Thou shalt go big or go home
“They don’t make ‘em like they used to.” It’s a phrase I mutter a lot while watching anything pre-1980. (Hell, pre-2010.) I consider it a prayer of awe and respect. But with The Ten Commandments, it’s less muttering and more a shout accompanied by a prostration at the altar of epic cinema. They don’t make ‘em anywhere close to this anymore. Even with a Best Picture contender this year that ran 3.5 hours and resurrected the intermission, The Ten Commandments stands alone. The sheer scope of DeMille’s last film dwarfs almost anything that’s come since.
Of course, no one ever accused Cecil B. DeMille, a titan of studio-era production now relegated to “dinosaur” status in most critical surveys, of subtlety. The Technicolor Ten Commandments declares its hugeness up front. We experience an overture, a director’s introduction, and extended title credits — almost ten minutes — before the first frame of the actual film. (That’s about 20% of the runtime of Sherlock Jr. in just motor-revving.) If you watch the proper, complete edit, which includes all the accoutrements, the runtime spans to a few minutes under four hours. This is an exhausting film, yes. But very much a rewarding one. The production is astonishing — not just the famous set pieces like the parting of the Red Sea or the plague mist rolling in like God’s own fog machine, but the way the entire effort is a flex of midcentury Hollywood’s capacity for industrial hugeness. Even when a few moments of the design underwhelm (I swear a few of these interiors were shot in a hotel lobby), there’s grandeur to spare. Through all the theatricality, the film still taps into a resonant and timeless story, one of cinema’s great sources of drama: Every step of the transformation of Moses from baby floating down a river to conflicted prince to reluctant prophet is given room to breathe, and when the film hits its peaks, it soars.
The story is, of course, drawn from the Book of Exodus, but DeMille and his team used an armful of supplementary sources: Philo, Josephus, the Midrash, and a pair of historical novels that colored in the gaps between verses. The result is a kind of Biblical cinematic “eternity version,” where scripture and apocrypha form a rich piece of Hollywood writing. DeMille credits the King James Bible onscreen, but behind the curtain are years of research and a writer’s room that included Jesse L. Lasky Jr., Fredric M. Frank, Aeneas MacKenzie, and Jack Gariss — each working to turn a holy text into a blockbuster.
In fact, this film is technically a remake… sort of. DeMille had directed The Ten Commandments once before, his 1923 silent film. That version, notably, only spends about a third of its runtime on Moses. The rest covers a contemporary morality tale involving bootleggers and crumbling morals. For his 1956 update, DeMille ditches everything except Moses, giving the ancient story the full Old Hollywood treatment.
The arc of Moses (Charlton Heston) kicks off with his rescue from the Nile by the pharaoh’s daughter following an order to murder and suppress the Hebrews. Moses grows up as a prince, competing with his cousin Rameses II (Yul Brynner) for royal favor. In a plot contrivance out of Shakespeare, the current pharaoh Sethi (Cedric Hardwicke) must choose his successor based on a series of character and productivity challenges. Everything’s coming up Moses at first: he negotiates peace and extracts improved labor out of the slaves by giving them — get this — livable rations. He also kicks off a romance with Nefretiri (Anne Baxter), betrothed to whichever of Rameses and Moses takes the throne. The rest of the first half of The Ten Commandments plays like a royal daytime soap, with betrayals, forbidden love, and palace intrigue, though it steers clear of any steam. Instead, it gives Moses a remarkably robust basis for a character arc when his birth origin inevitably comes to light: Will he cling to power and privilege, or throw in his lot with the enslaved Hebrews? Every time Moses signs a treaty or pipes up about humane treatment on the brickworks, it’s another nudge toward anti-imperial destiny.
Then comes the exile: Moses learns his Hebrew roots and forgoes his chance at the throne. Sethi banishes Moses into the desert, stripped of crown and comfort, and gives the fancy Egyptian hat thingy to Rameses. Moses wanders through endless sands until he finds the oasis of Midian, where he settles down for a score. Then, the encounters with God begin: he meets the legendary Burning Bush. Heston has a conversation with himself, his voice doubled as the divine whisper. (I think DeMille should have voiced God; it would have been a fun meta touch, director as divine Creator.) This is the film’s fulcrum: the pivot from palace politics to Providential purpose. When Moses strides back into Egypt — now flanked by shepherd’s garb and a staff that turns cobra — he is not just a man, but a vessel of God’s power and justice.
And lo, the payoff of this film’s second half. DeMille saved his greatest showpieces for the famous biblical stories: the Nile running blood-red, the hailstorm from a clear sky, the Passover murder gas, and the pillar of fire. (DeMille oddly hand-waves away a few of the plagues in narration; why he couldn’t spare the cash for a few buckets of frogs and locusts, I’m not sure.) But nothing rivals the parting of the Red Sea for sheer power. It has the aura of culmination, decades of Hollywood craft and savviness cresting in a perfectly constructed and immensely evocative set piece. A cast of thousands of Hebrews march on dry ground while the walls of water loom like glass cathedrals. The tactility of the practical effect leaves modern CGI looking tame even at its grandest.
