There's no question that THE STORY OF RUTH would have been a lot more different if it emerged as a Cecil B. DeMille production at the hight of DeMiller's spectacular career at Paramount. I'm sure he would have made certain that the writers expanded on the story to bring as much spectacle and battle scenes as possible in order to bring it up to his usual "sand and sandals" requirements.
But Henry Koster has taken a simple story, retained the simplistic values of the plot and made it a moving story of a young woman from a pagan culture who gradually amends her sinful ways and comes to worship only one invisible God. Koster has had wonderful success with his two very rugged looking male stars--TOM TRYON (whose role occupies the first half of the lengthy film, as a Hebrew) and STUART WHITMAN as the man Ruth comes to love. JEFF MORROW is also stalwart and appealing as the man who tries to win her love but fails miserably.
Alas, we now come to the real drawback of the film--ELANA EDEN, the unknown actress who plays the all important title role--Ruth, and her acting is, to put it kindly, "limited". In fact, it is only one notch above the kind of grade school emoting we had from Maria Montez during the height of her adventures with Jon Hall and Sabu. Furthermore, while undeniably beautiful in an exotic way, her accent makes much of her dialog in need of the caption feature. Her wooden performance is perhaps the reason for her very brief screen career in what should have been a star-making role.
Surprisingly, despite this main drawback, THE STORY OF RUTH has an intelligent script, sensible direction and a warm performance by PEGGY WOOD as Ruth's mother-in-law, Naomi. Miss Wood makes up for the lack of animation in Elana Eden's role.
Summing up: Handsomely produced, it's an interesting tale told smoothly without a lot of pomp and circumstance that usually accompanies these sort of Biblical tales. And Franz Waxman's music is stirring.
But Henry Koster has taken a simple story, retained the simplistic values of the plot and made it a moving story of a young woman from a pagan culture who gradually amends her sinful ways and comes to worship only one invisible God. Koster has had wonderful success with his two very rugged looking male stars--TOM TRYON (whose role occupies the first half of the lengthy film, as a Hebrew) and STUART WHITMAN as the man Ruth comes to love. JEFF MORROW is also stalwart and appealing as the man who tries to win her love but fails miserably.
Alas, we now come to the real drawback of the film--ELANA EDEN, the unknown actress who plays the all important title role--Ruth, and her acting is, to put it kindly, "limited". In fact, it is only one notch above the kind of grade school emoting we had from Maria Montez during the height of her adventures with Jon Hall and Sabu. Furthermore, while undeniably beautiful in an exotic way, her accent makes much of her dialog in need of the caption feature. Her wooden performance is perhaps the reason for her very brief screen career in what should have been a star-making role.
Surprisingly, despite this main drawback, THE STORY OF RUTH has an intelligent script, sensible direction and a warm performance by PEGGY WOOD as Ruth's mother-in-law, Naomi. Miss Wood makes up for the lack of animation in Elana Eden's role.
Summing up: Handsomely produced, it's an interesting tale told smoothly without a lot of pomp and circumstance that usually accompanies these sort of Biblical tales. And Franz Waxman's music is stirring.