Marginal Noah's Ark cartoons

I recently posted a list of 'all' the screen productions to adapt the story of Noah and the flood. As ever with these things you soon remember how impossible it is to list them 'all': there are just too many. With a story as popular as this there are always brief fantasy sequences where lead characters imagine themselves as Noah, or something that someone has just created for YouTube (how many views of an original Noah adaptation make it a worthy production in itself).

Anyway, as part of that process I went back on forth several times on a handful of films that all landed somewhere around the cut-off line, and, seeing as I'm wanting to post some brief thoughts about some of the Noah / flood / Ark films I've watched recently, I thought I'd start with these, particularly as the first two go back to the 1920s.

Amateur Night on the Ark (1923)

Between 1921 and 1929 American animation pioneer Paul Terry produces a series of over 450 cartoons called Aesop's Fables Cartoons, the earliest of which, such as The Cat and the Canary (1922) were more closely related to Aesop than Amateur Night on the Ark. Terry had started out at Thanhouser animating a character called Farmer Alfa, and when he left them in 1917 to set out on his own he brought his "star" Alfa with him. 

The Alfa character a bald older man with a white beard, featured in many of Terry's silent animations and here he appears as the sole human aboard a steamboat called "Ark" which aside from the chimney emit smoke as it powers the boat forward, otherwise resembles Noah's Ark (see above). But he's never identified as Noah, and his role doesn't really correspond to the biblical character. The Amateur Night" is a variety show which families of animals (certainly not just pairs) turn up for, and Alfa is takes the door money. Later he appears on stage, but is chased off stage when a box match he is performing in is exposed as a fake. 

Really, then, Terry's black and white cartoon uses aspects of the Noah story, the shape of the boat, the look of the character, the exotic animals, in a more modern context, with a certain amount of  anthropomorphising of the animals. However, aside from the use of the word “Ark” and the presence of animals and an older man, Amateur Night has little to do with the flood story, other than cultural resonance, so I might not qualify it at all as a Noah film, but for it's similarities with... 

Availability: YouTube.

Noah's Lark (1929)

As with the above, Noah's Lark, directed by Dave Fleischer, starts off as recognisably as a modern-twist on the biblical tale. Noah is portrayed as a modern-era sailor replete with an anchor tattoo on his forearm and accompanied by The Sailor's Hornpipe. If that all sounds a little reminiscent of a certain spinach-chumping sea-farer then you won't be surprised to know that it was Dave Fleischer's big brother Max who adapted the Popeye comic strip for the screen in 1933 (the comic strip began in 1929 as well).

As with Amateur Night the original biblical premise, a bunch of animals stuck on a boat captained by a human, is merely a leaping off point for Fleischer's flights of fancy and artistic imagination. Here it spins it off far beyond the typical edges of what that usually entails, as the animals -- who here seem more of a crew -- arrive on land to a fairground and get involved in all kinds of antics and visual jokes (a monkey plucking a tiger's stripes as bass notes in the soundtrack being a particularly good gag given this cartoon was from the early months of the talkie era).

So again the links to the biblical story are fairly tangential, but the use of the song "The animals came in Two by Two" over the opening credits, the explicit reference to Noah in the title, and the pun on Ark, the fear of the (flood) waters and perhaps just the sense of their joy/relief when they arrive on land once again tip their hat just a little more in that direction than the previous film. 

Availability YouTube.

Yogi’s Ark Lark (1972)

As with the above films, Yogi's Ark Lark has little to do with the flood story, other than cultural resonances. Again the boat in question is called “Noah’s Ark” and their are animals (Yogi Bear and a host of his other, early 1970s Hanna Barbera cartoon colleagues) and an older man who is named Noah. Essentially Yogi and friends get together and share their worries about the state of their home environments, such as their homes are being destroyed by litter and over-population and so decide to leave it all behind on an ark and head off in search of "the perfect place" (a phrase that becomes the title of a song that is used regularly throughout the show).

What was interesting for me was how the complaints about the state of the world were far more soft-right than you would get on this kind of show today making a host of usually fairly wacky characters seem rather old in yearning for a lost past they (presumably) ever experienced. Moreover, ultimately , they decide on a rather ‘Big Society’ solution of sorting out those issues themselves, with Top Cat and Lenny, for example, deciding not only to clean up their alley, but their entire city.

It all makes for pretty dull entertainment. Jokes are thin on the ground, with even the moments of slapstick falling short (actually if anyone had literally fallen short of something, it might have been the funniest thing in the programme) and the Noah parallels are extremely thin indeed. The Noah character really only feels like he's been brought on board [wink] to make the catchy title stick.

Availablity: archive.org.

Animaniacs: Noah’s Lark (1993)

The Animaniacs take on the flood story comes in episode 33 Cartoons in Wakko's Body where it sits alongside two other stories The Big Kiss and Hiccup. I'm not overly familiar with Animaniacs, so my comments will probably seem a bit odd to those who know the show, but essentially this is a kids-focussed cartoon, although very much with a few adult jokes smuggled in for the benefit of any adults watching. The New York comic style of deadpan humour is particularly to the fore, not least in Noah’s detached cynicism. Other jokes include some late-to-the-party, yet snobby, hippos and Noah’s fear of spiders.

Jokes aside this one sticks fairly closely to the plot. It's certainly far more recognisably a Noah story than the three episodes above. Interestingly, Noah (pictured above) is a lot younger here with dark hair and no beard. He also likes playing with one of those table tennis bats with the ball attached to it with a bit of elastic. While I'd have to consult with an archaeologist to be sure, I don't think those are in the Bible...

Availability: The only place I found this online gave me PC issues.

(Image taken from the Cartoonatics blog)

Noah's Ark: A Musical Adventure (Arca de Noé, Brazil, 2024)

Despite all my research into the story of the flood in recent months, somehow I almost missed the release of Noah's Ark: A Musical Adventure, or as it is known in it's native Brazil, simply Arca de Noé. It's an animated film that sits squarely in the box of animation for kids and hit theatres in the UK rather aptly during the summer holidays when parents often find themselves seeking shelter from the rain.

Arca is inspired by a 1975 poem by Brazilian poet, musician, playwright and diplomat Vinicius de Moraes, perhaps best known outside of his own country for pioneering bossa nova music on the soundtrack for Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus, 1959) along with his co-writer Antônio Carlos Jobim, singer Elizeth Cardoso and guitarist João Gilberto. Moraes' poem (translated here) offers a loving tribute to the biodiversity of the flood story. Noah gets a mention, early on but Moraes quickly moves on to his family, before there's a flurry of neat little descriptions of animal activity overflowing with life.

