The Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments (1956)

Runtime: 220 minutes

Directed by: Cecil B. DeMille

Starring: Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, Yvonne De Carlo

From: Paramount

Would you believe last night was the first time I had ever seen this classic film? Sure, I've seen the still great parting of the Red Sea effect but that was pretty much it. Several theatre chains are still doing the deal at some of their locations across the country of showing older films and this happened to be the latest one in the rotation. I figured my virgin experience should be watching it in an auditorium, and that's what I did. I wish it could have been an idiot-free screening but I don't want to go on a rant here.

From Letterboxd, the plot summary: "Escaping death, a Hebrew infant is raised in a royal household to become a prince. Upon discovery of his true heritage, Moses embarks on a personal quest to reclaim his destiny as the leader and liberator of the Hebrew people." In short, the movie is quality (I rated it 4 out of 5 stars on Letterboxd) and I am glad I finally saw it. The rest of the review is from what I wrote about it on Letterboxd, slightly expanded upon.

When I had the chance to see it on the big screen via Cinemark Theatres, it was an easy decision as I figured it was an epic spectacle of a film that was huge in scope and thus watching it in a theatre would be best, and turns out that it's true.

It's certainly bombastic and the opposite of subtle but no matter what you think of religion it is a greatly entertaining motion picture, and both "epic" and "spectacle" are perfect descriptive terms to use. It's a cast full of awesome old-school badasses (both male and female) and they all perform well, especially Heston, Brynner, Robinson as the perfect little sh*t-stirring weasel and Baxter as Nefretiri. There's also the likes of Vincent Price, John Carradine and a brief appearance by Woody Strode. All those guys are tremendous.

While the green screen effects looked kind of obvious on the big screen in 2014, I am OK with that as it's usually much preferable to CGI and the giant scope of the movie still came across well, and the legendary parting of the Red Sea scene is still awesome.

The movie's certainly long but for the most part it did not seem like it was almost 4 hours in length. There are some moments of goofiness and the dialogue is certainly flowery but I had no issues with that. They don't make movies like this anymore, that is for damn sure. If Hollywood got REALLY stupid and for some reason they tried to remake this, it'd be *so* bad and an embarrassment compared to DeMille's last film.

I'll be back late Saturday afternoon.