John Huston’s Noah and the representation of the patriarch in the 20th Century

Résumé

This article examines the cinematic representations of the patriarch Noah, the ark, and the animals throughout the 20th century. Through narrative and cultural history, it presents the importance of the Flood myth in contemporary societies, particularly the role that the Noahic story plays in disputes between fundamentalists and progressives. Additionally, it explores the cinema’s appropriations of this story from the 1900s to the 1930s, culminating in the production of the film “The Bible” (Huston, 1966).
Within the context of this specific film, the objective is to analyze the Flood sequence, particularly in two aspects: the representation of the vessel and the animals. Connections are established between these scenes and previous cinematic and artistic references while examining how editing and the soundtrack incorporated these references into the film. We conclude that the final result displayed on the screen has become a true visual paradigm of the 20th century and the history of Noah’s Ark.This text analyzes the filmic representations of biblical patriarch Noah, the ark and the animals, throughout the 20th Century. It shows the importance that the myth of the Flood has in contemporary societies, progressively more religious, and discusses the role that Noaic history plays in the disputes between fundamentalists and progressives groups. It presents the oldest examples of this history narrated by cinema between the decades of 1900-1930, understanding how that period’s movies incorporated elements of the plastic arts. It recounts how the movie The Bible: In the Beginning... was produced, how it belonged to an era of grandiose epics that was already in its last days. Within the scope of this specific film, the Flood sequence is focused on, particularly two of its aspects: the boat and the animals. It shows the enormous financial and labor investiments made to build arks never seen in the cinema. It tells the importance of animals for this film specifically, the huge investment made in faunal diversity, a production’s hallmark. It analyzes how the soundtrack and editing worked together to achieve a boarding like never before – and which, we say, will never happen again, given the current filming conditions. Finally, it presents a list of films cited throughout the text, with production references.