Going WAAAAAAAAAAAAY back in time according to the Good Book, the Jewish people were hardly a nation, but at one point consisted of Jacob and the 12 sons he begat from several women. Of that group, two of them, Joseph and Benjamin, were from his beloved wife Rachel. How the other 10 got there, you'll have to look in the Bible for, but that's a story unto itself. There was also a daughter Dinah, but that's also another story that takes place before the action here.
Anyway those who are not religious and bible readers might also remember Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical about Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. It was given to him by Jacob as a mark of his favor and it aroused the green eyed monster in the other brothers no end. They kidnap Joseph and sell him into slavery. And the brothers, Benjamin excepted, tell the father a wild beast killed Joseph.
The rest of the film is a retelling of Joseph's story and the moral as is taught to us that even when things look pretty bad, have some faith because God's got a plan for you. What gaps are left by Genesis, the scriptwriters fill in, even providing Joseph with a wife to be. She's the daughter of Pharaoh's baker who is executed in prison which Joseph foretold in a dream.
But to really give it some sex in true DeMille fashion, the writers expand the characters of Potiphar and Potiphar's wife. Potiphar is the wealthy Egyptian who buys Joseph and is played by Robert Morley and his wife is British sex pot starlet Belinda Lee.
The Bible has Belinda Lee interested in a quick roll in the hay with Joseph and when she doesn't get it, she hollers rape. As for Potiphar, impotence is not covered in the Bible, but Morley makes a pretty good stab at creating the character of a mercurial and sexually impotent man who's creating the sexual frustration in his own wife. Impotent man married to nymphomaniac girl, not a good recipe for a happy home life in the Bible or anywhere else.
Joseph is played earnestly by Geoffrey Horne, best known for playing another eager idealist in a bad situation as the young volunteer with Jack Hawkins and William Holden going to blow up that Bridge on the River Kwai. Horne had the looks and a certain charisma, too bad his career never really took off.
The last of the English speaking players in this film is that grand Scot, Finlay Currie who is Jacob. One thinks of Charlton Heston usually in biblical films, but for a while Finlay Currie seemed to be the actor to get when you did a film based on a biblical story. Besides playing Jacob here, he played wise man Balthazar in Ben-Hur, the elderly King David in Solomon and Sheba, and St. Peter in Quo Vadis.
You know it always occurred to me that Joseph, doing as much as he did for Egypt and then bringing his whole family over from Canaan, why didn't he also try to convert them to his monotheistic faith which most of the Egyptians are seeing as possibly the real deal as a result of all Joseph is accomplishing. If he had, a whole lot of history would have to have been rewritten. I can think of a few reasons why he didn't, but they would fall in the geopolitical not the spiritual.
Besides if he had done that, Cecil B. DeMille would never have made The Ten Commandments.
Anyway those who are not religious and bible readers might also remember Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical about Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. It was given to him by Jacob as a mark of his favor and it aroused the green eyed monster in the other brothers no end. They kidnap Joseph and sell him into slavery. And the brothers, Benjamin excepted, tell the father a wild beast killed Joseph.
The rest of the film is a retelling of Joseph's story and the moral as is taught to us that even when things look pretty bad, have some faith because God's got a plan for you. What gaps are left by Genesis, the scriptwriters fill in, even providing Joseph with a wife to be. She's the daughter of Pharaoh's baker who is executed in prison which Joseph foretold in a dream.
But to really give it some sex in true DeMille fashion, the writers expand the characters of Potiphar and Potiphar's wife. Potiphar is the wealthy Egyptian who buys Joseph and is played by Robert Morley and his wife is British sex pot starlet Belinda Lee.
The Bible has Belinda Lee interested in a quick roll in the hay with Joseph and when she doesn't get it, she hollers rape. As for Potiphar, impotence is not covered in the Bible, but Morley makes a pretty good stab at creating the character of a mercurial and sexually impotent man who's creating the sexual frustration in his own wife. Impotent man married to nymphomaniac girl, not a good recipe for a happy home life in the Bible or anywhere else.
Joseph is played earnestly by Geoffrey Horne, best known for playing another eager idealist in a bad situation as the young volunteer with Jack Hawkins and William Holden going to blow up that Bridge on the River Kwai. Horne had the looks and a certain charisma, too bad his career never really took off.
The last of the English speaking players in this film is that grand Scot, Finlay Currie who is Jacob. One thinks of Charlton Heston usually in biblical films, but for a while Finlay Currie seemed to be the actor to get when you did a film based on a biblical story. Besides playing Jacob here, he played wise man Balthazar in Ben-Hur, the elderly King David in Solomon and Sheba, and St. Peter in Quo Vadis.
You know it always occurred to me that Joseph, doing as much as he did for Egypt and then bringing his whole family over from Canaan, why didn't he also try to convert them to his monotheistic faith which most of the Egyptians are seeing as possibly the real deal as a result of all Joseph is accomplishing. If he had, a whole lot of history would have to have been rewritten. I can think of a few reasons why he didn't, but they would fall in the geopolitical not the spiritual.
Besides if he had done that, Cecil B. DeMille would never have made The Ten Commandments.