Cain and Abel (2009)

I discovered a Korean series on the UK version of Netflix last week (just before it expired...) which has been given the English title of Cain and Abel, but is set in modern times. At 20 episodes long, the first of which is over an hour long, I only managed to watch the first episode, but thought I'd post my findings for anyone interested enough to want to give it a look.

The series takes place in a hospital and is centred around two brothers, both of whom are doctors. One (Lee Seon Woo), seems to be some superstar surgeon that swans in to the hospital from elsewhere for special surgeries; whereas the other (Lee Cho-in) prefers to work in the emergency room, where homeless people turn up for treatment with life threatening conditions, only for him to swoop in and offer for payment for their treatment to be "added to his account".

On top of this both of the brothers' parents are also at the hospital. The father, somewhat oddly for a show based on a patriarchal story, is in a coma (so far at least) and so present and yet somehow absent. I suppose this might be some kind of metaphor for the way Adam seems strangely estranged from his children, given that, according to the most popular reading of the text, there are only four people on earth at that point in the story.

More interesting is the mother character, who has some sort of senior medical role at the hospital - at least that's what I infer from the fact she wears a white coat and keeps walking into rooms barking orders at younger looking doctors. She is also somewhat estranged from Lee Cho-in. The two have to talk in a professional context, but both there is conflict, both personally and professionally.

All of which brings me to the naming of this show. Korea has a large Christian community, but I have no idea to what the Bible has permeated the wider culture, which gives me a range of questions. Is the 'Cain and Abel' tag a literal translation, or something that Netflix, (or whoever first brought it to the English-speaking world), called it in order to grab viewers attention? Is one of the key players in the production a Christian? None of the leading characters' names seems to be linked to the original story so at what point did this become a "Cain and Abel" story?

Indeed thus far the story fits the set-up of the Jacob and Esau story at least as much that of Cain and Abel. Even the start of the show - which starts ahead of the rest of the main story with Lee Cho-in staggering through the desert injured - could be as much About Isaac's sons as Adam's. It also seems like naming the series after a story which famously climaxes in the murder of one of the two protagonists potentially reduces the tension. But then, if the story is not widely known in Korea then perhaps that was less of an issue.

Sadly this disappeared before I could watch any more of it, so it's possible that it's still 18 episodes away from the story reaching any kind of biblical parallel, but the IMDb summary does suggest that things do continue along biblical lines as the series progresses:

Based on the biblical story of Adam and Eve's first two sons, Cain and Abel is about Cain's jealousy towards his brother Abel. Lee Cho In is a very gifted doctor who has everything that he wants whereas his older brother, Seon Woo, is jealous of all the attention that Cho In receives. Seon Woo blames his brother for taking everything good in his life away from him. Seon Woo blames Cho In for getting their father's love, getting more recognition as a doctor, and for stealing the woman he loves.

The Bible: In the Beginning (1966)

The Bible (John Huston, 1966) has come to be known, somewhat unfairly, as the film that killed the biblical epic. It's a charge that somehow persists despite three major objections. Firstly, it hardly makes sense to blame a single film for destroying a genre, and even if did, that accusation should surely be pointed at The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) which blew £25 million for very little return, rather than at this. Secondly because rather than being an example of the worst of the genre it is surely one of it's best. Indeed, in concluding his masterful survey of the films of the Hebrew Bible, Jon Solomon cites it as one of the three "most representative and iconographical Old Testament depictions of the twentieth century" (175).

More significantly, of course is the fact that rumours of the genre's demise turn out to have been greatly exaggerated. Whilst Jesus Christ, Superstar, released just seven short years later, is not exactly an epic, it would have seemed hard to argue in 1973, that the Hollywood Bible film was enjoying anything other than reasonable health.

Huston himself was one of the greatest figures in Hollywood. He burst onto the scene in 1941 with the brilliant PI flick The Maltese Falcon before heading to the front line of World War II and creating a series of documentaries for the army. Key Largo and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (both 1948) reunited him with Bogart, as did The African Queen (1951) and the spoof, Beat the Devil (1953) and his catalogue of famous films extended all the way beyond Prizzi's Honor in 1985. In between times he found time to continue the Hollywood dynasty founded by his father Walter, with three of his five children (Anjelica, Tony and Danny) going on to have prominent roles in Hollywood, as well as his grandson Jack, who had the lead role in the 2016 version of Ben-Hur.

