Abraham and the binding of Isaac at the movies
A quick survey of a century's worth of films.
The following excerpt—which looks at the history of movies about Abraham, as well as movies that have referenced the binding of Isaac—is from ‘It’s All in the Family: The Patriarchs of Genesis in Film’, a chapter I wrote for The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception in Film (ed. Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch, 2016, pp 51-64). I am posting it here because a new film about Abraham and Isaac, His Only Son, is coming out this week.
The earliest known films about Abraham were short silents produced by Pathé Frères in France and directed by Henri Andréani. Le Sacrifice d’Abraham (1911) covered the near-sacrifice of Isaac, while Le Sacrifice d’Ismaël (1912) covered the expulsion of Abraham’s concubine Hagar and their son Ishmael into the desert, where they are saved from thirst by an angel who points them to a spring of water. The advertising for the film said it was shot on location in Egypt, on the exact spot where the story had taken place.1 Rébecca (1913) covered the efforts of Abraham’s servant Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac.
There were fleeting references to Abraham in later films, such as The Green Pastures (dir. Marc Connelly/William Keighley, 1936), which dramatizes various Bible stories in a sort of African-American folk idiom. In one scene, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob appear briefly as angels in heaven, summoned by “De Lawd” to discuss the enslavement and possible liberation of their descendants in Egypt. But the first major treatment of Abraham’s story in a feature-length film came in John Huston’s The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966).
While the first half of Huston’s film concerns the “primeval history” in Genesis 1-11, from Adam and Eve to the Tower of Babel, the second half follows the life of Abraham (George C. Scott) from his arrival in Canaan to the near-sacrifice of Isaac some forty years later. The film—conceived by producer Dino De Laurentiis as the first in a series of biblical adaptations, though it ended up being the only instalment (Corliss 2010)—takes much of its dialogue directly from the King James Version of the Bible, even going so far as to incorporate scriptures that are set centuries after Abraham’s lifetime. Thus, during a romantic interlude, Abraham and Sarah recite passages from the Song of Songs, while in another scene, Abraham takes Isaac through the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah and, along the way, he recites a passage from Isaiah 40 that describes God’s terrifying power over the princes of this world.
The story of Abraham received even lengthier treatment in Abraham (dir. Joseph Sargent, 1993), the second instalment in The Bible Collection series of televised Bible movies produced by the Italian company Lux Vide. This film, which runs three hours in its longest form, includes details that Huston omitted, such as Abraham’s (Richard Harris) sojourn in Egypt. It sets the stage for God’s covenant with Abraham by detailing the role that covenants played in Mesopotamian life, and it spends some time exploring the novelty of Abraham’s monotheism, by contrasting it with the polytheism of his father and brothers, whose idols Abraham smashes at one point. When Abraham meets Melchizedek and realizes that they have both been granted visions by God, Sarah tells her husband, “You’ve met a man who understands you.” The film also foreshadows the binding of Isaac by having Abraham instruct his sons to kill the lambs that they love the most when they make their sacrifices.
While most films about Abraham take their cues from the Hebrew scripture, he is also revered as a prophet within Islam, and at least one film has told the story of Abraham from a Muslim point of view. Ibraheem, the Friend of God (dir. Mohammad Reza Varzi, 2008), an Iranian film, shows Abraham (Mohammad Sadeghi) living in Babylon when Nimrod is king and refusing to worship the idols that are made by his uncle Azar. When Abraham is suspected of destroying the idols, he is catapulted into a fire and survives, which convinces many of the people who are watching that Abraham’s belief in the one unseen God must be correct. When Abraham and his family move to Canaan, Abraham sends Lot to Sodom to warn them against their evil ways. Finally, Abraham is instructed to sacrifice Ishmael, not Isaac, and after he passes the test—despite repeated attempts by the Devil to persuade him to disobey—he and Ishmael set up the Kaaba, the most sacred site in all of Islam.
The Muslim belief that Abraham was told to sacrifice Ishmael rather than Isaac is also reflected in the Iranian film Mesih (dir. Nader Talebzedah, 2007), also known as The Messiah and Jesus, the Spirit of God, which tells the story of Jesus from a Muslim point of view. It includes a scene in which Jesus shocks his fellow Jews by declaring that it was Ishmael rather than Isaac that Abraham was instructed to sacrifice.
The most recent—and by far the most subversive—depiction of Abraham in a widespread theatrical release came in the form of a gross-out comedy. Year One (dir. Harold Ramis, 2009) follows a hunter and a gatherer (Jack Black and Michael Cera) from a Stone Age tribe who encounter various characters from the book of Genesis, including Abraham (Hank Azaria), whom they interrupt during his attempt to sacrifice Isaac. (Embarrassed that they have spotted him, Abraham says that he and Isaac were playing a game called “Burny Burny Cut Cut.”) The film portrays Abraham as someone obsessed with circumcision, and it ends with one of the protagonists declaring to the people of Sodom that there is no need for a “chosen one”—and thus, perhaps, no need for a chosen people either—because “maybe we could all be chosen!”
The story of Abraham has also been told in episodes of The Greatest Heroes of the Bible (Abraham’s Sacrifice and Sodom and Gomorrah, dir. Jack Hively, 1979), Testament: The Bible in Animation (Abraham, dir. Nataliya Dabizha, 1996) and The Bible (prod. Mark Burnett/Roma Downey, 2013). The miniseries In the Beginning (dir. Kevin Connor, 2000) links the stories of Genesis and Exodus by having the staff of Abraham pass on to his descendants, including Moses and Joshua. An animated film based on stories from midrash about Abraham’s childhood, Young Avraham (dir. Todd Shafer, 2011), has also been produced.
Of all the episodes in Abraham’s life, the one that has been cited most often in non-biblical films would have to be the near-sacrifice of Isaac. Films such as Bigger Than Life (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1956) and the horror film Frailty (dir. Bill Paxton, 2001) have played on the notion that anyone who would do what Abraham almost did must be insane. In the former film, the father who tries to kill his son is driven mad by experimental drugs, while in the latter film, the big twist at the end reveals that the father who taught his sons how to murder in God’s name might really have been receiving divine messages after all. Crimes and Misdemeanors (dir. Woody Allen, 1989) features an interview with a fictitious professor who cites the akedah as evidence that a truly loving image of God is “beyond our capacity to imagine.” The protagonist in The Believer (dir. Henry Bean, 2001) is a Jewish neo-Nazi who once argued in yeshiva school that the story of the binding of Isaac proves God is a bully. A young Hannibal Lecter wonders in Hannibal Rising (dir. Peter Webber, 2007) if God intended to eat Isaac. Elements of the story have also surfaced in the films of Darren Aronofsky: the title character in The Wrestler (2008) is known as “the Ram” and is even described as a “sacrificial ram,” which harkens back to the animal that was sacrificed in Isaac’s place; and the title character in Noah (2014) becomes convinced at one point that he should kill his own granddaughters, in a scene that numerous observers have noted is reminiscent of the Abraham story.
Before writing this chapter, I had already written about several of these films at greater length; you can click on the titles to see my reviews of The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966), The Bible Collection: Abraham (1993), The Believer (2001), Frailty (2001), Mesih (2007), Year One (2009), The Bible (2013), and Noah (2014). Since writing this chapter, I have also reviewed The Promise (2005)—an Arabic film about Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar—and Isaac and Jacob (2004). Abraham was also played by Chaim Topol (who passed away a few weeks ago) in The New Media Bible’s word-for-word adaptation of Genesis (1979).
Information about these early Pathé films can be found in the company’s online catalogue (http://filmographie.fondation-jeromeseydoux-pathe.com).