John & the Whale

The Bible. Lured by ballyhoo or simple piety into the vast, glittering void of this enterprise--an experience roughly equivalent to being swallowed by a whale--a bored viewer will nonetheless feel twinges of gratitude. After all, it might have been worse. Producer Dino De Laurentiis originally intended to tackle the entire Old Testament, hiring every writer, actor and director in creation for a series of films running Lord knows how long. He has settled for 22 chapters of Genesis, compressed by Director John Huston into three hours of empty illustrations from Scripture.

Most entertaining is a kinetic, eight-minute Creation, astir with turbulent photography. Unfortunately, it is a long way from The Beginning to the end. The Word is interpreted altogether literally, neither revitalized with the logic of drama nor illuminated by the magic of myth. The film simply plunges ahead with quasi-King Jamesian narration, supplied by Playwright Christopher Fry and spoken by Huston himself, a mighty celestial circuit rider on the sound track. "God blessed them and said: Multiply," the voice intones, clearing the way for a shot of fuzzy, nuzzling seals and simultaneously raising questions of identity. There is somebody up there, all right, but who? A director, a Deity, or Our Man in Disneyland?

Stickier questions of taste arise in a gold-filtered Eden, where Adam (Michael Parks) takes shape in the sod, starts poking around Paradise eying Eve (Ulla Bergryd) and her apple while an athletic camera plays now-you-see-it, oh-you-don't with their anatomy. Such defoliated innocence fills an audience with awe, not for the miracle of mankind but for the skill of split-second cutting.

After Eden, the film follows the baffling genealogy of Genesis from Cain and Abel, through Noah, to the story of Abraham. Lineage becomes a problem, and at one point the burgeoning family of man crowds the screen with something resembling a pyramid of Chinese acrobats. Huston plays Noah, mugging simplicity as he takes his orders from the Almighty, cramming in a lot of low comedy aboard the Ark and looking sorely tempted to burst into the Rodgers & Hammerstein admonition that chicks 'n' ducks 'n' geese better scurry. Generally, the acting style is holier-than-thou, for Huston conducts his ensemble rather like an old-fashioned Sunday-school master who has put on a multimillion-dollar spring pageant and copped the best parts for himself.

Among the stars dimmed for the occasion are George C. Scott and Ava Gardner as Abraham and Sarah, the ancient barren pair who crawl abed hopefully cooing Songs of Solomon. Peter O'Toole, as three Angels of the Lord, smites Sodom in triplicate, terrorizing hordes of extras, who, as usual, do their best to make transcendental evil shine through gaudy sequins and gobs of purple eye shadow. Any characters who are at all respectable converse with a vengeful Deity mainly by lifting eyes skyward, and the pauses throb with crashing drums, heavenly choirs and bird song--everything, in fact, but a bouncing ball to help the audience pray along. Better read The Book.

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