Houston acted too., Most famously in Polanski's Chinatown (1974), but also here as an amiable Noah. Both Alec Guinness and Charlie Chaplin had initially been considered for the role, but Huston brings a cheerful sense of purpose to the impending destruction of humankind.  All this however is only after a masterful creation sequence and the sight of Michael Parks and Ulla Bergryd cavorting in the altogether behind a series of strategically-placed plants.

For the opening sequences, Huston narrates the opening chapter of Genesis over a series of stunning collection of images of the natural world: molten lava bubbles and flows as the land is separated from the sea; a gigantic sun rises, and moves across the skies, as the greater light is brought forth; and swarms of fish burst through the waters of the deep, as the creatures of the seas are created.

What is impressive about the creation sequence, in addition to the jaw dropping beauty of the images, is the way they so skilfully plot a course between a seven-day type literalist interpretation on the one hand, and more metaphorical readings on the other. Just like the written text, the viewer looks at the raw material and is able to apply their own interpretation. Furthermore, even after numerous nature documentaries and a number of cheap rip-offs the sequence still creates a sense of awe, even if Huston's use of the archaic King James Version and one of the more conventional parts of the soundtrack date things a little.

The soundtrack excels elsewhere however. Following the creation of Adam, and then Eve the fall and the scenes where Cain (Richard Harris) kills his brother are accompanied by more atonal music. This combined with the bizarre poses Harris strikes, and the low and then high camera angles make this whole sequence strange and disorientating. Whilst the narration is rigidly literal to the text, the film uses the more cinematic elements of image and sound to suggest this more mythical reading.

The one exception to this is Huston's Noah segment, which goes for more of a light-hearted family comedy feel. Gone is the slavish dependence (or at least the appearance of it) on the biblical text. Instead get other characters get to speak, such as Noah's wife who doesn't quite understand what is happening and Noah's disbelieving compatriots insulting him and calling him "stupid".Noah himself gets to use words and phrases not found in the text of Genesis such as when he suggests that the tigers are "only great cats" who can survive on milk from the other animals. Interspersed with this we get Huston mugging for the camera, visual jokes about the tortoises being last on to the arc and the slapstick spectacle of Noah sticking his foot in a bucket of pitch and sliding down the top deck. It's not that these homely touches are necessarily that bad, just that they feel somewhat out of place with the broody, otherworldly tone struck by the rest of the film. Huston rarely appeared in his own pictures, and perhaps this misstep gives a suggestion as to why. With that on top of having to manage an on-set zoo, it's hardly surprising he was repeatedly heard to quip "I don't know how God managed, I'm having a terrible time" (Huston 320).

In some ways, however, the film's episodic and inconsistent nature does mark it as a film of transition. Following the poor box office performance by both The Bible and The Greatest Story Ever Told, big studios seemed more reluctant to outlay immense budgets for biblical epics. Instead the 70s were featured the broadcast of numerous made-for-TV series marking the "migration of biblical narratives into the medium of television" (Meyer 232).

The rest of the film returns to this more pre-historic feel, aided by some fantastic high contrast lighting with gives so much of the film this eerie aura. Stephen Boyd's Nimrod, complete with a painted on mono-brow, shots his arrow to the sky and quickly finds there is no longer anyone who can understand his orders and then we swiftly move on to the sight of George C. Scott's Abraham leaving Ur.

Again the film does well presenting the main stories here (birth of Ishmael, visitation of the angels, the fall of Sodom and the aborted sacrifice of Isaac) in biblically faithful fashion whilst also questioning the legitimacy of that presentation. Particularly strange is the sight of Abraham's three ethereal visitors interchangeably using Peter O'Toole's head and an orgy scene dreamed up for Sodom that is more creepy than it is titillating.

The way these scenes pan out leaves Abraham's story, which comprises almost the film's entire second act, as some sort of hope for humanity, even as it hints of the rocky, even traumatic road ahead. The jump from a scene of he and Isaac walking stealthily through the chillingly charred remains of Sodom, to preparing for Abraham to kill his child, provokes anger rather than reverence. Abraham is troubled, but also haunted by the temperamental God who commands him. His willingness to sacrifice his son is more an act of fear of what might happen if he refuses than one of faithful service.

