The Bible...In the Beginning () is a 1966 religious epic film produced by Dino De Laurentiis and directed by John Huston. It recounts the first 22 chapters of the Biblical Book of Genesis, covering the stories from The Creation and Garden of Eden to the binding of Isaac.
Released by 20th Century Fox, the film's ensemble cast features Huston, Michael Parks, Richard Harris, Franco Nero, Stephen Boyd, George C. Scott, Ava Gardner, Peter O'Toole and Gabriele Ferzetti. The screenplay was written by Christopher Fry, with additional material by Orson Welles, Ivo Perilli, Jonathan Griffin, Mario Soldati and Vittorio Bonicelli. The film was photographed by Giuseppe Rotunno in Dimension 150, a variant of the 70mm Todd-AO format. The musical score was by the Japanese composer Toshiro Mayuzumi.
Premiering in New York City on 28 September 1966, the film received mixed reviews from critics. The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures included the film in its Top Ten Films list of 1966. De Laurentiis and Huston won David di Donatello Awards for Best Producer and Best Foreign Director, respectively. Toshiro Mayuzumi's score was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. The film was originally conceived as the first in a series of films retelling the entire Old Testament, but these sequels were never made.
Plot Part I The film begins with the Creation. God creates the heavens and earth, including the first man, Adam and the first woman, Eve. Both live in the utopical Garden of Eden until a Serpent convinces Eve to disobey God by eating a fruit from the tree of knowledge, and in turn Eve convinces Adam to do the same. God punishes the Serpent and banishes Adam and Eve from the Garden.
Eve gives birth to two children: Cain and Abel. When they are older, Cain becomes a farmer and Abel a shepherd, and they both make regular ritual sacrifices to God. When Cain offers his share of harvest and Abel offers a lamb, God favors the lamb sacrifice. Cain, filled with jealousy, murders Abel and runs away. Adam and Eve mourn the loss of both their sons, but God gives them another, who they name Seth. Generations come to pass, and most of the descendants of Cain grow evil.
God is displeased by his creation and intends to destroy it all via a global flood. He makes contact with Adam's descendant Noah, and commands him to build an Ark in order to save himself and his family. Noah obeys and, after the ark is finished, two pairs of clean and unclean animals and birds are brought to the ark. After the door is shut, a storm occurs and the fountains of water erupt, flooding the earth. All living things outside the ark die while the occupants survive. Forty days later, with Noah's wife counting the days, the ark lands in the mountains of Ararat, where the animals and birds disembark. God then promises Noah to never again destroy his creation by flood. This is symbolized by a rainbow.
Part II
The second part begins with a visual representation of Noah's descendants and a brief depiction of the story of the Tower of Babel, in which the king Nimrod defies God by ordering the construction of a colossal tower and firing an arrow from the top of it towards the sky. God responds by confusing the people to speak different languages, making them disperse across the Earth.
The remainder of the film tells the story of Abraham. God chooses him to become a father of a great nation by migrating his family to the land of Canaan. Abraham wants a child who would inherit his position, but his wife Sarah is barren. Sarah offers her handmaiden Hagar to bear Abraham's children instead. Hagar becomes pregnant with Ishmael, but God promises that Abraham will have another child with Sarah, and his child will be called Isaac and will inherit Abraham's position instead of Ishmael. Hagar and Sarah begin to grow resentful of each other.
The men of Abraham start quarreling with those of his nephew Lot, and so they agree to part ways. Lot decides to try and live with his family in the city of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham receives the visit of three angels, who announces Sarah's pregnancy and God's plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah by fire. Abraham intercedes for the sodomites. Two of the angels go visit Lot, telling him and his family to flee the city and never look back. Then the angels bring down fire, destroying the city, and Lot's wife looks back and she is turned into a pillar of salt.
Sarah finally gives birth to Isaac, and Abraham gives a feast for Isaac. Sarah, fearing that Ishmael might kill Isaac as Cain did to Abel, asks Abraham to send him away. Abraham exiles him along with his mother out into the desert. With Ishmael on the verge of death, Hagar cries out to God for help. Then God miraculously creates a spring from the sand, promising that Ishmael will be a father of a great nation and that he and his descendants may prosper.
God then instructs Abraham to kill Isaac as a sacrifice. Abraham is devastated, but obeys and takes off towards the mountain Moriah, alone with Isaac, in order to make the sacrifice there without telling his true intentions to him or his mother. In a scene unique to this adaptation, Abraham and Isaac make a stop at the devastated ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah, where they ponder the wrath of God. In Moriah, as Abraham prepares to sacrifice his son, God stops him, revealing it was all a test to see if Abraham would still obey God no matter what. Instead, Abraham and Isaac sacrifice a ram that was stuck in some nearby bushes.
