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The Ten Commandments (1923)
Rate:
7
Viewed:
10/08, 4/22
10/08:
There's a great reason why most silent films are completely forgotten today, and The Ten Commandments is no exception.
The most surprising part is the how packed the two stories are in one film. What I was expecting from the
remake occurs during the first fifty minutes, but it just keeps going on and on for another hour and an half when I
thought to myself, "What more can there possibly be?" It's the random vignette of some poor bastard breaking
literally all of the Ten Commandments.
I'm rather annoyed by the narrow-minded vision that people must either follow the Ten Commandments or be lost
forever. Wow, that's a lot of Christian propaganda right there. Hence, I can't help but to fall asleep although the
performances by Richard Dix and Rod La Rocque as the McTavish brothers are well-done. Even better is Cecil B. DeMille's
direction which seamlessly incorporates the lavish visual effects with the goings-on, however muddled they are.
All in all, it's a good thing The Ten Commandments was remade.
4/22:
The 1956 version of The Ten Commandments is never going to be topped, but the silent picture is a good start anyway.
What I don't like is it's two films in one. The first half is plentiful while the second is more of an afterthought.
It's not to say either is bad, but showing an example for the present-day is extreme. The reality is everybody
breaks the Ten Commandments regularly and most can't recite them all off the top of their heads.
Thinking back to the remake, the original only covers from Moses telling Rameses II what he'll do to the firstborn children to
leading the Exodus to parting the Red Sea (which was done with a Jell-O sliced into two that got
superimposed against a reel of the Israelites walking through) to throwing down the tablets from Mount Sinai.
Still, the whole thing bothers me because I expected a longer buildup until the aforementioned events. The next
part is okay but is surprisingly twice as long as the biblical epic when it should've been the other way around. At any rate,
Richard Dix gives a sensitive performance while Theodore Roberts is no Charlton Heston.
Interestingly, the idea of making The Ten Commandments originated in a contest. The winning suggestion
to Cecil B. DeMille was: "You cannot break the Ten Commandments—they will break you." The massive structures as shown in
the silent film aren't the same ones used in the remake since they were dynamited, bulldozed, and buried beneath the
Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes in northern Santa Barbara County, California.
All in all, Cecil B. DeMille was wise enough to remake The Ten Commandments by just focusing on Moses and
expanding the story.