It's a fitting end to what is - in contrast to the majority of epics that went before it - "a personal film on a gigantic scale (Forshey 146). In some ways that is far more reflective of Genesis itself. Whilst chapter one paints of a broad scale, from there on in it's the story of God with a string of individuals - Adam, Cain, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Huston's film not only gets this, but its highly literal narration, in tandem with its dark and primitive feel, underlines the mythological nature of the texts giving much of the film a strange sense of the dawn of time, and the primitive nature of the cultures involved. Whilst the change of tone in the Noah section is a little misplaced, it's hard to deny to boldness of Huston's artistic vision.
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- Forshey, Gerald E. (1992) American Religious and Biblical Spectaculars Westport CT: Praeger.
- Huston, John (1981) An Open Book. London: Macmillian.
- Meyer, Stephen C. (2015) Epic Sound: Music in Postwar Hollywood Biblical Films, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
- Solomon, Jon. (2001) The Ancient World in the Cinema, (Revised and expanded edition). New Haven: Yale University Press.

La Sacra Bibbia/After Six Days (1920)

With so many silent films lost to the ages, we should be grateful even for those where the remains are only part of what was originally projected. Nevertheless, it's hard not to be a little aggrieved that the print of La Sacra Bibbia (also known as just La Bibbia) that remains is a butchered version edited down for a re-issue. Indeed Sacra Bibbia was reissued at least twice, once in 1929 (as After Six Days) at the advent of the sound era, and once as late a 1946, for which a trailer was put together boasting of a $3 million and promising a cast of 10,000. The film's publicists also made much of the film being shot at the "exact locations" though the artefacts that are shown seem more like modern re-creations than the famous landmarks themselves.

The version that remains is the 1929 version, edited down from the original and replacing the original (reference free) title cards with an earnest, but dull narration. According to Campbell and Pitts La Bibbia was released as a series of one reelers (1981: 12) and a copy of the original Joseph reel found it's way into the Joye collection and survives in the BFI's archive. The fragment (which I reviewed here) indicates some of what was lost. In addition to the intertitles, the re-issue also cropped the image, disastrously on more than a few occasions.

What remains, however, is still a testament to what was the strength of the Italian silent epic. It was in Italy that the historical epic was born (Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei, 1908) and for all the attention given to Griffith's Birth of a Nation it was Cabiria that took the epic film to a whole new level. Indeed Griffith is reputed to have admitted Cabiria inspired him to make Intolerance what it was. La Bibbia retains much of the grandeur and spectacle of those films and in its own right contains numerous shots for which it deserves to be remembered.

The film was directed by Armando Vay and Dr Piero Antonio Gariazzo. These days Gariazzo is better remembered for his commentary than his filmmaking. Bertilini only mentions him for his 1919 book Il Teatro Muto and his expression of a sentiment more widely connected with Alfred Hitchcock, "Whether they are skilled or not, film actors and actresses are like puppets" (Bertilini 2013: 259).

Unsurprisingly the acting is not particularly memorable, but the compositions and imagery are what really stand out. The earliest scenes give a sense of creation and must have inspired Huston and Dino De Laurentiis' sort-of remake in 1966. Eve appears for the first time as smoke rises from Adam's sleeping body. The two frolic in the garden before embracing and taking a bit out of the forbidden fruit almost simultaneously. Moments later a furtive Cain, dominating the foreground and shooting furious looks directly at the camera forlornly pokes his sacrifice knowing it will fail whilst in the rear of the shot, almost off camera, his brother contentedly carries on.

The brief scenes of the Ark and are unspectacular, but nevertheless the curve of the unfinished boat's hull and the struts that support it form a pleasing backdrop to shots of Noah and his family. Once the rains come in earnest, however, the images are far more disturbing. First Doré's "The Deluge" is evoked as people desperately climb on a rock hoping for salvation; then a wider shot of dead bodies piled up just above the rising waters as the rains continue to lash down; then finally a double exposure brings the camera closer to some of these, now ghostly, corpses floating away whilst the camera ploughs on in the opposite direction.

