GROSS/57 BONUS - The Bible - two by two
An insight from John Huston into how spectacle works in a cinematic epic.
I’m obsessed with this shot from John Huston’s The Bible (1966’s top-grossing film, reviewed last week). A line of charismatic wild animals follows Huston himself (as Noah) into the enormous Ark built for the movie on a soundstage in Italy.
In this passage I’ve clipped from Huston’s autobiography (An Open Book) there’s a nice insight into the way cinema - especially epic cinema - works. The way we sit in the dark, soaking up these vast spectacles and we’re somehow able to naturalise them, to fit them into a coherent, continuous sense of the world such that they don’t disrupt it or make us feel uncomfortable.
There’s probably a whole literature about this, right? About the psychic effort that must go into accommodating such spectacles - waves that swamp New York, planets colliding, apes that climb skyscrapers - allowing them to sit next to the more ordinary, human-scale stuff alongside them. And the vital work done by filmmakers that allows us, somehow, to just nod and accept the most ridiculous events as if they were perfectly plausible; continuous with the reality depicted.
Huston describes the enormous, arduous, months-long effort to realistically populate his Ark and, in particular, the effort he went to to persuade the animals to walk into his huge wooden prop in an orderly manner, in pairs, as is written.
The revealing bit, though, is the way he notes that the only people impressed by this extraordinary feat, which took months of work, were the members of his own crew shown the scene during production - cheering and whooping in awe. Actual audiences, watching the movie in actual cinemas, just took it for granted. As he says: “After all, everybody knows that animals always walk into an Ark two by two.”
We were shooting Genesis: In the Beginning in continuity, and although the Ark sequence was some months away, we were preparing the ground, building the sets and acquiring the animals. They were being flown in from Tripoli, Egypt, Africa, West Germany to Rome almost daily to be accommodated on the back lot of the Dino De Laurentiis studio. Every morning before beginning work, I visited the animals.
One of the elephants, Candy, loved to be scratched on the belly behind her foreleg. I'd scratch her and she would lean farther and farther toward me until there was some danger of her toppling over on me. One time I started to walk away from her, and she reached out and took my wrist with her trunk and pulled me back to her side. It was a command: "Don't stop!" I used it in the picture. Noah scratches the elephant's belly and walks away, and the elephant pulls him back to her time after time.
There was also a hippo named Beppo. I fed him daily with a bucketful of milk, and it got so that Beppo would open his mouth as soon as he heard me approaching. If I didn't pour the milk down his throat immediately, he would stand there patiently with his mouth wide open, waiting. I could put the bucket on the ground and walk around him, petting him, and Beppo wouldn't close his mouth. One day I put my hand inside his mouth and patted his pink chops. The mouth remained open, those great teeth on display.
Two African giraffes were wild when they came to us. They went directly into seclusion in a high, stockade-like pen, padded on the inside so they wouldn't injure themselves. After a few days I began visiting them every morning, and they gradually lost their fear of me. Next I put granulated sugar on the top railing of their pen, then lump sugar. They loved it, and finally they were taking it from my hand. There was a ramp outside their enclosure, and as I walked by on a level with their heads, they became so bold as to bar my way with their long necks. Then they would search through my pockets for sugar. Only when the sugar was produced would they raise their necks and permit me to pass.
And there was a raven that served as the watchdog of my trailer. If any man came into the trailer except me, the raven flew info the air and attacked at eye level. This bird was also keenly aware of sex, and if it was a woman who entered, he would drop to the floor and go for her ankles. Gladys never came into the trailer unless I was there. I would call, "Raven!" and the bird would fly over and land on my arm. We used this in the Ark sequence, along with the trick of reaching into Beppo's mouth and the giraffe's game of barring Noah's way.
A bird with an ax-shaped beak that could splinter a two-by-four did a ritual dance every morning as I approached. Ever so gently he would take my hand into his beak, then climb onto my wrist and go on dancing. A blessed bird in contrast with our friend the-parrot.
