February 6: Samson and Delilah (1949 -- Cecil B. DeMille)

★★

This movie should be as good as The Ten Commandments.  DeMille worked with many of the same elements here that he used in the later film.  The visually arresting Samson and Delilah is chock full of ornate sets, lavish costumes and sexy skin, just as Ten Commandments was, and  here, too, these are all captured in rich Technicolor.  Samson and Delilah also features crowds of extras that create great scenes of action spectacle.  Samson defeats the entire Philistine army with jawbone of an ass, and blinded in the temple courtyard later, he’s heckled by colorful crowds and baited by a group of lively dwarves.  The destruction of the Dagon Temple is a sequence of great spectacle, and Samson’s fight with the lion is one of great action.  DeMille even has a similar love triangle in the two films.  The hero in both loves a pious woman and a courtly vixen, and this latter undermines the hero because of her conflicted love/hate feelings about him.  There’s a large overlap between the two films.

But Samson and Delilah pales in comparison to Ten Commandments, and this is largely due to the performance of Victor Mature as the eponymous lead.  Mature has no rapport with the camera or the audience, and he brings no integration of Samson’s various aspects to the character.  Sanson is sometimes cocky and cavalier, tossing off his mother’s warnings, fighting the lion with his bare hands rather than a spear, or talking confidently with Saul as they watch the approach of the rich Philistine.  These scenes have no shade of reverence in them whatsoever, but we soon see the strongman praying earnestly at the grinding wheel and acting responsibly by surrendering to the Philistines.  More damaging to the film is Mature’s inability to sell us on Samson’s passion.  Despite the dialog and the plot, we never get a sense of a strong connection between him and Semadar, and  his decision to tell her the answer to his riddle seems odd and unmotivated.  Likewise, there’s no real chemistry between Lamarr’s Delilah and Mature’s Samson as the two say their lines and move through the stage blocking.  Neither of the actors sells us on a passion so intense that Samson would reveal the source of his strength, and it’s almost a surprise later when we hear that god has given Samson his strength and that telling Delilah is a form of turning against god.  Mature’s lack of commitment and charisma at the core of this film is what makes Samson and Delilah so strangely opaque despite its many beauties.

Samson and Delilah is a movie worth seeing for the insight it can bring into the important 50s genre of the biblical epic.  It’s also worthwhile as the predecessor of the altogether successful Ten Commandments.  There’s a great deal of potential in this project, and it’s a pity that DeMille wasn’t able to cast a better actor in the lead role who could create a more compelling center to the film.