Solomon And Sheba released on Blu-ray last month in a limited edition of 3000 units courtesy of the folks at Twilight Time.
1959 was a hell of a year for cinema. You know it’s a good year when Some Like It Hot and North By Northwest weren’t even nominated for Best Picture. Ben-Hur, Anatomy Of A Murder, Operation Petticoat, Sleeping Beauty, Pillow Talk, and Rio Bravo are just a few of the great films released in that year. Scan down that list — way down — and you will find this crazy mess.
King Vidor’s Solomon And Sheba is certainly one of the odder outputs from the age of religious epics, and its strangeness doesn’t boil down to any one single factor: a very troubled production, complex protagonist, rampant fictionalization, and sexy approach all contribute to the epic weirdness. On paper it looks pretty great, with lovable badass Yul Brynner in the lead and pedigree afforded by the age of classic Biblical epics. Could this be a forgotten gem? The answer… is no. But read on, this epic clunker is not so easily dismissed!
The story concerns King Solomon of Israel (Brynner) and his visit from the Queen of Sheba (Gina Lollobrigida), an event which is recorded with matter-of-fact terseness in the Book of Kings. But where the Bible records a straightforward diplomatic visit and exchange of gifts and ideas, the writers and director of Solomon And Sheba envision a lusty tale of forbidden love and epic battlefield heroics.
The film opens with a truly awful battle sequence in which obvious dummies get tossed around, George Sanders swings his sword with all the gusto of a fly swatter, and main character Solomon switches between Yul Brynner in close shots and another actor on wider ones. I thought it was an obvious stunt double, but it turns out these shots feature original actor Tyrone Power who died on the set. More on that later.
As far as Biblical personalities go, Solomon doesn’t rank very high on the scale of heroes and is in many ways a very strange choice of a character to build a film around. We are told that his grandfather Saul, the first king of Israel, lived wickedly, while his father David was called a man after God’s own heart. Solomon was somewhere in the middle. Blessed with incredible wisdom, he often served God but was also a serious womanizer and made many boneheaded decisions as King.
King Vidor’s bizarro film takes Solomon as he is without attempting to cover up his flaws of hubris and lust, then injects him into a story that’s 90% an original fiction supported by neither Biblical nor historical accounts. Once you factor in that Vidor was a Christian Scientist, his mangling of the Scriptures almost feels conservative. But despite an incredibly dubious start and premise, there’s some fun to be had here.
Clearly, Vidor wanted to have his cake and eat it, too — though that’s not necessarily uncommon for the era. Solomon And Sheba certainly wasn’t the first or only film to justify amped-up sexuality by sneaking it into a Biblical or historical context, but it may be one of the bolder examples. Voluptuous Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida is stunningly sultry as the Queen of Sheba, and besides sporting some revealing clothing, she also gets a bathing scene which predates a similar scene in Cleopatra.
Even more eye-opening is the film’s most famous sequence; Solomon observes and then joins a pagan fertility ritual which devolves into an orgy. While more implied than shown, it’s nonetheless pretty racy for the Sunday School crowd circa 1959. Sheba dances enticingly in a Princess Leia bikini while drums beat a quickening rhythm. The dancers writhe and pair off, some of them forcibly, and slink into the shadows to commence their acts of lust.
The film is perhaps as well known for its troubled production as anything else — it originally starred Tyrone Power but he died of a heart attack on the set. He was replaced by Yul Brynner, cementing for him an “arrogant king” typecast which had been previously established by his roles in The Ten Commandments and The King And I. Many scenes had to be reshot with Brynner, and the change in casting also weakened the presence of Adonijah (George Sanders) as Solomon’s brother. Power and Sanders were believable as brothers; Brynner and Sanders, not so much.
After Solomon and Sheba’s scandalous love affair, God abandons Solomon and rains destruction on his Temple, and jealous brother Adonijah makes a power play against him to seize his kingdom so that we can squeeze in another battle sequence. Unlike the opener though, this one’s actually pretty awesome, and Solomon devises a clever plan to defeat his enemies despite being vastly outnumbered.
Meanwhile back in Jerusalem, Solomon’s enemies slut-shame Sheba and incite the crowds to stone her in a scene which recalls Monica Bellucci’s Malena character. Because of her repentence, God heals her and allows her to return to her home with her unborn love child. Again, the liberties taken with the source material are pretty astounding — literally none of this is in the Bible or historical texts. But the film does show some flashes of brilliance as well, quoting from Solomon’s writings in Ecclesiastes and The Song Of Solomon and applying well-known verses to the fictional construct.
The Package
Solomon And Sheba comes to us in a limited edition of 3000 units from Twilight Time.
The highlight is as always that old Twilight Time staple, an 8-page booklet with notes by Julie Kirgo. Of particular interest to this film is a retelling of its tragic and troubled production.
Special Features and Extras
Isolated Music & Effects Track
Theatrical Trailer 1 (4:01)
Theatrical Trailer 2 (3:15)
MGM 90th Anniversary Trailer (2:06)
MGM promo ad.
Make no mistake, Solomon and Sheba is an epically bad film. Yet, I feel it’s absolutely worth watching. This thing’s all over the place, hopping like mad from legitimately compelling, to cheesy, to glamorously sexy, and from Biblically reverent, to totally, absolutely not.
A/V Out.
Available at Screen Archives Entertainment.