If this adaptation of the flood story comes to us via Moraes, directors Alois Di Leo and Sergio Machado and their writers Heloísa Périssé and Ingrid Guimarães have certainly brought in plenty of their own ideas too. Neither the Bible nor Moraes talk about two musical mice who having not received an invitation to board the ark, delivered courtesy of literal blue birds, are determined to try and get on anyway. The bluebirds, certainly as represented by their leader Kilgore, tip the hat to various cultural landmarks: the delivery company; Apocalypse Now;* the former Twitter logo; and the computer game turned movie Angry Birds. In a way they typify the movie, which always feels like it's trying to be, or at least refer to, something else. At times it feels like Madagascar (2005) or Singin' in the Rain (1952) or The Lion King (1995). Even Noah's quirky coloured shades seem to borrow from El Arca (dir: Juan Pablo Buscarini, 2007) although I suppose that may in turn derive from an illustrated children's book based on Moraes' poem that's popular in both South American countries. 

Like various animated re-tellings of the flood story, Noah's role is fairly small (the last animated Noah film to percolate down to local cinemas in the UK, 2015's Two by Two, left him out entirely). We witness him hearing God's call at the start of the film, and he crops up regularly throughout, but we do so mainly because one of the film's two rodent heroes Vini and Tom/Tito awakes during the moment of revelation and so goes to investigate.

The moment itself draws on God's call to Moses in films like The Prince of Egypt, although here the booming words from the sky are accompanied by southern lights-style colours in the sky. This is particularly apt given that I've been enjoying their northern counterparts causing wonders this week amidst the aesthetically pleasing aftermath of the X7.1 electromagnetic solar storm.

In a strange sort of way it's God's part of the conversation with Noah that seems most reminiscent of the call of Moses. God does not come out of it particularly well. He's presented as unstable and unpredictable. Initially he tells Noah of his plans to destroy the world and the audience can sympathise with Noah when he questions what he's told with "don't you think that's a bit much?" Recently I've been comparing the way Jewish tradition contrasts Noah, who in the Bible fails to protest when God informs him of his plans, with Abraham and Moses, both of whom question God and win some concessions as a result. So if God is shown in this film to be a bit changeable, that certainly has its origins in the Bible. 

Soon after, God moves into a more angry mode when Noah fails to agree straight away: "am I stuttering?" he thunders back in a way that will perturb both fans of the Bible/Torah/Qur'an and anyone who, like me, is finding the repeated use of that particular phrase deeply grating. But then when Noah asks what God's going to do while he is building the boat, God seems slightly hurt as he suggests "I can get the invitations out". 

Having realised God's plans, the two mice (or are they rats? I'm sure they're called both during the course of the film) decide to try and sneak aboard, even though the invitations are quite clear that it's only one male and female of every species. Back at Noah's house this part of God's dictum is also causing some consternation. "What about other types of families?" Noah's granddaughter Susana asks. It's fair to say Susana is not on board with the whole operation. When her grandfather fist reveals his plans she exclaims "What if everyone drowns? That's going to look so bad for him."

Interestingly Susana becomes the film's most prominent human from that moment on. She's a similar age to most of the film's target audience (about 7 I would imagine) and is enchanted by and becomes friends with many of the animals. Still it's interesting that concerns that pass many by are put so simply and eloquently on the lips of a young child. From a biblical point of view, it's interesting that Noah's three sons are not really part of the film. Susana is not presented as an orphan, nor is there any mention of them. Given the kind of film this is, I think that's quite a bold and positive move. The symmetry of the eight people on board the ark in Genesis doesn't completely preclude infants, and it makes the story far more relatable to its core audience (children).

The film's other interesting decision in this respect is that -- aside from the call of Noah -- Noah's wife (called Ruth here) gets equal screen time her husband thereafter. This is something of a first. Both Jennifer Connelly in Noah (2014) and Joanne Whalley in The Ark (2015) play more-developed versions of Noah's wife than the character found in the Bible whose actions and contributions are not recorded; whose words are not documented; and who is mentioned only as a passenger. Here her contribution is certainly felt. She brings warmth, wisdom and compassion to proceedings, a care for the animals and for Susana. 

More recent depictions of the flood story, particularly 2014's Noah, have been criticised for their all-white casts (see Wil Gafney, Micah David Naziri and Ryan Herring for example). But this film is not a Hollywood film, it's from Brazil, a country where, according to its latest census, "45.3% of the country’s population reported being brown.... 43.5% reported being white... 10.2%, black". So it's perhaps not surprising that this ethnic mix is reflected in the three human characters: Susana is depicted with brown skin, Noah is White and Ruth is depicted as and voiced by a Black woman. It's surprising that it's taken so long for this mix of nationalities to emerge, given that the conclusion of the story is that all people (and thus all ethnicities)  come from the handful of humans who survive the flood.

If questions about "other types of families" and the use of a diverse 'cast' sound a little too modern, then this probably isn't the film for you. The film delights in slipping anachronistic elements of the modern world into this almost pre-historic story. There are mentions of selfies, body shaming and going viral. The Scar-esque male lion Baruk even tells the other animals to "give me a like" at one point. 

Anyway, having got wind of the ark's imminent departure, Tom and Vini (who is presumably named after Moraes) try to get onboard anyway. Their first effort sees them simply walking up the gang-plank along with all the other animals, simply hoping not to get seen. However, as they progress up the slope their mood turns to fear. Indeed, there's an unusual atmosphere among all the animals. The film really brings out their differing concerns. Big creatures are concerned about stepping on smaller ones. Some worry other animals will eat them. The latter fears turn out to be not without foundation. When the verbosely loquacious Baruk and some of his predator cronies see so many animals in such a confined space they draw on another modern phrase describing the scene as an "all you can eat buffet". I can't quite work out if giving the lion a very similar first name to a recent US President is a deliberate reference to American self-interest overseas, but perhaps I'm reading too much into that.

But the musical duo's initial efforts flounder when they meet Nina, the female mouse who had received an official invite. Having two male mice turn up throws her off guard and the resulting kerfuffle sees plan come into action. A second, much smaller boat, housing some of the other less-desirable animals has set sail to try and board the ark surreptitiously. Here we find that the cockroaches, mosquitoes and head lice turn out to be of a far greater moral character than the king of the beasts, Baruk.

Despite Baruk having seized control of the assembled animals, through fear and intimidation, he has one fatal flaw -- a desire to be lauded as a musician and it's here where the mice and their new friends are able to use their musical prowess to save the day. But this whole extended section is overly complicated and dull and even an interesting subplot involving a low-on-confidence dove can't keep the second half afloat. Moreover, despite a number of songs being crammed into this final section, none of the film's music really stands out. I wanted Tom and Vini to have at least one really good ballad. 

