"SAMSON AND DELILAH".........THE ORIGINAL BAD HAIR DAY......

Samson And Delilah (1949)    Going back to watch an old Cecil B. DeMille biblical epic is great fun for about the first 20 minutes or so........

                Then it starts to sink in........that this is what the entire 130 minute movie is going to look like........

                  The stodgy, pageant-like arrangement of the actors, the slow, methodical pacing, the actors' heavy burden as they wrestle with the florid overwritten pronouncements that function as the dialogue.........

                   The overall effect is like watching a Sunday School play written for 3rd graders........ performed by adults.......

                  DeMille stands as a singular figure in Hollywood, his long career as a purveyor of spectacle stretching from the silent to the sound era.   Like Hitchcock, Ford and Hawks, he 'branded' himself as a recognizable superstar.........as a producer-director, he was as much the main attraction of his movies as the stars he cast in them. (Most of his films would kick off with a expository narration.......by DeMille himself)

                 But here's the crushing irony.......as an actual filmmaker, DeMille was barely functional. Possessing not a smidgen of cinematic talent, he had no idea how to set up a scene, position actors, or effectively use camera movement and editing to tell a story.

                    Everyone remembers the iconic moments from his films.....the Red Sea parting, Samson knockin' down the pillars........but just try sitting through any DeMille film from beginning to end. They're a punishing, excruciating tour through a series of turgid tableaux, with actors stiffly posed, reciting reams of ornate gibberish.....(....."even a ruby loses luster beside your lips...")

                   We'll say this much for "Samson And Delilah".......it's by far the easiest to digest of the DeMille Bible parades.  Hedy Lamarr simmered and sizzled as Delilah........even garbed in ankle-length Old Testament robes, she always found a way to expose her gorgeous long legs. And you've got to love the old-fashioned physique of that slab 'o beef, Victor Mature......no real muscles on him, he's simply a big, barrel-chested guy.  (The studio balked at DeMille's idea of using the far more physically sculpted Steve Reeves....yes, that Steve Reeves, who went on to star in "Herclules")

                 Two more MVP we'll mention.......George Sanders, playing the Philistine tyrant as another one of his sarcastic, wittily dissolute sophisticates, purring out his dialogue as if he's still slinging barbs in "All About Eve".....and 15 year old Russ Tamblyn, itching to conk Sanders' Imperial guards with a well-place slingshot rock........

                 2 stars (**).....but that's only if you can stay awake for that long expected special effects extravaganza (damn good for 1949) in which the much maligned Mature really brings down the house........(and a very special 4 stars **** to Hedy Lamarr, whose telecommunications invention led to all sorts of future electronic wonders.....including Wi-Fi...….no joke....look it up.)