Customer Rating: 
Summary: One good, and one evil
Comment: The 1956 version of 'The Ten Commandments' is easily one of the most popular films in Hollywood history, eclipsing even Ben-Hur. (Let the protests begin!) Charlton Heston won his only Oscar for his performance in Ben-Hur, but it is in his role as Moses where he clearly had the most defining and remarkable performance of his distinguished career. I've seen the film countless times and couldn't recommend it more enthusiastically. Interestingly, Demille's first go at this story during the silent era is a tremendous curiosity and quite a puzzling oddity. The first half of the film presents a fairly generic although competent survey of the Moses/Exodus story, but only when the film abruptly segues into a modern day morality play involving two brothers, does the actual head scratching begin. Unfortunately, this part of the film was meant to be the heart and soul of Demille's picture, but it amounts to some kind of strange ham fisted unintentional parody of such odious transparency and bludgeoning obviousness that I found myself chuckling and shrugging throughout. It's actually difficult to review this film objectively because I still appreciate Demille's attempt here to really say something, however much a failure it may have been. Fortunately, he quite thouroughly redeemed himself with the '56 remake.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great buy
Comment: We watched this movie around Easter and decided to get it. We are very happy with the versions that are included. A good movie to have on hand when you want to watch it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ten Commandments
Comment: I bought this to add to my collection of Charlton Heston movies. I had seen it many times on television. An outstanding performance!
Customer Rating:
Summary: 10 commandents
Comment: Product is excellent as all items I have purchase from Amazon. I shop around for the best value and Amazon is still Tops.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Simply irresistible
Comment: For many people Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 remake of his own THE TEN COMMANDMENTS is so iconic it practically defines the Hollywood movie as much as any picture (with the possible exception of GONE WITH THE WIND). Even more than fifty years later it's capable of giving tremendous pleasure despite its incredible length (three hours and thirty-nine minutes) and its style which was extremely anachronistic even for the time. DeMille, who had forever made his name as one of the most important and powerful directors of the silent era, directs his actors as if they still were in the silents, so their gestures and poses are big and their emotions even bigger. Probably the most fun for contemporary audiences is Anne Baxter as the Throne Princess Nefretiri, who gets to deliver all kinds of howlers to Charlton Heston as Moses ("You will be king of Egypt and I will be your footstool!"), but pretty much everyone involved seems to be having a grand old time. Particularly fun are Yul Brynner as a haughty Pharaoh Ramses, Nina Foch as the kindly Princess Bithia, Edward G. Robinson in his bizarre role as Dathan the evil Hebrew governor, and Sir Cedric Hardwicke as the old pharaoh Seti.
And then there's the spectacle, which every DeMille movie promises and on which he did not skimp in this film. One of DeMille's specialties was the presentation of the more salacious aspects of sinfulness, and so we have no less than two extended sequences with dancing girls, not to mention Baxter's diaphanous gowns and Brynner and Heston and John Derek (as a Douglas Fairbanks-like Joshua) wearing practically nothing on their chests for large periods of the film. There's also the killing of the firstborn of Egypt, the staining of the Nile, and pillar of fire, the Golden Calf and a very impressive parting of the Red Sea (the most famous of the film's sequences). Heston seems stranger and stranger as the film progresses, with even wilder wigs, but all this seems in keeping with the entire tone of the thing. Even when you laugh at it you can't help but be impressed.
This fiftieth-anniversary edition adds DeMille's long missing introduction to his own film plus long musical sequences for the overture and the entr'acte; it also comes with his original 1923 version (which is extremely different, with sections set in the contemporary period for the time much like Griffith's INTOLERANCE).
|
