…………………………………………………

David and Bathsheba Movie Review

David and Bathsheba is a 1951 historical film directed by Henry King and starring Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward. It’s a very forgettable epic flick.

………………………………………………….

“Perhaps you would prefer honesty to truth, Sire“

…………………………………………………..

King David chances upon the beautiful Bathsheba bathing in the nude. Enamored by her beauty, he commits the act of adultery with her. His action leads to disastrous consequences. This movie was a big box office hit back in its day and it was nominated for multiple Oscars, but nowadays its impact has been blunted and reasonably so as it’s such a weak flick. It’s passable, but I wouldn’t really call it riveting. In fact, it’s quite tedious.

These epic films should be rousing entertainment, but this one was so slow in pace, weakly structured and uneventful for the most part that it failed to engage me properly. The movie is hardly accurate, but the real life story is so simple that it’s not worthy of a feature film treatment. That resulted in a lot of padding.

The biggest issue is its staginess. The scenes that were more cinematic were big and exciting, but those were fewer in numbers unfortunately. The majority of the scenes revolve around the relationship between these two and I was quickly bored with that entire story.

Susan Hayward was quite mediocre in this role while Gregory Peck fared better and he acted out his monologues and pensive scenes deftly, but both of these performers felt too modern in this particular setting. It felt like a Hollywood production and it never at all felt believable. Others were entirely forgettable as the bulk of the movie is about these two. I wished for more Goliath and similar adventurous and battle scenes that were here almost non-existent.

…………………………………………………..

David and Bathsheba at least looked and sounded great. The score is suitably epic and spectacular. The production design is terrific. The cinematography is gorgeous. This is is among the better Technicolor productions of the time for sure. It definitely, thus, deserved those technical nominations, but the nod for screenplay was definitely not earned. The psychological scenes worked for me, but because I could never buy the dialogue and the actors in their roles, I could never get fully invested in the story unfortunately.