Books, Arts & Manners: Goliath’s Revenge

This is no age for Biblical films. It is only partly a matter of the secularization and skepticism of the audience; more to the point, Biblical films were, in the De Mille days, excuses for lush historical spectacles, violence, and orgiastic sex. The historical spectacle, however, has moved over into the future, our Punic wars having become star wars; the violence has moved into the present—our streets, homes, countryside bursting with it. Sex no longer needs the pretext of pharaohs and Roman emperors to be endemic and frenetic: Skirts and trousers are shed as readily as togas and peploses. And the Good Book has largely gone the way of other good books in the age of television. At the screening of King David I attended, the invitational audience (mostly media people and Paramount personnel) sniggered longest and laughed loudest at lines that stemmed literally, or least dilutedly, from the Old Testament.

The director of King David—and this assignment was imposed on him— is the Australian Bruce Beresford, one of the most valuable directors of our time. Though earlier films heralded his talent, Breaker Morant and Tender Mercies confirmed and extended it, for Beresford is one of the rare directors who keep developing, diversifying, and growing; at this very moment he is directing his first opera, The Girl of the Golden West, for the Spoleto Festival in Charleston. With King David he has done, more or less, what Pasolini did for the New Testament film and David Lean for the action spectacular, desert variety: elevated a previously commercial genre into something like art. If King David finally does not make it, it is because it has run into more front-office interference than art can survive.

JS

About the Author

John Simon

Featured Tags

This is no age for Biblical films. It is only partly a matter of the secularization and skepticism of the audience; more to the point, Biblical films were, in the De Mille days, excuses for lush historical spectacles, violence, and orgiastic sex. The historical spectacle, however, has moved over into the future, our Punic wars having become star wars; the violence has moved into the present—our streets, homes, countryside bursting with it. Sex no longer needs the pretext of pharaohs and Roman emperors to be endemic and frenetic: Skirts and trousers are shed as readily as togas and peploses. And the Good Book has largely gone the way of other good books in the age of television. At the screening of King David I attended, the invitational audience (mostly media people and Paramount personnel) sniggered longest and laughed loudest at lines that stemmed literally, or least dilutedly, from the Old Testament.

The director of King David—and this assignment was imposed on him— is the Australian Bruce Beresford, one of the most valuable directors of our time. Though earlier films heralded his talent, Breaker Morant and Tender Mercies confirmed and extended it, for Beresford is one of the rare directors who keep developing, diversifying, and growing; at this very moment he is directing his first opera, The Girl of the Golden West, for the Spoleto Festival in Charleston. With King David he has done, more or less, what Pasolini did for the New Testament film and David Lean for the action spectacular, desert variety: elevated a previously commercial genre into something like art. If King David finally does not make it, it is because it has run into more front-office interference than art can survive.