Sadly Over-hyped

Absolutely Brilliant!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

I was interested in seeing this movie because it was one of the earliest feature length films based on the Bible. Obviously, I've seen other versions of the Ten Commandments story and wanted to see how this did it. It actually starts with the plagues and immediately goes to Moses getting the ten commandments. I was so confused when the scene suddenly transitioned to modern times with people reading the Bible! Yeah, I thought this movie would be a complete retelling of Moses, but the majority of it actually took place recently! It's weird that I consider something recent when the movie was made in 1923.I really appreciate how unpredictable this was. Most of the movie features these two brothers, one of whom abandons religion and sees how much of a bigger success he can become. It really does raise a lot of great questions as to how religion is still relevant today. How much can a person gain from reading the Bible? The best part might be when because he was using defective concrete, his mother dies. Her dying words are that she apologizes for teaching him that he should fear God and not love God. There's a lot going on here and it really is a profound film. ***1/2

Cecil B. DeMille's silent epic certainly ranks among the most audacious Old Testament melodramas ever made, jumping in one dazzling edit from a 90-minute exodus out of ancient Egypt to modern (c. 1923) San Francisco, where the possibility of divine retribution is never more than a tremor away.The biblical prologue, a complete film in itself, condenses the material DeMille would later use for his entire 1956 remake, with a similar emphasis on spectacular set design, impressive special effects, and stoic overacting. But the plot really picks up steam after it shifts to the 20th century, depicting the fraternal rift between a crooked building contractor out to break all ten of the Lord's commandments, and his saintly younger brother (a carpenter, naturally). The older, unscrupulous sibling is cheating on the construction costs of a new cathedral, and because DeMille's God is a vengeful God the sinner pays a heavy penalty for his greed, indirectly killing his own mother when the walls come tumbling down, and later contracting leprosy from his deadly Eurasian mistress! The moralizing is no less heavy-handed than in most silent melodramas, but DeMille was always a better showman than a preacher, and at times it almost seems the unintended humor of this typically overwrought Sunday School lesson was deliberate.

The 50th anniversary DVD of the 1956 'The Ten Commandments' includes Cecil B. DeMille's original 1923 version. The restored print of this history making silent film is simply amazing, so sharp and crystal clear with zero flickering. Furthermore, this version is the same, the reverse and also different from the 1956 version.It's the same in that De Mille rebuilt the same set of Ramses' city -- larger than the towers built for D. W. Griffith's 'Intolerance' (1916)-- for the '56 version, used much of the same script, camera angles and other sets. It's the reverse, because as Katherine Orrison notes on the commentary track, if a shot was done from the right side in the '23 version, it was filmed from the left in the '56 version, and vice versa. She kids us not! She's written three books about "C.B." It is different from the '56 version in two major ways. First, the story of Moses begins with him giving the ninth plague (killing the first born), and ends with him hurling the 10 Commandments down at the revellers worshipping the Golden Calf below Mount Sinai. Second, the movie then becomes a second story (the Biblical scenes are called "The Prologue"), taking place in San Francisco."The Modern Story" is about the brothers John, a carpenter (Richard Dix) and Danny, an architect (Rod La Roque) and their struggles with morality. Danny vows to break all ten commandments, and by the end of the movie, he has. Like Ramses drowned in the Red Sea, Danny, escaping to Mexico in his speed boat 'Defiance' also drowns smashed on a large rock that looks suspiciously like Mount Sinai. Note: Before Richard Dix went on to fame and success in sound movies (mostly for RKO), he starred in many other silent films-- check out his great performance in 'The Vanishing American' (1925) as an Indian.Visually interesting throughout, the film even takes place on the construction site of the Catholic cathedral in Washington Square in San Francisco as it was being built. Actually shot in the outside construction elevator on the roof, you get to see a lot of the vista of 1923 San Francisco! Let's all meet at Washington Square for the 100th anniversary of this film! Plus the whole movie really works. What sets and costumes! The parting of the Red Sea in this version is even better than the 1956 one! I give it an 8.

Today,all his epics ("ten commandments" 1 and 2,"sign of the cross" "Samson and Delilah" ...° have worn remarkably well.Like many people ,I saw the 1956 version well before the silent one.The prologue (which is very long for a prologue) has a plot similar to the 1956 version from the plagues to the golden calf orgy.Even the Parting of the Red Sea (and it's quite impressive for 1923!) and the writing of the Holy Tablets are here (it looks more like some kind of mystic firework here).As for the orgy,it's simply better than the color version.That said I like that latter version best,because the gap between the biblical tale and the modern one makes that the two parts do not hang very well,in spite of a brilliant transition : Moses and his people saga suddenly segues into a mother reading the Bible to her sons.The second part will deal with the story of two brothers,one of whom trying to break these "fusty" commandments and not be broken by them. There are interesting parallels: the workers on the building site and the slaves working for pharaoh on the pyramids,the hero who ,like "pharaoh's tribe ,is drowned in the tide" .Little by little,the film becomes slowly but inexorably overtly Christian: the momma hints to carpenters,nice carpenters,there's a short return to biblical times but depicting a scene of Jesus' s life and unlike the bad woman who became a leper in the prologue,salvation is around the corner for the evil millionaire's wife.Lines from St Matthew ("he gained the world but lost his soul") add to this feeling a redemption.Despite the reservations expressed above,De Mille was a storyteller extraordinaire,who equaled D.W .Griffith .Thou shalt not overlook him.