However it's the Tower of Babel that lives longest in the memory. Here's it's depicted as a towering ziggurat, so colossal that it's top disappears into the clouds off the top of even an ultra-wide shot. It both reflects and emboldens Bruegel's famous painting (1563) and Doré's engraving (1865) amongst others, soaring above the seemingly minute people milling about below. Another highlight of these opening scenes is the spectacular destruction of Sodom, as the disastrous angelic visit to Lot ends in brimstone raining down on the city in a whirl of sparks and smoke.

In contrast to these more eye-catching, spectacular scenes, the Joseph episode neatly emphasises Mrs Potiphar's obsession with him, notably the voyeuristic pleasure she finds secretly watching him. In a darkened foreground she watches him silently through a grill, briefly facing the camera as she bites her bottom lip in ecstasy. The theme of the audience watching someone watching someone else has been replayed numerous times since, another reminder of Hitchcock. When Pharaoh remembers his dreams a matte shot shows cows running above his head, before animated stalks of wheat appear. The section's use of low and high angles to reinforce the power dynamics of the courtroom scene.

Moses' appearance on the big screen here was possibly the last time before DeMille made his indelible mark two or three years later. The differences are striking. For example rather than carrying around a mighty staff, Moses' rod is more reminiscent of a magic wand. Suddenly it feels like DeMille might have been compensating for something. Moses also has horns in the style of Michelangelo's statue (1513-1515) - just one of a number of ways in which the film's portrayal resembles the famous sculpture, something DeMille made much of when promoting his 1956 remake with Charlton Heston. That said, the crossing of the Red Sea - here portrayed using a rather clumsy matte shot - is not a patch on DeMille's first attempt just a few years later.

Indeed after such a striking first half the second part of the film is less impressive. Once Moses has installed Joshua as his successor and wandered up the mountain to meet his maker, the remaining footage skips to the story of Solomon, perhaps suggesting that a scenario or two are missing here. Solomon shows his wisdom, threatens to cut a baby in half before being wowed by the Queen of Sheba in a scene full of over-the-top headdresses. Eventually he ends up a pagan orgy with her in scenes strongly reminiscent of the later Solomon and Sheba (1959).

By then, the film, or this cut of it at least, has rather lost its way and like the Hebrew Bible itself, the narrative thread rather trails off. Nevertheless, there is so much to be appreciated in the rest of the film it is a shame that it has had so little attention,  neither amongst silent cinema fans, nor amongst academics. Even if what we have is only a pale reflection of what once was, La Sacra Bibbia deserves to be better remembered.

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- Bertilini, Giogio (ed.) Silent Italian Cinema, Bloomington: Indiana University Press
- Campbell, Richard C. and Pitts, Michael R. (1981) The Bible on Film: A Checklist, 1897–1980, Metuchen, NJ, and London: Scarecrow Press.
- Gariazzo, Piero Antonio (1919) Il Teatro Muto Turin: Lattes, cited in Pitassio, Francesco (2013) Famous Actors, Famous |Actresses: Notes on Acting Style in Italian Silent Films" cited in Bertilini, Giogio (ed.) Silent Italian Cinema, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, p.259

Biblical Fratricide in Film

I'm going to be writing a short entry for the Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception on Fratricide, so I thought I'd sketch down a few thoughts here first of all.

The obvious place to start is with Bible films that cover the story of Cain and Abel. There are a good number of these going all the way back to 1911's Cain et Abel through to a brief cameo is 2009's Year One (pictured). Aside from those two others really stand out. Firstly there's Huston's 1966 The Bible: In The Beginning which has a visceral primitive quality about it. The other is from 2003's The Real Old Testament, which has some great lines in it. "I like Nod. Nod is great" and (on the mark of Cain) "Y'know those kinds of things are just so complicated that..."

Cain and Abel is such a prominent story that it's tempting to just leave it there, but there are a few other stories of (potential) fratricide in the rest of Genesis. Firstly you have Jacob and Esau, which whilst the story itself ends on reconcilliation echoed down the ages and seems to have played a part in the subsequent conflicts between the Hebrews and the Edomites (c.f. the famous verse in Malachi 1:3). Sadly no Bible film that I can recall covers this conflict.