That said, the film is certainly not as bad as its current 4.3 rating on IMDb suggests. There are some interesting ideas as well as some fun ones and, among the plethora of nods to other films, there's some originality there as well. That's quite an achievement given 4000 years of adaptations of the flood story. So even if it's nowhere near The Prince of Egypt (1998) its certainly superior to 2002's Jonah a VeggieTales Movie.  

* I owe that observation to Jeremy Clarke's review of the film.

'Full' list of Noah and the Ark films

The above still is from Ermanno Olmi's Genesi: La creazione e il diluvio (Genesis: Creation and Flood, 1994) part of The Bible Collection. 

Many years ago I posted a "full list" of Adam and Eve films though it's perhaps not as complete as I thought it was back then. Nevertheless, given I'm looking at Noah films at the moment, I thought it was about time I posted a similar list of films about the flood and Noah. 

I've restricted these to films which either try and tell the story set in the ancient world, or that are offering a direct modernisation. That means I'm excluding films like Peter Weir's The Last Wave (1977) which offer modern parallels, but not explicitly, or Moonrise Kingdom (2012) which draw on the imagery and meaning, but aren't really 'doing the story' so to speak. Due to the short amount of material available I am including films where the Noah segment is only a significant part of a longer movie. I have included a couple of documentaries with dramatised sections, but I'm not sure about those. I might take them out later!

I'll be adding to this as I go along over the next few weeks, but for now, here's the list:

• The Tale of the Ark (dir. Arthur Melbourne Cooper, UK: 1909)
• The Deluge (dir. Richard Strauss, USA: 1911)
• Photoplay of Creation (dir. Charles Taze Russell, USA: 1914)
• La Sacra Bibbia (dir. Armando Vay & Piero Antonio Gariazzo, Italy: 1920)
• The Bible: The Deluge (dir. Rev Harwood Huntington & Edgar J Banks, USA: 1922)
• The Bible: Noah and the Ark (dir. Rev Harwood Huntington & Edgar J Banks, USA: 1922)
• Noah's Ark (dir. Michael Curtiz, USA: 1928)
• Amateur Night on the Ark (dir. Paul Terry, USA: 1923)
• Noah's Lark (Dave Fleischer, USA: 1929)
• Father Noah's Ark (dir. Wilfred Jackson, USA: 1933)
• Deluge (dir. Felix E. Feist, USA: 1933)
• Noah (BBC) (dir. André Obey, UK: 1946)
• The Green Pastures (dir. Marc Connelly & William Keighley, USA: 1936)
• Noah's Ark (dir. Bill Justice, USA: 1959)
• Noah (pr. BBC, UK: 1960)
• Mel-o-Toons: Noah's Ark (dir. unknown, USA: 1960)
• I patriarchi (dir. Marcello Baldi, It: 1963)
• Noah (wr. Joost van den Vondel, Belgian: 1964)
• The Bible : In the Beginning (dir. John Huston, USA/It: 1966)
• Mister Magoo's Noah's Ark (dir. Abe Levitow, USA: 1965)
• Yogi's Ark Lark (dir. Joseph Barbera & William Hanna, USA: 1972)
• In Search of Noah's Ark (dir. James L Conway, USA: 1976)
• Greatest Heroes of the Bible: The Story of Noah (dir. James L Conway, USA: 1978)
• Genesis Project: The Bible: Genesis (Prod: Campus Crusade, US: 1979)
• The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible: Noah's Ark (dir. Don Lusk; Ray Patterson, USA: 1986)
• In the Beginning: The Story of Noah (dir: Osamu Tezuka, Jp/It: 1986)
• Die Arche (dir. Klaus Georgi, E.Germany: 1987)
• Noah (dir. Thomas Stephan, E.Germany: 1990)
• Animaniacs: Noah's Lark (dir. Greg Reyna, USA: 1993)
• Genesis. Creation and the flood (Genesi: La creazione e il diluvio, dir. Ermanno Olmi , It/D/USA: 1994)
• Enchanted Tales: Noah's Ark (dir. Hazel Morgan, USA: 1994)
• Testament: The Bible in Animation: Creation and the Flood (dir. Yuri Kulakov, Russia/UK: 1996)
• Noah's Magic Ark (dir. Laura Shepherd, USA: 1996)
• Prophets Stories: Story of Nuh (dir. unknown, Egypt: 1998)
• Noah (dir. Ken Kwapis, USA: 1998)
• Noah's Ark (dir. John Irvin, D/USA: 1999)
• Fantasia 2000 (dir. James Algar, Gaëtan & Paul Brizzi, USA: 1999)
• Noah: He Walked With God (prod. Jehovah’s Witnesses, USA: 2004)  
• Evan Almighty (dir. Tom Shadyac , USA: 2007)
• Ark (dir. Grzegorz Jonkajtys, Marcin Kobylecki., Poland: 2007)
• El arca (dir. Juan Pablo Buscarini, Argentina/Italy: 2007)
• The God Complex (dir. Mark Pirro, USA: 2008)
• Veggie Tales: Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Noah's Umbrella (dir. Mike Nawrocki & John Wahba, USA: 2009)
• The Search for Noah's Ark (dir. Matt Bennett, UK: 2012)
• Unogumbe (Noye's Fludde) (dir. Mark Dornford May, South Africa: 2013)
• The Bible (dir. Crispin Reece, US: 2013)
• Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky , USA: 2014)
• The Ark (dir. Kenneth Glenaan, UK: 2015)
• Veggie Tales: Noah's Ark (dir. Mike Nawrocki, USA: 2015)
• Oops Noah has gone (Two by Two) (dir. Toby Genkel & Sean McCormack, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, USA: 2015)
• Stories of the Prophets: Prophet Nuh (prod.Visagaar Entertainments, 2017)
• Good Omens (dir. Douglas Mackinnon, UK/USA: 2019)
• Noah (dir. Douglas Mackinnon [Sight & Sound], UK/USA: 2019)
• Noah and the Flood (dir. Robert Savo, Bulgaria/Morocco: 2021)
• Days of Noah (dir. Dalton Thomas, Israel: 2022)
• Ark and the Darkness (dir. Ralph Strean, USA: 2024)
• Gênesis (Series) (prod. Record TV, Brazil: 2024)
• Noah's Ark: A Musical Adventure/Arca de Noé (dir. Alois Di Leo, Sergio Machado, Brazil/India/US: 2024)

A few notes

I've gone round and round in circles as to whether to include Amateur Night on the Ark (1923) and/or Noah's Lark (Dave Fleischer, USA: 1929) but ultimately decided to keep them both in, partly due to their proximity to one another both historically and in how they handle the material. Both are early, animated, black and white cartoon from the late silent era which use aspects of the Noah story in a more modern context, with a certain amount of anthropomorphising of the animals. For me, though, aside from the use of the word Ark and the presence of animals and an older man, Amateur Night has little to do with the flood story, other than cultural resonance. Noah's Lark, on the other hand, starts off recognisably as a modern-twist on the biblical tales, even if Fleischer's imagination and artistic freedom spins it off far beyond the expected edges of what that usually entails. They're both available on YouTube so let me know below if you disagree. 

