Like a handful of reviewers here, I first encountered "The Ten Commandments" in the theater on a parochial school class trip to the movies. As a Catholic, we had already been instructed on the life of Moses and how he rose to prominence to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt and slavery. As a kid, I would have been eight or nine years old at the time, and was looking forward to seeing how the baby Moses was found floating in the river, and how the adult Moses turned his staff into a snake. It goes without saying that the burning bush scene and parting of the Red Sea had to be in the picture as well. I recall some disappointment that there were no plagues of frogs or locusts on screen, but after all, the film ran over three and a half hours as it is.
Watching the movie the other night brought back a lot of those reminiscences, and I was pretty amazed at how colorful and full of pageantry the picture was. The cast of thousands was indeed a cast of thousands, epic in scope of course, and one of those reminders that 'they just don't make 'em like that any more'. But with an adult eye, some of the film's glaring downsides are more than noticeable. Like the stilted dialog that hearkens all the way back to the birth of talkie films, and the wooden performances of characters portrayed by the likes of John Derek (Joshua), Vincent Price (Baka) and John Carradine (Aaron). I also had to laugh during that scene when Sephora (Yvonne De Carlo) and her sisters met Moses (Charlton Heston) for the first time. The goo-goo eyes directed at Heston were embarrassingly anachronistic even for the 1950's; why director Cecil B. DeMille allowed that to stand I'll never know.
But the story pretty much kept faith with the Biblical version of Moses, and gives a good accounting of his break with the Pharaoh and the wandering in the desert on the way to Sinai. Upon studying the opening credits, I had my eyes open for appearances of unlikely actors like Mike (Touch) Connors and Clint Walker but they apparently weren't sharp enough. It's my understanding that Walker got his 'Cheyenne' gig on the basis of his appearance in this film. It was easy to catch Woodrow 'Woody' Strode though as the Ethiopian King bearing gifts for Rameses I (Cedric Hardwicke). And what can you say about Edward G. Robinson? On paper, his casting in a Biblical epic seems rather mindless, but by the time Moses' followers languished in the desert, he really hit stride trying to undermine the whole enterprise.
And for cinema fans, the coup de grace of course is the parting of The Red Sea in all it's pre-CGI glory. I read about how DeMille did it once, using combined footage of the Red Sea with scenes from the Paramount backlot using a huge water tank split by a U-shaped trough. It was the most difficult special effect ever to be attempted at that time, and to it's credit, is still impressive to watch today. It's got 'how did they do that' written all over it.
Watching the movie the other night brought back a lot of those reminiscences, and I was pretty amazed at how colorful and full of pageantry the picture was. The cast of thousands was indeed a cast of thousands, epic in scope of course, and one of those reminders that 'they just don't make 'em like that any more'. But with an adult eye, some of the film's glaring downsides are more than noticeable. Like the stilted dialog that hearkens all the way back to the birth of talkie films, and the wooden performances of characters portrayed by the likes of John Derek (Joshua), Vincent Price (Baka) and John Carradine (Aaron). I also had to laugh during that scene when Sephora (Yvonne De Carlo) and her sisters met Moses (Charlton Heston) for the first time. The goo-goo eyes directed at Heston were embarrassingly anachronistic even for the 1950's; why director Cecil B. DeMille allowed that to stand I'll never know.
But the story pretty much kept faith with the Biblical version of Moses, and gives a good accounting of his break with the Pharaoh and the wandering in the desert on the way to Sinai. Upon studying the opening credits, I had my eyes open for appearances of unlikely actors like Mike (Touch) Connors and Clint Walker but they apparently weren't sharp enough. It's my understanding that Walker got his 'Cheyenne' gig on the basis of his appearance in this film. It was easy to catch Woodrow 'Woody' Strode though as the Ethiopian King bearing gifts for Rameses I (Cedric Hardwicke). And what can you say about Edward G. Robinson? On paper, his casting in a Biblical epic seems rather mindless, but by the time Moses' followers languished in the desert, he really hit stride trying to undermine the whole enterprise.
And for cinema fans, the coup de grace of course is the parting of The Red Sea in all it's pre-CGI glory. I read about how DeMille did it once, using combined footage of the Red Sea with scenes from the Paramount backlot using a huge water tank split by a U-shaped trough. It was the most difficult special effect ever to be attempted at that time, and to it's credit, is still impressive to watch today. It's got 'how did they do that' written all over it.