The Big Fisherman

There are no good stills from this movie available online. There is no good print of this movie accessible, though the whole of it is on YouTube. To be strictly fair, we could pay for a higher quality still from certain companies, but we’re still a start-up and are not going to do that. And it appears that there was a VHS release of the movie, but Amazon hasn’t even heard of it. There appears to have been a Region 2 release. It’s out of print. It’s possible I’ve written about more obscure Disney works, but not a lot of them and certainly not theatrical release movies.

Princess Fara (Susan Kohner) lives in Arabia, a princess who turns out to harbor a secret. She is indeed the daughter of another Arabian princess, Arnon (Marian Seldes). As part of a treaty, Arnon married Herod Antipas (Herbert Lom), who fell in love with Herodias (Martha Hyer), his brother’s wife, and divorced Arnon, who returned to Arabia. After that, there was an oath sworn by Arabian after Arabian to kill Herod and avenge Arnon and Fara, whom her father had named Esther. Fara discovers this on her mother’s deathbed, in no small part because her mixed Arab and Judean blood means Prince Deran (Ray Stricklyn) cannot marry her—but neither can her actual love, Prince Voldi (John Saxon).

Fara signs the oath, disguises herself as a boy, and flees to Judea to murder her father. She is robbed. She meets John the Baptist (Jay Barney), who is kind to her and tells her to seek out Jesus (we’ll get back to Him). She encounters a fisherman named Simon (Howard Keel), who takes her home to hire her and let her work on his boat because he’s fired John (Brian G. Hutton) and James (Tom Troupe) for being all into That Jesus Guy. He insists Fara wash, whereupon his mother, Hannah (Beulah Bondi), discovers she’s a girl. She calls herself Esther, which is sort of her name, and manages to insinuate herself into Herod’s household because she can translate Greek prophecies, which will make it easier to kill him. Meanwhile, Prince Voldi has followed her and promptly been arrested by the Romans; no Arabians are allowed in Judea because of the whole “repeatedly trying to assassinate Herod Antipas” thing.

Oh, it’s a lot. There are things I haven’t even started covering here. It is a three-hour Biblical melodrama. Fara spends a major chunk of the picture conflicted between her desire to kill her father and the “turn the other cheek” words of Jesus. The household of Herod Antipas is your standard Fifties Biblical Epic Den Of Iniquity, and when Fara starts work, she’s being leched over by Lysias (Jonathan Harris). Which is weird if you’ve seen even a little Lost in Space. But consider that Herod Antipas doesn’t know who she is and has a well-known habit of appreciating beautiful young women and did we really need that, movie?

The movie leans hard on the conflict between Fara’s people and the Judeans. Now. It’s worth noting that the historical Herod Antipas did in fact marry a woman from Nabatea, in the Arabian Peninsula. Her name is alternately spelled Phasa’el and Phaisael; they were married for twenty years and are not recorded as having had children. He did indeed repudiate, or divorce, or something (the legality and religion involved is uncertain) her to marry Herodias, indeed his brother’s wife. This was used as a pretext for war between Nabatea and Judea. Most of the rest of the history involved is uncertain.

But the idea that any Arabian entering Judea would be arrested, that any Judean entering Arabia would be stoned to death, is ludicrous. For one, it’s not as though you could tell just by looking at them. For another thing, much though the Romans may have disliked the idea, it would not have been possible to fully police any border in those days; we can’t even really do it now. Nabateans and Judeans on the borders doubtless traded all the time when no one in authority was looking. It’s a long and standard aspect of human history.

Everyone keeps calling this the story of Simon Peter, and I suppose it technically is at that. Inasmuch as he is a major character in it. But I wouldn’t say he’s the main character in it; that’s the fictional Fara. We don’t even fully get the drama of the moment when Simon becomes Peter, and Fara’s family history is much more a part of what we’re focusing on than anything to do with Simon Peter, his mother, his late wife, and so forth. Very little of this is in the Bible and even less is part of oral tradition.

So let’s shift into talking about production, because I’m sure you’re all wondering. As was I, when I started watching the movie. I was convinced that, despite the YouTube upload’s being labeled as the movie I was looking for, it was something else entirely. The first thirty-five minutes are all caught up in Arabian politics and not anything to do with the Bible or its lands or characters or anything. Even Fara’s only half Jewish, and she’s more Jewish than any of the other characters in that part of the movie.

The thing is, Walt didn’t want to make this movie. Roy approached him with the book and suggested that the studio adapt it. Walt said no. Technically this movie is outside the purview of this column, because it was not made by Walt Disney Pictures. It was, at Roy’s insistence, distributed by Buena Vista Pictures, but it was made by Centurion Pictures, which IMDb lists as having done this and a show called Yarns From Pigeon Inlet. However, for one, I didn’t know that when I put it on my schedule. And for another, the whole thing was so bonkers I had to share.

It’s got an absolute murderer’s row of talent involved. So okay, not so much on the screen. Herbert Lom was a decent actor. John Saxon . . . tried to kill Mitchell. Tom Troupe was the judge in Summer School. Howard Keel had done a bunch of big-budget musicals and was in the middle of a shift to leaving them behind. And that’s kind of where we run dry. A lot of Hey It’s That Guys and people who would end up on Murder, She Wrote. Beulah Bondi used to work with Capra and played James Stewart’s mother on two non-consecutive occasions.

Behind the camera, though? It was the last film completed by Frank Borzage, the first-ever Oscar winner for Best Director. It was produced by Rowland V. Lee, a big name in early Hollywood, who came out of retirement to do it. Its cinematographer, Lee Garmes, had a career stretching from 1918 to 1972; a “special thanks” in 1978 gives him a sixty-year career. Which included things like Morocco, Shanghai Express, and Gone With the Wind. It was edited by Cotton Warburton, who worked for Disney from 1956-1978, working on a ton of major releases for the studio in those years, and Paul Weatherwax who only did “The Reluctant Dragon” for the studio but also things like Star Spangled Rhythm and A Raisin in the Sun. Costume designer Renié worked on things like the Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra. And some guy named Ub Iwerks did the visual effects.

Do not, however, let that persuade you to see it. It is very long, very confusing, and very dull. There’s about a good forty-five minutes in that three hours, or the nuggets of a much better Biblical epic. The choice to have Jesus be heard but not seen is an interesting one, and I cannot find who voiced him—it would be funny if it had been Roy, but it clearly wasn’t. It’s also noting that it was nominated for three Oscars, losing literally all of them to another Biblical epic which at least has a really interesting chariot race in the middle.