There's a little more about Felix E. Feist's Deluge in this BFI article about disaster movies. It wrongly, in my opinion, calls it the first disaster movie. I think that title belongs to one of the early Last Days of Pompeii films, probably the 1908 one. Based on the description I'm also not entirely sure it merits its place on this list. But I'll leave it in for now.

I patriarchi (dir. Marcello Baldi, It: 1963) is often appended to the start of Giacobbe, l'uomo che lottò con Dio (Jacob: The Man Who Fought with God, 1963).  

Mister Magoo's Noah's Ark was perhaps released as part of a compilation of episodes called Mr Magoo at Sea along with his retelling of "Moby Dick" and Treasure Island (source TV Guide).

As with Amateur Night on the Ark above, Yogi's Ark Lark (Hanna Barbera, 1972), featuring Yogi Bear, Top Cat and a host of other Hanna-Barbera characters from the 1970s, probably falls the wrong side of the line in terms of it's use of the flood story. For one things there is no flood, and the only animals on-board are the anthropomorphised Bear and his friends, most of whom lack life partners. The title and biblical imagery is more of a prop for a round the world trip in search of the "Perfect Place" away from damage to their local environment(s).

One film I might have included but felt it didn't quite meet the criteria is The Noah (1975) written and directed by Daniel Bourla. It's a post-apocalyptic film best known for featuring Robert Strauss's last performance. From what I've read this is more metaphor than adaptation, but I may adjust this once I've actually seen it.

The two East German made short films Die Arche (1987) and Noah (1990) do appear to be different films, the first directed by Klaus Georgi, the latter (also known as Das Volk sind wir, that is we are the people) directed by Thomas Stephan. According to filmportal.de the latter was also part West German funded. 

An earlier version of this list included a title called L'Ancien Testament Tome: Le déluge (2005) cited by Verreth which he seems to have taken from this DVD set as the episode titles are identical. I can't quite read the writing at the bottom, but I did find another French website here which gives a cast list, and all of those actors performed in the 1978 series The Greatest Heroes of the Bible, already listed above. I suppose that could be an incredible coincidence, but that seems a pretty open and shut case. I could possibly have made a whole post about that detective job, and I suppose I still might if only to preserve the screen-grabs (I can't seem to that on archive.org at the moment).

"The Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception" entry on Noah includes The Story of the Prophet Nuh with Zaky (2009), but having watched this on YouTube, I don't think it really merits its place. It's not even an animation, just some narration over still images, with an occasional very basic animated effect.

An earlier version of this list included a title ¡Ups! El arca nos dejó (dir. Ana Medellín, Miguel Valdez-Lopez, 2015), but it turned out that this was an episode of a review show which covered Genkel & McCormack's film Two by Two, which incidentally has a separate IMDb page for a version of it called by another title All Creatures Big And Small (2015).

Gênesis (2024) is a Brazilian telenovella which is running at the time of posting. There's more about it on Record TV's website (the producers) including some footage from each episode, but I couldn't get all the way back to the start to count the episodes and I haven't the time right now to fully research it. Noah definitely features though.

 

Last updated: 21/10/2024

The Tale of the Ark (1909)

The earliest film about Noah and the flood is The Tale of the Ark (1909) by British animation pioneer Arthur Melbourne Cooper. It's currently available for free on BFIPlayer, in the UK at least, and seems to also have been circulated under the title Noah's Ark. I don't know much about Cooper, but he apparently learnt some of his skills from the legendary British cinema pioneer Birt Acres and while I'd love to get into all of that, I simply don't have the time at the moment. So I'll restrict myself to a few passing observations about the film itself.

The film begins with a young girl playing with a toy Noah's Ark, who soon tires and settles herself down for a nap. there's a cut, and the next shot is of the ark now resting on water, by grass. This is a charming framing device, which both contextualises this as a children's film (or at least one suitable for/aimed at children), while also putting it outside the scope of historical scrutiny. Years later another black and white film that featured Noah, The Green Pastures (1936) would employ a similar framing device.

The rest of the film is stop-motion animation. Plot-wise things are fairly straightforward. Noah opens the doors, the animals bring themselves on board, the rains comes forming a flood, then the water recedes and the animals disembark, but there are a number of nice touches here. Firstly while most of the animals file onto the ark fairly uniformly, the elephants provide a certain level of comedy, spinning and rolling about and heading off in different directions. This shows a level of advancement, of Cooper going beyond basic execution of a smoothly executed piece of animation, to include humour and give his characters personality.

Secondly I was struck by the way the waters gradually recede after the flood. I don't know whether the water was gradually drained off camera, or if it was gradually filled and the footage reversed, but again it perhaps could have been done with simple cuts but this seemed a superior approach.

Finally, Cooper again uses the elephants to lighten the tone and highlight his dexterity as an animator. When Noah and the animals disembark Noah lowers the ramp, but it's not placed quite right, at least, not for one of the elephants who uses their trunk to adjust it before going down. Again the fussiness / sense of  exasperatedly having to show Noah how to do it right is quite a complex thing to convey with animated figures.

For those wanting to read more about this film, David Shepherd wrote a paper on it for the Journal of Religion and Film back in 2016 called "Noah's Beasts  Were the Stars": Arthur Melbourne Cooper Noah’s Ark (1909)'.

In the Beginning: The Story of Noah (1986)

Back in 2020 I wrote an initial post about a Japanese anime series Kyuuyaku Seisho Monogatari (In the Beginning) initiated by the renown director Tezuka Osamu. I meant to write up a few entries of the series, particularly the ones that almost included Nehemiah, but apparently never got around to it. However, now I'm doing a deep dive on adaptations of Noah, I thought now would be a good time to revisit that entry at. least, and maybe start the ball rolling with the others.

