Stories from the Bible have frequently been used in films. There are various reasons for motion picture producers to turn to the Bible as source material. The stories, in the public domain, are already familiar to potential audiences. They contain sweeping, but relatively straightforward, narratives of good versus evil, and feature crowd-pleasing battles, sword fights, natural disasters, and miracles. History The American film industry has been producing movies based on Bible stories since 1897: The Horitz Passion Play (1897) was the first Passion play to be shown in the United States. One of the earliest biblical films was the 1903 production of Samson and Delilah, produced by the French company Pathé. Another early film about a story in the Book of Genesis was the 1904 French film Joseph Vendu Par Ses Frères (Joseph Sold by his Brothers). Peak years for production of Biblical movies were around 1910. Matthew Page points out that "more biblical films were released in the years from 1909 to 1911 than at any other time". Enrico Guazzoni's 1913 Italian epic Quo Vadis? is often considered the first successful feature-length motion picture and one of the first films with over two hours running time. Cecil B. DeMille specialized in extravagant epics throughout a career that spanned both the silent and sound eras. His 1923 silent version of The Ten Commandments (1923) included spectacular special effects for the parting of the Red Sea. De Mille followed The Ten Commandments in 1927 with King of Kings, a lavish, reverential life of Christ with a climactic resurrection scene in color. King of Kings was re-released in 1931 with a synchronized musical score. MGM's 1925 silent-era Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, starring Ramon Novarro was the most expensive film of its time. It included two spectacular scenes: the sea galley battle with pirates and the famous chariot-race. Another "swords and sandals" epic of the 1920s was Noah's Ark which combined title cards with spoken dialogue. The major studios produced fewer epics during the 1940s due in part to wartime scarcity of resources. After the war, some of Hollywood's highest grossing films were religious epics produced as vehicles for its biggest stars. Samson and Delilah was the biggest moneymaking movie of 1949 and is considered the picture that sparked the biblical-epic film craze of the 1950s. It was followed by two of 1951’s biggest box-office hits, Quo Vadis and David and