Solomon and Sheba (1959)

(On TV, November 2020) A film can do everything according to the rules and still fall flat, and that’s the way I feel about King Vidor’s Solomon and Sheba, a historical epic that clearly plays by all of the rules of 1950s epic movies yet fails to make a strong impression. Oh, it does have its qualities—Yul Brynner with hair (as Solomon), George Sanders in a minor role, and the incomparably named Gina Lollobrigida (as the queen of Sheba), huge armies clashing in the desert, and a scene with the well-known judgment of Solomon, and the rest of what audiences expected from movie epics over what they could see on household TVs. But compared to other epics, Solomon and Sheba feels somewhat generic—compressing decades of filmmaking in one all-available present, this film appears without much distinction nor grandeur beyond Brynner playing a king. Things get somewhat more interesting once you start reading about the film’s production—the newness of shooting a historical epic in Spain (rather than the more common choice of Italy at the time) pales in comparison to the behind-the-scenes drama that surrounded Tyrone Power‘s sudden death two-third of the way through, and his replacement by Brynner. Very little (if any) of this backstage turmoil shows up on the screen, though, and the result, unfortunately enough, is Yet Another Epic rather than something distinctive in its own right.