Early, Early Religious Epics

 Ben Hur – 1925 (music by William Axt)

 Samson + Delilah -1922
Early Religious Epics:

 Samson + Delilah – 1949 (music by Victor Young – very good composer)

 Quo Vadis (1951)
 Why the date? – Moral/spiritual repair after the WWII – the threat of TV is also a big
reason for a lot of money being poured into cinema.
R.E. were designed to provide unique experience – something you couldn’t get in television.
New technologies:

 The invention of Cinemascope – kinda like an early IMAX (The Robe – 1952 first film
to use Cinemascope so a religious epic introduced this technology) –
 3D
 Smell-o-rama – like the 4DX
 Rumble-rama (much later only in the 1970s)
 Stereo sound
These were the measures taken to counter-act the evolution of TV
Victor Young – Samson & Delilah (1949)
(big impressive, large romantic orchestra)
Quo Vadis (1951) Miklos Rozsa – dense orchestration

 invented the sound of a past roman empire

 Fanfare brass (often moving in 5th and 4ths) leaning on dyadic harmony
 Modality (both for the themes and harmony)
 Latin or English religious text or as a textural device.
The Robe (1952) Alfred Newman
10 Commandments (1956) Elmer Bernstein
Ben Hur (1959) Rozsa again
King of Kings (1961)
Jesus of Nazareth (1977) – TV film directed by Franco Zeffirelli Maurice Jarre – composer of
Lawrence of Arabia – quite unique sounding composer
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
The Passion of Christ (2004) – John Debney