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.
