So why exactly does The Ten Commandments (1956) stand out as the one truly great religious epic?
This particular genre of Hollywood filmmaking excess came into huge popularity in the late 1940s. There had been religious pictures and movies with spiritual themes from the silent era onward, of course. But from roughly 1948 to 1965, the major studios each cranked out at least one of these grand spectacles to add to the catalog of Inspirational Cinema. Every one of these big religious epics produced in that period were popular; all guaranteed moneymakers at the box-office. And just about every one of these pictures are regarded today as laughably hokey relics from a bygone era. The problem with most of these overblown movies is, in addition to a lot of simply bad scriptwriting, weak thematic construction, overacting or practically non-existent acting, that they tended to get lost in their own piousness. The Robe (1953), the first movie shot with the Cinemascope widescreen process, is a particular example of this: with characters looking heavenward at their moments of inspiration, the choral singing in the background soundtrack. The movie just drips with its religiosity while presenting a personal drama which in and of itself is not enough of a story to fill out the scale of the movie in which it's couched. The Silver Chalice (1954) and many pictures like it are simply risible, trying desperately to be something bigger than the costume spectacles they are, with stilted dialogue, cardboard characters, wooden acting (of which Paul Newman, in his first ever starring role, was guilty and for which he took out a full-page ad in Variety on the night of the film's 1966 TV premier to publicly apologize for), and an especially hammy Jack Palance mugging it up as Simon Magus in this one. Another example is Samson And Delilah (1949, with Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr), which was also a Cecil B. DeMille picture; doing a more-or-less straight retelling of the biblical story from the Book of Judges. It wasn't that any one element of this movie or the acting of its cast was in and of itself awful, or the dialogue which was no worse than many of its contemporaries in the genre, but it just doesn't come off as a film that can be taken at all seriously by audiences today because it is so earnest. That and you really can't take droll George Sanders seriously as the Philistine tyrant. It's even worse that Samson is so obviously a chump who was dumb enough to walk straight into the trap Delilah laid for him with both eyes wide open.
The large-scale epic motion picture based upon biblical and religious themes also was unique to this particular period of American history, the Cold War. The threat of Communism was held up as the single greatest danger to the American way of life, and Hollywood was duly enlisted to provide ideological ammunition in the fight against it. Hence, movies emphasizing spirituality were produced for both entertainment and propaganda purposes. To be certain, in what was a more religious era, the major studios could count on huge box-office profits from audiences who would readily flock to films that showcased and confirmed the truths of their faiths and bolstered religious morale against Communism's atheistic assault upon Western cultural values. The parallels between Rameses' (sic) Egypt and the Soviet Union were quite deliberately drawn for the benefit of the audience. At the time, Egypt was a client state of the Soviets and had recently engaged in war against the Jewish state of Israel, which of course was America's principal ally in the Middle East and the site of the Promised Land of biblical legend. Like Pharaoh, the Soviet Politburo allegedly regarded its people as "property of the state", and such was the ideological message that was repeatedly broadcast over every American media outlet that could be utilized for the purpose. Cecil B. DeMille, himself a staunch conservative and committed cold warrior, made it rather plain that his grand remake of The Ten Commandments was part of the overall counterattack upon the alien ideology of Communism and its denial of the principle of men and women living as "free souls under God".
The Ten Commandments is laden with the politics of the period and also many of the other defects of religious movies of the era; doubly so given that Cecil B. DeMille, in the course of a nearly forty year career as a movie director, never changed his moviemaking style all that much from the silent era and for his grandest project of all reverted fully back to that era. The dialogue is florid and even purplish in certain scenes ("Tears? When you have been bathed in scented water, when your limbs have been caressed by sweet oils and your hair combed with sandalwood, there will be no time for tears"), characters are posed in tableux displays or strut dramatically, and Anne Baxter (Nefretiri) and Vincent Price (Baka) are shamelessly campy in their performances. Watching Anne Baxter as the camera tracks backward during her walkthrough in her chambers while dripping in anticipation for the reunion with Prince Moses, her all–conquering hero, you see her performing the same sort of moves Theda Bara might have done in one of her movies. You're watching a 1920s style movie made with the technology of 1956, without a hint of modern storytelling or cinematic convention having been incorporated into the production at any stage.
And yet, quite counter-intuitively, these elements actually give The Ten Commandments a power which lifts the movie far above its genre. The 1920s cinematic style and dialogue has the effect of liberating the film from identification with any one time-period; creating an impression of an ancient era. And while the movie was crafted as an allegory of the Cold War, it is executed in such broad terms that its theme of the fight for liberty transcends time and can be applied to any era in which human beings suffer under the yoke of tyranny and it is thereby possible to read into the movie any political philosophy which engages in such a struggle. And then, there is the atypically dynamic figure of Moses himself, portrayed with gusto by Charlton Heston, who dominates this movie from the first moment he appears in it, and backed by a cast of powerful supporting actors who are needed just to counterbalance him.
