The Ten Commandments
Posted: 2004-04-13 01:12am
No, I'm not talking about Judge Moore's oversized paperweight. Rather, I'm referring to the immortal 1956 movie everybody thinks of when it comes to the religious epic. Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments.
If I have to watch one of these, this is the style I like: ridiculously overblown. Everything on a GRAND scale; ham-acting, hilariously pompous and stilted dialogue, bombastic music, ponderous narration, a literal army of extras. With a cast which includes: John Derek in the days before he changed his profession from acting to exploiting his wife Bo, Sir Cedric Hardwicke as the very British Pharoah Seti, Anne Baxter with her borderline-slut portrayal of Nefreteri, pre-Munsters Yvonne Craig, Vincent Price just being Vincent Price, Edward G. Robinson as the Hebrew gangster Dathan Rocco, and of course headed up by the overacting tag-team of Charleton Heston and Yul Brenner, you've got the Mother of all Religious Epics.
Not content merely to portray Moses, Heston is also the voice of God in this picture, while Brenner's Ramses is so iconic that probably many people to this day think the historical Ramses looked like Brenner. When comedian Billy Crystal once did an impression of Brenner portraying Babe Ruth in a movie, he of course played Brenner as playing his Ramses as Babe Ruth. And with some decent SFX, a ton of memorably MST-able lines and 50s piousness oozing out of every frame, TTC is four hours of entertainment gold.
If I have to watch one of these, this is the style I like: ridiculously overblown. Everything on a GRAND scale; ham-acting, hilariously pompous and stilted dialogue, bombastic music, ponderous narration, a literal army of extras. With a cast which includes: John Derek in the days before he changed his profession from acting to exploiting his wife Bo, Sir Cedric Hardwicke as the very British Pharoah Seti, Anne Baxter with her borderline-slut portrayal of Nefreteri, pre-Munsters Yvonne Craig, Vincent Price just being Vincent Price, Edward G. Robinson as the Hebrew gangster Dathan Rocco, and of course headed up by the overacting tag-team of Charleton Heston and Yul Brenner, you've got the Mother of all Religious Epics.
Not content merely to portray Moses, Heston is also the voice of God in this picture, while Brenner's Ramses is so iconic that probably many people to this day think the historical Ramses looked like Brenner. When comedian Billy Crystal once did an impression of Brenner portraying Babe Ruth in a movie, he of course played Brenner as playing his Ramses as Babe Ruth. And with some decent SFX, a ton of memorably MST-able lines and 50s piousness oozing out of every frame, TTC is four hours of entertainment gold.
