Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Michael Parks | ... | Adam | |
Ulla Bergryd | ... | Eve | |
Richard Harris | ... | Cain | |
John Huston | ... | Noah | |
Stephen Boyd | ... | Nimrod | |
George C. Scott | ... | Abraham | |
Ava Gardner | ... | Sarah | |
Peter O'Toole | ... | The Three Angels | |
Zoe Sallis | ... | Hagar | |
Gabriele Ferzetti | ... | Lot | |
Eleonora Rossi Drago | ... | Lot's Wife | |
Franco Nero | ... | Abel | |
Pupella Maggio | ... | Noah's Wife | |
Robert Rietty | ... | Abraham's Steward | |
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Peter Heinze | ... | Shem |
An elaborate Hollywood retelling of the Bible stories narrated by the film's director John Huston. We open with the Creation of the World and arrive at the Garden of Eden with our first ancestral parents and continue on to Cain murdering his younger brother Abel. Next, we visit Noah and his ark with its spectacular flood sequence. Then we come to the story of Nimrod, King of Babel, the emergence of man's vanity and the heights to which it could aspire if unchecked. Finally we cover Abraham, a mystic who spoke personally with God, a leader of men, a builder of nations, a pioneer and a warrior and Sarah. At the time she conceived her first child, the event being forecast by an Angel of the Lord. Three such Heavenly Messengers appeared in the course of events which befell Abraham and Sarah. Written by Anonymous
Just a year after his triumph in "Becket", Peter O'Toole is almost unrecognizable but does high class work as the Angel of the Lord--he's **trium in uno**--opposite Abraham and Sarah as portrayed by Ava Gardner and George C. Scott. These two great but very different actors play wonderfully off one another--Scott's earthy energy against the elegant tones and sorrowful eyes of O'Toole--who is on his way to destroy the sin cities of Sodom and Gommorah with all their inhabitants.
The other fine portrayal is of Nimrod, "a mighty hunter before the Lord", by the late actor Steven Boyd. In a single, four minutes scene he captures all the kingly hubris of this biblical figure-- the first in the book of Genesis who does not represent a nation. He who built the Tower of Babel, and saw it destroyed.
Children would be entertained by the carnival of the animals sequence depicting Noah and the Ark.