David and Bathsheba (1951)

Second viewing; previously viewed on August 28, 1999.

A king covets the wife of one of his generals. The king takes her as a lover, and she becomes pregnant of him. He tries to arrange things for it to look like the child's father is the woman's husband. When that proves unfeasible he sends the general to a deadly military mission.

This is what happens when Hollywood takes a biblical story and lays a coating of 20th-century ideology on it. The Bible story is basically about abuse of power. The movie has that angle too, but it makes David's relationship with Bathsheba a romantic one (in the sense with which the 20th century has endowed the word "romantic"). Anyway, both in the movie and in the Bible there is ample tolerance for the murderous behavior of kings. Not to mention that war itself derives from an abuse of power. But it would be too much to ask from a 1950s Hollywood movie to go that far. On a more down-to-earth note, a problem with this movie is that it suffers from too much padding with elements extraneous from the main plot, such as the protagonist's life history and poetic inclinations. But it's a watchable movie; the acting, in particular, is quite good, and so are the production values.

Rating: 54 (down from 60)