The Bible According To Hollywood (Passport/DVD-Video)
Picture:
C Sound: C- Extras: D Main Program: B+
On a
certain level The Bible According to
Hollywood is your typical documentary in a digital age fast approaching
that of post-broadcast-journalism – stock footage, voice-of-God narration,
intertitles, etc. The only thing missing
is a host with an unnecessarily large microphone shoving it in the faces of the
actor’s on the sets of films like DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (both versions), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and, of course, John Huston’s The Bible. . .In the Beginning
(1965). But alas this is impossible,
unless of course one had access to either stock footage or a time machine, but
if it were possible, I’m almost certain Phillip Dye, the director of this
piece, would have made use of it. But
this is not necessarily a compliment.
From the days of Robert Flaherty to Michael Moore, viewers have come to
make certain assumptions about the documentary as a genre or format – a term I prefer, since genre
can mean many things in cinema. (Much of
this is no thanks to 40 years of credibility-demanding, middle-brow television
journalism spanning from Walter Cronkite to the late Peter Jennings.) Yet, it
is the precise way in which the documentary manipulates a viewer’s perceptions
about realism through formalistic choices such as special effects, graphics,
editing, selective chronologies and plotting, and music, which makes it one of
the most interesting, compelling, and perhaps insidious cinematic formats.
Sure,
such techniques are easy to spot in a Bowling
for Columbine (2002) or Fahrenheit
9/11 (2004), if one is already convinced of the falsehood of the
message. But what if the techniques are
more muted, and the message more mainstream?
Like on any random A&E
Biography, or even that of your local news – which leaves the titillating
formalism to the 30-second spots of the commercials put on by its corporate
sponsors – the real highlight of the dinner hour anyway, but makes use of formalism
nonetheless in its own content.
Released
in 2004, The Bible According to
Hollywood works out of a much older documentary tradition, conservative and
smothering, like an overprotective mother unwilling to let her children – the viewers
– think for themselves. Any hard
conclusions are drawn for you via the narrator, Henry Stephens, who has the
kind of voice that makes you think you’ve heard him on 100 other things before,
even if you haven’t. But it was only
after I had to hire a few narrators myself on my own various film projects that
I realized that there are probably thousands of men -- and maybe even a few
women! -- who can make themselves sound like this particular narrator. Perhaps that voice is kind of like the audio
version of the Le Tigra, Ferrari, and Blue Steel faces in voice-over lampooned
by Ben Stiller in Zoolander
(2001). But this is not to say that The Bible According to Hollywood is all
bad. Perhaps as entertainment there is
very little to redeem it, but as a reference, it is an excellent video overview
of the Bible on film – a kind of Cliff’s Notes for Bible-based movies, not in
terms of analysis, because there hardly is any, but in terms of making the
viewer aware of what films are even out there, and their relationships to each
other. One criticism though even of this
strategy is how often this film relies on poor film prints and faded copies of
the films it wants to catalogue. In
addition, it is almost inexplicable how this documentary skips Ted Turner’s
Emmy-Award Winning Bible Collection, while Godard’s Hail Mary barely gets a footnote.
Yet on a
more basic level The Bible According to
Hollywood is one of the most comprehensive 120 minute documentaries on the
subject – that is, cinematic material derived in some way shape or form on the
Bible. (60 minutes on films based on the
Old Testament, and 60 minutes on films about the New Testament to be
exact.) So while I cannot say much for
this film in terms of style, as far as substance goes I recommend this two-part
series for anyone even remotely interested in the topic of Biblically
films. In many ways, this documentary is
like a catalog, designed for the viewer seeking more Biblical-based
material. And since the film ends in
essence talking about Mel Gibson’s The
Passion of the Christ, the film’s effort to attract viewers perhaps
prompted by Gibson’s work is almost transparent. But I don’t see anything wrong with
that. Love it or hate it, Gibson’s Passion (2004) is one the most
important Biblical films made since Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) – not necessarily because of
content, but because of how the reception of this film changed the industry.
And while
I would discourage any viewer to take the narrator’s limited analysis of the
various films at face value – or any other narrator for that matter-- I must admit that this film was where I first
heard of Sydney Olcott’s From the Manger
to the Cross (1912), and my Ph.D. dissertation is on the subject! For that reason alone I cannot say but too
much negative about a documentary text that proved to be a vital source in my
own research on the representation of Jesus in cinema. However, some more devout viewers may find
themselves from time to time offended by offhand quips like: “everybody’s
loses their head when making movies about John the Baptist” written by
director Phillip Dye, but obviously intended to keep the interest of the
viewer. Some may find such comments
humorous, but I personally was not amused.
The Bible
According to Hollywood also makes for some interesting trivia. I bet you didn’t know that both James Dean
and Paul Newman got their start making Biblical films. And if you pay attention to Charlton Heston,
at his self-indulgent best, you’ll also discover who it was that made the first
feature film. (Answer: Cecil B. DeMille
with The Squaw Man in 1914.) Although in actuality, From the Manger to the Cross when all five of its reels are shown
in one sitting actually beat it by two years – having been released in 1912
with a running time just over sixty minutes.
Heston, toward the end of the documentary, very pleased with himself
points out how because he has been in a few DeMille films, how this connects
him very closely with the beginning of the medium. He also laments how he doesn’t know how
movies got so expensive. He claims he
doesn’t know how this happened. That
nobody knows how this happened. Two
words: UNIONS and INFLATION. But his
point is still taken, movies are much more expensive to make today than in
Heston’s time, even when adjusted for inflation. Steven Spielberg makes a similar observation
in American Cinema: The Film School
Generation. The ironic counter to
the expenses of the films made via the Hollywood machine however, may in fact
be the documentary as a format.
In
conclusion, the narrator explains that viewers don’t want a sermon, but
entertainment, summarizing that people, instead of just relying on movies based
on the Bible, may want to consider checking out the original source material,
meaning the Bible itself. Well, to be
cute I may want to say that instead of relying on documentaries about movies
based on the Bible, they may just want to check out the movies themselves – but
if it weren’t for The Bible According to
Hollywood, I must admit, a casual viewer might not no where to begin.
- Gregory Allen
Gregory
Allen -- filmmaker, scholar, and critic -- is the Supervising Professor for the
Panopticon Multimedia Student Intern Program.
He has a Master’s Degree in Literature, and is a Ph.D. candidate at the University
of Pittsburgh, completing his dissertation on the representation of Jesus in
cinema. He is currently developing a
graphic novel with Atlantis Studios about the war in heaven based on an
original screenplay (For more information please visit www.gregorykahlilkareemallen.com).
