Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16319 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-03-26
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 111 minutes

Synopsis
DAVID AND BATHSHEBA brings to life what is possibly the most dramatic story in the Old Testament. Gregory Peck stars as King David, a devout servant of God who is having serious marital difficulties with his wife Michal. Recently returned home from the wars with the Ark of the Covenant in tow, David sees hottie Bathsheba (Susan Hayward) bathing on a nearby rooftop, and in no time at all the two lovebirds are tossing their togas to consume their passion. Of course, there are a couple small hitches--Bathsheba’s husband for one, and the wrath of God. With a drought upon the land and King David’s flock demanding that Bathsheba be stoned to death for her sins, dashing David must come up with some new psalms on the double to save the kingdom and his love. Special effects work on the Ark was innovative for the period and the costuming is excellent, making DAVID AND BATHSHEBA one of the better biblical films of the 1950s.

Customer Reviews

Above average 50s Biblical epic
There's no shortage of bad dialogue in David and Bathsheba - "I was quite a hand with a slingshot," "The King of all Israel out there in the darkness exposing himself to the enemy" (full marks to Dennis Hooey for delivering that one with a straight face), "Go and sit with the concubines." And somehow I doubt a bored David ever told the prophet Nathan "Whatever you say." He even tries the old "My kingdom doesn't understand me" routine on desperate housewife Bathsheba at one point. So it's probably a tribute to Henry King's direction that the film isn't at all bad despite the pitfalls much of the first third provide.

Maybe it's to play down the censor-baiting nature of the plot - a married man kills a femme fatale's husband and gets away with it! - but King brings out the growing moral and theological complexities in Phillip Dunne's script rather than upping the sin and sandals hokum. This is the conflicted David on the downhill slope, abandoned by a vengeful God he no longer understands, and the film doesn't back away from the awkward unanswerable questions about why a loving deity would choose to wreak vengeance on the innocent rather than the guilty. It even offers a genuinely surprising criticism of the sexual inequality of the law, where the failings of husbands result in the punishment of their wives.

Unlike King David, which sidelined the king in favor of the admittedly more interesting Saul, David is firmly at the center of the drama and despite an interesting display of shoulder twitching and a frankly gormless overlong close-up when visiting the site of Saul and Jonathan's death, Gregory Peck's performance grows in stature as David shrinks. Susan Hayward is pure Hollywood pro, Raymond Massey is an appropriately theatrical prophet (why be naturalistic when you've got a voice that makes the very heavens quake?) and Kieron Moore's Uriah such an intransigent unreconstructed chauvinist that you can't exactly blame David for putting him in harm's way, but despite threatening to soft peddle the film doesn't allow David a moral get out of jail free card over his death. With surprisingly strong but subdued design and Technicolor photography this is definitely a cut above most 40s-50s Biblical epics.

not bad
This dvd obviously has good actors, but where it lets me down is that it does not stick to the Scripture regarding this incident, and some scenes have no warrant from Scripture at all, like when the King enters the Holy of Holies and places his hands on the ark, that I am sure is the writer's invention. Apart from that not too bad to watch.