Starring the great Yul Brynner as Rameses, Pharaoh of Egypt, and also starring Charlton Heston as the Hebrew slave, Moses, Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956) plays like pure movie paradise.
Featuring an all-star cast plucked from the cinematic firmament: Edward G. Robinson, Anne Baxter, Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price, John Derek, Yvonne De Carlo, John Carradine, and many more.
From the man who got Bible movies down to a science, The Ten Commandments is Cecil B. DeMille's story of Moses, religiously played by a gentile. Set in the days when slaves were all just clean, decent white folks and Pharaoh was a stern but kindly old British guy, the music is so huge, the narration so epic, the majesty of DeMille's creation really raked in the moolah.
Some of DeMille's shots, particularly those depicting long lines of human toil, call to mind the work of Soviet Union filmmaking genius Sergei Eisenstein's masterpiece Ivan the Terrible, they're that good. Most of the movie, however, is overshadowed by hyper-use of color.
He'd made the film before. DeMille's first version was the black and white silent relic from 1923. So he dug that one up and gussied it with the sparkling technology of the day.
It wasn't his only collaboration with Heston. He also cast Heston as the ringmaster in a circus.
Utilizing miracles of movie trickery, 24 frames per second flash and we see the Burning Bush, and get to listen in while it tells Moses what to do. We see the magic staff of Moses turn into a snake that eats other snakes without even developing a lump and having to take a month or so to digest.
Above all, The Ten Commandments is a story of men. Men in a pants-free world.
And it is a story of commands, laws bestowed by God Himself to never break, under any circumstances, no matter what. Laws such as, Thou Shalt Not Kill.
The best part is when Moses lures a bunch of guys into the Red Sea that God opened up and then they all get killed. Plus there's a river that turns into blood, a creeping Death Fog, and even a Pillar of Fire. So there's plenty of something for everyone.
Anyone watching the movie who questions why God talks to Moses only and can't appear as a governing species of flame-retardant flora for all to witness will be ritualistically flogged.
Behold, Yvonne De Carlo before she became TV's Mrs. Munster!
Behold, Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson in the same movie years before they were in Soylent Green, the one where people get turned into crackers!
Yes, The Ten Commandments. Available online, and wherever shafts of sunlight angle down from gaps in clouds.
Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
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