"The Ten Commandments"

Lol, we pretty much watch it every year....I still find it hilarious that a gun-totin' WASP plays Moses....still, they just can't make movies like that today. Good luck verifying all the SAG cards, heh. CGI is less trouble, and cheaper apparently.

I love to watch this movie...just for the laughs.

I enjoy the spectacle. The heavier than heavy ham acting nearly spoils it, but I love the photography and there is real drama in some of the Old Testament tales.

How do you like the crashing of the tablets?

I like when the star holds his staff over his head and yells:

"You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands."

That's the rod of God he holds in his hands, blasphemer.

Hahahahah. Good one Frank!!

Love this movie. Moms loved it and it became tradition in our house to watch it every year. When we got older, she would have to shush us, my brothers and I, laughing and cracking jokes throughout, reciting dialogue. It's high camp at it's best and played to the hilt by all.

Heh heh, 7 p.m. tonight, I'm there. Was wondering how things may have been different if Kirk Douglas, Jewish, had played Moses, and Chalrton Heston, not Jewish took the role of Spartacus? Both high-camp movies for sure...

Watching it now. Yul Brenner is so fine, he takes my breath away!

Ten Cmmandments


eoe, I'm glad to hear that you outgrew the movie as you got older. My grandson and I watched this one last year. His mom and dad are very religious (excessively religious in my view). Anyway, it was clear to me that my grandson had seen the movie several times and knew it pretty much by heart. He seems to believe that what he sees on the screen is exactly how it happened. This is one of my gripes with historical movies. They take all sorts of liberties with what is known about the events, but many of the viewers have no real knowledge by which to judge the truth of the movie, so they take it to be true. The movie version becomes their reality.

I take heart in seeing that you seem to have caught on, as you got older, that it was just a movie, and a corny one at that.

It's a film white elephant and Anne Baxter should have been shot by Heston for acting without the Swiss cheese. "Oh, Moses, Moses, Moses...." Yul Brenner poses as if he is a model for an official government sculptor, Edward G. Robinsons plays a villianous version of Stan Laurel and Heston recites his lines as if he is speaking in front of an NRA convention. By todays standards, the special effects are now showing their seams, especially the animated fire whirlwind. And the parting of the Red Sea (it was actually the Reed Sea) isn't really any better done than the old silent version (but, it's in color!)

It's a film that doesn't gain in stature from multiple viewings but descends into the camp, overblown monstrosity it really is.

I love it.

Would love to see a remake with Harvey Firestein in the Anne Baxter role

I too think the time is ripe for a new version. One Heston film I do love as is is Ben Hur.

Heston was far superior in "Ben Hur" and there isn't an ounce of camp in that film compared to this illustrated pulpy Bible story version -- a work of gaudy, glossy fantasy. Even the soundtrack is filled with garish flourishes which might even embarass Harvey. I certainly can hear him uttering some of the florid and fatuously contrived dialogue for Anne. That is if he could keep from laughing.
I don't believe anyone would sit through another version -- it's laughable in taking itself so seriously in the moribundity of Biblical pictures. If you can take De Mille seriously here, just consider the imagery of Anne Baxter's milky white complexion in that royal blue and crimson outfit at the end of the film. She looks like a flag.

Looking at Heston's body last night, I suddenly realized what old age can do!

Hazlitt, I don't remember but feel certain that when I was a kid, someone broke the news that this movie and most of the others of this genre weren't historically accurate. Perhaps around the same time I learned there was no Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy or Easter Bunny. It was probably one of my older brothers.
Why don't YOU tell your grandson that what he sees on the screen is not exactly how it happened.
You know what might be fun? If I had a grandkid this is what I'd do. There are several versions of the Gunfight at the OK Corral. I'd rent some with him, especially Tombstone with Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer, and then read what really happened (there's got to be an accurate recounting of this event somewhere). I'd educate him about how Hollywood rewrites history for the sake of entertainment plus it would give us something to do together.

Personally, I didn't ever think anyone saw this as more than a lavish spectacle. I watch it for the same reason I watch THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY - garish entertainment.

Hmm, if it was remade today, who would star (this is in keeping with the Harvey Fierstein comment made above).

I'm thinking Arnold Visloo (he was the mummy in The Mummy) as the Pharaoh, Harrison Ford as Moses and hmm who for the Anne Baxter role?

I saw this film repeatedly as a kid and remember having a headache once or twice afterwards. It was too much for my tiny brain to assimilate, I guess. Loved Edward G. Robinson, though. I can't think of any film he's been in that he hasn't stolen...