Cast
Production Development In May 1961, Italian film producer Dino De Laurentiis announced his plans to make a film about the Bible, which would include stories from both the Old and New Testaments. He envisioned it as a 10-hour film divided into three parts, and estimated he would need three years and $24 million to produce it. In June, De Laurentiis hired British playwright Christopher Fry to write the final screenplay of the film. Fry said he was "very enthusiastic about this assignment." De Laurentiis' initial three-film idea included depictions of the Creation, the story of Jesus, and the foundation of the Christian Church. Fry was chosen to "put the finishing touches" to a script composed of various episodes, each to be written by a different writer. Each sequence in the film would be filmed by a different director, and the cast would include 50 stars and hundreds of "top-flight" character actors.
In June 1962, De Laurentiis offered the role of Judas Iscariot to Montgomery Clift, who said he would play the part if it was not a cameo. In July, Anita Ekberg and Jo Morrow were considered for a role in the film, which Ekberg turned down. That same month, De Laurentiis said he would not hire actors "who think they are bigger than the parts they play." In September, Fry was writing the script of Part One of The Bible, which would begin with the Book of Genesis and end with the Fall of Jericho. By December, De Laurentiis had hired Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini to direct some of the film's sequences.
In January 1963, De Laurentiis hired a third director, Orson Welles, to direct the "Esau and Jacob" sequence. Fellini and Visconti were going to direct "The Deluge and Noah's Ark" and "Joseph and his Brethren" episodes, respectively. In March, Fry and other writers were still working on the screenplay, while De Laurentiis was considering the possibilities of releasing The Bible as one, two, or three films. In June, Fellini left the project because the "only idea [he] could think of was a movie about a director trying to do a movie about the Bible." In July, De Laurentiis chose Welles for the job of directing the "Abraham" and "Jacob" segments, which were scheduled to be filmed in Spain and Sicily. Columbia Pictures allocated $20 million for the film. By August, De Laurentiis had hired Robert Bresson to direct the first half of The Bible, from Creation to Cain and Abel. Welles went to the top of Mount Etna in Sicily to look at the landscapes where he would film the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah. In September, De Laurentiis convinced John Huston to direct the entire 12-hour film. Welles backed out of the film due to a "disagreement with the producer." In November, Columbia Pictures decided not to finance the film.
Seven Arts Productions contributed 30% of the budget.
Casting In March 1963, Ina Balin was cast in the film. By May, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn had agreed to play Abraham and Sarah, but Tracy later became ill and could not play the role. In July, when the screenplay included Jacob's story, Peter O'Toole was given the role of Jacob. In August, O'Toole was recast as Nimrod, the king of Babel, and became the first actor to be signed for a leading role in the film. That same month, De Laurentiis traveled to London to try to sign Richard Burton for either Noah or Jacob and also Trevor Howard for Abraham. Howard was signed for Abraham on September 3.
In January 1964, De Laurentiis said he was considering asking Maria Callas to play the role of Sarah.
Ava Gardner was reluctant at first to play the part of Sarah, but after John Huston talked her into it, she accepted. She later explained why she accepted the role:
Anglo-Persian actress Zoe Sallis, who was cast as Hagar, was originally known as Zoe Ishmail, until Huston decided that she change her name because of its similarity to the name of Ishmael, her character's son, played by Luciano Conversi.
Ulla Bergryd was an anthropology student living in Gothenburg, Sweden when she was discovered by a talent scout, who photographed her in a museum there, and then promptly hired to play Eve. In an interview for The Pittsburgh Press, Bergryd recalled the experience:
Huston originally considered Alec Guinness (who was unavailable) and Charlie Chaplin (who declined) for the part of Noah until he finally decided to play it himself.
The film marks the debut of Italian actress Anna Orso, who portrays the role of Shem's wife. It also introduced Franco Nero to American audiences; Nero, who was working as the film's still photographer, was hired by Huston for the role of Abel due to his handsome features. At the time, Nero could not speak English, and Huston gave him recordings of William Shakespeare with which to study.
Moelwyn Merchant (credited as "W. M. Merchant") was a theological and historical consultant for the film.
Filming Filming took place mainly in locations throughout Italy, including Rome, Sardinia, Sicily, Itri, Abruzzo and Mount Vesuvius.
The scenes involving the Garden of Eden were shot at a "small zoological garden" in Rome instead of a "beautiful place of trees, glades and wildflowers" which had been demolished shortly before the shooting began. Ulla Bergryd, who was cast as Eve, later recalled, "Paradise was, in fact, an old botanical garden on the outskirts of Rome."
There were five reproductions of Noah's Ark built for the film. The largest reproduction, which stood on the backlot of the De Laurentiis Film Center, was 200 feet long, 64 feet wide, and 50 feet high; it was used for the long shot of Noah loading the animals. The interior reproduction, which was one of the "largest interior sets ever designed and constructed", was 150 feet long and 58 feet high and had "three decks, divided into a hundred pens" and a ramp that ran "clear around the ark from top to bottom". The third reproduction was a "skeleton" ark, built for the scenes depicting Noah and his sons constructing the Ark. The fourth reproduction was "placed at the foot of a dam" for the inundation sequences and the fifth reproduction was a miniature for the storm sequences. The cost of building the five reproductions was more than $1 million. The building took months and more than 500 workers were employed. The animals were delivered from a zoo in Germany.Hughes, p.70f The whole segment of Noah's Ark had a total budget of $3 million.