David and Bathsheba

Year:  1951

Filming:  Color

Length:  116 minutes

Genre:  Biblical/Drama/Religious/Romance

Maturity:  PG (for intense thematic elements)

Cast:  Gregory Peck (King David), Susan Hayward (Bathsheba),

Raymond Massey (Nathan), Kieron Moore (Uriah), James Robertson Justice (Abishai), John Sutton (Ira), Jane Meadows (Michal), Gilbert Barnett (Absalom)

 Director:  Henry King

Personal Rating:  4 Stars

***

     Underrated and overlooked, David and Bathsheba is another “sword-and-sandal” flick that takes liberties with the scriptural text but still manages to artfully convey the moral potency of the ultimate story of sin and redemption. It may not have the rollicking action of Ben-Hur or the grand spectable of The Ten Commandments, and yet the excellent acting and poignant “what-ifs” make it another Easter film to remember.  
 

    Gregory Peck stars as King David, a man torn between the flesh and the spirit as he struggles to rule the kingdom of Israel and make his peace with God. But one night while walking on the palace balcony, his restlessness diverts his attentions towards Bathsheba, the beautiful wife of one of his captains, who he spies bathing in her yard (“Peeping Dave”!). Bewitched, he invites her to be his guest for dinner, where it is revealed that she has been spying on him as well (don’t tell he has a royal tub on the veranda, please…) and is quite taken with her observations. They both agree it would mutually pleasurable to shack-up. 
 

    Lest we forget her husband Uriah – well, he’s out fighting for King and Country in the Israelite army. He doesn’t quite know what’s afoot back in his happy home, and King David is determined to keep him in ingnorant bliss. If Bathsheba is caught in adultery, she could be stoned to death according to the law of the land, which outranks even the king himself. Plus, David’s out reputation would be pretty much sunk by courousing with the wife of one of his war heroes. But when Bathsheba becomes pregnant with a royal child, David will stop at nothing to save her. 
 

    First, he tries to get Uriah to go home on leave so that it can claim to be the child’s father. But this brillian plan is foiled by Uriah super-soldier who insists upon sleeping in the field with his men. So reluctantly, the king falls back on Plan B: have Uriah to be thrown into the front lines of battle, and then have everyone else fall back, assuring his removal from the realm of mortal existence. The plan is a smashing success. Or at least, as a temporary fix. But he takes full advantage of it and marries Bathsheba before the world knows she’s pregnant. 

    But when a terrible drout strikes the land, people begin to wonder if it is the punishment of God. Also, Michal, David’s estranged first wife (he has something of a harem going for himself), is dertimined to make him suffer, and turn his favorite son Absolom against him. Needless to say, the Bathsheba incident only makes their relationship less fuzzy, and when the Prophet Nathan comes out to accuse the king of adultery, Michal is determined to seal her husband’s fate. With the net closing in on him, and the death of Bathsheba’s child making him feel even more isolated, David must embark on a personal quest of redemption and spiritual awakening in order to save Bathsheba’s life, the Kingdom of Israel, and his own soul.  
 

    I persoanlly think this is one of the better Biblical movies out there, and certainly the best version of the story of King David (please, avoid Richard Geer like the plague!). Even though it does take liberties with the text, it stays much more on track that some other big-budget blockbusters including The Ten Commandments. In fact, I find it more believable because this film does not try for really outlandish special effects, like fyberoptic burning bushes, and yet maintains a quality in the setting and camer-work. Also, I find it to be more an intimate spiritual journey of one man searching for God, and a man who is much more relatable to every-man than Charlton Heston’s portrayl of Moses. 
 

    I’m also happy to note that the subject of David’s epic affair is treated tastefully…a few passionate kissing sessions, and we get the picture. We don’t have to follow them through the visual blow-by-blow of bedroom sequences. However, as with I Confess, the advertisements indicate all sorts of torrid happenings that are never shown in the movie. Indeed, even Bathsheba bathing is mostly shot from a suitable distance, with close-ups showing her behind a screen (no Kevin Costner in the resovoir here…although we can well imaging that David has a better vantage point to see things from his balcony!).  
 