I proposed to Charlie Chaplin that he play Noah. He was tempted and toyed with the idea for some weeks. I thought we had him, but finally he said no; he couldn't conceive of being in someone else's picture. I then turned to Alec Guinness. There was a conflict in dates and we lost him. As actors, those two men were ideal for Noah: either of them would have given a superb performance.
But as the weeks passed, I began to realize how important it was that Noah should be on familiar terms with the animals-knowing them was as important as an actor's ability to play the role. So I decided to do the part myself.
We had two principal sets for Noah's Ark, one on the back lot and one on a sound stage: the "inside" and the "outside." The "inside" Ark, in the stage, was three stories high. A ramp led from bottom to top, past the giraffes' pen as one started to climb and on up through tiered galleries and sectioned stalls of various sizes. The heavier animals were on the bottom floor; medium-sized animals on the second floor, where Noah and his family lived, too; and smaller animals and birds on the top floor. The Ark was large enough for the birds to fly around in, so they were always airborne above us. The pens for the larger animals were constructed with a gap of a couple of feet at the bottom so they could be cleaned with rakes from the outside, and food and water could be put in for them at night without opening gates or doors. The carnivorous animals-leopards, lions and tigers-were separated from the others by heavy plate glass.
The interior of the Ark was kept scrupulously clean: there never was a sweeter-smelling barn. We had a large staff of keepers, and the animals had the best of food and bedding. All of them that could be groomed were, including two Russian bears, and they were all exercised daily. We shot inside the Ark over a period of weeks, and not a single animal ever got sick. More than once visitors came in, looked around and exclaimed, "I've never been in an Ark before!" It tells something about the utterly natural atmosphere of tr..e place, with all those animals living together in complete harmony.
The exterior of Noah's Ark on the back lot was a beautiful structure, 300 cubits long by 30 cubits high, as specified by the Lord and executed by The Bible's art director, Mario Chiari: 500 feet by 50 feet, that is. It was, of course, finished on only one side, the side to be photographed. The road along which the animals were to parade ran through the Ark. This approach with the animals walking two by two seemed to me a prerequisite of the sequence. But how to do it? Various ideas were advanced: matte shots, glass shots, stop-camera shots, process shots... All the tricks that cinematography is heir to were duly considered and found wanting. At last it seemed to me the only way to get the shot would be to train the animals so that they'd actually do it-walk into the Ark two by two. No one, including the Italian animal-trainer, believed it possible. But my idea of how to go about it got the support of the German circus owner who supplied our big cats. His opinion tipped the scale, and Dino agreed to let me try it.
First, ditches were dug on either side of the road leading into the Ark so it became a kind of causeway. While not deep enough to injure animals falling into them, the ditches served as invisible fences. The handlers started by leading individual animals along the road-through the open door of the Ark and out the other side. This road described a big circle: starting point, up the road, into the Ark, through the Ark, out and around and back to the starting place. Up, in, through, out, around, back; up, in, through, out, around, back. When one of a pair became used to this, then the other was added and the two were led side by side. The order of their appearance never varied. Behind the elephants came the ostriches, behind the ostriches, the zebras, and so forth. When the animals were well accustomed to this, the next step was to have the handlers walk in the ditches, leading their charges on longer nylon lines. Now and again men would be yanked out of the ditches by animals bolting, but it was pretty good. We could make it, as planned, with the men out of sight of the cameras, which would be shooting at ground level.
However, the animals got so used to their daily around-:Ind-around that it suddenly struck me one morning that we might get the shot without the lines. Our two cameras were set up; I got into my Noah cost~me and took my place; the lines came off; and the animals marched right up the road, to Noah's piping, and into the Ark two by two-a parade of animals well over a hundred yards long. We knew we had it, but we did it again, and again they marched through two by two without a misstep. When we saw it on the screen in the projection room, a cheer went up. I never heard a regular theater audience applaud this scene. They seem to take it for granted, accepting it the same way that visitors to the set accepted the Ark. After all, everybody knows that animals always walk into an Ark two by two.
It was Nigel Smith, he of Tufnell Park Film Club and London guided walks, that put me onto the Huston book.