Shavuot Movie Review: The Story of Ruth

I may confess that I have a very hard time watching and relating with old movies, especially those with a historical-religious subject. I often need a long time to figure out the context and cultural representations and appropriations. 

For this Shavuot, I was looking for something interesting to watch and was recommended to have a look at The Story of Ruth, an american production from 1960. It is available for free on YouTube and it lasts a little bit more of two hours.

It is produced by Samuel Engel, featuring as Ruth the Israeli-born Elana Eden. Eden, who studied acting and played at Habima and had her stage debut in Lysistrata, surpassed for this role big names such as Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor.

Ruth the Moabite - Moab is supposed to be located in the nowadays area of Jordan - is a priestess in the Temple of the Moabite God Chemosh, that discovers Judaism through Mahlon, a young man she feels in love with. For his courage of exposing idolatry, he will die after trying to escape the forced labour prison he was sent to. A widow, Ruth is starting together with Mahlon´s mother, Naomi, the journey back to Bethlehem. As a Moabite, he is received with disdain by the locals, as the Moabites are considered a cursed people. In the Parashat Ki Tetze it says that there is prohibited to marry a Moabite - or an Ammonite - as they refused to give food and water to the people of Israel while on their journey out of Egypt, plus they hired Baal to curse Israel. 

Back to the movie The Story of Ruth, it follows at certain extent the story from the Meghillah, but I´ve found often the setting and the actors´ play more fit for a play than for the movie. Funnily, I don´t get it why some of the men are summarily dressed, in some very short kind of underwear, including the judge Boaz, while the women were mostly overdressed. As for Ruth, she was super flirty both as a priestess and as a converted Jewess. 

The conclusion is that I am not sure that I haven´t wasted those two hours watching this movie, but maybe I need to delve a bit more into the reception of Ruth by the Christian denominations and eventually watch a recent movie on Ruth and place the representations in a larger multi-religious context. 

The Story of Ruth was not the most exquisite choice for a serious Shavuot discussion but it was eyes-opening. Given that it took me a long time to really understand the deep meaning of the biblical story of Ruth, I suppose I need more time to grasp its cultural reception.