As we enter the Sacred Triduum, Hollywood is celebrating Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), if not always the underlying message contained on those two ancient stone tablets Moses received at Mount Sinai c. 1446 BC.
The American biblical epic, starring Charleton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as Pharaoh Ramses II, was a filmmaking masterpiece three years in the making.
Narrated by DeMille himself, it tells the story of Moses as an infant, as related in Exodus 2:5, rescued by Pharoah’s daughter, played by Nina Foch, who, discovering the crying babe lying in a papyrus basket in the bulrushes, adopts him. Moses’ sister Miriam, played by Olive Deering, seeing this, arranges for their mother, played by Martha Scott, to nurse Moses as this tender yet powerful tale unfolds, showing how he is educated and formed for the mission of leading the Hebrew slaves in their Exodus.
Three months after embarking from Egypt, Moses receives the Ten Commandments, as recorded in Exodus 19:1, marking the Israelites’ transition from their status as escaped slaves to a nation living under God’s laws.
The Ten Commandments was the director’s final film — shot in VistaVision and color by Technicolor on location in Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula — and the highest-grossing film of 1956. To this day it remains one of the top 10 highest grossing films of all time, its adjusted equivalent an estimated $1.1 to $2.8 billion.
The film was released by Paramount Pictures on October 5, 1956 -- the date chosen not for any religious significance, but to tee it up for the Academy Awards, where it garnered seven nominations and one Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, often falls around that time, albeit in 1956 it fell two weeks prior on (coincidentally and appropriately for Christians) Friday, September 14, and Saturday, September 15, the Feast Days of the Triumph of the Cross and Our Lady of Sorrows. These two feast days tie in directly with the Passion of Christ and the Resurrection, so ABC since 1973 has chosen to air The Ten Commandments at Passover/Easter time. It will air this year on Holy Saturday — Saturday, April 4 at 7 p.m. — along with screenings of a restored version in select theaters through April 2, and on UPtv on Good Friday.
For it was our sin — “O happy fault!” (O felix culpa in Latin) sung during the Easter Vigil’s Exsultet, recalling Adam's original sin — that was “necessary” for bringing us Christ, the “great Redeemer.” The Church sees in the Passover lamb, sacrificed to gain freedom from bondage for the Israelites, Christ himself, whose sacrifice wins freedom from sin.
Then, comes the Resurrection, foreshadowed in the arrival of the Israelis in the Promised Land of Canaan, culminating 40 years of wandering in the desert — a relatively short journey extended by God in punishment for want of obedience and faith as documented in Numbers 14:34 and Joshua 5:6.
DeMille had told the Passover story in 1923 in his 222-minute silent film, splitting the narrative between the biblical Exodus and the present day, dramatizing the Ten Commandments’ relevance.
But while the two movies may have bookended and showcased DeMille’s career, what they did best was to highlight the Ten Commandments, especially, in the 1923 version, framed by this dramatic opening prologue, stating forthrightly:
“Our modern world defined God as a ‘religious complex’ and laughed at the Ten Commandments as OLD FASHIONED… Then, through the laughter, came the shattering thunder of the World War… And now a blood-drenched, bitter world — no longer laughing — cries for a way out… There is but one way out. It existed before it was engraven upon Tablets of Stone. It will exist when stone has crumbled. The Ten Commandments are not a rule to obey as a personal favor to God. They are the fundamental principles without which mankind cannot live together… They are not laws — they are the LAW.”
It would seem more than fitting, then, to include the 1923 version in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, for which the 1956 version was selected in 1999.
