I've always enjoyed this movie, and it's not as bad as people think. Apart from Pasolini's "The Gospel According to Saint Matthew" this is one of the few Biblical epics I've seen that makes a serious attempt at meeting the material on its own terms rather than spicing it up with extraneous material. Sure, the scenes of Adam and Eve are like a bad "Star Trek" episode, but the photography for the Creation sequence is spectacular. John Huston clearly had fun playing Noah, and the loading of the animals into the Ark is the best part of the movie. I also enjoyed George C. Scott as Abraham and Ava Gardner as Sarah, and Peter O'Toole's understated performance as the Angel of the Lord. Unfortunately, the Sodom and Gomorrah sequence was pretty bad; John Huston was a great director, but he didn't have Cecil B. DeMille's flair for scenes of pagan debauchery. An Italian director like Pasolini or possibly Visconti might have done better.
Review of The Bible in the Beginning...
