AndrewBloom
6/10 3 years ago
[6.0/10] Jews read a book on Passover called The Haggadah, which retells the story of our liberation from Egypt. There's a conspicuous quirk of this prayer book -- it only uses Moses’s name once, in a short prayer, otherwise leaving him conspicuously absent from the story of his people’s escape from bondage, his presence felt only by implication. There’s a host of explanations for this choice, but the one I heard the most growing up is that it was a tribute to Moses’s importance, a way for him and his deeds to loom over the story without ever having to be sullied by trying to capture his being in the crucible of the tale.
Director Cecil B. DeMille and the rest of the creative team behind *The Ten Commandments* take the exact opposite approach. Moses is emphasized, underscored, highlighted, foregrounded, reified at every opportunity. He is a conqueror of rival cities. He is a sympathizer to the plight of the oppressed when it’s in his interest not to be. He is a shirtless hunk whom all the ladies fall for. He is God’s deliverer, blessed with an ability to speak with the Lord and chosen to enact his will. He is a vessel for the King of the Universe’s power, producing great and terrible feats that make the impossible seem possible. He is a paragon of virtue and morality, making big speeches about divine law and showing the light to an unruly people. He is flawless, peerless, preternaturally good and pure, to the point of being nearly inhuman.
That’s jarring for someone who grew up with the version of Moses gently omitted from explicit from the Exodus story. As an adaptation, there’s no reason DeMille and company have to be faithful to any particular faith or sect’s interpretation of his renowned figure. But he feels more like a generic 1950s hero -- strapping, square-jawed, impossibly good -- than the more complex and human figure from the holy books.
It’s part and parcel of the approach DeMille and his team take to the film which can basically be summed up as: more, bigger, simpler. *The Ten Commandments* is a famously long movie, a roadshow presentation that took up an entire evening of television when aired on network T.V. stations. To match that length, the film goes big on everything, with massive ornate sets and landscapes, flashy set pieces, and most notably big personalities for basically every character on screen.
Charlton Heston’s Moses barks every line he utters with utter severity. His conniving former paramour, Nefretiri, is made into a Lady MacBeth, plotting to install her beau and eliminate her suitors, quickly devolving into evil woman tropes that were already tired seventy years ago. The two are embroiled in a power struggle/love triangle with Moses’s erstwhile half-brother Ramses, as the siblings jockey to inherit the throne. There’s a strange B-plot involving the slave Joshua, a secondary hero; the sacrificing Lilia, his secondary love interest; and Dathan, the quisling slave and secondary villain of the piece.
DeMille eschews fidelity to the source material in favor of cramming it all into standard Hollywood tropes. Nearly every word exchanged in the film is overly flowery prose delivered with an exaggerated, breathless air. And ironically, by pumping up the emotions and the characters, *The Ten Commandments* makes both less impactful.
The exceptions are few, but include Edward G. Robinson’s slimy Dathan. Robinson gives his character a mercenary, odious vibe with every line he delivers, selling the notion of a huckster who knows exactly the evil he’s doing and isn’t afraid to throw anyone under the nearest chariot if it’ll feather his own nest.
And they also include Yul Brynner’s Ramses, the would-be villain of the piece who is strangely sympathetic and, possibly by accident, the most complicated figure in the piece. He is undoubtedly malevolent, attempting to kill all Hebrew first born sons as his predecessor did and callously dismissing the plight of the slaves. But he’s also the best-motivated character in the story, spurred by jealousy, anticipating his people’s complaints if their free labor suddenly disappeared, questioning his own gods as a means of control, and mourning the loss of his son. Ramses is a bad man, one who earns his hollow fate in the film’s narrative, but also the most complicated and, unexpectedly, human figure in the piece.
He’s also one of the few people of color in a major role. Look, it’s folly to go back to a film in 1956 and expect it to live up to modern standards and norms. That doesn’t make it any less cringeworthy, however, to see the rampant brownface, the depictions of “Nubians,” and other casual if muted prejudices on display. It’s worth taking these things as we find them in classic films, understanding the context in which they arose even as we don’t excuse them, but it can become a bit much to stomach in places.
DeMille and his colleagues hope you’ll forget about this in the throes of sheer awe. More than half a century later, the sheer spectacle of *The Ten Commandments* still holds up. While certain camera tricks don’t match the CGI-aided images of the modern era, they’re still impressive for their time. And gigantic set pieces like the Jews’ great exeunt from Egypt, their sinful excesses, and the crossing of the Red Sea can still job your draw after so many years.
There’s occasional bits of cheesiness like turning the angel of death into a cheap horror movie mist. But there’s a scope and scale to the film that’s unquestionably impressive. Striking tableaus, washes of color, and a sense of the epic permeate each frame, lending the film a certain weight through iconography alone.
But this maximalist approach fails the film at the level of narrative and character. Moses in particular is perfect and heroic. His biblical speech impediment is traded in for an endless stream of booming oratory. His doubts are exchanged for unshakable faith. His temper is substituted for righteous indignation. The movie puts him on a pedestal, losing the human being at the center of the Passover story and, oddly enough, making him into an idol, whether golden or matinee.
Maybe it would have been too controversial in 1956 to present a more complicated take on the Exodus story. A Moses possessed of the human flaws and faults could have been too much for studios, let alone audiences, at the time for any filmmaker to put forward. Perhaps the best Hollywood could do at the time is what the contemporary epics did so well -- wrap stories up in gauzy hues and bombastic tones, to make the men and women inscribed into or omitted from the Haggadah into larger than life figures.
But while I can appreciate the grandiosity of DeMille and company’s vision, it lacks the humanity, in its central figure in particular, to give the story weight and meaning. *The Ten Commandments* is at its most successful when it uses its scope to convey the elemental sentiments of a people as a whole. The torturousness of bondage, the joyousness of liberation, the libertine indulgence of sin, the collective shame of those chastened, all gain life when spread out among the film’s massive cast.
And yet, when the film resorts to the cinematic equivalent of Great Man history, retelling the tale as a clash of personas that could have been ripped from any other historical epic of the era, the spark is all but extinguished. As a visual and logistical achievement, *The Ten Commandments* is worthy of its venerable place in the cinematic canon. As a story of Moses and his people’s liberation, it falls short of that critical lesson from the Haggadah, raising the volume but diminishing the man, and the search for freedom he represents.
