It should scare you that no one can definitively say that if The Ten Commandments were remade today that it wouldn’t have had a sequel in the works within a week of positive box office response. There was talks of making a sequel to The Passion of the Christ (no, I’m not joking – that idea is in fact still circling the drain of Hollywood); someone remade Ocean’s Eleven, and then, based on the fact that George Clooney and Brad Pitt just have too much chemistry to not sequel the idea into the ground, Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen were made; and, for whatever reason, the long buried series of Indiana Jones was exhumed so its creators could give its corpse a good rogering. The point being, there was a time when films were made and their existence set in stone as to make them irreplaceable. The Ten Commandments should arguably be one of those films.
We wouldn’t say it’s a perfect film, or that no one could make a better live portrayal of Moses leading the Jewish people out of Egypt, but The Ten Commandments is classic spectacle-making at its finest loaded to the brim with the Golden Age of Hollywood's keen eye for pageantry. This is one of those pinnacle achievements in taking a sort of Saturday serial type film and turning it into a genuine epic. The grandeur of The Ten Commandments stems as much from it being a story that spans generations as it does from its concept of showmanship. With an intermission splitting the film in two (and across two discs – which especially annoys me considering the full movie could easily fit on one Blu-ray) it attempts to preserve that feeling of watching a movie as an event, and not just a Saturday night where you ordered in.
Even for the steadfastly atheist in the crowd*, the story of Exodus has become well known in American culture as not only a piece of history and biblical allegory but as a basic storytelling frame that countless other stories have used as inspiration. You might not know all the details of Moses’s life, but most people (if not all) can give you the basic run of his story: given up at birth, adopted by the Pharaoh, becomes a messenger of God’s agenda of freedom for the Jewish slaves, leads them out of Egypt by parting the Red Sea, guides them through the desert, and finally delivers the ten commandments from God to steer the despondent travelers from their wicked idolatry. Countless genres have drawn from or parodied this story to the point where you could know it without having ever touched a Bible or Tanakh. And no one can fault you for thinking there were originally fifteen commandments. No one. Mel Brooks is just that good.
Director Cecil B. Demille took the writings of the Old Testament and crafted a film epic. Sure, it has plenty of camp, some shoddy writing, and outdated effects, but The Ten Commandments represents one of the early triumphs in long-form storytelling. It also ranked as one of the most ambitious efforts ever, not only for its unheard of running time of nearly four hours, but also thanks to the sheer scope of it all and the casting numbers. Everyone, whether you’re just the casual filmgoer or an aspiring filmmaker, should see The Ten Commandments at least once. You have to take it with its exciting moments of over-the-top film wizardry and its narrative lulls, but the end result is an undeniable part of film history.
For many, The Ten Commandments represents their strongest memory of Hollywood’s Golden Age and its elaborate pageantry. And for some, it’s the most memorable moment of Charlton Heston’s acting career – which is admittedly a shame. Though he carries the film from start to finish, he can’t be considered a strong actor if you were to base his talent on what he gives us here. It served the part for this huge feast of concept and story, but in any other situation the performance is utterly laughable. Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, Yvonne De Carlo, John Carradine, Debra Paget, and Vincent Price also star.
Has it been restored? You bet, but that’s not going to fix the basic film degradation issues that plagued the copy it was restored from. Consequently there are plenty of moments where the color will distort, maybe just for an instant but sometimes longer. The noticeable change, assuming you can get past the color issues as they arise, is the clarity of what’s in the frame. Just like with the difference between the DVD and Blu-ray versions of The Sound of Music, the change here is incredible. The sharpness is miles above previous DVD iterations, and if you’re buying this reissue just for the film – then take comfort in knowing that the blur that plagued past releases has vanished.
At this point, I’m going to take a moment to reemphasize my annoyance at the film still being split over two discs. It’s wholly unnecessary and downright disruptive. If Dances with Wolves can fit on one disc, why not The Ten Commandments? Was it really so much effort to recompile it onto one disc?
Blu-ray Bonus Features
However, if you’re buying this set with your heart set on getting some solid extra features – you need to buy the big box special edition that has the extra disc, because this two-disc set is embarrassingly ill-equipped. Beyond three trailers for the film (1956 “Making of”, 1966, and 1989), and an audio commentary by film historian Katherine Orrison, there’s just a newsreel covering the film’s premiere in New York. Compared to the huge amount of extras in the big collector’s set, this feels like an intentionally lightweight version with no other intention than to make that larger one with a bigger pricetag seem more tempting (shame on you, marketing). The imbalance is despicable.
"The Ten Commandments" is on sale March 29, 2011 and is rated G. Drama. Directed by Cecil B Demille. Written by Dorothy Clarke Wilson, J.H. Ingraham. Starring Charlton Heston, Edward G Robinson, Vincent Price, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter.
