The Ten Commandments: SE

The Ten Commandments took all of 1955 to shoot. And, when it was released, it was the most costly Hollywood movie to hit the screens.

Cecil B. DeMille was 75 at the time. He had already made one version of The Ten Commandments, back in 1923. But he thought this story had already lasted 3000 years, so it probably still had legs.

The passage of time has shown this to be a deeply flawed movie, with old Cecil making plenty of historical compromises to make it palatable to 1950s American audiences.

I don't mean just the unlikely, in fact totally ridiculous casting of all-American Chuck Heston as Moses. The Americanisation of Jewish history went far deeper than that. As commentator Katherine Orrison notes in her optional audio commentary, details of Egyption makeup and costumes were revised to make them more palatable to 1950s taste. And certain unpalatable (for 1956) historical facts were excised - for instance, the fact that Moses, while a Prince of Egypt, had a Black wife from Ethiopia.

Cecil shows in The Ten Commandments that his idea of direction is to let everyone do their own thing, and just hope that they know how. The dialogue is stiff, the acting is wooden. Unnaturally posed tableaus are struck at every possible opportunity - Cecil is a delicatessen-store Sergei Eisenstein; lashings of art with extra ham.

But he sure did have a way of massing together thousands of extras to create a big scene, in the grand old silent-cinema traditions of pioneers such as D.W. Griffith. His best mass-scenes are as full of life and colour as a painting by Delacroix.

He was the latter-day King of Spectacle. Some of the amazing sets built on location in Egypt, or on massive soundstages back in Hollywood, look as astounding now as they would have back in 1956. And in that pre-computer age, his key special effect, of the parting of the waters of the Red Sea during the Jewish Exodus, is still compelling and dramatic stuff.

Charlton Heston is a pretty pathetic actor, but give him a stiffly gossamered swept-back hairstyle and a grey beard, and he can strike some pretty amazing poses. But there are some genuinely good actors here as well. And the acting honours are stolen by one person of absolute shining star-quality - Yul Brynner as the evil Rameses, Moses' would-be nemesis. Every word, every movement, speaks authority in his role. It is an outstanding screen achievement.

Anne All About Eve Baxter is on hand as the Throne Princess, Nefretiri, who was very keen on marrying Moses when he was a Prince of Egypt, but not so keen on him in his new persona as Jewish prophet calling down the curses of God. She is so bad that she's terrific. Totally melodramatic, using every pointer from her Guide to Over-Acting. She is so over the top that Vincent Price, as the aristocratic but evil Baka, seems a positive model of restraint.

Watch for Judith Anderson in the role of the royal house-slave Memnet. She gives a restrained and effective performance, as we would expect from this fine Australian actress, who is today remembered best as the housekeeper Mrs Danvers in Rebecca. And watch too for veteran heavy Edward G. Robinson as the turncoat Jewish slave Dathan, who is just too willing to sell his people down the river. He is delightfully unconvincing - you keep searching for a glimpse of his machine-gun.

The Ten Commandments is arrant nonsense, but if you forget the Americanisation of folk-myths and forget the ham-acting, there's enough spectacle here to keep you amused for a few hours.

This anamorphic transfer of a 70mm Vistavision Technicolor print is just superb. There are a few white flecks here and there, but these are the only sign of wear.

The Technicolor is demonstration-quality. The Egyptian cohorts are gleaming in purple and gold; and the sheen of their spears in this three-strip Technicolor process is like stars on the sea, when the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. Well, you get the idea.

The overall quality is really astounding. The only film transfer I can think of that compares with this on DVD is the recent Region 1 Warner transfer of the old three-colour Technicolor print of Errol Flynn's The Adventures of Robin Hood. It's possibly even more dynamic in its effect than that - these colours are ravishing.

The sound too is good for its time. The Dolby Digital 5.1 surround is used with deep atmospheric effect, with great audibility. The only time the sound really lets us down is in the scene when God talks to Moses atop Mount Ararat, from a flaming bush.

This God (actually voiced by Chuck Heston himself - he loves the sound of his own voice) is so bass-oriented and muffled that most of the words are gibberish. Well, it is a quasi-religious epic, after all. I suppose we should be grateful it's not in Aramaic!

The main feature spreads itself over most of the two discs, and the extras are pretty limited.

The main extra feature is the optional audio commentary by writer Katherine Orrison, author of Written in Stone, a book about the making of the movie. I've heard snatches of her commentary during key scenes (who could listen to more than three hours of commentary after viewing the movie?) and she sounds full-bottle - there's lots of chatty information here about the filming and the actors, delivered in a very natural and lively way, even if at times she sounds very much as if she's reading straight from a script.

The key 'making of' documentary is divided into six parts: Moses (mainly Charlton Heston reminiscing about the role),The Chosen People, about how actors were selected for their roles, Land of the Pharaohs about the shooting on location in Egypt, The Paramount Lot, about the shooting on the giant two-studio sound-stage, The Score, about how the pretty insipid soundtrack music was created and Mr. DeMille, a very short tribute to the director. When run together, this totals around 35 minutes and has a few diverting moments.

There are three cinema trailers. The first, a pretty good anamorphic transfer, runs for ten minutes, and gives Cecil B. DeMille the chance to point to a two-foot thick Bible to show that his story is the real thing. I mean, if it's in the Bible, it must be true!

There's a short 1966 revival trailer, presented in good condition anamorphic transfer, and a 1989 revival trailer showing considerable degradation in image quality, with a huge loss in original colour values.

Finally, there is a fairly ordinary black-and-white newsreel clip of its New York Premiere in 1956, showing a few of the movie's stars arriving, and a few stars who weren't in it, but who should have been. John Wayne arrives for the premiere - what a Moses he would have made. And here's Tony Curtis - he would have been a smash as Rameses.

It's a very camp, over-the-top movie, with wooden acting and lots of silly poses. But there is still lots of grand spectacle here, and it's deserving a place in the library of anyone interested in the full scope of film history. Or rent it for a bit of a giggle.