more in love with the language of the Bible than the content. His presentation is lacking in artistry, save for snippets such as the scene where God first speaks to Abraham. It's overlong and dull to the point of putting you to sleep. They really should have cut a lot out. Read the book instead.

This film was released in September of 1966, which placed it at the close of a long tradition of Hollywood Biblical epics. I was around ten years old and had a vinyl LP of its great musical score which I played over and over before I finally saw the movie on the big screen of a theater. Our family was not particularly religious, but this film was one of those that had a profound influence on me and made me interested in knowing more about the Bible.

Looking at it today, I see more depth. The opening footage from all over the world of the days of the Creation is still breathtaking. As a child I felt uncomfortable with the partially nude scenes of Adam and Eve, and even now I believe nudity needs to be implied. Otherwise my mind stops focusing on the story and thinks "I just saw a naked actor!". Also, a theory of some Bible commentators is that animals are clothed with feathers or fur, and Adam and Eve were clothed with a glow of light emanating from within them. When they sinned that glow disappeared and they were then totally naked before they hit on the idea of fig leaves. (This interpretation would not likely have been known to John Huston). Beyond that, the film rolls on quite nicely through the first twenty-two chapters of Genesis. The cinematography is rich and beautiful. I do think a few too many scenes were interpreted as desert settings, since many of the Bible lands were lush and only outskirted by desert as a result of the climatology of the region being somewhat different more than 4,000 years ago (though of course that's controversial). Either way the storyline still follows the episodes of salvation history. One reviewer said it looks like they just kept shooting until they ran out of film and decided to call it quits. To me it was essential they kept going until they climaxed the film with the sacrifice of Isaac, which pointed forward to the day when God would inaugurate a new creation. Thus there is a great arc of theme in the epic from "In the Beginning" to "The New Beginning".

Overall the movie looks like a live-action version of Sunday School art. By that I mean most of the scenes are like pictures I've seen in religious artworks. For example, Adam and Eve are portrayed by clean-shaven white people. Cain bashes Abel over the head instead of slitting his throat (like the sacrifices he'd watched - see I John 3:12 in the original Jerusalem Bible [1966], not the New Jerusalem Bible [1985]). This Tower of Babel somewhat rightly resembles a Sumerian ziggurat, yet more resembles Renaissance paintings of it. Modern researchers have discovered that Noah could have been a king, and the ark was actually a huge flat barge shaped like a giant shoebox to ride the tidal waves of the Flood. The movie pictures things like I've seen them all my life: a peasant Noah, and a rounded boat with a house on top (and that shape would capsize in no time). The only thing they didn't have was a giraffe sticking out of the window.

Nevertheless, you may enjoy these traditional depictions. I'm just preferring literal Biblical research combined with the look of what has been discovered in archaeology. Yet, for me the overall effect of this film is still profound and quite moving. It's been said that George C. Scott's portrayal of Abraham was the low point of the movie, but I thought his crusty performance was inspiring! (I was also thankful they didn't picture Abraham like Santa Claus). For the most part, watching this film was an enjoyable and uplifting experience. Any Biblical movie should give us a taste of what things were like, and then we should always go back and read the Book. There we will find the authentic atmosphere of the actual words. Still, one line the scriptwriters put in the mouth of Abraham is not found in the Bible, yet it does reflect what the Bible says of him. It has helped me with my faith. It is the line where Abraham asks, "Shall the Lord speak, and Abraham not believe?"

From the Creation to the story of Abraham, The Bible...In the Beginning, covers the first half of the Book of Genesis, with an all star ensemble.

Maybe it's because I consider myself one of the devout, but I think this last of the great Biblical epics that began in 1949 with "Samson And Delilah" works very well. Christopher Fry, who was responsible for making "Ben Hur's" script literate and compelling manages to do the same here, and Huston does a fine job of directing as well as providing a noble touch as narrator/voice of God and Noah.

About the only ineffective touch comes at the end, where it is all too clear that the fire is causing George C. Scott's age makeup to run.

This is not John Huston's worst movie, not in a million light-years, but it is not his best either. This is a decent if flawed epic, John Huston does do a very good job directing and you can tell a lot of effort went into making this.

The acting was good enough, my favourite was Stephen Boyd, while his screen time is not large, he commands every second of it. Peter O'Toole, George C.Scott and John Huston also do sterling work, on the other hand there are some like Franco Nero for instance who comes across as a little bland.

The film is overlong and is ponderous in pace. Plus there are moments of disjointed writing.

That said, the film does look absolutely stunning and still holds up. The cinematography is very beautiful, and the scenery and costumes are splendid. The score is also excellent.

