Samson and Delilah (1949)

When strongman Samson rejects the love of the beautiful Philistine woman Delilah, she seeks vengeance that brings horrible consequences they both regret.

Director:

Cecil B. DeMille

Writers:

Jesse Lasky Jr. (screenplay) (as Jesse L. Lasky Jr.), Fredric M. Frank (screenplay)

Stars:

Hedy Lamarr, Victor Mature, George Sanders

Won 2 Oscars. Another 1 win & 5 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Hedy Lamarr	...	Delilah
Victor Mature	...	Samson
George Sanders	...	The Saran of Gaza
Angela Lansbury	...	Semadar
Henry Wilcoxon	...	Ahtur
Olive Deering	...	Miriam
Fay Holden	...	Hazelelponit
Julia Faye	...	Hisham
Russ Tamblyn	...	Saul (as Russell Tamblyn)
William Farnum	...	Tubal
Lane Chandler	...	Teresh
Moroni Olsen	...	Targil
Francis McDonald	...	Story Teller (as Francis J. McDonald)
William 'Wee Willie' Davis	...	Garmiskar (as William Davis)
John Miljan	...	Lesh Lakish

Storyline

Though his people, the Israelites, are enslaved by the Philistines, Samson (Victor Mature), strongest man of the tribe of Dan, falls in love with the Philistine Semadar (Dame Angela Lansbury), whom he wins by virtue of a contest of strength. But Semadar betrays him, and Samson engages in a fight with her real love, Ahtur (Henry Wilcoxon), and his soldiers. Semadar is killed, and her sister Delilah (Hedy Lamarr), who had loved Samson in silence, now vows vengeance against him. She plans to seduce Samson into revealing the secret of his strength and then to betray him to the Philistine leader, The Saran of Gaza (George Sanders).

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Plot Keywords:

impaled by spear | long haired man | samson character | delilah character | character names as title | 

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Taglines:

HISTORY'S MOST BEAUTIFUL AND TREACHEROUS WOMAN! (original print ad - all caps)

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Genres:

Drama | History | Romance

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Certificate:

Approved

Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

21 September 1950 (Italy)

Also Known As:

Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah

Filming Locations:

Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$3,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Paramount Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

134 min (with overture and exit music)

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

In 1951, British moviegoers voted Hedy Lamarr's Delilah the tenth "best screen performance by an actress".

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Goofs

Immediately after Dagon falls a column falls near the dias. As it tilts over the "stone" develops a crease as it falls.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Narrator: Before the dawn of history, ever since the first man discovered his soul, he has struggled against the forces that sought to enslave him. He saw the awful power of nature rage against him. The evil eye of the lightning... The terrifying voice of the thunder... The shrieking, wind-filled darkness enslaving his mind with shackles of fear. Fear bred superstition, blinding his reason. He was ridden by a host of devil gods. Human dignity perished on the altar of idolatry. And tyranny ...

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Crazy Credits

As Samson and Delilah (1949) starts, the title is written on scroll, that is opened, to be read. The remaining opening credits, after the scroll and title, are normal. Closing credits are normal, also.

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Alternate Versions

Previous home media releases of the film (LaserDisc, VHS) did not include the overture and exit music. They were restored for Paramount's official DVD release in 2013 and the subsequent Blu-ray release in 2014.

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Connections

Featured in The Ten Commandments: Making Miracles (2011)

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Soundtracks

For To Win A Bride
(uncredited)
Written by Victor Young and Jesse Lasky Jr.

User Reviews

"What invisable power strikes through his arm?"

Cecil B. DeMille is best remembered for his biblical epics, even though in a forty-year, eighty-film career he only made four of them. It wasn't just that the bible pictures gave him some of his biggest hits; it was in these features that DeMille seemed most at home, and the one genre in which he had unique ability.

Samson and Delilah brought an end to a long phase of epic-cum-adventure movies from DeMille. This period, beginning with The Plainsman in 1936, had some of the weakest pictures of his career for a number of reasons. For one thing, DeMille was not really very good at individualistic action scenes, and there was too much DeMillean historical grandeur and not enough of the free-spirited feel of the Errol Flynn or Tyrone power swashbucklers he was to some extent an trying to copy. What's more, these were mostly original stories or, at least, ones which were not well known, and DeMille's poor choice of source material and screenwriters meant the new characters and situations tended towards the feeble. DeMille's strength lay in his staging and presentation of a familiar tale, and as such his return to Sunday-school moralising, stuffy and pompous though it may be, is apt and welcome.

You see, DeMille was probably aware on some level that although these fables were well-known in a largely Christian society, to a modern audience they were also historically distant, emotionally neutral and even ridiculous when presented literally. But DeMille never attempted any humanity or realism in his features, instead turning the remote, mythical nature of the stories into a virtue, portraying his subject matter with a kind of dignity and grace. Of course most ancient world epics do this to some extent, but DeMille did it the most effectively because he never demanded that the audience sympathise with the characters, merely that we marvel at their deeds.

Specifically, DeMille composes the picture with overstated gesturing and painterly tableau, like a Gustave Dore print come to life. This is combined with the vivid colours of a bible stories illustration, coded with drab shades for humbleness and virtue, garish ones for extravagance and sin. Throughout, DeMille's flair for dreamlike, rhythmic motion keeps the images flowing, most notably in the establishing tracking shot at the wedding feast - although if you watch closely you'll see one of the two men engaged in a mock swordfight is actually camply slapping his opponent with a feather duster.

And DeMille was perhaps unique in that he even used the imagery to turn God into a character. You can see from one of his much earlier religious pictures, 1929's The Godless Girl, that DeMille associated God with natural beauty, and in Samson and Delilah God makes several key "appearances" as a breathtaking skyscape. This touch would be expanded upon in the 1956 version of Ten Commandments.

It's a pity DeMille didn't associate God with good acting, because even the theatrical presentation on offer here could do with at least some half-decent hamming. The trouble is DeMille chose his actors for their physicality, not for their ability to qualify their job description. In this respect Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr are natural choices. DeMille's business associate Henry Wilcoxon, whom the director unbelievably used to cast in lead roles, is as wooden as ever, and the somewhat hit-and-miss Angela Lansbury, misses this time. The only standout is George Sanders who proves, just as Herbert Marshall did in DeMille's Four Frightened People, that bad dialogue becomes bearable if you underplay it.

Fortunately when it came to crew DeMille always procured the best. Samson and Delilah boasts Oscar-winning costumes and art direction from no less personages than Edith Head and Hans Dreier respectively. The Technicolor cinematography is great, with some remarkably clear night time shots. Some of the effects may be a little dubious; whenever Victor Mature lifts up something heavy it's obvious it's being hoisted from offscreen, and that woolly-rug/lion tamer scene is actually betrayed by bad editing, but overall this is a solid, high-quality production.

Yes, Samson and Delilah is as corny as anything, but it looks great, and above all it entertains. Don't be too harsh on DeMille's staginess or his archaic moralism, for as his willing appearance as himself in Sunset Boulevard proves, he probably didn't have a sense of irony. And his earnestness was probably his greatest asset.