The Ten Commandments (1923)

Long before the Charlton Heston graced the screen, there was another epic film directed by the great Cecil B. DeMille also entitled The Ten Commandments. Through is grand career as one of the greatest and most influential motion picture directors of the first half of the 20th century, DeMille was known for his two types of films, morality/battle of the sexes and epics. This picture does not let the audience down with the eye candy of massive sets and countless extras to recreate the story of Moses from the book of Exodus.

For those who may not have known that DeMille made two versions on The Ten Commandments, you may not know that this version doesn't just tell the biblical story, but a shares a modern morality play as well for the second half of the film. It gives a sense of having two films in one, and with a running time of nearly two hours and twenty minutes it would have felt like two films for audiences that were use to shorter features. But it is DeMille, and he can get away with it.

The first half is the dramatization of Exodus from when Moses first asks for his people to be let go to the crossing of the recieving of the ten commandments on Mt. Siani. (A sort of abbreviated version, but as we all know most books have more detail then its film counterparts.) We all know the story, and there is nothing special, story-wise, to note as special. But technically the story is massive. With some of the largest movie sets in history recreating ancient Egypt, to one of first uses of color film, to dazzling special effects to create the parting of the Red Sea. This half of the picture was to make the audiences watch in awe, seeing things that they had never seen before. Egypt was an exotic faraway place that people in America have never seen such recreations of. And with the world famous discoveries of the tomb of King Tutankhamun just a year prior, these scenes must have really caught the eyes and imaginations of its audience. To enhance the spectacle DeMille filmed parts of the Exodus in early Technicolor, which brings these images even closer to real life for those watching. And to top it all off was the greatest special effect in movie history at that time, the parting of the Red Sea. To accomplish the effect DeMille used a Jell-O mold filmed close up to create the walls of water while splicing in people walking through the break of these two jiggling walls. This was an effect that worked wonders for the film and is still very convincing to this day. DeMille really flexes his creative muscles with this epic half of the movie, immortalizing him as one of the greats.

The second have tells the story of very religious mother raising her two sons on the ten commandments, which leads us to think the the first half was a visualization of the mother teaching her sons. As the sons grow up they go two different directions, one doing as their mother taught and keeping the ten commandments, the other determined to break every one of them as he believes they are no good in this modern days (the roaring 20s.) The good son (played by Richard Dix) becomes a modest carpenter, and "bad" son becomes very wealthy owning his own contruction firm building large projects even hiring his brother as labor. Well the bad son's greed and selfishness eventually leads to his downfall which includes the death of his own mother as his shady construction of a church collapses and kills her. The bad sons ends up broken inside as he breaks every commandment. The morality is pretty straight forward and seems a bit lacking at points, but still remains a decent picture for its time.

The Ten Commandments was a huge epic for its time, opening at the Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Blvd., which still stands and operates to this day as a reminder of the romantic period of Hollywood. Its technological contributions to the film industry with it Technicolor scenes and special effect used would inspire the films to come for years. The large Egyptian set pieces, including a four 35 foot tall pharaoh statues, 21 sphinxes, and 110 foot tall gates built by the hands of 1600 men was a gargantuan set meant to awe all that watch this movie, rivaling the Babylon sets of W.D. Griffith's Intolerance. Sadly the sets built just outside Pismo Beach in California, because of its sand dunes recreated Egypt, would be demolished after filming by dynamite and buried in the sand, but due to the weather and the surf, the shards of broken set still lie out in the open and anyone can walk up to it and pick up a piece of this famous movie set. (This would not be too uncommon of an act to leave demolished sets behind during this period, and it is interesting that you can visit historical movie sets like this to this very day.)

Of coarse DeMille would remake his masterpiece years later with an even longer film that centered only on the story of Moses. He would do so as his final film as his health was limiting him. Though that version would stand as "The" Ten Commandments film, it is importnat to note his great skill in producing this momentous version that could not be compared to any other film in size at that time.