The second is also more about fratricidal intent which manages not to avoid in murder - Joseph at the hands of his jealous brothers. Again Joseph hasn't featured in a huge number of Bible films, although the Emmy award winning entry for "The Bible Collection" series, starring Ben Kingsley, stands out amongst television (and as the emphasis for the EBR is on reception rather than specifically film that should be fine). And of course there's the Lloyd-Webber thing. Incidentally both of these passages are evoked in consecutive chapters of Paul's letter to the Romans (8:28-9 and 9:13), although the first doesn't use a direct quotation.

Finally there is the story of Hamor and Jacob from Genesis. Whilst the Bible doesn't really make it clear how closely Jacob and Hamor are, the story as portrayed in the 1998 Malese film La Genèse emphasises the "brotherly" nature of the relationships between the heads of the different tribes and clans. Furthermore once Hamor's son Shechem marries Jacob's daughter Dinah then the two men become related, through partaking in Hebrew ritual as well as marriage. The subsequent murder of Shechem by Jacob's sons more than touches on fratricide.

But aside from Bible films there are other, more contemporary films which explore the issues. Perhaps the most well known film to draw on the resonances of the Cain and Abel story is East of Eden starring James Dean (1955). The two brothers (Cal and Aron) squabble over their father Adam's favouritism as well as a woman they are both attracted to. Whilst the film does not end with fratricide, many of the same emotions are thrust under the microscope, and the film deliberately nods in the direction of the Biblical narrative.

Another film that has been linked to the Cain and Abel story is Milos Forman's 1984 Amadeus which has been likened to the Cain and Abel story by Gregory Allen Robbins.

Lastly, there is the TV series Kane and Abel (1985). I've never seen it although I remember my parents being taken with it when it aired on TV. Whilst the Kane and Abel here aren't brothers, there's a sense of brotherhood rivalry between the two men which draws additional mythical power from the similarly named biblical story.

The future actually promises a couple of further possibilities. Firstly there's rumours of Will Smith starring and producing a vampire take on the ancient story, likely to be called The Legend of Cain. There's also Warrior a cross between the story of Cain and Abel and that of Rocky. Actually that was released in September last year (2011), but I missed it then and haven't had a chance to catch it yet. I'd be interested to know what anyone who caught it thought. I notice it's currently sat at 145 in the IMDB top 250.

Comedy Bible Films

The invention of cinema opened up whole new possibilities for comedy. Whilst the very early comic films could only reproduce slapstick acts from the theatre, once cinema began to find its own visual language, it quickly became the most popular comic medium. It was some time however before comedians sought to explore religious subjects, kept at bay initially by early twentieth century piety, and then later by the Hayes code. Little surprise, then, that the first religious comedies were made in Europe where the code had little effect.

Spanish director Luis Buñuel's career included numerous films which took a scathing look at religious themes, but it wasn't until his 1969 film La Voie Lactée (The Milky Way) that he featured characters from the Bible. Jesus appeared in several scenes - as a small boy; being persuaded by Mary not to shave off his beard; at the wedding of Cana; and failing to heal two blind men - as does a modern-day Hosea.

The most well-known comic Bible film is undoubtedly Monty Python's Life of Brian filmed ten years later in 1979. In many respects however it is not a Bible film at all. Jesus makes only the briefest of cameos at the start of the film, and whilst we do later encounter a leper whom Jesus has healed, the rest of the material is purely fictional. The film tells the story of Brian, also a crucified, first century, Jewish leader. For a comic film, it's remarkably well informed, indeed it was the Python's research that ultimately persuaded them that rather than focus on Jesus, they should target religion instead. Yet the primary reason for its enduring popularity is first and foremost because it is consistently funny, featuring prominently in numerous lists of the greatest comic films.

Having witnessed the success of Life of Brian, other filmmakers tried to make religious comedies in a similar style. The following year, Dudley Moore and Richard Pryor starred in Wholly Moses, which blatantly plagiarised the Python's idea, only this time it told the story of a man whose life bore remarkable similarities to Moses. Unfortunately, it wasn't nearly as funny, barely raising a laugh throughout.

Moses also starred in Mel Brooks' compilation of historical skits in The History of the World: Part 1. Moses (played by Brooks) appears in a style strongly reminiscent of DeMille's 1956 Ten Commandments, carrying not two but three tablets of stone. In a moment of clumsiness he drops one of the tablets and God's original fifteen commandments are cut down to ten. Later on Brooks also appears as a waiter at the Last Supper, ultimately finding himself holding a halo-like plate behind Jesus' head when Leonardo turns up to paint a group portrait.