As it happens, The Story of Noah, is not a bad place to start, because it was the pilot and was finished around 1986, six years before the project came to completion. Although Tezuka continued to work on other episodes of In the Beginning, he died in 1989 and the series was completed without him. So, not only was The Story of Noah the pilot, it was possibly also the standard to which the others would be compared. 

In terms of tone, these are in the same ball park as many Bible-related animated adaptations. It's generally trying to offer a dramatised standard take on the text. Some bits are simplified (the animals only go in pairs, not fourteens for clean animals), more adult content is left out (the story doesn't get to Genesis 9 where Noah gets drunk and naked) and it adds in extra material to make the story work as drama.

For example, in Genesis Noah doesn't speak until after the aforementioned drunkenness, here the filmmakers give him and his family some dialogue in earlier scenes. We also see Noah being mocked and encountering opposition which is also not in the biblical account (or elsewhere as far as I recall). These things attempt to make the ancient text into a modern drama.

As this is a series, there's some harmonisation to make all the episodes feel similar. The most obvious example of this is a mischievous cartoon fox who appears in each episode, but perhaps a bigger issue is that such an approach essentially takes a range of texts written in quite different genres and standardises their tone. This reinforces the impression of univocality rather than the diversity of the biblical texts.

Overall (based on these episodes) the series seems is probably going for presenting a version of the texts most would be happy with and then trying to present it in such a way as to make it accessible for kids (without alienating adults). Given that, it's surprising that the episode starts by giving rather more attention to humanity's "wickedness" than most such child-orientated adaptations. The episode starts briefly touching on the Gen 6:1-4 about the sons of God having children by human women. There's also a brief shot of a naked woman's chest, which I don't think I've seen in any other Noah film.

There are some other visual innovations.  When Noah hears God tell him to build an ark he also sees a vision where it's sketched out in a white line drawing in the sky. The idea of Moses seeing a vision is one that emerges in later Jewish texts. When Noah tells his family what's happened there's some scepticism, especially from Ham. As the episode progresses Ham is consistently the one who is most likely to question, challenge or disagree with what Noah is doing. While the episode where Ham tells his brothers about their father's nakedness is not included, nor Noah's resulting curse upon Ham's son Cush, this seems to be at least a nod to it. Ham is perhaps the off-white sheep of the family.

The biblical text, doesn't actually say how long it took to build the ark, with some suggesting it took more than 100 years, or that Noah had time to first grow the trees he would use to build it. Here, it takes 7 days a number that's agrees with the Mesopotamian pre-cursors to the biblical flood story. This gives Noah's neighbours plenty of time to mock Noah, his wife and her sons (this is an idea that is developed more in the New Testament and the Qu'ran) and this forms quite an extended sequence. Some of Noah's neighbours also discuss sabotaging the ark, an idea found in texts such as Tanchuma Noach.

Like many child-orientated Noah products in popular culture (as well as animated shorts, I'm thinking of the popular ark playsets) there are attempts to lighten the mood. For example, there is a big focus on the animals arriving and the family's wonder at all these strange beasts. There are also some moments of humour here, skunks, Ham asking the scorpions not to bite him, octopodes riding on the back of a turtle etc.

When the flood finally comes we see both rain falling from the sky and water coming from the deep. This is part of the text that modern readers often overlook but seems to derive from the ancient worldview from which these texts emerged, and the idea that something fundamental changed the geology and physical processes by which the earth runs.

The flood scene doesn't shy away from the fact that people are losing their lives, including a Danby-esque scene of survivors clinging to a rock. Shem and his wife even lament the death of the people they knew. It also looks like the cross-series fox is without a partner and he is rejected by the other animals as he tries to find the female fox. Noah's sons are also unhappy about the lone-fox surviving. As are the rabbits who it tracks down, planning to eat them. I'll avoid spoiling how these various fox related story lines resolve themselves, as it's the only part of the story which is not from the text of Genesis.

It's not only the fox who ends up hungry. By the time the rain stops and the boat lands, the family has gone without food for several days and the animals are looking similarly peckish. This isn't an angle I've seen explored before. Shem and his wife discuss the possibility of farming the animals once things are back to normal, but we're not told about Noah going on to plant a vineyard or of his agricultural innovations. The family's story ends with Noah's sacrifice, God's promises and the rainbow.

Overall this is definitely one of the better animated takes on the story, perhaps not surprising given Tezuka's reputation. I'm not sure if/when I'll get round to writing about the rest of the series, but if/when I do I hope those entries completed after Tezuka's death continue in the manner of this pilot entry.

Noah Adaptations p01: Introduction

I'm going to start a new series looking at adaptations of the Noah story, which is going to be broader than just film to look at other, earlier, media (including “The Deluge” (1840) by Francis Danby, above). But I'm also going to be looking at adaptation in an era of changed weather patterns and human responses to that, and the idea that adaptation has parallels with recycling. 

The obvious convergence point -- for those that know me -- is Darren Aronofsky's 2014 film Noah which presents Noah as a passionate environmentalist, whose absolute belief that God shares his passion drives him to almost wipe out his family (and therefore the remaining vestiges of destructive humanity).

I don't know that I have much more to say about it at this point. but if I have time I'll perhaps compose a super list of Noah films, though given the sheer number of animated takes on this film it might prove tricky to know where to put the cut-off point.

Also I'm on the hunt for a good reception history guide to Noah (sadly the Wiley Blackwell volume "Genesis Through the Centuries" is still a couple of years away from publication. I'm hoping my access to De Grutyer's "Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception" is still valid.

Greatest Heroes of the Bible: The Story of Noah

In terms of biblical chronology, this is the earliest story, and whilst the series wasn't broadcast in biblical order - the episode covering the Tower of Babel didn't air for another six months, for example - the first part of it did screen on the series' first day (Campbell and Pitts). The episode is presented as a single/joint episode in the complete box set that was released on DVD a couple of years ago.

The programme starts with a five minute creation sequence, very much in the mould of Huson's The Bible (1966) but with only a fraction of the budget. Then we are introduced to the main story, with a a certain amount of invented subplot to flesh things out a little. Here it takes what would is looking like the standard plot line for the series. God's "hero" is part of a tiny band of the faithful who take on a larger majority who are indifferent, if not openly hostile, to God. When conflict arises God intervenes in dramatic fashion. I've still got a way to work through the series but most of the episodes I have already reviewed follow this pattern. Slavery is a common motif - almost the defining sin of those who oppose God. As usual the invented parts of the plot are spruced up with biblical language even if it is found in completely the wrong context. "You shall surely die" Noah is warned at one point by the city's Karmir (with echoes of Airplane).

