"The Bible: In the Beginning..." is an Academy-Award (for its score) nominated, American movie from 50 years ago. It was written by Christopher Fry and directed by John Huston, already a 2-time Academy Award winner at this point. The title basically says already what this is exactly about. It is a collection of contents from the bible that do not have anything to do with each other. So it is basically several movies in one. This is maybe a good thing from the perspective that this is a truly long film and you do not have to watch it all at once without anything getting lost. IMDb lists several runtimes, but I did not see the version of 3.5 house (luckily), but the one with 174 minutes.
I personally somewhat enjoyed the first two sequences with Adam & Eve and Noah, played by Huston himself. He sure has the looks for the part and it's no rarity that he acts in his films too. He is also an Oscar nominee for performing. Unfortunately, everything afterward (Abraham, Isaac) was not of particular interest to me, maybe because I wasn't even vaguely familiar with the story in contrast to the first under 90 minutes. Had the film ended around 1.5 hours, I probably would have been more generous with my rating, but this way it was really dragging at times and occasionally a tedious watch. Also the acting could not really convince me, even if the script wasn't bad and had quite a few fairly smart moments.
If you have a religious background or are just interested in religiously themed films, this one is worth checking out. Unfortunately, neither of the two applies to me and still I liked half of the film at least to some extent. However, as a whole, I felt this was too long (wouldn't even want to imagine a version that is still almost another hour longer) and I lost interest in the character at some point I have to admit. That's why I would not recommend it to general audiences. Admittedly, it's not worse than "The Passion of the Christ".
I personally somewhat enjoyed the first two sequences with Adam & Eve and Noah, played by Huston himself. He sure has the looks for the part and it's no rarity that he acts in his films too. He is also an Oscar nominee for performing. Unfortunately, everything afterward (Abraham, Isaac) was not of particular interest to me, maybe because I wasn't even vaguely familiar with the story in contrast to the first under 90 minutes. Had the film ended around 1.5 hours, I probably would have been more generous with my rating, but this way it was really dragging at times and occasionally a tedious watch. Also the acting could not really convince me, even if the script wasn't bad and had quite a few fairly smart moments.
If you have a religious background or are just interested in religiously themed films, this one is worth checking out. Unfortunately, neither of the two applies to me and still I liked half of the film at least to some extent. However, as a whole, I felt this was too long (wouldn't even want to imagine a version that is still almost another hour longer) and I lost interest in the character at some point I have to admit. That's why I would not recommend it to general audiences. Admittedly, it's not worse than "The Passion of the Christ".