The storm of controversy caused by 1988's Last Temptation of Christ meant that film studios were far too nervous to release any potentially blasphemous comic films in the 90s, but the new century has witnessed a new crop of comedy films with some basis in the stories of the Bible. Genesis has been a particularly popular source of material spawning films such as Year One (Cain and Abel to Sodom and Gomorrah), Evan Almighty (a modernisation of the Noah story), The God Complex (most of Genesis, but also includes a few other parts of the Bible) and The Real Old Testament (Creation to Jacob and his wives). The Ten turned to Exodus for its inspiration instead, building a sketch around each of Moses's Commandments.

Of these more recent films, The Real Old Testament (pictured above) is easily the funniest, despite being an independent, low-budget film. It succeeds because, like Life of Brian, it is so very familiar with its source material. This gives it a strong base from which to mine the humour which exists in the gap between biblical culture and our own, and help viewers to gain a new perspective on stories that are, at times, over familiar.

What's significant about these films is that two of the five were made by established studios on big budgets, demonstrating that it has, at last, become acceptable to mix the Bible with comedy.

Year One (2009)

With his beard and his stout figure Jack Black has often seemed a littel prehistoric compared to his liposuctionned, bodywaxed, Hollywood cohorts. So it was perhaps only a matter of time until someone offered him a role playing a caveman. Black plays the role of Zed alongside Michael Cerra's Oh in Year One, the latest film from producer Judd Apatow (Superbad, Knocked Up, Anchorman) and writer / director Harold Ramis (Analyze This, Groundhog Day).

Yes, this is gross-out comedy version of ancient history set largely in the Old Testament. There are characters eating poo, strange things happening at orgies and jokes about sex aplenty. The Carry On team never did the Bible, but if they had have done, it would probably look something like this. (And those films do appear to have been somewhat influential on Year One). Certainly Ramis’ loose approach to history has more in common with those films and Mel Brookes’ History of the World Part 1 than the relatively meticulous Life of Brian.

Yet in other ways, the film has much in common with Life of Brian - the benchmark for any historical/religious comedy. Both films feature a leading man who may or may not be the chosen one (in fact 'Messiah' simply means anointed or chosen one). Both films use the Bible, but in neither is it the primary focus of the story, and both films are keen to put across the idea that religious figures are unnecessary because we can make our own destiny. Yet whereas Life of Brian managed to make that point fairly effectively whilst still being funny, Year One puts the comedy on hold and brings in the crescendoing orchestra.

That said, as a comedy, Year One does manage to be reasonably amusing, and manages to find a good deal of original material from a subject that has been done many times before. Perhaps part of that is due to its structure. After Zed and Oh are thrown out of their tribe for eating the forbidden fruit, the first half of the film turns into a historical road movie, with the pair meeting a number of Jesus’ ancestors  (Cain and Abel, Adam and then Abraham and Isaac). But as they wander they discover their tribe has become enslaved and taken to Sodom. The second half of the movie is set in Sodom itself. It’s the quest to free the women they love, Maya and Eema, in the hope that such heroics will make the girls love them back.

Zed and Oh reject Adam’s family, with their murderous brother and their bizarre sleeping arrangements, and the tribe of the circumcision-obsessed Abraham, as well as the God that both families follow, but when they reach Sodom things become a bit more inconsistent. The idea of there being gods who require human sacrifice is rightly rejected, and at times any idea of god also seems to be disregarded. Yet eventually Zed prays and ultimately what he prays for does come to pass, in a way that at least suggests God’s approval of Zed’s new message. Some would call it providential timing, others pure coincidence, but at the very least, Zed’s “make your own destiny” message seems to rely on that coincidence in order to gain wider acceptance.

Jesus only mentioned Sodom a couple of times, but interestingly, he also suggests that had miracles occurred there, the city would have seen the errors of its ways. “If the miracles that were performed in you (Capernaum) had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day.” (Matthew’s Gospel, 11:23). It’s perhaps not the message Black and co. were seeking to send, but it’s interesting that they can’t quite get away from the fact that there’s more to life to sex and fart jokes.

