The Ten Commandments (1923 film)

The Ten Commandments
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Cecil B. DeMille
Produced by	Cecil B. DeMille
Story by	Jeanie MacPherson
Starring	Theodore Roberts Charles de Rochefort Estelle Taylor Julia Faye Richard Dix Rod La Rocque Leatrice Joy Nita Naldi
Music by	Hugo Riesenfeld
Cinematography	Edward S. Curtis Bert Glennon Donald Keyes J. Peverell Marley Ray Rennahan
Editing by	Anne Bauchens
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release dates	November 23, 1923 (1923-11-23)
Running time	136 minutes
Country	United States
Language	Silent English intertitles
Budget	$1,475,837[1]
Box office	$4,168,790[2][1]

The Ten Commandments is a 1923 American epic silent film directed and produced by Cecil B. DeMille. Written by Jeanie MacPherson, the film is divided into two parts: a prologue recreating the biblical story of the Exodus and a modern story concerning two brothers and their respective views of the Ten Commandments.

The film is a grand spectacle of early Hollywood filmmaking, running 136 minutes, with the Exodus scenes photographed in early Technicolor. The film is the first in DeMille's biblical trilogy followed by The King of Kings (1927) and The Sign of the Cross (1932). The movie was released by Paramount Pictures and premiered at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre on December 4, 1923.^[3][4]

Plot

Despite its epic scale, the Moses story only takes up about the first third of the film. After that, the story changes to a modern setting involving living by the lessons of the commandments. Two brothers make opposite decisions, one, John, to follow his mother's teaching of the Ten Commandments and become a poor carpenter, and the other, Danny, to break every one of them and rise to the top. The film shows his unchecked immorality to be momentarily gainful, but ultimately disastrous.

A thoughtful contrast is made between the carpenter brother and his mother. The mother reads the story of Moses and emphasizes strict obedience and fear of God. The carpenter, however, reads from the New Testament story of Jesus' healing of lepers. His emphasis is on a loving and forgiving God. The film also shows the mother's strict lawful morality to be flawed in comparison to her son's version.

Danny becomes a corrupt contractor who builds a church with shoddy concrete, pocketing the money saved and becoming very rich. One day, his mother comes to visit him at his work site, but the walls are becoming unstable due to the shaking of heavy trucks on nearby roads. One of the walls collapses on top of the mother, killing her. In her dying breath, she tells Danny that it is her fault for teaching him to fear God, when she should have taught him love.

This sends Danny on a downward spiral as he attempts to right his wrongs and clear his conscience, but he only gets into more trouble. To make money, he steals pearls from his mistress, and when she fights back, he kills her. He attempts to flee to Mexico on a motorboat, but rough weather sends him off course and he crashes into a rocky island, where he is presumably killed.

Throughout the film, the visual motif of the tablets of the commandments appears in the sets, with a particular commandment appearing on them when it is relevant to the story.

Cast

Prologue

• Theodore Roberts as Moses, The Lawgiver
• Charles de Rochefort as Rameses, The Magnificent (credited as Charles De Roche)
• Estelle Taylor as Miriam, The Sister of Moses
• Julia Faye as The Wife of Pharaoh
• Terrence Moore as The Son of Pharaoh
• James Neill as Aaron, Brother of Moses
• Lawson Butt as Dathan, The Discontented
• Clarence Burton as The Taskmaster
• Noble Johnson as The Bronze Man

Story

• Edythe Chapman as Mrs. Martha McTavish
• Richard Dix as John McTavish, her son
• Rod La Rocque as Dan McTavish, her son
• Leatrice Joy as Mary Leigh
• Nita Naldi as Sally Lung, a Eurasian
• Robert Edeson as Redding, an Inspector
• Charles Ogle as The Doctor
• Agnes Ayres as The Outcast
• Roscoe Karns as Man at Lunch Wagon (uncredited)

Production

The Exodus scenes were filmed at Nipomo Dunes, near Pismo Beach, California, in San Luis Obispo County, which is now an archaeological site. The film location was originally chosen because its immense sand dunes provided a superficial resemblance to the Egyptian desert. After the filming was complete, the massive sets – which included four 35-foot-tall (11 m) Pharaoh statues, 21 sphinxes, and gates reaching a height of 110 feet, which were built by a small army of 1,600 workers – were dynamited and buried in the sand. However the burial location at Nipomo Dunes is exposed to relentless northwesterly gales year-round, and much of what was buried is now exposed to the elements, as the covering sand has been blown away.

Portions of the modern story were filmed in San Francisco, with the cathedral building sequence filmed at the then under construction Sts. Peter and Paul Church on Filbert Street and the adjoining Washington Square. The parting of the Red Sea scene was shot in Seal Beach, California.^[5] Some shots were also done at the now-demolished courthouse in Fresno, California.

The visual effect of keeping the walls of water apart while the Israelites walked through was accomplished with a slab of Jell-O that was sliced in two and filmed close up as it jiggled. This shot was then combined with live-action footage of Israelites walking into the distance, creating a near-perfect illusion.^[6]

Reception

The film was the second most popular movie of 1923 in the US and Canada.^[7]

Remake

DeMille directed a second, expanded version of the biblical story in 1956. For the later version, DeMille dropped the modern-day storyline in favor of profiling more of Moses' early life. In 2006, the 1923 film was released on DVD as an extra feature on the 50th Anniversary DVD release of the 1956 film. In the DVD commentary with Katherine Orrison included with the 1923 film, she states that DeMille refilmed several sequences nearly shot-for-shot for the new version, and also had set pieces constructed for the later film that were near-duplicates of what he had used in 1923.

See also

• List of early color feature films
• The House That Shadows Built (1931 promotional film by Paramount)

References

External links

• The Ten Commandments at the Internet Movie Database
• The Ten Commandments at allmovie
• The Ten Commandments Archaeological Site
• Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
• The Ten Commandments at Virtual History