Samson and Delilah (1984)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Samson and Delilah
Original title Samson and Delilah
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1984
length 95 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Lee Philips
script John Gay
production Franklin R. Levy
music Maurice Jarre
camera Gerry Fisher
cut George Jay Nicholson
occupation

Samson and Delilah (original title Samson and Delilah ) is an American Bible film by Lee Philips from 1984 . Max von Sydow as governor Sidka, Belinda Bauer as Delilah and Stephen Macht as windy Maluck as well as Daniel Stern as Micah and Clive Revill as Raul play the leading roles . Antony Hamilton is cast as Samson, José Ferrer as high priest, Maria Schell as Deborah and Victor Mature as Manoah. The script is based on a story from Eric Linkletter's book Husband Of Delilah .

action

Prologue: “It is 1100 years before the birth of Christ. The tribes of Israel have settled in the hills and valleys of the Jordan River. Unfortunately for them, they are ruled by a pagan people, the Philistines . Their cruelty has brought fear, poverty and slavery to them. Then it happened that a peasant woman, who had been sterile all her life, had a son in the village of Zora. He is brave, rebellious and incredibly strong and has only one thought, a command from God to free his people from the Philistines. His name is Samson . "

Samson is chosen to deliver Israel from the Philistines. For this he was endowed with superhuman strength by the God of the Jews. On the way to his bride Virinia in Timna, Samson kills a lion on the way only thanks to his strength in the presence of the beautiful Delilah . The courtesan is very impressed. The governor Sidka also shows up with thirty of his soldiers in the house of the wealthy bride's father Raul during the wedding celebrations and immediately clashes with Samson. This gives him a riddle, which, contrary to Samson's expectations, he can solve with cunning. Since the warrior does not have the festive costumes promised to solve the riddle, he goes to the nearby Askalon, kills 21 men there and strips them of their clothes. The governor's revenge is not long in coming, his soldiers kill Raul and his entire family, including Virinia. Sidka assumes that Samson is among the victims, but is taught otherwise by his revenge measures.

A love affair has developed between Delilah and Samson and he begins to trust the beautiful woman. Sidka doesn't just accept that, however. He wants to get Delilah to help him discover Samson's secret of his strength. When Samson tells Delilah that he has to leave her because he has to go back to his people, she makes the decision to give Sidka the requested information. Behind this is her desire to bind Samson to her forever. She promises Sidka to give him what he wants if he promises her to leave Samson alone, since he could no longer be dangerous to him without his strength. The following night, Delilah persuades Samson to reveal his secret that the source of his power lies in his hair. When he fell asleep, she cut off his long braid of hair. When Sidka appears with his men, Samson has nothing more to do and is arrested. During a visit to the inmate, Delilah discovers that he has been blinded and that Samson is blind. He only sees her as the traitor and doesn't want to hear anything about it when she declares that she loves him.

Some time later, Sidka held a big festival in the square in front of the temple of the god Dagān to celebrate his triumph over Samson. Delilah appears and reminds the governor of his promise and insists on taking Samson with him now. He asks them to lead him to the pillars of the temple and then to leave quickly. Before that can happen, the guards pull her back on Sidka's orders, who wants her to watch Samson's final demise. Then something happens that nobody expected, Samson breaks his chains and asks God to give him a lot of strength again. And so it happens, Samson brings the columns of the temple to collapse with the help of his superhuman physical strength and pulls the court and thousands of Philistines and Sidka with him to their death. Delilah's grief for Samson is great.

Epilogue: “And so a man who was born to free his people from enslavement and persecution succeeded through his death to unite the tribes of Israel and to lead them against the Philistines. A man who was loved and betrayed by a woman. A woman from Gaza, called Delilah. "

production

Production notes, background

It is a production by First National Telecommunications Inc. Catalina Productions (II). The film was shot in Mexico.