And then with the ultimate climax in the bag… the film stretches out another half hour to chase the titular ten-piece laws. I guess it makes sense; it’d be silly not to include the Commandments. (I’m not surprised that DreamWorks shifted the focus by re-titling their animated quasi-remake; though even The Prince of Egypt tacks the Commandments on at the end.) This last stretch is a bit of a trudge as the Hebrews turn on Moses while he collects the three… I mean, two stone tablets. DeMille obviously felt bound to show Moses receiving the law, but it undercuts the emotional and narrative momentum of the hour and a half that precedes it, and it leaves me a little sour as the “Exit Music” plays.
Still, it’s hard to deny the ambition and sweep of The Ten Commandments. The parting of the Red Sea is the headline grabber, but the entire film is full of high-effort, high-payoff visual effects. The Angel of Death glides in as green mist, eerie and silent; the Burning Bush radiates power; and the blood spreads with high-contrast horror. John P. Fulton led the SFX team, and world-class practical effects have a cinematic power that endures in ways that computer-driven effects rarely do.
The performances, meanwhile, lock into a very specific mode of spiritual theater and studio era bombast. Everyone speaks in capital letters. It’s not bad acting, generally, though it’s pitched to the mezzanine of a cathedral. Baxter is a major highlight, purring every syllable like she’s seducing a sphinx. She morphs between about four different archetypes in as many hours. Brynner offers a racially ambiguous sneer and haughtiness perfect for Rameses. It’s a massive cast, with sturdy talent spread across the cast sheet: Edward G. Robinson shows up as the Hebrew who betrays his people; John Carradine is a charming Aaron; and Vincent Price makes a small appearance as a slave driver.
And then there’s Moses himself, Charlton Heston, in an iconic performance, which is not necessarily the same as a great performance, though I think it hits that benchmark. What he lacks in chemistry with the cast surrounding him — particularly Baxter; I don’t believe their torrid affair for a second — he makes up for with chiseled screen presence. His beard grows longer and white as he grows closer to God. He sometimes resembles a Michelangelo statue, a raw strength to his screen persona. But he does solid, interior work during the film’s first half in his spiritual crisis as he confronts his Hebrew heritage and royal identity, which makes Moses’s arc as a leader for his people very effective and even moving.
Exodus is millennia old, but DeMille brings a particular 1950’s American flavor to the story. It’s a theological-political mashup: When he’s a prince, Moses’s approach to leadership has New Deal-coded, Cold War-tinted, foreign policy-driven overtones: he negotiates economic and cultural peace treaties and repurposes state agencies to serve the people. He seeks to find prosperity and cultural stability after widespread calamity, much like Eisenhower. The late golden calf sequence plays like a warning shot across the cultural bow — hedonism and rebellion as shorthand for moral collapse, foreshadowing the way New Hollywood and the sexual revolution would reframe DeMille and Bosley Crowthers-types as the dated cruft that needs to be shed in favor of the youth generation. From an imagery perspective, Moses is essentially Protestant Jesus, a savior and a spiritual liberator who was speaks in concise edicts and who his people just need to believe in to find salvation.
There’s another factor to The Ten Commandments’ place in history. Coming just a decade after World War 2 and the Holocaust, the empowerment of Jewish people and culture is a key point of the film. Consciously or subconsciously, the Passover here evokes the sudden genocide of the Nazi gas chambers. The miracle of sparing the Hebrews has all the more power, and the death of Rameses’ kid all the more tragedy. DeMille was partially Jewish by heritage, and he explicitly reached out to Jewish executives when raising funds for The Ten Commandments’ production.
So where does all of that craft and context leave The Ten Commandments today? Somewhere between holy kitsch and cornerstone. It’s old-fashioned in more ways than one, that’s for sure. But it’s also massive and mesmerizing in a way that Hollywood rarely even attempts anymore. (Only James Cameron and maybe Christopher Nolan.) It believes in itself — earnestly, completely, thunderously — and that self-seriousness and prodigiousness reach become strengths. You don’t watch this for focus or for visual wit; you watch it to be awed. And on that front, it doesn’t just deliver, it overpowers like the Red Sea crashing down on you. You feel the elements shot on location: the dust, heat, and wind. You witness the divine, or at least DeMille’s approximation of it.
The film was DeMille’s last, and it concluded a late run of massive successes: His previous film, the 1952 Greatest Show on Earth, won Best Picture and paved new ground in production as an early adopter of green screen effects. His film before that, the 1949 Samson and Delilah, was (by current estimates) the highest-grossing film of the year by a factor of three over the runner-up. (Whereas The Ten Commandments only doubled-up second place in 1956.) According to Letterboxd and by broad acclaim, though, The Ten Commandments is DeMille’s biggest and most important movie. Its screening on TV remains an Easter staple in the US, and it places highest in They Shoot Pictures’ critical retrospective of DeMille’s career (though still not cracking the top 1000 films).
Moses’s saga is among the most cinematic stories in all of literature, one that lends itself to adaptation again and again. It has it all: mythic scope, social revolution, and personal reckoning. Unforgettable images and a natural, rhythmic arc and climax. The Ten Commandments isn’t quite as immediate and emotional as the next-most-famous telling, The Prince of Egypt, but it absolutely lays the groundwork for the latter’s streamlined, musical rendition. The Ten Commandments is an awesome film, in both common usages of the word; it successfully sells its conviction that this story deserves the biggest possible canvas. So yes, it’s overlong and stodgy. But it’s also a glorious reminder of a time when Hollywood knew what it meant to go biblical. They don’t make ‘em like they used to: So let it be written. So let it be done.
Is It Good?
Very Good (6/8)
Awards and Honors
Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.