The Ten Commandments

Rating:
Summary: Heston goes to the mountain.
Review: This new transfer of the DeMille classic is excellent, with a bright color palette and nary a hint of film grain. The 1:85 anamorphic image allows the film to fill the screen of a widescreen television, immersing the viewer in this still-impressive mid-50's spectacle. Yes, the stars overact and the tone of the film alternates between sincere religious zeal and high camp, and yet the film still holds up as the ultimate Biblical epic, perhaps rivalled only by Heston's other Biblical opus 'Ben-Hur.' A worthy addition to any DVD library, especially for fans of 1950's widescreen epics.

Rating:
Summary: Yup....it's a "must-see" to believe!
Review: Most of these amazon.com reviews are right on. This movie has very little to do with Christianity (in fact, it would make a strong case against it---full of vengeance and death) and everything to do with DeMille's spectacle. It is wholly compelling and 3.5 hours fly by in technicolor soap opera splendor, with an amazing cast.

Heston, with great pecs and knocking knees, is fantastic up until he meets God on Sinai and begins a series of wild new hairdo's....that's when he becomes a Baritone-Bot. Anne Baxter is as hammy as can be and chews up half the scenery in Egypt ("Eve Harrington goes to Goshen?!"). Debra Paget, John Derek, breathtaking Yvonne DeCarlo, Martha Scott and Edward G. Robinson are marvelous supporting players and Yul Brynner steals the show as the Pharoah.

This great epic film transcends "Biblicial" and stands on its own as a testament (pardon the pun) to great cinematic achievements on all levels. Definitely one to own and enjoy again and again.

(You might very well believe after seeing this that Yvonne and Yul were, at the time, the most beautiful specimens of their genders!)

Rating:
Summary: Matchless spectacle, less impressive film
Review: They say Cecil B. DeMille never made a good film. This version of The Ten Commandments pretty much supports that opinion. T10C gets along by balancing (not always very well) lots of labored acting from an essentially solid cast--over-directed, in classic DeMille fashion, to the point of mere puppetry--with lots of Techincolor spectacle and lots and lots of FX, most famously the parting of the Red Sea. It's an uneasy mix and the whole doesn't add up to the sum of its parts.

Before the film starts, DeMille appears to tell us that he sees T10C as a Biblical parallel to the 50s conflict between divinely-ordained capitalism and godless Communism. In other words, the Egyptians wear black hats and the Hebrews wear white. This pretty much sums up the plot as DeMille gives it to us; whatever else happens is window-dressing and, while a lot of it is indeed impressive to watch, it can't make up for a stultifyingly trite script and marionettish acting.

The only performances that achieve some humanity over, above, and beyond DeMille's trite approach are Nina Foch as Bithiah (Moses' adoptive Egyptian mother), Yvonne DeCarlo as Sepphorah (Moses' wife), and Edward G. Robinson as the vile Dathan. The other characters are paper cutouts: Vincent Price gives us his best sneeringly effete mannerisms as the overseer Bakkah; Martha Scott trots out her noble, careworn mother routine (cf. Ben-Hur, in which she also plays Heston's ma); John Derek and a nearly-forgotten Debra Paget cannot find any identifiable flesh to put on the bones of Joshua or Lilia. Heston, as Moses, pontificates as woodenly as ever; Yul Brynner, as Ramses II, is as willing to posture as always--only his shaved head lends verisimilitude to the character.

The true awfulness of the whole is summed up in two successive scenes immediately preceding the last of the Ten Plagues (we see only a bloody Nile, hail falling from a clear sky, and the Angel of Death). In the first of these scenes Nefertiri (Anne Baxter), Moses' onetime royal fiancee and now Ramses' queen, confronts Moses' shepherd wife Sepphorah. Just compare Baxter's one-note acting to DeCarlo's "You lost him when he went to seek his God; I lost him when he found his God." In the next scene, Nefertiri has waited in Moses' hut to tell him she has sent Sepphorah and Moses' son to Midian to save the boy from Ramses' edict that the Hebrews' firstborn must die. There's no other way to phrase it: to show her lasting lust for Moses and her misplaced confidence that he still desires her, she wriggles before him in a silver lame sheath. She leaves reassuring herself that Moses will let no harm befall her firstborn son. We know better, and after the boy dies we naturally expect a change in Nefertiri's attitude toward Moses. We don't get it. Baxter expresses her venom in exactly the same heavy, breathy phrases she uses all through the film. (Was she *really* Frank Lloyd Wright's granddaughter?)

That's an adult viewpoint. When I first saw this film as a kid of 9 I was enthralled and to some extent I still am. Before the advent of VHS, I saw T10C more often than any other film and in more languages, as I rarely missed a chance to see it even when traveling in Europe. After its first release, I did not see it again for 25 years and was surprised to realize how much of it I had remembered with astonishing clarity. It was one of the first VHS films I purchased. Despite its flaws, it somehow keeps its hold on the viewer, and I won't blame anybody for treasuring it as I still do--that first sight of hail coming down from a clear sky over Ramses' balcony, that awesome foggy green hand menacing the moon as the Angel of Death descends over Egypt, and those impossibly tacky fireworks as the finger of God carves out the stone tablets of the law atop Mount Sinai. (I won't go into those embarrassingly fake cobras Moses and the Egyptian priests create out of sticks.) It was only when I saw a restored print of DeMille's original silent T10C that I came to appreciate the parting of the Red Sea for the tremendous achievement it was for the 1950s: in the silent version, the "sea" consisted of two slabs of gelatin filmed while melting under hot lights, and the film was then reversed to create the impression of a parting sea.

Buy it and enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: They don't make em like this anymore
Review: .........and some might say, good job they don't. But with this movie they would be wrong. This is an epic movie in all senses of the word, De Milles "cast of thousand" means extra's by the train load, lavish painted sets, and one of, if not THE classic story. Add the class of Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter & Edward G Robinson (to name but a few) and a watertight script, and this is one polished piece of cinema. Long before CGI, but the special effects are still pretty good, the cinematics sweeping, but the real power of the movie lies in Charlton Hestons powerhouse performance. Back when hero's looked the part, maybe not buffed like Brad Pitt in "Troy" but camera down around the knees, and bellowing out quasi prose in a booming baratone, really portrayed the characters with panache. This is a fairly long movie and covers the story from the Bull Rushes to the delivery across the Jordan, and most things in between during the 220 mins run time. Yul Brynner is also suberb as Rameses the Egyptian tyrant, and the whole production is on such a massive scale, it's a visual feast on the small screen. The transition to DVD is pretty good with Dolby sound and a few other extra's on the two disc set. Considering the year of production, this stacks up well and is probably considered the benchmark in sword and sandal style biblical epics. One for the collectors library. Enjoy!