So Let it be Written....the 10 Commandments appreciation thread

In 3 days we get our annual holiday treat from ABC…the 4 hours of cheezy goodness that is Cecil b. DeMille’s masterpiece, The Ten Commandments.

I have a love/hate relationship with this movie. It’s soooooo bad (acting, dialog specifically) it’s incredible fun. I must admit that I’ve seen the beginning about 20 times…I’ve seen the end, maybe twice.

One favorite aspect is how the screenplay is firmly…firmly…grounded in 2000 BC Egypt through the use of metaphors and similes. Silk can’t just be “oooh…shiny”; it’s got to “shimmer like the Nile.” Seti can’t be an old goat or an old snake…no, he’s an “old crocodile.”

In a completely non-ironic, non-snarky way…the obelisk raising scene is cool.

One scene I like is when Moses’ wife is approached by Nefertiri. She tells her that she doesn’t fear her, only Moses’ memory of her. When Nefertiri tells her she need not fear even that, Sepphora makes the bitter comment, “You lost him when he went to seek his God. I lost him when he found him.”

I like the passing of “the Angel of Death”. For a movie of that era I would have expected something a little more anthropomorphic. What we get is the eerie mist trailing from the sky and along the ground. As a child that particular event concerned me as I am a firstborn.

And Moses’ step-mother, when she took refuge with the Hebrews, asked for her litter bearers to be admitted as well, a suggestion that the Exodus was not necessarily as homogenous an event as many think it.

Rameses is such a badass…completely unfazed by the fact that hail is falling from the sky and bursting into flames. Just wraps his cloak around himself and stomps off…“peculiar weather we’re havin’.”

I love it – each scene looks composed, like a 19th century spectacle painting. In fact, we’ve got one here in Boston – “The Seventh Plague of Egypt” by John Martin:

http://www.secrel.com.br/jpoesia/feito39.html#seven

(The reproduction doesn’t do it justice – there are lightning bolts and blazing fires that aren’t visible or obvious here. And the damned thing’s Huge)

It’s not a movie – it’s a filmed pageant, and they took care that the colors are bright and vibrant (compare any scene with that new Hallmark Tv Movie they just showed, which looks washed out by comparison).

de Mille’s folks really did research this. There was a souvenir program booklet that I saw in Sam Wellers Books basement ages ago, and I’m sorry I didn’t buy, showing how they got that weird asymmetric unilock on Yul Brynner from Egyptian carvings, and used pre-Hebrew writing for the Commandments themselves.
Speaking of Salt Lake City, one of the conceptual artists responsible for this was arnold Friberg (his name’s in the opening credits). Arnie’s the guy who did all those paintings at the LDS Visitor’s center to illustrate the Book of Mormon (they’re also bound into many editions of the BOM). Going into the Salt Lake Visitors center or flipping through the BOM gives non-LDS folk an eerie rush of deja vu until they realize this.

It’s hard to believe, but at one time this wasn’t on TV every Easter/Passover. When I was a kid I saw a still from this and wanted to see the picture, but in those pre-VCR days there was no way to do this. It wasn’t on TV or anything. I was frustrated for years until they re-released it when I was in high school. (I had to wait even longer until I finally got a chance to see Fantasia).

It would be interesting to compare this version with DeMille’s silent version. Just from the acting style, it feels like a silent movie – but in Technicolor and Panavision.

I have. I’ve got the silent one on tape. There’s a lot of “modern” (for 1923) drama, with the story of Moses only being part of it. But the Moses part is pageant in that version, too, with the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea

They did it with water, formed gelatine, and running the film backwards. But still pretty impressive for the time.

and with laboriously hand-colored frames, the best they could do before real color film (and arguably better than two-strip Technicolor, 'cause you could get blues).

This is another of those films I had to wait a long time before I saw. I’d seen film stills from it in an old encyclopedia I bought in grade school, but I didn’t see the film until a few years ago.

I swear that when I watch the sea parting (which I always do if I’m home, I’ll switch it over to see that scene- even in today’s CGI world it holds up) sometimes I see what looks like hands coming from the sky (not clear, more cloudlike) and sometimes I don’t see them. Does anybody know if there are hands in this scene?
Favorite no Over the Top Moments:

*Cedric Hardwicke’s death scene (" With my last breath I’ll break my own law and speak the name of Moses… Moses.")

*Ramses’s obnoxious little son (compared to whom Chulalongkorn in his other 50s despot pic seemed sweet)

*Anne Baxter’s cold “Before you take my blood let me see the blood of Moses on your sword”.

Favorite OTT Moments:

*Judith Anderson’s scenes as Mamnet, the bitter old spinster servant on loan from Rebecca who keeps Moses’s swaddling for just such an occasion

*Vincent Price who shows mild passing lust for the slave girl he sends for but is ALL ABOUT whipping Joshua (John Derek). His daughter, herself an out lesbian, says to the best of her knowledge her father wasn’t gay or bi, but he flatly could have played it well

*Edward G. Robinson throughout- even Billy Crystal didn’t kill the enjoyment

Did anybody see the new miniseries? I forgot it was even on.

Always odd to me about Hollywood epics: most wouldn’t dare touch Shakespeare’s plots or dialogue (the “additional dialogue by Sam Taylor” credit notwithstanding) but they’d give sideplots and extra dialogues galore to Bible stories while at the same time taking away real parts of the story (God’s odd decision to kill Moses before he gets to Egypt, for example).

Of course at risk of being disrespectful I’ve always had a certain sympathy for Pharaoh.