Moses has everything a man of his era and background could want. Rescued from death and slavery as a baby when plucked from the waters of the Nile by the grieving Princess Bithiah (Nina Foch) and raised in the household of the Pharaoh Sethi (Cedric Hardwicke), he grows into manhood as a prince of the realm. He has fame, fortune, the clear favor of his adoptive father Sethi, the slavish devotion of the beautiful throne-princess Nefretiri, and is in line to become the next ruler of Egypt even over his half-brother Prince Rameses (Yul Brynner —a man who could strut even while sitting down). When we first see Moses as a grown man, he is returning in triumph from the wars in Ethopia, and we soon discover that he negotiated an alliance between Ethopia and Egypt, which shows us his wisdom and integrity and only further casts him in Sethi's grace. Commissioned to finish the great pharoah's treasure-city, Moses —after securing better treatment for the Hebrew slaves on the construction force— accomplishes the project while overcoming the growing hatred and jealousy of Rameses.
But one little accident of fate changes everything: when Nefretiri murders the household slave Memnet (Judith Anderson), who thirty years earlier had witnessed Bithiah's act of mercy toward a Hebrew child, was sworn to secrecy then, and now is threatening to reveal the secret so that no Hebrew should sit upon the throne of Egypt. Nefretiri, totally in love with her man, silences Memnet. But the old slave's evidence, a piece of Levite cloth in which the infant Moses was swaddled, lays neglected on the floor of Nefretiri's chambers. When Moses notices it and starts asking questions, and Nefretiri reveals that she killed Memnet to keep her from going to Rameses with the cloth that would destroy him, the prince demands to know the terrible secret because he must have the truth. Seeking answers, Moses then confronts Bithiah, and relentlessly interrogates his adoptive mother on the matter. Bithiah tries desperately but ultimately in vain to deflect her son's curiosity. His determination is only further fired as now Moses knows he must pursue the truth, no matter the cost
His quest takes him inevitably to Goshen, the province where the Hebrews have been segregated, to the house of the old woman Yochabel. There, he finds Bithiah attempting to hustle the Levite family out of the country before the "terrible secret" can be revealed and discovers that the old woman was the same one Moses had, days earlier, rescued from being crushed between large stones at the building site. Confronting the old woman, who had promised Bithiah just moments earlier not to reveal her true identity as Moses' birth-mother and thus take from him everything that Bithiah has provided, the prince is able to pry the truth from her when she can no longer deny him. And holding the piece of his swaddling cloth, Moses has no doubt about his path from that point forward: "This is the binding tie, and here I will stay. To find the meaning of what I am, and why a Hebrew, or any man, must be a slave."
So Moses throws away the comfortable, privileged life he has enjoyed and takes up the life of a Hebrew laborer, where he witnesses firsthand the oppression of his people and the cruelties practiced upon them by their Egyptian overlords, and his own sense of justice will not permit him to tolerate it. After Moses murders Baka to save Joshua, who is being whipped to death by the Egyptian, and is arrested and brought before Pharaoh as a traitor, Sethi, who cannot believe that the son he has so long favored could betray him, asks what evil drove Moses to his rebellion. To which Moses replies:
"The evil that men should turn their brothers into beasts of burden, to slave and suffer in dumb anguish. To be stripped of spirit, and hope, and faith, only because they are of another race, or another creed. If there is a god, he did not mean this to be so. What I have done, I was compelled to do."
Heston's Moses is unlike every other central character in the religious epics of the period —who are either passive witnesses, passive martyrs, or disciples-in-waiting; all of whom are about as interesting, character-wise, as a bowl of oatmeal. Moses is not acted upon, he acts. Even as an agent of Yahweh and in spite of whatever personal doubts he has of his own ability to carry out such a mission, he is the driving force in the fight to liberate the Hebrews just as he was as prince of Egypt. Moses is self-possessed, confident, decisive, powerful. He can and will take matters into his own hands as he sees fit —as when he takes on the three marauders at the well of Jethro (Eduard Franz), or ultimately climbing the forbidden holy mountain, where his transformation from prince into the prophet who defeats an empire is completed.
The real secret of the The Ten Commandments as a movie, which really is no secret at all, is that it is only nominally a religious picture and is far more a classic Hollywood drama of the human condition. It's got romantic triangles, conflict between brothers, jealousy, greed, betrayal, the clear and unambiguous demarcation of good and evil; all playing against the backdrop of grand, sweeping events unfolding behind it. But perhaps the single most important element in the formula that makes this movie is that of the central character becoming a hero by way of a quest for truth, personal sacrifice, and the sheer force of will needed to shape the destinies of himself and all around him. Powerful themes and ideas at the core of a fairly well-written script —even for all its purplish character prose— and wedded to a cast of strong actors able to carry them through and drive the picture to its inevitable and very satisfying conclusion. That and, of course, none of these other pictures had anything even approaching the jaw-dropping spectacle of the parting of the Red Sea. And there's a formula for success for any movie which no other genre film of the era ever came close to attaining.
