Salome (1953)

Had the director credit read Ed Wood and not, as it does, William Dieterle, I would have thought it one of Wood's worst efforts. How anyone involved would want to include this debacle on their CV is beyond me. In its favour we do get some film buffs treasures; Basil Sydney, looking as though he wandered onto the wrong soundstage while shooting Hamlet and wondering why he is suddenly in the wrong costume; Cedric Hardwicke, slightly aloof and apart, as if he is being filmed against the blue background that wasn't available at the time; a pair of gorgeous hams in Charles Laughton and Judith Anderson, chewing not only the scenery on their own set but also that on adjacent sound stages, and, of course, Stewart Granger, supercilious as ever, barely managing to conceal his built-in arrogance. This leaves Rita, alone, isolated, getting no help whatsoever from the rest of the cast, still managing to shine and glow in a meaningless cause.

I disliked this movie very. There are several reasons why. First of all I didn't expected a historical accurate drama cause we all know most Hollywood Productions round this time are light weighted entertainment. There is no historical accuracy in that movie. Scenery and Equipment are looking like an Aladdin Adventure of 1001 Arabian Nights. Maybe round this time everybody was wearing colorful dresses and also the places where the people lived where full of different colors. To sum it up I don't know how they people lived round that time but I never got the feeling that this was the way I saw here. Maybe in other Movies like Quo Vadis or The Robe weren't also very accurate but I have to say I never cared of something like that in those great Movies. One of the reasons is simple because the actors who played Nero (Peter Ustinov) and Caligula (Jay Robinson) were convincing in their roles. I can not say the same thing about Charles Laughton as King Herod. To see him all the time eye rolling, working with his eye browse and grimacing was annoying. I don't know why he overacted in all his scenes. In a different category is Stewart Granger. He looks like if he were sleepwalking all the time. Hey, wake up you just fall in love with one of the most attractive women ever lived on planet Earth: Rita Hayworth. Oh yes she is beautiful and the camera has all the focus on her. It's her movie and we see for that time some half naked scenes with her. In my Opinion that's one of the problems of the movie. The story and the lines people are talking seemed to be irrelevant all are focusing on the beauty of Rita. Everybody who loves beautiful women can understand King Herod starring at her all the time. For me the movie is boring because in a way you wait the whole movie for the famous (but very irrelevant) scene with Salome.That's a shame cause the Story round John the Baptist is a really interesting one and I don't know why the filmmakers didn't allowed John the Baptist to baptize at least one single person in this movie. He looks like to be an angry agitator and not like a prophet. From one moment to another Stewart Grangers character became an aficionado about the so called new religion. We never find it out through the whole Movie why. His character as Commander Claudius seems so unimportant and boring that the audience not really cares about him .An other negative point about this movie is that they tried to ignore religion. I cannot understand that because this movie is about a story told in the bible and one of the most important prophets ever. The filmmakers also tried to include Jesus somehow in the story. Didn't these people read the bible? What I cannot understand is the denial of Jewry round the period of Herod. I mean it looked like the whole movie if they hadn't any religion or something like a pagan religion round that period. I wouldn't call this movie shows Anti-Semitism but it has tendency to do so.To sum it up: boring characters next to Salome (and her character is annoying too), overacting of Charles Laughton, sleepwalking of Stewart Granger and denying of historical facts and religion for lightweight entertainment. The focus is clearly on the attraction of Rita. She is the best of the movie but that's not enough for 103 Minutes.

Giving it a different focus from what we where taught about hebrew princess Salome, William Dieterle faces this biblical Epic. She is presented here as an innocent victim of his evil mother's wishes.The film is watchable -just once- if you like the genre and consider it was made in the early 50¨s; but no more than that. There is an abuse of fake decorates that look cheap at times, the script is just standard and the acting performances are uneven.Charles Laughton gives an interesting performance as Herod, Judith Anderson looks mean enough as his revengeful wife and Stewart Granger fits enough in a dull character as a Christian roman officer. Alan Badel -John the Baptist- is out of line as a sort of a possessed fanatic transmitting more fear than sympathy. Rita Hayworth looks splendid and does acceptably as the princess of the title in a movie planned to serve her beauty (the famous seven vales dance is a highlight and she looks sensual and most attractive there).A small product in its genre, "Salome" is just a watchable film for its times and no more.

Salome is yet another film about a peripheral biblical character. All we know about her is that when John the Baptist was in Herod Antipas's dungeon awaiting sentence, she danced for the king and John's head got served up as the main course at a banquet on a silver tray.From that stringy bit of knowledge that the Good Book gives us, Columbia Pictures constructed a plot for their number one sex symbol Rita Hayworth so she could do a strip tease for Charles Laughton. That in itself was enough to sell tickets no matter how ludicrous the story.And it's one of the more ludicrous Bible based stories ever brought to the screen. The story of course is that Herod Antipas had committed adultery with his brother's wife and Salome's mother and she later became his queen. Here she's played by Judith Anderson in her best Mrs. Danvers manner.The story opens with Salome returning from Rome where the Emperor Tiberius played by Cedric Hardwicke has sent her packing because she wants to marry a Roman. His action's left her bitter against the occupiers of her country and to make matters worse, she's accompanying the new Governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate played by Basil Sydney and a stalwart centurion who is Stewart Granger.The fly in the ointment is this nasty preacher, John the Baptist who goes around saying awful stuff about Judith Anderson and Charles Laughton. He's played by Alan Badel who was introduced in this film. Badel was roughly contemporary with Hugh Griffith in British cinema and both had a pair of the wildest eyes this side of Jack Elam. Allowed them both to be cast as fanatic types. It serves Badel well as John the Baptist.What I love about this story is that everybody's got an agenda going here except Pilate and the Baptist. Salome wants to protect mom, Herodias wants the Baptist dead, Herod wants him to just go away and shut up, and our centurion is a stealth Baptist follower soon to be following that cousin of his from Nazareth.All that leads up to the events described in the Bible. Everybody goes through the motions here, they all know this film is a Thanksgiving special. Especially Charles Laughton who's done lascivious before on the screen, in The Barretts of Wimpole Street, in The Paradine Case, in The Strange Door. Laughton has lascivious down to a science and with Rita Hayworth as the lust object who could blame him.As for Rita she must have felt like Maureen O'Hara did, that other Hollywood redhead who got cast in all these exotic roles where her titian tresses were jarringly out of place.She must have wondered why she came back after this one.