Best movie ever!

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The Story of Ruth is a beautifully-filmed story of one of the books of the Bible, Ruth. Ruth eventually became the great-grandmother of David. The film, for the most part, faithfully reconstructs the events depicted in this book of the Bible. The director does a fairly good job, as do most of the A and B actors, and the production values are very good. The pace of the film seems to be livelier in the beginning with the life of Ruth among the Moabites, and the romance between Elana Eden as Ruth and Tom Tryon (The Cardinal) son of Naomi, Mahion, plays very well. Although Stuart Whitman as Boaz probably does his best work ever in this film, he is really not a match for Tryon, either physically, or acting-wise. The woman who plays Naomi is a bit hammy, but most of the other actors play their roles well; particulary Jeff Morrow as Tob, the rival of Boaz for the love of Ruth. The pace of this film is quite leisurely; the opposite of most sword and sandal films of the time. But as a first-rate soap, most female viewers, will be very happy with the pacing. I can recommend the film as one of the more interesting stories in the Bible.

What is it about Hollywood and the Sandal Epic? There are wonderful, human stories in the Bible and the Classics that don't need any embellishment or additional material to make interesting, even great movies. Take "The Story of Ruth" as an example. The real Ruth is a small book (4 chapters) in the Bible with enough material to make a full length movie without the imaginative script writing that "The Story of Ruth" incorporates. There's sex and seduction, (And it came to pass at midnight, that the man was afraid, and turned himself: and, behold, a woman lay at his feet. And he said, Who art thou? And she answered, I am Ruth thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman; Ruth 3: 8-9), intrigue (Boaz manipulates his rival into renouncing his claim to Ruth and Naomi's land; Ruth 4: 1-9) and love and faith (for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; Ruth 1: 16).Instead of sticking to a good story, the movie invents a Ruth who serves as a Priestess of a pagan god, which only serves as a reason to hold a courtroom drama. There are also two klutzy secret agents from the Moab Mossad whose demise is taken straight from the Apocryphal story of "Daniel and Susanna". Traditionally, Ruth is thought to have been a redhead, as were most Moabites. While Elana Eden is a stunning beauty, her hair is the wrong color and too stylishly coiffed for a poor woman of 900 BCE with the occupation of gleaner. In the Bible, Boaz is certainly not the dumb pushover that Stuart Whitman portrays.All of this is likely due to the movie's release in 1960. It's quite possible that Hollywood, in its wisdom, decided that the real Ruth was too raunchy a commodity at the time. Perhaps, instead of this fantasy, someone in our more enlightened era will make a movie that is realistic and follows the original.

There's no question that THE STORY OF RUTH would have been a lot more different if it emerged as a Cecil B. DeMille production at the hight of DeMiller's spectacular career at Paramount. I'm sure he would have made certain that the writers expanded on the story to bring as much spectacle and battle scenes as possible in order to bring it up to his usual "sand and sandals" requirements.But Henry Koster has taken a simple story, retained the simplistic values of the plot and made it a moving story of a young woman from a pagan culture who gradually amends her sinful ways and comes to worship only one invisible God. Koster has had wonderful success with his two very rugged looking male stars--TOM TRYON (whose role occupies the first half of the lengthy film, as a Hebrew) and STUART WHITMAN as the man Ruth comes to love. JEFF MORROW is also stalwart and appealing as the man who tries to win her love but fails miserably.Alas, we now come to the real drawback of the film--ELANA EDEN, the unknown actress who plays the all important title role--Ruth, and her acting is, to put it kindly, "limited". In fact, it is only one notch above the kind of grade school emoting we had from Maria Montez during the height of her adventures with Jon Hall and Sabu. Furthermore, while undeniably beautiful in an exotic way, her accent makes much of her dialog in need of the caption feature. Her wooden performance is perhaps the reason for her very brief screen career in what should have been a star-making role.Surprisingly, despite this main drawback, THE STORY OF RUTH has an intelligent script, sensible direction and a warm performance by PEGGY WOOD as Ruth's mother-in-law, Naomi. Miss Wood makes up for the lack of animation in Elana Eden's role.Summing up: Handsomely produced, it's an interesting tale told smoothly without a lot of pomp and circumstance that usually accompanies these sort of Biblical tales. And Franz Waxman's music is stirring.

*Some spoilers*When I was a kid my mom stumbled across this little gem at the video store and I have loved it ever since. This priceless little saga is based on the biblical heroine, Ruth, and with a dash of imagination, an attractive cast, and excellent writing you get real treat indeed. Ruth, a Moabitess, (remarkable performance by Elana Eden;her only film appearance)begins a friendship with Malone, a Jew, and in doing so she begins to accept his strange beliefs and fall in love with him. She embraces his faith and gives up everything for them and her love for Malone. It is at his death however, (she weds him seconds before he dies) she begins to know his mother, Naomi (Peggy Wood, really shines in this role) and then she goes back with her to Naomi's native land, Jerusalem. Ruth never really had a mother and begins to love Naomi as her own mother. Things really heat up, when Ruth meets two kinsfolk of Naomi's; Toab and Boaz (Walt Whitman was just great)just shortly after their arrival. The two men then vie for her. In the meantime, she also must face the prejudices of the people and she's also(little does she know) being persued by Moabite soldiers who are coming to take her back to Moab to be punished. Plenty of action, suspense and romance. This movie is very entertaining and I cherish it to this day.