Here Noah is specifically marked out as a proto-John the Baptist - he even describes himself as a voice crying in the wilderness. Noah is played by Lew Ayres, whose career almost spanned back to the silent era, though he is best known for his role for 1930's All Quiet on the Western Front and for being Dr. Kildare in nine movies filmed in the early 1940s. Ayres, a conscientious objector in WWII cuts a far more sympathetic figure than Russell Crowe in Aronofsky's recent Noah (2014). That said, there is one scene from Aronfsky's film that is very similar to one here, where the people of the local settlement, spurred on by their charismatic if self-obsessed patriarch, attack the ark just moments before the rains come.

Special effects are somewhat mixed. A now familiar drawn-on bolt of lightning accounts for the city's high priest. Likewise God's voice comes from a billowing cloud. Aside from that the use of (presumably) a miniature ark combined well with footage that shows a torrent rushing through trees, and people slipping off rocks into the water. The effects are rather undermined by other shots and sequencing, however. Noah and his family emerge from the ark into the bone-dry, arid deserts of (presumably) Southern California, looking as if it hasn't seen rain for months, rather than having been under water until recently.

Ayres does a pretty good job in the lead role, even if he is given some rather pungent dialogue at times. The acting of those who oppose him is pretty hammy, but again, that's emerging as a standard feature of the series as a whole.

==========
Campbell, Richard H. and Pitts, Michael R., (1981) The Bible on Film: A Checklist, 1897-1980, Metuchen, N.J., & London: The Scarecrow Press.

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.
================
- 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.

==========================
- 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

Noah (2014)

In comparison to the majority of Bible movies, films about Noah have tended to take a more creative approach to telling the story. Michael Curtiz's 1929 Noah's Ark wraps the main story up in a "modern" day train crash story; thimbles and pipe cleaners lend a distinct charm to Disney's 1959 stop motion short of the same name; and the 1999 TV film, also of the same name, bizarrely combines the story of Noah with that of Lot.

Darren Aronofsky's Noah (2014), then, is hardly the first film about Noah to take a more creative approach. His is a mythic take, on a story which permeated so many different ancient cultures. Whilst this version is clearly an adaptation of the Jewish version of the story - and whilst Aronofsky himself is an atheist, his Jewish background has clearly been influential - the fantastical approach he has taken with his subject matter works to evoke a story that was known to far more people groups than simply the descendants of Jacob.

Aronofsky particularly seems to revel in the fact that the Bible is often a strange book, and that few parts of it embody that 'oddness' more than Genesis. Indeed, I don't think you've really taken the Bible seriously until you acknowledge this inherent oddness. Take for example these words from the prologue to the Noah story:

"When people began to multiply...and daughters were born to them, the 'sons of God' saw that they were fair and took wives for themselves... the 'sons of God' went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them..." (Gen 6:1-4)

And that's one of the passages that Aronofsky leaves out. Add in those making covenants by dismembering animal carcasses and perambulating between them; Lot sleeping with both his daughters on consecutive nights, and Abraham being just moments away from sacrificially chopping up his only son and you have one weird book. Of course, Genesis is not necessarily endorsing all the  actions it describes. However, all too often people behave as if that the world of Genesis was broadly similar to out own, where people thought, felt and generally acted in a similar manner to the way in which we do today, despite the substantial evidence to the contrary, not least in our main source for these very stories.

What I most appreciate about Aronofsky's Noah, therefore, is that he grasps, and indeed seems to relish, this strange 'otherness'. The film was over twenty years in the making after a project at school on the subject first caught his attention. The result is probably the first Bible film to feel like a cross between Lord of the Rings, Waterworld and Mad Max. As John Wilson put it, Noah isn't so much an adaptation, as a film that uses Genesis as a "mood board" (Front Row, 2014). The resulting film posses a strangely uneven style which many have disliked, but again this is what makes the film so bizarre and so interesting.

On the surface of course, it's a biblical epic and some of the scenes that Aronofsky has created here are amongst the very best in the genre. Chief among them are the minutes leading up to the launch of the ark which, on the big screen at least, are spectacular. Noah rescues his son Ham from the descendants of Cain, escapes to the ark whilst the 'watchers' protect the ark from the on-rushing hordes, which culminates in their angelic souls spectacularly beaming back up to heaven just as the waters of the deep break forth lifting the ark up and away.  Clint Mansell's score, quite different from the kind of music he has typically produced for Aronofsky, ratchets up the tension magnificently. It maybe the 21st century, but it nevertheless feels very like the moment the Red Sea parts in the 1956 version of The Ten Commandments.

But this sequence also contains exactly those elements which feel so very far away from the kind of movie that DeMille and his ilk would ever have produced. The 'watchers' are angels (the Nephilim of Gen 4) who have quite literally fallen to earth, and found as they crashed to earth that the earth, or rather its rock, has clung to their bodies. The resulting 'rock monsters' look like the kind of special effect Ray Harryhausen might have created for Jason and the Argonauts (1963). When they die defending the ark their souls are sucked back up to heaven in great beams of light that feels like something from Independence Day.

The movie's other breathtaking sequence also illustrates the diverse mix of styles that Aronofsky brings together. Shortly after the launch of the ark, Noah retells his family the story of creation accompanied by a time-lapse-styled montage portraying an evolutionary act of creation with a hint of stop-motion. The sequence ends at the Tree of Life (with all the echoes of Aronofsky's earlier The Fountain) with a glowing snakeskin wrapped around Noah's arm like tefillin straps. Throw in the lunar-esque Icelandic landscape; a cameo from Anthony Hopkins that veers a little too closely to Billy Crystal's turn in The Princess Bride; and Noah's nightmares alternating between blood underfoot and water overhead, and it's not hard to see why many dislike the film's unevenness.

The unevenness both unsettles viewers and hints at the divergent sources that lay behind the version that is cherished today. It's not that Aronofsky has pinpointed the exact cultural context of the original stories. He hasn't and clearly didn't intended to. But he has created a context where some of the questions that the text raises, and that the story's characters would have had to face, can be explored. In particular the time spent on the ark during the flood, so often skipped over in other versions of the story, turns into a dark psychological drama, as Noah feels inescapably drawn to take The Creator's work to its grimly 'logical' conclusion by ending even his own family line.

It's a film, then, that takes seriously the nature of the destruction that "The Creator" (as God is called in this version) unleashes during this story - a point that few critics seemed to appreciated. Ironically, many Christians railed against the film's portrayal of Noah as a homicidal maniac, overlooking the fact that of course the number of deaths at Noah's hands are only a fraction of those who drown in the flood sent by God. To assess this film's Noah as a psychopath is something of a miscalculation. Noah doesn't want to kill his granddaughter - and in fact ultimately he cannot - he just believes that this is what his creator is calling him to do. Noah's readiness to follow even the most horrific of his creator's commands brings him into similar territory as Abraham, sacrificing his offspring because he is convinced God wills it.

