A Story Of David: The Hunted has been little seen since it made it's television broadcast debut in 1961, the year its star died. Jeff Chandler was in real life Ira Grossel, a Jewish kid from the Canarsie section of Brooklyn and very proud of his heritage. A very committed Zionist he grabbed at the opportunity to make a film in Israel. Would that it have been a better one. Even Chandler's most distinguishing feature, his prematurely gray hair was dyed black for the film.
The story of David centers in his years before he became king and involves the growing jealousy of King Saul played here by Basil Sydney. I've a feeling that Sydney might have been cast because he had played King Claudius in the Laurence Olivier production of Hamlet and the similarities are there. There are even more similarities between Saul and Shakespeare's other brooding and jealous monarch Othello. And Saul has an Iago in his court, an Edomite named Doeg played in proper serpentine fashion by Peter Arne. Arne pushes all of Sydney's buttons concerning Chandler and Sydney reacts with several acts of barbarity.
Which Chandler refuses to avenge because he's pledged in loyalty to Saul. It leads to a very confusing situation for the viewer.
The film is all biblically correct, but that master of biblical spectacle Cecil B. DeMille always used the Bible as base to start and then set his writers to work at making dramatic coherent sense of stories like Samson And Delilah and The Ten Commandments. The Bible is not a book of drama, it's a religious text.
The ending should have been what actually happened to Saul at the battle of Gilboa with Saul going the night before to the witch of Endor, breaking his own law doing so. I got the feeling that the producers ran out of money and just ended the film midway without a climax the audience was expected. Chandler just takes his army and parts from friends each going to their ordained fate. Even Doeg is not dealt with, he's one of those peripheral Bible characters and the Bible doesn't say what happened to him. He should have met Iago's fate.
The film I saw wasn't bad, all the players gave a good account of themselves, but I wanted so much more from this. Jeff Chandler must have been disappointed and Ira Grossel more so.
The story of David centers in his years before he became king and involves the growing jealousy of King Saul played here by Basil Sydney. I've a feeling that Sydney might have been cast because he had played King Claudius in the Laurence Olivier production of Hamlet and the similarities are there. There are even more similarities between Saul and Shakespeare's other brooding and jealous monarch Othello. And Saul has an Iago in his court, an Edomite named Doeg played in proper serpentine fashion by Peter Arne. Arne pushes all of Sydney's buttons concerning Chandler and Sydney reacts with several acts of barbarity.
Which Chandler refuses to avenge because he's pledged in loyalty to Saul. It leads to a very confusing situation for the viewer.
The film is all biblically correct, but that master of biblical spectacle Cecil B. DeMille always used the Bible as base to start and then set his writers to work at making dramatic coherent sense of stories like Samson And Delilah and The Ten Commandments. The Bible is not a book of drama, it's a religious text.
The ending should have been what actually happened to Saul at the battle of Gilboa with Saul going the night before to the witch of Endor, breaking his own law doing so. I got the feeling that the producers ran out of money and just ended the film midway without a climax the audience was expected. Chandler just takes his army and parts from friends each going to their ordained fate. Even Doeg is not dealt with, he's one of those peripheral Bible characters and the Bible doesn't say what happened to him. He should have met Iago's fate.
The film I saw wasn't bad, all the players gave a good account of themselves, but I wanted so much more from this. Jeff Chandler must have been disappointed and Ira Grossel more so.