    What I like best about this portryal of the relationship, though, is the way David is shown as going through something of a mid-life crisis at the same time. It is interesting to watch the comic scene when he is unable to hit his mark with a sling-shot, even though a nearby shepherd boy can do it. “Did you really kill a giant, David?” Bathsheba asks him twittingly. But beyond the irony, it is symbolic of how far he has strayed from his roots. Another symbol of his sense of disolusionment is his lament over Jonathan, his dearest friend who was killed in battle under his father Saul. At the time, Saul was hunting David for fear that he would take his throne, even though that was not David’s intent. Jonathan had helped him escape, and David had been on the run during that battle that resulted in both Saul and Jonathan being killed. Now he continues to feel that he somehow failed his friend, and knows not how to remedy that failing.  
 

    Gregory Peck makes a robust, worldly, yet sympathetic David who seems to have lost his grasp on the spiritual world amidst all the turmoil of military conquests and political negotiations that come with kingship. In his climb to the top, he has lost any sense real love, whether it be romance with women, friendship with men, or even divine consolation from God. In reaching out for Bathsheba, it is almost symbolic of his inner confusion, seeking spiritual intuition and true love in a forbidden embrace. Susan Hayward as the alluring and strong-willed Bathsheba also shows a yearning for true love, even if that means being an accomplice to murder and plunging the whole kingdom into turmoil. At the same time, one has to feel for her a little bit in light of her husband’s portrayed neglect (I’m just talking about physical, but emotional as well), and she seems to be truly repentent for the way things went in the end.  
 

    Whether or not Uriah was a frustratingly law-abiding goody-two-sandals is lost in the mists of time and story-telling, but this portrayal certainly makes it clearer why David finds it expedient to have him hurled out front to save Bathsheba’s life and his own reputation! I can’t say I care much for the portrayal of the prophet Nathan as a religious fanatic, as I don’t believe the Bible portrays his actions in that like at all. He was actually using great wisdom in his approach of making David convict himself of his own crime from his own mouth, and I think that this scene suffered in the film because Nathan was made to look like a wild-eyed holy man, hell-bent on Bathsheba’s death. I think the film was trying to make him a symbol of the more tribal Old Testament understanding of God before the coming of Christ, but Nathan look coo-coo in the process wasn’t worth it. 
 

    But in the end, the plot does highlight the very essence of God: Mercy. As rebellions is seething outside the palace walls, and the mob bays for Bathsheba’s blood, she seems to have resigned herself to whatever fate might be in store, and calmly asks David to play her something that he wrote his boyhood on his harp. He chooses “The Lord is my Shepherd”, but mutters in a tone of cynicism that the God he belived in as a boy, who he had seen in the beauty of Creation and as the strenght of the weak, was only a childhood fancy. Nathan’s God, he decides, is vengeful and merciless. 
 

    But suddenly he is struck with the necessity of finding out which portrayal of God is true, and to find it out for himself.  So he goes into the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant is housed, and begs God from the bottom of his heart to have mercy on his people and Bathsheba, saying that he will willingly take any punishment for his sins. Then he asks that the innocent boy, David, might live again in him. In a deliciously dramatic moment, he stretches out his hands and touches the tabernacle.
 

    David then experiences a flash-back of his boyhood, when he was called in from tending his flocks to be annointed king of Israel by the prophet Samuel, and the realization that God had judged his heart worthy to be the King of his people. Then he also sees the day when he battled the giant Goliath, with only a sling-shot and five small stones, and his friend Jonathan cheerss him on from the Israelite lines. He remembers the victory, and the overwhelming sense that God was with him and working through him.     When King David comes back to the present, he hears rain falling on the parched land. “God is a mystery”, Nathan remarks, “but today we have seen a glimpse of his face.” 

     So while this movie is all too often passed over in favor of other big-budget Biblical flicks, I really think that this story is too poignant to be forgotten. David himself is such a multi-faceted character, emphasizing all the high and low points of our own lives, and the pain when confronted with an inability to claim the deepest desires of our hearts. That God singled out this flawed man to the king of his chosen people when he is just a shepherd boy tending his flocks is amazing enough. But there was even more to the story of this man who sinned, repented, and found forgiveness: he was being chosen to found a dynasty that would bring forth Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Savior of the World. So this Christmas, I urge you to look up David and Bathsheba, a powerful Biblical film that shows us the mercy of God and gives us a “glimpse of His face.”

King David (Gregoery Peck) plays the harp for Bathsheba (Susan Hayward)