MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Robe’ Is Testament to Hollywood Storytelling

Few actors could do religious ecstasy like Victor Mature. He’d flex that 2-by-4 jaw, let his eyes fill with rapture and then sigh like only a true believer can sigh. When it came to Hollywood biblical Babylon, Mature was one of the best.

He actually was a pretty mediocre actor, known more for his handsome face, curly hark and coupe-sized shoulders. But in movies such as “Samson and Delilah,” “Demetrius and the Gladiators” and “The Robe,” he was the faithful’s poster boy, big-studio style.

“The Robe,” directed by Henry Koster for 20th Century Fox in 1953, features what is possibly Mature’s most earnestly devoted performance, as a slave who turns away from all things pagan. The video is being shown today and Friday at the Cypress Senior Center in a free screening.

Hollywood had turned to the Bible for epic pictures heavy on sex, sin and redemption before, but the ‘50s proved to be an especially fertile period for this stuff. The Old and New Testaments offered familiar tales of drama and moral sweep, and top producers such as Darryl F. Zanuck and Frank Ross (who did “The Robe”) took advantage, usually with little restraint.

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And what better way to show off CinemaScope, film’s giant-screen process that was supposed to keep people in the theaters instead of home watching that new gizmo called television? CinemaScope and Technicolor were real modern miracles; “The Robe” was one of the first flicks to combine them.

They certainly made Mature look larger-than-life, but he wasn’t the only one. He tends to stand out in hindsight because “The Robe” became such a symbol of the genre that made him famous. But at the time, much of the attention went to the young Richard Burton, who received a best actor Oscar nomination for his role as Marcellus, a party-mad Roman soldier who eventually finds Christianity.

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The movie starts off saucily, mostly because of Marcellus’ affair with dark-eyed Diana (Jean Simmons, fetching in burlap and sandals). There’s a lot of heat there, which doesn’t get by Caligula (a snarling Jay Robinson), who also likes Diana and blocks the romance by banishing Marcellus to Palestine.

Unhappy in this outback, Marcellus is ordered to supervise what he thinks is a routine execution. But Christ’s death brings a transformation; Marcellus is tortured by the memory of it (and by the fact that he won Christ’s robe while gambling at the foot of the cross), and he seeks out Mature’s Demetrius for answers. His salvation, marked by grandiloquent gestures and music, comes later.

Not even a zealous fundamentalist could call this art. On the other hand, neither should the most sensitive religious scholar be offended by the picture’s well-meaning excesses. “The Robe” is what it always has been--an icon of Hollywood showiness.

* “The Robe” is being shown today and Friday at 12:45 p.m. at the Cypress Senior Citizens Center, 9031 Grindley St., Cypress. Free. (714) 229-6780.