What is it about Hollywood and the Sandal Epic? There are wonderful, human stories in the Bible and the Classics that don't need any embellishment or additional material to make interesting, even great movies. Take "The Story of Ruth" as an example. The real Ruth is a small book (4 chapters) in the Bible with enough material to make a full length movie without the imaginative script writing that "The Story of Ruth" incorporates. There's sex and seduction, (And it came to pass at midnight, that the man was afraid, and turned himself: and, behold, a woman lay at his feet. And he said, Who art thou? And she answered, I am Ruth thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman; Ruth 3: 8-9), intrigue (Boaz manipulates his rival into renouncing his claim to Ruth and Naomi's land; Ruth 4: 1-9) and love and faith (for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; Ruth 1: 16).
Instead of sticking to a good story, the movie invents a Ruth who serves as a Priestess of a pagan god, which only serves as a reason to hold a courtroom drama. There are also two klutzy secret agents from the Moab Mossad whose demise is taken straight from the Apocryphal story of "Daniel and Susanna". Traditionally, Ruth is thought to have been a redhead, as were most Moabites. While Elana Eden is a stunning beauty, her hair is the wrong color and too stylishly coiffed for a poor woman of 900 BCE with the occupation of gleaner. In the Bible, Boaz is certainly not the dumb pushover that Stuart Whitman portrays.
All of this is likely due to the movie's release in 1960. It's quite possible that Hollywood, in its wisdom, decided that the real Ruth was too raunchy a commodity at the time. Perhaps, instead of this fantasy, someone in our more enlightened era will make a movie that is realistic and follows the original.
Instead of sticking to a good story, the movie invents a Ruth who serves as a Priestess of a pagan god, which only serves as a reason to hold a courtroom drama. There are also two klutzy secret agents from the Moab Mossad whose demise is taken straight from the Apocryphal story of "Daniel and Susanna". Traditionally, Ruth is thought to have been a redhead, as were most Moabites. While Elana Eden is a stunning beauty, her hair is the wrong color and too stylishly coiffed for a poor woman of 900 BCE with the occupation of gleaner. In the Bible, Boaz is certainly not the dumb pushover that Stuart Whitman portrays.
All of this is likely due to the movie's release in 1960. It's quite possible that Hollywood, in its wisdom, decided that the real Ruth was too raunchy a commodity at the time. Perhaps, instead of this fantasy, someone in our more enlightened era will make a movie that is realistic and follows the original.