Here, Gregory Peck plays the King of Israel, who spots Susan Hayward's red-headed Bathsheba going about her ablutions and is instantly smitten, subsequently incurring the wrath of God and having to atone for his sins. More of a plodding, pompous moral debate than an epic, Henry King's movie eschews a lot of the DeMille-style orgies and battles one would expect. There is, however, a cleverly staged flashback to David's famous fight with Goliath, played by a six-foot-eight Pole called Walter Talun. Peck manages to exude nobility and Hayward is ravishing, in a Kansas farmgirl sort of way. But the Ark of the Covenant upstages them all.

King David enters into an adulterous affair with the beautiful Bathsheba, which has tragic consequences for his family and Israel.