This article was originally published at rejesus.co.uk

Caïn et Abel (Cain and Abel)

Henri Andréani, Pathé, France, 1911, 5 mins
I'm not going to be able to find stills for many of these silent films, so I'll use images from the Renaissance paintings instead. This is not entirely without merit. As I mentioned on Tuesday Judith Buchanan pointd out how these early Bible films will have been influenced, to some degree at least, by the paintings of the events they were portrying. This is Il Tintoretto from 1550-53. Thanks to Art and the Bible and Loving God Center for these.

The opening scene of Caïn et Abel is a cramped shot of Cain and Abel arguing and almost coming to blows but for the intervention of Adam and Eve. It's a shot that's significant in a number of ways. Firstly, because much of this film is shot in a closer proximity than was standard for the time. The film is heavily marked with Pathé touches. Both its general 'look' and the style of the angels and the manner of their appearance etc. are all very familiar from The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ. But whereas those films stood at a distance as if the viewer were sat watching the production in a theatre, here there are a number of mid-shots.

The claustrophobia nature of these shots, which may have been shockingly groundbreaking at the time, not only adds to the tension but expresses it in spatial terms. There's a real sense of cabin fever - these four people are the only humans in the world and they are starting to get on each other's nerves. The composition is interesting elsewhere as well, using foregrounding and backgrounding quite effectively.

The opening shot is also significant because it introduces Adam and Eve into a story from the Bible in which they are not really involved. They are, of course, present in the narrative's prologue and epilogue, but their absence during the story itself has caused some scholars to suggest that the story itself has been incorporated, into the "J" source. It's notable, for example, that Adam's line grows from Seth rather than Cain.

The third point of significance here is that all four memberd of the family are portrayed as cavemen, wearing animal skins - Eve looks like an archetype for Raquel Welch's One Million BC role for example - but also later we see Cain's murder weapon is a flint axe. For obvious reasons these four characters cannot really be located at a specific point in the accepted chronology, but [edit] Gen 3:20 describes God using animal skins to make clothes for Adam and Eve as they leave the Garden of Eden. (Thanks to Timothy D. Lee for reminding me of that one - see comments below). [/edit]

What's striking, though, is the contrast with the Bible's early descriptions of Adam and Eve's attire - "and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons." (Gen 3:7). Here, however, dead animal has usurped dead fruit leaves, as Abel's animal sacrifice will prove superior to Cain's fruits of the ground.

Similarly, Cain is depicted as brutish, which is perhaps only to be expected, but also of low intelligence. Indeed, this is often used as a humourous device. And of course the timing is interesting given that the Cain and Abel story is currently doing the rounds in cinemas in Year One which is also a comedy.

So all in all, it's interesting to watch how the narrative unfolds from this opening. The intertitles for this print were in German: there are so few copies of films of this age that you have to make do with what you have. Some of them followed the practice of citing actual scriptures. Gen 4:4-5, Gen 4:10 and Gen 4:14 are all cited. There's a brief scene guide at the bottom.

God's rejection of Cain's sacrifice is shown by his sacrifice fire going out, whereas Abel's keeps on burning. IN contrast to the text of Genesis the murder takes place not in the field, but in the rock outcrop where the (attempted) sacrifices have just taken place. Cain goes and finds a flint axe and strikes Abel neither completely spontaneous, nor entirely premeditated.

As soon as Abel dies Cain is wracked with guilt. He covers the the body with stones, as if making an altar or a monument. There was something very Girardian about this. Girard's theory about sacrifice, which approach the subject via anthropology, talks about mimetic desire (the mechanism by which someone else having something makes another person want it), which is present to a degree here here in that the two sacrifices take place at the same time and in the same shot, though Cain wanted to make the sacrifice anyway. But more significantly it talks about how human sacrifice used to happen to heal discord within the community, and, crucially, how the graves (or the memory) of the murdered / sacrificed individual becomes sacred, and revered. I'm not sure I've explained that very well, but the manner in which the body was covered - far more elaborately than was stricly required to cover the body, grabbed my attention.

Of course God is not fooled, and an angel appears (accompanied by cardboard rays of light as in other Pathé films of the period, the line about Abel's blood crying out from the ground is given via intertitle and the body is revealed. Cain runs off, but then sees a vision of Abel's body, and then of the angel once more.

