(1956/Paramount Pictures) DVD / VHS
Rave Reviews
“De Mille’s riotously flatulent Exodus epic … hysterically campy.”
—Eric Henderson, Slant magazine
“A great big wallow, sublime hootchy-kootchy hokum.”
—TV Guide’s Movie Guide
“What DeMille has really done is to throw sex and sand into the moviegoers’ eyes for almost twice as long as anyone else has ever dared to.”—Time magazine
Plot, What Plot? Before movies even learned to talk, legendary director Cecil B. DeMille learned the one unbeatable box-office combination: stories from the Bible featuring scads of sex and oodles of orgies. This theory of tantalizing tales from the Good Book reached its zenith in DeMille’s multimillion-dollar 1956 remake of The Ten Commandments. Beloved by many, and taken way too seriously by most, Ten Commandments is basically a carnival sideshow of devilry and debauchery, swathed in the protective blanket of being based on the Bible.
We first know we’re in for a Holy Hoot when the film opens with DeMille himself stepping out from behind a curtain to tell us how carefully and accurately his film tells the biblical tale of Moses. Once the master showman steps back behind the drape, his film belies everything he’s said. The central story concerns the age-old eternal triangle, this one between Charlton Heston as the stone-faced Hebrew prince Moses, Princess Nefretiri, a slithering sex goddess steamily overplayed by Anne Baxter, and bald-headed Yul Brynner as Moses’ “half brother” Ramses, who wants Baxter to bear his children. The only problem is, neither history books nor the Good Book make any mention of this trio of love turtles.
Never mind, the film also features state-of-the-art, Oscar-winning special effects, including John Carradine turning Moses’ staff into a snake, a green-fingered plague misting its way through the streets of Egypt at night, and the legendary “parting of the Red Sea” sequence (an effect achieved by melting two blocks of blue Jell-O, then running the footage backwards). When it’s trying to be spectacular, Commandments indeed is. But whenever two characters are onscreen speaking, purple prose keeps popping up, made all the purpler by the actors speaking it.
DeMille always insisted he cast Heston in the lead role because of his resemblance to Michelangelo’s statue of Moses—little did he know that Charlton’s every move and line reading could be mistaken for granite. “Your fragrance is like the wine of Babylon,” Chuck tells the badly bewigged Baxter, restraining himself from mashing his lips to hers. “Oh, Moses!” she declaims, playfully grabbing his helmet, “I am Egypt!” She then performs the lip-lock Chuck was too restrained to do.
As the third side of this triangle, Yul Brynner’s Ramses is the most consistently interesting character in the film—which isn’t to say he doesn’t overact, merely that he does so with greater gusto than most of the rest. In proposing marriage to Baxter (or rather, commanding that she marry him), Brynner declares, “You will be mine, like my dog, or my horse, or my falcon. Except that I shall love you more … and trust you less!” Apparently finding the prospect of being walked on a leash irresistible, Baxter acquiesces.
In typical 1950s epic fashion, DeMille also cast a gallery of character actors and ingénues (both male and female) in supporting roles. Among the more amusing faces in this overcrowded cast of thousands are: Lily Munster (Yvonne De Carlo) as Mrs. Moses; a vampish Vincent Price as bad boy Baka; the DeMille of the Razzies John Derek as hunky stonecutter Joshua; and, constantly swallowing scenery whole, then spitting it right back into the camera, Edward G. Robinson as the heavy of the piece (and the leader of the Golden Calf Gang) Dathan. An interesting factual note is that Nina Foch, cast as Moses’ adoptive mother who rescues him from the bulrushes, is in real life all of seven months older than Charlton Heston.
Nearly four hours long, with every minute of that last hour making your backside throb, Ten Commandments is widely considered the finest of DeMille’s many sand-and-sex epics. But for those of us who know kitsch when we see it, Ten Commandments is CB’s supreme masterpiece of biblical bloviation.
Dippy Dialogue
Nefretiri (Anne Baxter): “Oh, Moses, Moses! You stubborn, splendid, adorable fool!”
Choice Chapter Stops
Chapter 17, Disc One (“The Royal Barge”): Baxter lords it over Heston, now reduced to making bricks out of straw and mud.
Chapter 13, Disc Two (“The Parting of the Red Sea”): In which The Jell-O of God smites those evil Egyptians.
Special Recommendation
If you get the DVD, try watching it with the French dialogue track and English subtitles enabled—you’ll miss none of the nostril-flaring “subtleties” of the performances, and experience the rare treat of hearing a Bible tale told by Pepé Le Pew.