My, how times have changed. Back in the days of Cecil B. DeMille’s riotously flatulent Exodus epic, a filmmaker with delusions of godliness could be counted on to be benign. The Ten Commandments is a film that’s ripped out of the Old Testament, but aside from the final Mt. Sinai sequence, it feels like the grandest archetypal Sunday-school pageant ever produced, which, for all intents and purposes, is to say it’s a product of the post-Resurrection take on the events surrounding the creation of Moses’s oppressive law.
Watching the showcase, which reverently documents Moses (Charlton Heston, in the role he believes he was born to play) and his calling to free the Hebrew slaves from the hand of Egypt’s tyrannical pharaoh, you can practically smell the slow cookers simmering away in the church kitchenette for potluck lunch. In stark contrast, and by most accounts, Mel Gibson’s ode to the key event of the New Testament fairly reeks of the retrograde brimstone characteristic of the Bible’s earlier, far more vengeance-oriented sections. Of course, this critic wildly simplifies sacred matters, but so does DeMille’s 1956 blockbuster (also his final film). And thank the Lord for that. If you’re going to mount a nearly four-hour-long production based on an ancient text, this is the way to do it: with an abundance of ornate sets and costumes, kitschy special effects, and a mind-blowingly stentorian cast backed up with literally thousands of extras.
In the early history of narrative films, DeMille was always a cinematic shaman whose relationship with religious morality was primarily as an 11th-hour trump card, which allowed him to film suggested orgies and Roman atrocities only to still lay down cheap redemption to send audiences out of theaters with their composure (and moral preconceptions) still intact. The Ten Commandments is hardly different from this model, but DeMille’s pre-Code films got away with a lot more than Hollywood typically allowed in the 1950s. Which makes DeMille’s decision to cast the hysterically campy Yul Brynner and Anne Baxter in the crucial roles of Rameses II and his wife, Nefretiri, an inspiration, whether intentional or simply by God’s fate.
While Brynner’s huffy priss stops short of the obligatory homoeroticism that seems the mark of so many ’50s historical spectacles (not to worry, John Derek’s wide-eyed, mouth-agape, head-tilted-back-as-he-grasps-Charlton’s-biceps performance, as Joshua, picks up the slack), Baxter’s chest-leading performance rides high in the annals of camp. Nefretiri spends the entire film in a dizzy heat over Moses, baring her teeth in fits of jealous passion and using drapery and bejeweled accessories as her own personal weapons of seduction.
The film’s four screenwriters almost didn’t even need to do Baxter the favor of supplying such immortal lines of dialogue as “Oh Moses! You stubborn, splendid, adorable fool!” She, and she alone, carries the film through its somewhat tepid first few hours before DeMille the ringmaster starts firing on all cylinders, culminating in the sweeping melodrama, the go-for-broke majesty of the deservedly iconic depiction of the parting of the Red Sea.
Image/Sound
This UHD release of The Ten Commandments has been sourced from the same master used for the 2011 Blu-ray release. That was already on impressive release, absent of the instances of edge enhancement and many other problems that marred prior DVD pressings of the film, and the 1080p format only dials up the splendor of the film’s over-saturated colors. The special effects still very much show their age, but Paramount has done a fine job of more seamlessly rendering the more primitive matte effects and other process shots. On the audio front, the lossless presentation is mostly a triumph of clarification. The surrounds are more effectively deployed, dialogue is clear across the board, and the score displays a newfound accuracy.
Extras
The only extra of note here is the commentary track by Katherine Orrison that’s appeared on several prior editions of Cecil B. DeMille’s epic. Author of Written in Stone, a book about the making of the Ten Commandments, Orrison deserves some sort of prize for rarely stopping for a breath. Her enthusiasm for the film is clear, and she’s obviously done her research, so the track bounces between interesting behind-the-scenes information and gushing over her love for the film’s silent-movie grandeur. It’s not the most consistent commentary track you’re likely to come across, but it’s certainly one of the most ambitious. Also included here are some snips from the archives: a newsreel of the New York premiere and three trailers from three eras (the last one of which, from 1989, makes one nostalgic for the days when quasi-macho-pious cinematic temples of doom were considered, briefly, old hat).
Overall
Cecil B. DeMille’s Exodus epic, and Anne Baxter’s riotous pursuit of Charlton Heston, has never looked better than it does on this new 4K edition.
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