In a throwback to the golden age of
cinema, Hollywood has declared 2014 the "Year of the Bible."
From Ridley Scott's
"Exodus" starring Christian Bale as Moses, to Russell Crowe playing
Noah, Hollywood is gambling on new innovations in technology and star power to
revisit some of the most popular stories ever told.
"It's definitely a throwback to
the 1950s and early '60s," Dr. Stephen J. Whitfield, an American Studies
professor at Brandeis University, told JNS.org.
Starting with "The Robe"
in 1953 and Charlton Heston's 1956 Passover-related epic "The Ten
Commandments," and continuing with Heston's other biblically themed films
- 1959's "Ben-Hur" and 1965's "The Greatest Story Ever
Told" - the post-war era was packed with movies that appealed to the
conservatism of the era.
"One of the reasons biblical
epics were [so] popular in the 1950s and '60s was because of the general
atmosphere of piety of the era," Whitfield said.
Advances in technology also played a
role, according to Whitfield.
"The second reason [for the
popularity for bible-related films] was television, which was in black and
white for most of this era," he said. "What movies could do is
provide rich living color on a very big screen."
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