I’ve always been impressed with Pharaoh. He’s either infinitely stupid or infinitely tough (maybe both). as portrayed in TTC, he sees all the miraculous power of the Hebrew God, yet he insists on ignoring this and, finally, in pursuing and trying to kill the Hebrews. Even after his Firstborn is killed. Even after the pillar of fire holds up his chariots (a detail not in Exodus, by the way – the pillar of fire, like the pillar of smoke, was a guide only, not a blockade), he still sends his chariots after the Hebrews across the parted Sea.

I just finished re-reading Charlton Heston’s memories of this movie in In The Arena. Very interesting look at the production from the inside.

Cedric Hardwicke is so cool…I always associate him with 2 roles: Seti, and the narrator in War of the Worlds. Such an excellent voice.

Nefertiri…one spiteful bitch.

My favorite OTT scene is the love scene between Moses and Sepphora (Yvonne de Carlo, aka Lily Munster). She has this long speech, in couplets comparing the charms of Egyptian women to her more earthly yet sincere attributes…with each line she swings her head up and talks about Egypt…then down, talking about herself. Up…down…up…down…it’s hypnotic.

The Hebrews will always be “mud turtles” to me.

Arnold Friberg Ten Commandments art:

http://www.fribergfineart.com/items.asp?CartId={24CD743EVERESTA-3516-4F54-81EA-7E8D74F20C48}&Cc=TENC

and Book of Mormon Art:

http://www.schoolofabraham.com/friberg.htm
and other stuff:

http://www.fribergfineart.com/

Any idea how Charlton Heston’s doing, incidentally? He announced that he had the early signs of Alzheimer’s in 2002, since when he’s done a couple of movies and some voice-over work, but does anybody know if he’s “still with us”? Is he capable of doing interviews anymore?

I’m not a fan of his politics and gun views, but I’ve always thought he was unfairly panned as an actor due to the ease of imitating him. Plus, he’s one of the biggest surviving links to the Golden Era and I hate to see him go.

Plus, the best film musical score EVER.

I’m a big fan.

“His God…Is God.” :eek:

“God opens the sea with a blast of his nostrils”

One of my favorite corny shots is when the Red Sea is parted and there are some women on a rock with their hair being blown back and their hands up to their faces in a swoon over the awesomeness of it all.

One of the guards says “Hell”. Just recently when I saw that I was like “wait a minute…” Was that even a concept back then? I let it slide.

I, too, love the vast city and obelisk-raising scene.

And the speech the narrator gives while Moses is wandering through the desert.

I thought the way they did it in Prince of Egypt was quite excellent, if you haven’t seen it. Kind of the same as in the Ten Commandments, but more artful, for lack of a better word. Prince of Egypt was surprisingly good, and had some truly magical moments.

This film is obviously a big influence on Stephen Spielberg. It’s playing in the background when Roy Neary (Dreyfuss’ character) is sculpting his model of Devil’s Tower in the living room. One of the first appearances at Devil’s Tower closely resembles The Angel of Death. Heck, Devil’s Tower resembles Mt. Sinai from this film.

then there’s the Spirits from the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark – heck, the very idea of using Moses and the Ark of the Covenant i that movie.

I like how every character in the entire film, at one point or another, cries out, “Moses!”

“Moses!”
“MOSES!”
Moses!
“Moses!”
“MOW-ses!”
“Moses Moses Moses!”

(We call it “The Moses Movie” at our house.)

Also, my favorite line in all of cinematic history is “Let’s see them make bricks with no straw!”

Just because.

Brilliant, brilliant movie.

My brother-in-law calls Planet of the Apes “that movie with Moses and the talking monkeys”.

I remember a miniseries called Moses the Lawgiver that I need to get on DVD at some point. It starred Burt Lancaster, had a budget probably less than Heston’s salary for TTC, but I remember it as very good. It covers from birth to Sinai to Moses’s death. Has anybody seen this in the past 30 years?

MAD Magazine had Heston’s first words in their Planet of the Apes parody be “Let my People Go!”
Time Magazine’s review of Beneath the Planet of the Apes was entitled “Moses Meets the Humanoids”.

As for the Burt Lancaster opus, it was available on VHS (I don’t know if it’s currently on DVD), and they had it at my video store in the mid-1980s, so somebody’s seen it in the past thirty years. Heck, I think I have. I think it’s shown up on TV.

Well, with ol’ Will it’s usually more a matter of *cutting * sideplots and lesser characters. But at least these *were * plays to begin with, so the story-arc structure is already there. The play itself tells us how we ended up with King Harry is addressing the troops on St. Crispin’s Eve.

With the Bible, you have often the problem that in places you find half a century’s worth of events and backstory knocked off into two paragraphs, followed then by four chapters describing one particular day’s extreme violence, or giving specifications for a ritual procedure… and NO explanation other than “God willed it”. Which is fine as Bible… but would make a lame theatrical feature. In the case of Exodus, if you went by what the Bible actually contains, the parts of this movie between when Moses is born and when he sees the burning bush would be over in about 20 minutes, as it says jacksquat about what happened after he’s rescued by the Pharaoh’s sister leading to that when he became an adult he killed a man who was abusing a slave, and had to leave the country. But in the second half you’d spend one whole fascinating hour watching them assemble a tabernacle.

And for some reason, folks don’t care if you elaborate upon the Bible, just as long as in the end God kicks heathen ass or everyone ends up repenting, which to them is the point.

ALSO, of course, we can’t forget that in the heyday of Bible/Mythology epics, very often the Biblical or Classical origin of the story was just the excuse for a writer/producer/director to throw in a large, sprawling exotic-action-fantasy production with many bare-chested men in short tunics, dancing girls with grapefruits attached to the end of their braids (what was THAT about???), and well-endowed bitch princesses lounging seductively (just as long as they get their comeuppance).