As Peter Chattaway has observed, Aronofsky's other films "often dwell on the idea that purity or perfection is impossible, and that the pursuit of these things is self-destructive." (Chattaway 2014). It's not hard to see how the filmmakers unpack similar themes in Noah. Noah's environmentalist perfectionism is such that he rebukes his child for picking a flower; his destructive obsession drives him to almost kill his grandchild. On a physical level the floodwaters have destroyed the world, but there is also huge destruction on an emotional level. Little wonder that the film's epilogue opens with Noah, alone, getting drunk on the beach. Years before this film was released Aronofsky described this as an indication of Noah's "survivor's guilt" (Aronofsky, 2007), but Noah is also continuing to agonise over the questions which dominated the film's third act. Was he was right or wrong to spare Ila's child? Has his 'compassion' ultimately doomed the world to be destroyed by humans all over again? How can he face his family given how close he came to committing such an horrific act? It's no coincidence that Aronofsky framing of Crowe's Noah repeatedly echoes the famous final shot of The Searchers (1956).

It's here that his daughter-in-law Ila's words help rehabilitate Noah, in the eyes of his family, to himself, and also, to some extent, to the viewer:

He chose you for a reason, Noah. He showed you the wickedness of man and knew you would not look away. And you saw goodness too. The choice was put in your hands because he put it there. He asked you to decide if we were worth saving. And you chose mercy. You chose love. He has given us a second chance. Be a father, be a grandfather. Help us to do better this time. Help us start again."

On all three fronts the rehabilitation is only partly successful, such trauma is not easily overcome, but it does manage to leave the film on a positive note, whilst also challenging its audience to re-examine its own environmental credentials. This, then, is a more hopeful ending than Aronofsky's later mother! which suggests that this film's second chance, if it even is only a second chance, is doomed to fail and will ultimately lead The Creator to endlessly destroy and misguidedly restart the world again. Here though, the despair is not yet so overwhelming. Noah may have begun amidst environmental apocalypse (with an implied modern parallel), but it ends still offering us a fig leaf of hope, urging us to act before its too late.

===============================
Aronofsky, Darren (2007). "Just Say Noah" Interviewed by Ryan Gibley for The Guardian, 27 April. Available online - https://www.theguardian.com/film/2007/apr/27/1

Chattaway, Peter T., (2014) "Flood Theology" in Books and Culture Vol 20 No.3 (May/June 2014)
Available online - http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2014/mayjun/flood-theology.html?paging=off

Front Row (2014) BBC Radio 4, 4 April. Available online - https://soundcloud.com/front-row-weekly/fr-kate-winslet-richard-ayoade

Two by Two/Ooops Noah has Gone (2015)

Earlier in the year the BBC’s Tony Jordan told us the first draft of his script for The Ark ended with the first drop of rain. Now it’s two months later and for this new Noah movie that’s the starting point rather than it’s end.

You see whereas many Noah films are concerned with the protagonist and his struggle with his role, in this one Noah is entirely absent. Instead the focus is on the animals on-board the ark, or rather those that are not quite on-board. You see somehow our hero Finny, and his new friend Leah have missed the boat, literally. Finny wasn't meant to be on it in the first place. He and his dad Dave had stowed away on board disguised as the other half of Leah’s family. But when the two go exploring they get separated and end up not being on-board when the ark gets swept away.

It all leads to a Finding Nemo type plot only involving two children and two parents (Leah’s mum, Hazel, is also part of the cast). There’s been criticism in some circles for that similarity of theme, but I don’t think those are warranted. Separation of children from their parents is such a primal fear (in both directions) that it’s territory worth exploring - let's face it, it even crops up in the story of Jesus. And the way that plot device is used to examine the issue is fairly different and different themes emerge.

One of the most interesting of these is the way the film examines the issue of nature versus nurture. Other films look at how we can break free from our upbringing, or move past traumatic experiences from the past. By assigning personality traits to the evolutionary make up of species Two by Two is able to look at the issue of how much of who we are is due to hard wiring and how we might overcome it. Leah and Hazel are grimps - their status as aggressive loners is built into their DNA. Yet the film raises the possibility that they might even overcome the limitations of their birth, such that, by extension it suggests, so might we. In a not dissimilar vein it also seems to advance the theory that if we can discover the place we really fit we can thrive in a way we might never have thought possible.

Part of the reason that the film can explore these issues is because rather than using known and familiar animals as its lead characters, it uses made up ones instead. This raises interesting possibilities in a way that using rabbits and guinea pigs would not. Had it used familiar animals then any sense of tension would be gone - the audience would know in advance that their survival was guaranteed. Here, whilst it seems unlikely that all of the leading characters are going to be wiped out, it does suggest some latitude, particularly when you bring evolution and adaption into the mix as well. It opens up a range of options and lead to a surprisingly satisfying conclusion.

Sadly, for me at least, it doesn't really have a great deal to say about the biblical story of the flood. The basics are there (although the eponymous two by two rule is seemingly not adhered to religiously) and it’s an interesting idea to take away the human focus, but it doesn't have much to offer in its place. There are a number of moments when the characters pull through in unlikely ways, but these are clearly just down to a question of genre rather than God-acting-in-mysterious-ways moments. Everything just happens because it does and leaves the whole film feeling like an unsatisfying plot device. The original story has layers of meaning - it’s an origins story, a story of faithfulness, of a god purging his subjects, of deliverance and of new creation. None of these themes really emerge and the film ending where it does leaves little conclusion other than a bit of self realisation.

The other thing that was lacking, for me at least, was humour. I stress the personal angle in this not merely because humour is notoriously subjective, but also because I’m wary of veering into abusing national stereotypes. The film is a collaboration between Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Ireland and three of those nations have a notably poor reputation for humour amongst the English. I strongly suspect it’s just a difference in what one is used to. Nevertheless, it did seem like it would have been rather easy to inject a little more humour at numerous points in the story. Humour that would be a bit more lowest common denominator (meant in the original, rather than the more modern - and derisory - sense).

Overall Two by Two: Ooops Noah is Gone is not a bad little film. I enjoyed it more than I expected and the kids did as well, and some of its lessons are certainly valuable. But it’s not really a Noah film, it just came along for the ride.

