Salomè

Not since seeing Derek Jarman's film ' Sebastiane ' in Latin have I seen a film as camp as this. They have a lot in common, including a dance to provoke or excite an audience. I am not sure that a sense of camp was in the director's mind when ' Salome ' was made, but no one in their right mind, or wrong mind, take your pick, could take this film seriously. Salome is a wicked good woman here repenting of her sins to above all others John the Baptist, played in hilarious earnestness by Alan Badel. His is a really bad performance, laughable and deliriously silly at the same time. It is as amusing as anything in Monty Python. Herodias, played to maximum kitsch by Judith Anderson is far, far better. I would like to believe she was starring in this nonsense to get people in to see the dance of the seven veils, and no doubt hoping that her last laugh would be on the way to the bank. After all it brought in over three million viewers in France, and being then a highly religious country it no doubt delighted everyone, including the suggestions of soft porn in the dance. Salome is to heterosexuals as erotic as Sebastiane riddled with arrows for homosexual men. The ending is mercifully brief after the dance and I imagine the patter of many feet towards the exit sign ( but probably not in France. ) The best ' acting ' for me came from Rex Reason as Marcellus, Rome's intended husband for Salome, and I can understand that she was happy with the arrangement, before Tiberius Caesar decides to call the whole thing off. Watch it and wonder at the delirium of Hollywood in thinking they could create magic out of Rita Hayworth and Stewart Granger. Hayworth does her best and she could dance. Granger in my opinion was just doing a job. There should have been a book on the making of this. We will never see this kind of so-called Biblical films again - I say this with hope.