Victor Mature, who plays Manoah, Samson's father, in this film, starred in the role of Samson in the 1949 film of the same name . For Mature it was his last role in a film before his death in August 1999. Unlike the film adaptations of 1949 and 1996 , Delilah survived Samson's suicide in this film and openly shows her grief.

The actor of Samson, Antony Hamilton, was sick with a virus with high fever and vomiting while he had to survive the final scenes of the film with the temple columns bursting. On the set he was congratulated on his realistic acting work for these circumstances. For Hamilton, who grew up in Australia, it was his second film, but his first in a leading role.

history

Delilah , also Delilah or Dalila, was a Philistine woman, as passed down through the Tanach and the Old Testament of the Bible , who betrayed the Israelite judge Samson , also Shimshon or Simon, whereby she handed him over to his enemies. Samson, considered invincible, was given invincible strength by God. A razor should never get on his hair, because then he would lose his strength. Samson fell in love with the girl who belonged to the Philistine people . When she asked him for the fourth time the secret of his strength, he revealed his secret. Delilah then called for the Philistine princes, who cut off Samson's hair in his sleep and then blinded him as well. Since the Bible says nothing more about Delilah after that, it remains in the dark what happened to her. Maybe she was in the temple of the god Dagan when Samson brought it down with his regained strength and thus - according to the Bible - killed more people than during his lifetime.

publication

The television film premiered on April 1, 1984 in the USA on the ABC program . It was first shown in France in May 2009. It was also published in Spain, Hungary, Venezuela and the Federal Republic of Germany.

On January 22, 2009 the film was released on DVD with a German soundtrack. and

criticism

On the Rotten Tomatoes website, which scores movie reviews, Samson and Delilah only got 33% positive reviews.

Kino.de stated that the couple Samson and Delilah and their story are "among the most famous in the Bible" and have been filmed many times. It continued: “Lee Philips version from 1984 is certainly not one of the highlights. The American TV production is reminiscent of inexpensive B-movies and sometimes seems involuntarily funny. However, the handsome leading actors Antony Hamilton and Belinda Bauer deserve praise for doing their job very well. "

Matt Page wrote on Bible Films that a link between the 1984 version and the 1949 version of DeMilles was that Victor Mature was in both and that Max von Sydow was also in two of these adaptations, the 1984 and 1996 versions contribute. He went on to say that this version was a particularly lame version of the story, the main purpose of which may have been to show a lot of bare skin from both Samson and Delilah. Only Sydow and Jose Ferrer rated a decent performance in their supporting roles, the rest of the film was pretty terrible. Antony Hamilton's performance in particular was rated very negatively. It is also strange that the Dagon Temple is open on all sides in all three films, which makes it difficult to understand why so many people died in the collapse, since they could have run away in all directions.

For Academic-Bible.com the film was a love drama based on biblical motifs in an exotic setting.

The lexicon of international film found: "A television production that does not come close to Cecil B. DeMille's naive colossal play of the same name."

Award

  • 1984: Emmy nomination in the category "exceptional achievements in hairstyles" (Jan Van Uchelen)

Further film versions of the material

In addition to silent, short and television episode films, here are some of the most famous versions:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Samson and Delilah adS Trivia IMDb (English)
  2. ↑ Samson and Delilah adS releasedat.com (English) with the original trailer
  3. ↑ Samson and Delilah Fig. DVD case (in the picture: Antony Hamilton, Belinda Bauer)
  4. ↑ Samson and Delilah adS Rotten Tomatoes (English)
  5. ↑ Samson and Delilah (1984) TV history epic about the famous biblical couple. adS kino.de. Retrieved November 19, 2017.
  6. ↑ Samson and Delilah (1984) adS biblefilm.blogspot.de (English)
  7. ↑ Samson and Delilah ; USA 1984 adS academic-bible.com. Retrieved November 19, 2017.
  8. ↑ Samson and Delilah. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed November 19, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  9. ↑ Films about Samson adS biblefilms.blogspot.de (English)