The Ark (2015)

I must admit I'm a big fan of Darren Aronofsky's Noah from 2014. It's a huge, dark exploration of- some of the textual and philosophical issues surrounding the flood story written in bold, dramatic tones. Tony Jordan's The Ark is not those things, indeed it's a very different take on the story, but none the worse for that. Out go the volcanic landscapes of Iceland, in come the warm dry Moroccan dessert. Out goes the grunting, moody grit of Russell Crowe and in comes the quirky warmth of David Threlfall, no less determined, but very much in his own fashion. Out goes the primitive, mythical operatic style of Aronofsky's film and in it's place we find an approach that probably owes more to soap opera than anything.

Both films have been criticised for their dialogue: Crowe et al. talk in that way which is so familiar from epic films - a sort of halfway between Yoda and Frankenstein’s monster; Threlfall and family for lacking gravitas. The truth is that we don’t know how they spoke. And whilst the importance and severity of the situation Noah foresaw is enough to make anyone strip their sentences down to the bare minimum, it’s also likely that aspects of Noah’s normal family life remained as well, like catching up with cousins at a wake.

So Jordan’s comes into it’s own. To the cynics, of course, it’s the easiest of targets. The Bible film genre is easier than most to poke fun at, purely for it’s own existence; but somehow the story of Noah is the largest and slowest moving fish in a particularly well-crammed barrel. But if you want to use film to explore the stories of the Bible, and to think about what they might have to say about our relationship to the word today then using a modern soap-operaesque approach is as legitimate as any. INdeed the nature of myth through the ages has been taking an old story and reworking it in a way that your new audience relates to.

Interestingly The Ark starts with a shot taken under water. In a film about a flood there’s barely a drop of the stuff on display. The Ark is surely the driest Noah film on record. Not only is it set in arid desert, but the rains don’t start until the last ten minutes and even then the time spent afloat is over before it’s really started. Even the post-flood scenes take place against a sandy, dry background, asif the Ark’s inhabitants had wanted to hang on, just in case it was going to start up again.

So the film’s wettest scene is actually of Noah’s sons, and then the patriarch himself, enjoying a bonding moment in a local oasis. It’s an indication of the way the relationships will continue throughout the film. Noah is a friendly, loved and admired father. Even when his sons think he may have lost his mind they can’t quite entirely rule out the possibility that he might be right. Time and again they honour him for the way he has brought them up.

Whilst the film overall relies rather more on the Bible that on the Qur'an, in one important aspect it follows the Islamic version of the story - Noah has four sons rather than the more familiar three. From the moment he appears on screen you get the same feeling you have for the fate of anyone who beams down from the Starship Enterprise wearing Any sense of foreboding that presents the viewer with is only heightened by the realisation that the fourth son, Kenan, is played by the excellent Nico Mirallegro.

Perhaps it's just because I last saw him in his excellent performance in 2014's Common, but the moment he appeared on screen as Noah's fourth son, I got the same feeling I used to get whenever an unknown actor in a red jumper beamed down from the Starship Enterprise. Somehow someone's not going to be on board at the end of the film. Either way Mirallegro is reprising the role of a young man whose punishment seems somewhat out of proportion to his “crimes”.

But Mirallegro’s Kenan, with the link to the land of Canaan which only becomes explicit in the final scene, is where, I suspect, Jordan’s wrestles most earnestly with his subject matter. Early in the film the distinctions are more black or white (perhaps a little too literally). One the one hand is Noah a believer in God. On the other the city dwellers who worship not, as would have been most likely, an assortment of local and/or ancestral deities but instead are pre-historic new atheists. It’s a little cringeworthy, but Kenan adopts Noah’s arguments against atheism, even at one point, parrotting his argument that "[o]nly an idiot would say there is no god because to say that you'd need to know everything, and only an idiot would think they do".

Kenan gains far more screen time than Ham, Shem and Japheth. Just as Aronofsky used the fictional Ila to pose his questions, so Jordan employs Kenan for the same purpose. When Kenan fatally writes off the deluge as just another storm, choosing to stay with his girlfriend instead you can sense Jordan’s dilemma. If atheism is idiotic, a more traditional take on the Noah story is no less troubling. The sin which has ruined the world need only be “wanting” rather than being “content”. Kenan might be sleeping with his girlfriend and enjoying the odd puff of a pipe, but his behaviour hardly seems to merit his extinction.

Certainly, the strain of atheism Noah and his family encounters is rather anachronistic. Its followers pour scorn on the idea of an old man in the sky with a white beard millennia before the greeks would first picture Zeus in such a fashion. They argue that they “have science” and that the "universe created itself". Surely they argue if the world is designed then "Who designed the designer?"

Elsewhere however these kind of modern-sounding objections feel much more realistic, most notably when first Noah’s wife and then his sons respond to his plan to escape the world’s watery demise. “Won't they all eat each other?” asks Mrs Noah (played wonderfully by Joanne Whalley). “Can’t we just escape to higher ground?” suggests one of his sons.

It’s these interactions which feel the most natural and are, for me, the the strongest part of the film, whereas the earlier scenes had felt a little too stereotypical. Noah and his godly family are white: the non-white characters are the sinners who will drown. The women either deny sex to their husbands, or are too frigid (and I would estimate that the length of time discussing sex is far greater than the time The Noahs ultimately spend afloat).

Thankfully this seems to change once a “messenger” appears from God and instructs Noah to expand his farming-come-boat-building business (making a line drawing in the sand as if Noah was unsure what a boat looked like). It becomes a spot Noah returns to as the story progresses, the rains seem delayed and even his faith starts to waiver. The messenger however does not return until the very end of the film, and even then only to pose the question "Will Man learn his lesson?”

Gradually, though, people start to come around. First Noah’s wife, then his sons and daughters in law. Whilst Noah’s preaching in the city appeared, initially, not to have gained any new converts to his cause, later on a handful of followers turn up. And then, at last, the animals appear, and, just as Noah’s wife had predicted, the family end up having to “make a dash for it when it starts raining."

The animals appearance is one of the films boldest and best choices and allows the films focus to remain on the human drama at the heart of the story. It also allows it to capture a strange kind of fear as the doors to the ark close and suddenly a bunch of strangers realise they are trapped in a confined space with one another and bunch of equally frightened animals.

If the ending is rather twee, it’s perhaps because Jordan didn’t want to include it at all. Like the writer of the book of Hebrews Jordan’s interest is more in Noah as a man of faith than the more Old Testament ideas of origins and covenant. Purportedly the first draft of the script ended with very first drop of rain. Whilst that might have felt a little under-done, it’s testimony to Jordan’s writing skills that the happy ending and the token appearance of the rainbow feels a little surplus to requirements.