The Ten Commandments ****½ (1956, Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Edward G Robinson, Anne Baxter, Nina Foch, Cedric Hardwicke, Yvonne De Carlo, Debra Paget, John Derek) – Classic Movie Review 2247

Director Cecil B DeMille remakes his 1923 silent film The Ten Commandments in 1956 with the help of Charlton Heston as Moses, Technicolor, VistaVision and Oscar-winning special effects.

The Ten Commandments also stars Yul Brynner as Rameses, Anne Baxter as Nefretiri, Edward G Robinson as Dathan, Yvonne De Carlo as Sephora, Debra Paget as Lilia, John Derek as Joshua, Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Pharaoh Sethi, Nina Foch as Bithiah, Martha Scott as Yochabel, Dame Judith Anderson as Memnet and Vincent Price as Baka.

So this is Fifties Hollywood’s awesome biblical epic of the story of the Hebrew Moses (Heston) who is adopted as a child and given Egyptian nationality by Princess Bithiah (Nina Foch). His love for the Princess Nefretiri (Anne Baxter) angers the powerful Prince Rameses (Yul Brynner) and Moses is betrayed by Dathan (Edward G Robinson).

Moses is disowned and banished into the desert by the Pharaoh Sethi (Sir Cedric Hardwicke), then leads the Israelites out of the wicked grasps of the Egyptians, parts the Red Sea, and leads his Chosen People to the Promised Land.

Filmed on location in Egypt, Mount Sinai and the Sinai Peninsula and featuring one of the largest sets ever created, it is DeMille’s last and most successful film, then the most expensive film made. It was nominated for seven Oscars including Best Picture, but won only the one for Best Visual Effects (John P Fulton).

DeMille’s unshakeable belief, enthusiasm and energy, the cast of thousands, Heston’s conviction and the heroic-style acting keep this spectacular biblical epic together and compelling. Visually, in Loyal Griggs’s cinematography, it has a fascinating style – that of the engravings in the Victorian Bibles of the director’s youth.

At 220 minutes, it is well on the way to four hours long but it manages to be gripping and entertaining all the way in its antiquated epic style, a welcome throwback to the silent era of DeMille’s original.

The weird and wonderful casting – from the ruggedly handsome, chiselled-featured Heston (born John Charles Carter on October 1924 in Evanston, Illinois, with English and Scottish ancestry and more recent Canadian forebears) as Moses to the Vladivostok, Russia, born Brynner as Rameses – isn’t everybody’s idea of ideal but it unexpectedly works to the film’s advantage.

Not to mention, but I will, the Worcestershire-born, Shropshire grammar school-educated, RADA-trained English stage and film actor Sir Cedric Webster Hardwicke (19 February 1893 – 6 August 1964) as the second pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt.

Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Pharaoh Sethi in The Ten Commandments (1956).

The old-style parting of the Red Sea and the tablet writing of the Ten Commandments still thrill, loads more than in Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014). Needless to say, the screenplay takes considerable liberties with the biblical story of the Book of Exodus, compromising the film’s claim to authenticity, but showing the film was a popular fundraiser among revivalist Christian Churches. Adjusted for inflation, it earned a box office gross equivalent to $2 billion at 2011 prices, making it the seventh most popular film ever made. 

The screenplay by Aeneas MacKenzie Jesse L Lasky Jr, Jack Gariss and Fredric M. Frank is based on the 1949 novel Prince of Egypt by Dorothy Clarke Wilson, the 1859 novel Pillar of Fire by J H Ingraham, the 1937 novel On Eagle’s Wings by A E Southon, and the Book of Exodus.

Robert Vaughn makes his big-screen debut in an uncredited role.

The cast are Charlton Heston as Moses (and the voice of God at the Burning Bush), Yul Brynner as Rameses II, Anne Baxter as Nefretiri, Edward G. Robinson as Dathan, Yvonne De Carlo as Sephora, Debra Paget as Lilia, John Derek as Joshua, Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Pharaoh Sethi, Nina Foch as Bithiah, Martha Scott as Yochabel, Judith Anderson as Memnet, Vincent Price as Baka, John Carradine as Aaron, Olive Deering as Miriam, Douglass Dumbrille as Jannes, Frank de Kova as Abiram, Henry Wilcoxon as Pentaur, Eduard Franz as Jethro, Donald Curtis as Mered, Lawrence Dobkin as Hur Ben Caleb, H. B. Warner as Amminadab, Julia Faye as Elisheba, Lisa Mitchell, Noelle Williams, Joanna Merlin, Pat Richard, Joyce Vanderveen, and Diane Hall as Jethro’s Daughters, Abbas El Boughdadly as Rameses’s Charioteer, Cavalry Corps Egyptian Armed Forces as Pharaoh’s Chariot Host, Fraser Heston as The Infant Moses, John Miljan as The Blind One, Francis J. McDonald as Simon, Ian Keith as Rameses I, Paul De Rolf as Eleazar, Woodrow Strode as King of Ethiopia, Tommy Duran as Gershom, Eugene Mazzola as Rameses’s son Amun, Ramsay Hill as Korah, Joan Woodbury as Korah’s Wife, Esther Brown as Princess Tharbis, and Babette Bain as Little Miriam, and Kathy Garver as Rachel.

The 1956 American religious drama film epic The Ten Commandments is produced, directed and narrated by Cecil B DeMille, is shot in VistaVision and Technicolor by Loyal Griggs, made by Motion Picture Associates, released by Paramount Pictures, and scored by Elmer Bernstein.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2247

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/