Overall, it is flawed but I think it is worth the look. 6/10 Bethany Cox

As much as I wanted to try and rate this film independently of my own beliefs (as an atheist), I found it impossible to separate said beliefs from my appraisal of the film. The film succeeds to some extent purely from the standpoint of a dramatic retelling of the stories in the book of Genesis. The stories are retold faithfully, albeit with an air of solemnity and drama that even exceeds that found in the Bible. However, as someone who doesn't believe in the historical accuracy of the episodes depicted here, the film didn't do anything for me other than turn me off even more from religion. For not only are these stories made up, I find them profoundly immoral. Those who believe in the Bible and think that there is some profound moral lesson in the stories of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, of Lot's wife turning into salt, or of Adam and Eve being cast out of paradise for their "disobedience," well, they will probably love the film. As someone who finds the lessons expressed in those stories repugnant, this film contributes nothing to human progress. Perhaps the most reprehensible scene in the history of film is the depiction of the half-naked homosexuals of Sodom and Gomorrah, whom the loving God of the Old Testament annihilates in a fireball that looks suspiciously like a nuclear bomb. Thank God (pun intended) we've come far enough since this film was made that such depictions of gays are rightfully deemed not only politically incorrect but downright despicable.

I won't waste anyone's time with a lot of dribble. I first saw the film for the first time on television(CBS) to be exact. I enjoyed the movie very much - I just recently bought a copy on DVD; obviously, it's not something I'll play over and over again. But whenever I am the mood I would definitely watch this film, I enjoyed John Huston's work on the film. This is merely an introduction of the bible to people who never read it. Bible(movie) covers from Creation to Sacrifice of Isaac. To me I never found any of the scenes in the movie boring.

It is true that this is a long and often boring film, something inevitable, considering De Laurentiis' initial project… But the diverse elements that integrate it are good: Mario Chiari's production design, Toshirô Mayuzumi's score, Maria De Mattei's costumes, Ernst Haas' direction and cinematography for the prologue ("The Creation") and Giuseppe Rotunno's images for the rest; plus so many splendid faces of the Italian cinema including Eleonora Rossi Drago as Lot's wife; Giovanna Galletti, from "Rome: Open City", as a citizen of Sodom, and Puppella Maggio as Noah's wife; the big first opportunities for Michael Parks and Franco Nero (as Adam and Abel), and Huston's own fine performance as Noah. According to some sources, Orson Welles contributed to the script.

a beautiful music score, and some interesting segments but this film suffers from sluggishness and some serious miscasting. Even with it's all-star cast it tends to drag, from a script that hasn't achieved the best pacing. The Noah segment is by far the best, with Huston himself playing both Noah and the voice of God. Peter O' Toole is very otherworldly as the angels, but George C. Scott (an actor I admire very much) is really out of his element as Abraham. And the script has been cursed with one of the great failings of the Bible itself. Translated into English of early seventeenth century England, the language used by the people in the bible has remained in that stilted form. As our language has evolved and changed over the centuries the Bible hasn't and it becomes truly tedious in a motion picture of this length. Even Hollywood realized this with most of the great religious epics they dropped the "thees" and "thous" and "thys" and "thines" which are no longer in general practice since the days of the puritans. Still it is a fair and reverent look at the book of Genesis.

I remember reading the Leonard Maltin review and how he said that this was definitely a time where you should read the book over the movie. I personally found this movie to be just okay. Despite the name "The Bible" it doesn't describe that much of the Bible. It's only the book of Genesis. In fact, why not just name this movie Genesis? You could make sequels that cover all the other books in the Bible.

That being said, there isn't anything too bad about this film. It's mostly well acted, but it has a major flaw. It doesn't really have anything unique about it at all. When you take a story as famous as the Bible that's been adapted so many times, you need to have something extra. I guess it was faithful, but it came off as bland. It's still got some good acting, it's just nothing to remember. **1/2

Even great directors have their off days. Hitchcock hit a low point with Under Capricorn; Spielberg's 1941 was a mess; Peckinpah didn't get much acknowledgement for his final movie The Osterman Weekend. Like these other great film-makers, even John Huston occasionally gave us a stinker. His worst film was The Bible (yes, worse than the terrible "Phobia"). It was also his most commercially successful film. Go figure.

Originally planned as a phenomenally expensive adaptation of the entire Bible, producer Dino De Laurentiis eventually down-scaled his vision to allow for this version of the first 22 chapters in the Book of Genesis. We are taken through the Creation; Adam and Eve; Cain and Abel; Noah's Ark; the Tower of Babel; and Abraham's test. Big stars pop in for brief appearances, including Richard Harris (Cain), George C. Scott (Abraham), Ava Gardner (Sarah) and Huston himself (Noah).

At 174 minutes, the film is awfully long. Its over-bearing message is hard to tolerate, and quite often the pacing is so slow that the film grinds to a boring standstill. Films like Barabbas - made four years earlier - proved that lengthy biblical epics could be lively and literate, but this one one is anything but. The episodes come and go without giving the audience much to get excited about. The one segment which rises above badness is the Noah's Ark sequence, which has a pictorial splendor and quirky humour lacking from the rest of the film. This segment alone, however, is not enough to save the whole picture. Ultimately, The Bible is a pretty huge failure on a film-making level, and a film utterly unworthy of its talented cast and director.