The Big Fisherman

The lush romanticism of director Frank Borzage (Seventh Heaven, Street Angel) is subsumed by the plodding reverence of producer Rowland V. Lee's screenplay (co-written with Howard Estabrook), based on the best-selling novel by Lloyd C. Douglas. Howard Keel stars as a stalwart Simon-Peter, the ...more

Earnest and well-intentioned but weighed down by a screenplay that takes a story many would consider pure gold and turns it into pure lead, The Big Fisherman will be best appreciated by those with a fervid fondness for 1950's Biblical epics and/or those with deeply held Christian beliefs. If a viewer doesn't fall into one or both of those categories (and in some cases, even if one does), Fisherman is apt to be a bit of a struggle. While Rowland V. Lee and Howard Estabrook's dull and lifeless ...more