there no shortage of bad dialogue in david and bathsheba i be quite a hand with a slingshot and the king of all israel out there in the darkness expose himself to the enemy ( full mark to dennis hooey for deliver that one with a straight face ) and go and sit with the concubine . and somehow i doubt a bored david ever tell the prophet nathan whatever you say . he even try the old my kingdom doesn not understand me routine on desperate housewife bathsheba at one point . so it probably a tribute to henry king direction that the film isn not at all bad despite the pitfall much of the first third provide . maybe it the censor bait nature of the plot a married man kill a femme fatale husband and get away with it . but king brings out the grow moral and theological complexity in phillip dunne script rather than up the sin and sandal hokum . this be the conflicted david on the downhill slope and abandon by a vengeful god he no longer understands and and the film doesn not back away from the awkward unanswerable question about why a loving deity would choose to wreak vengeance on the innocent rather than the guilty . it even offer a genuinely surprising criticism of the sexual inequality of the law and where the failing of husband result in the punishment of their wife . unlike king david and which sideline the king in favour of the admittedly more interesting saul and david be firmly at the centre of the drama and despite an interesting display of shoulder twitching and a frankly gormless overlong close up when visit the site of saul and jonathan death and gregory peck performance grows in stature a david shrink . susan hayward be pure hollywood pro and raymond massey be an appropriately theatrical prophet ( why be naturalistic when you have get a voice that make the very heavens quake . ) and kieron moore uriah such an intransigent unreconstructed chauvinist that you can not exactly blame david for put him in harm way and but despite threaten to soft peddle the film doesn not allow david a moral get out of jail free card over his death . with surprisingly strong but subdued design and technicolor photography this be definitely a cut above most 40 50 biblical epic . fox new dvd be a good transfer and include an incredibly hokey candid behind the scene short and a trailer with brief shot delete from the film sole battle scene .