What's interesting about this is that Abel's appearance seems to be a demonstration of Cain's inner torment. I don't think Abel's body is meant to be physically present anymore than the dagger is physically present in Macbeth. This is the first time I have seen such psychologising in an early film - aside from that expressed in the faces of the actors. Does it also suggest that the angel he sees is also in his mind?

Lastly, there's quite a long shot at the end of the film of Cain dragging himself along the floor, through the narrow, muddy passageway between two rocks. It's fairly open to interpretation, but for me it symbolises both the journey he will undertake to Nod, and his now lowly status (he is dragging himself through the mud).

The scenes are as follows:

[Extra-biblical Episode - Cain and Abel argue]
Cain and Abel's sacrifices - (Gen 4:3-4)
Murder of Abel - (Gen 4:8b)
God confronts Cain - (Gen 4:9-14)
Cain flees to Nod - (Gen 4:15)

Campbell and Pitts only mention this film is passing (p.5) as part of their discussion of the 1910 film Cain and Abel by Gaumon. They also mention a third film on this story, also called Cain and Abel made in the US the same year (1911) by Vitagraph. The summary from the BFI archive, which formerly cited the film as 1909 is this:

The story of Cain and Abel. Cain and Abel and their parents, all dressed in skins, are standing around the camp fire. Cain argues with Abel but their mother, Eve, separates them and Adam sends him off (55). Cain and Abel both prepare to make sacrifices upon two stone altars. Abel sacrifices a lamb, which burns properly, but Cain's sacrifice of farm produce does not, and he throws it to the ground in disgust and envy. He makes threatening gestures towards Abel, who is praying at his sacrifice (129). Cain retreats a short distance and thinks about killing Abel, demonstrating how he will use his stone axe. Abel says a few words to him but when he turns his back Cain fells him with the axe, and covers his body with stone slabs (237). Cain is struck by lightning several times, and a shining ray appears from which an angel carrying a sword emerges. Cain cowers before the angel, who asks him what he has done. The angel points his sword at Cain, then causes the stones to fall from Abel's body. Cain rises and stumbles away (303). [Short section 297-298ft showing Cain rising to his feet, is repeated twice]. Cain clambers and stumbles over the rocks until he is stopped by a vision of Abel's body, which turns into the angel. The angel strikes Cain on the shoulder with his sword, and curses him, before disappearing (388). Cain crawls amongst the rocks, struggles through a wood, and falls to the ground (463). Blank. The end. (467ft. 35mm).

First Reviews for Year One

Year One doesn't open here until Friday (so say the posters on the buses in London), and I've not been sent a review copy, so my own review of this film will have to wait until the weekend (in what is the busiest couple of weeks ever). Meanwhile, Peter Chattaway's review is up at Christianity Today, as well as a brief piece on other films about Genesis (I wrote a longer article similar to this back in 2005). And on his blog Peter offers some points he "considered making in my review but, for whatever reason, didn't". Here's a snippet of Peter's review:

Along the way, people talk about God every now and then, but his role in the story is rather diminished; indeed, where the Bible ascribes certain actions to God, the film consistently ascribes them to regular people (except for one lightning bolt, the timing of which may point to a higher cause). It is not God but Zed's fellow villagers who expel him for eating the forbidden fruit; it is not God but Adam (Ramis) whose questions prompt Cain to complain that he isn't Abel's "keeper"; and it is not God who saves Isaac from being sacrificed at the last minute but Zed and Oh, who stumble onto the scene just as Abraham is raising his knife.
...
On a certain level, comedies like these can serve a valid purpose, inasmuch as they highlight the vast gulf in sensibilities between ancient cultures and our own; it is not a bad thing to realize just how "strange" the ancient world was, or how "strange" we would seem to them.
...
Occasionally amusing but not very funny, and far too coarse and stupid to be all that enlightening, Year One has to rank as the most disappointing Bible-themed movie by a major studio in decades

Peter's not alone in disliking this one. It's currently only got 5.5 at IMDb, 37% at Metacritic, and just 20% at Rotten Tomatoes. That said both Variety and The New York Times liked it, though the usually generous Roger Ebert is not a fan.