A Lean Decade.

There were few successful movies or novels with explicitly religious themes during the 1960s. In 1961 a remake of King of Kings, a life of Jesus, was released. Nicholas Ray directed Jeffrey Hunter and Siobhan McKenna in this CinemaScope version, which was better received by the critics than by the audience. In 1965 George Stevens directed another version of the life of Jesus, The Greatest Story Ever Told, starring Max von Sydow and Charlton Heston. This version was filled with famous stars in cameo roles. John Wayne played a Roman officer supervising the Crucifixion of Jesus. The next year John Huston tackled the first twenty-two chapters of Genesis in a film called The Bible. The film was not a success with either the critics or the public. Huston himself made a passable Noah. Critics believed the best of the biblical films to appear in the United States during the decade was Pier Posolini's...