The New Pictures

Samson and Delilah (Paramount) bedizens the Biblical story with all that $3,000,000 can buy: Hedy Lamarr, Victor Mature, 600 extras and eye-crashing Technicolor, mixed by the lavish, lily-gilding hand of Cecil B. DeMille. The result may not be quite Old Testament, but it is Bible story shrewdly blended with sex, spectacle, and the merest suggestion of social comment to keep it abreast of current Hollywood trends. It is unlikely to tarnish Producer-Director DeMille's reputation for consistently making (as well as spending) more money on pictures than anybody else.*

The movie opens with a long shot of the earth whirling in space, and the voice of Creator DeMille himself intoning a speech that begins: "Before the dawn of history, ever since the first man discovered his soul . . ." To meet the challenge of building from there, DeMille brings on a seven-day saturnalia in the fleshpots of Timnath; Delilah Lamarr slinking through ten changes of scanty costumes; Samson Mature strangling a lion with his bare hands, killing 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, and pulling the temple down about the ears of the whole company.

Faced with an original story that seemed, for movie purposes, to be nothing but fragments and figments, DeMille turned four writers loose on the job of working up a convincing script. They telescoped the Biblical account, invented some new sequences, tinkered with motivations, added characters, threw in some dancing girls. Major change: Delilah became the younger sister of the nameless Philistine woman who was the Biblical Samson's wife. The final adaptation skillfully manages to achieve the most serviceability for the screen with the least violence to Scripture. Its best job is to create conviction in Samson's feats: e.g., his slaughter with the jawbone of an ass looks plausible because the script places him tactically in a narrow defile where he can take on the Philistines a few at a time.

The dialogue is a lot less convincing, though sometimes a lot more fun. Bits of it hew more or less to lines out of the Bible ("If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have answered my riddle"). But most of it is Biblical ersatz with an Edgar Rice Burroughs flavor ("You will bring death to the village. Samson is our warrior"). And sometimes it lapses into pure Hollywood (Samson to his mother: "Ummm, you're the best cook in Zorah, little mother"). A dialogic highpoint of some kind is reached when Samson, handed a javelin to do battle with the lion, cheerily assures Delilah: "I won't need it. He's a young lion."

The acting in a DeMille picture bears about the same relation to ordinary acting that a DeMille spectacle bears to everyday life. Holding up the florid tradition of black-hearted villainy are George Sanders and Henry Wilcoxon. Mature is suitably curly-haired and big-muscled as Samson. For all her plumage, including a gown of 2,000 peacock feathers (which DeMille ordered retouched for more color), Miss Lamarr's slitherings suggest a small-town belle making like a femme fatale.

DeMille has provided plenty of gorgeous scenery for all the actors to chew on, and has filmed his spectacular scenes with technical virtuosity and boundless gusto. Even lovers of cinematic art who recognize Samson and Delilah as a run-of-DeMille epic should enjoy it as a simple-minded spree. In its way, it is as much fun as a robust, well-organized circus.

Bride for Sale (RKO Radio) is a tired old triangle farce in which three veterans crank out the creaking whimsy. As a high-powered tax consultant, Claudette Colbert spends her days poring through income-tax forms looking for a home-loving rich husband. To keep her in his employ, George Brent sneaks into her files some data on wealthy Robert Young, who is in on the conspiracy to discourage her. The drawing room dither that follows shows everyone falling for Claudette, but nobody very happy about it. Claudette, who appears to be slumming in her farce role, allows herself to be photographed catching a wrestler in her lap, getting belabored with mackerel and judoing Robert Young over her shoulder.

*DeMille's 68 movies in the 36 years since he made the first feature-length film (The Squaw Man) have cost an approximate total of $33 million (not including advertising expenses). Thus far, the first 67 have grossed $562 million.

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