Frugal Café Blog Zone

Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on April 3, 2010

Easter just isn’t fully Easter to me if I don’t watch the magnificent 1956 classic The Ten Commandments. And yes, I’m watching it now (ABC airs it every year), running back here to the computer to type during commercials.

I saw this biblical epic for the very first time in the late 1960s. My church youth group went with our parents to a theater in Los Angeles that had brought it out of the vault, something they did in theaters before cable TV and DVDs were common. My eyes were glued — this sumptuous film on the big screen was truly mesmerizing. Even on the small TV screen, it is far more majestic, compelling, and magical than many big-budget films today. The movie’s special effects of the plagues of Egypt, the burning bush, the pillar of fire, and the miraculous parting of the Red Sea are still my favorite parts. Still awesome to watch.

Decades before special effects became common, even expected, in a film, The Ten Commandments still shines brightly as a testament to the magnificence of the Golden Age of Hollywood. This was the last film directed by the legendary Cecil B. DeMille (he had also directed a silent version in 1923), and it has a stellar cast: Charlton Heston as Moses, with Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, Vincent Price, John Carradine, Martha Scott, Yvonne De Carlo, John Derek, Nina Foch, Judith Anderson, Debra Paget, and Sir Cedric Hardwicke.

My biggest complaint now as an adult is the sometimes-painful overacting of Anne Baxter as Nefertiri, the woman desperately in love with Moses. The ridiculous repetition of her saying Moses’ name, not once, but usually twice or thrice, in each scene, is spoken so hammily slowly that, halfway through the film, I’m primed and ready to reach down and rip the words from her overacting throat (Moses… Moses… Moses…). But I can ignore and almost forgive Baxter’s performance, because the rest of the film more than makes up for such script silliness.

Happy Easter!

The Ten Commandments – Film Trailer

The Ten Commandments Fan Trailer

Some little-known trivia notes and behind-the-scenes details about The Ten Commandments via IMDb.com:

To create the effect of the sandstorm in the narrated desert sequence, Cecil B. DeMille used the engine blast from tied-down Egyptian air force planes.

During the early part of principal photography, Yul Brynner was still on Broadway starring in “The King and I.” All of his shots on the actual Egyptian locations were done in one day after which he had to fly back to New York.

Cecil B. DeMille suffered a heart attack during the production after climbing 130 feet to check a faulty camera perched on one of the giant gates used in the exodus sequence. He took a couple of days off and then, against his doctor’s orders, returned to work to complete the film.

Up until the release of The Passion of the Christ in 2004, this was the highest grossing religious epic in history, earning over $65.5 million in 1956. (This translates into $446 million in contemporary figures.)

14,000 extras and 15,000 animals were used in the production of the movie.

Considerable controversy exists over who supplied the voice of God for the film, for which no on-screen credit is given. The voice used was heavily modified and mixed with other sound effects, making identification extremely difficult. Various people have either claimed or been rumored to have supplied the voice: Cecil B. DeMille himself (he narrated the film), Charlton Heston and Delos Jewkes, to name a few. DeMille’s publicist and biographer Donald Hayne maintains that Heston provided the voice of God at the burning bush, but he himself provided the voice of God giving the commandments. In the 2004 DVD release, Heston in an interview admitted that he was the voice of God.

Cecil B. DeMille’s first choice for Moses was William Boyd, best known as Hopalong Cassidy. Boyd turned down the role, fearing the Hopalong Cassidy identification would hurt the movie.

Charlton Heston was chosen for the role of Moses by Cecil B. DeMille because he bore a resemblance to Michelangelo’s statue of Moses in Rome.

As a publicity stunt, Cecil B. DeMille had public displays and monuments of the Ten Commandments erected around the country. Known as decalogues, most of them were placed in or near government buildings.

In adjusted-for-inflation gross, this movie is the top grossing movie in the US that has not benefited from multiple releases. It is generally in the top 3 to top 10 of all-time top grossing films (depending on who made the list and how they accounted for re-releases), adjusted for inflation.

Celluloid art created the special effects of the Red Sea parting by pouring 300,000 gallons of water into a tank and then playing the film backward.

Another plague was filmed but not used. According to the commentary on the 50th Anniversary DVD, this was a plague of frogs leaving the muddied Nile, coming up onto land, frightening and chasing Nefretiri and her attendants through the chambers of the place. Cecil B. DeMille felt that the scene was not frightening enough – and could even be considered comical – and thus he omitted it from the final film.

The orgy sequence took 3 weeks to film.

Animation was employed to create the hail as it was falling from the sky in the background, but popcorn that had been spray-painted white fell as “hail” onto the pavilion of Rameses’ palace. It was light so it could not hurt the actors, it bounced like real hail; and it could be swept up and used again for additional takes of the scene. The fire that burned from the hail was created by animation.

The illusion of the Red Sea parting was achieved by large “dump tanks” that were flooded, then the film was shown in reverse. The two frothing walls of water were created by water dumped constantly into “catch basin areas” then the foaming, churning water was visually manipulated and used sideways for the walls of water. A gelatin substance was added to the water in the tanks to give it more of a sea water consistency. Although the dump tanks have long since been removed, the catch basin section of this tank still exists today on the Paramount lot, directly in front of the exterior sky backdrop, in the central portion of the studio. It can still be flooded for water scenes, but when not being used in a production, it is an extension of a parking lot.

Urban legend has it that Anne Baxter’s character’s name was changed from Nefertiti to Nefertiri because Cecil B. DeMille was afraid people would make “boob” jokes. In reality, DeMille was sticking to history: Rameses II’s queen was called Nefretiri. Nefertiti lived about 60 years earlier than the events in The Ten Commandments. Both names mean “Beautiful”.

Nina Foch, who plays Bithiah, is actually a year younger than Charlton Heston, her onscreen son.

In the scene in which Ramses carries the dead body of his son (Eugene Mazzola), into the arms of the statue of Sokar, the boy changes from Eugene Mazzola’s actual body to a wax dummy. The statue was unable to support Mazzola’s actual body, and it was difficult for Mazzola to stay “dead” while he was placed on the statue.

The red smoke on top of Mt. Sinai, which symbolized God’s presence on the mountain, was a matted special effect superimposed over a shot of the actual Mt. Sinai filmed on location.

The cloud special effects used during the parting of the Red Sea scenes, would later be repeatedly used in various movies by director Steven Spielberg.

Martha Scott, who plays Moses’ biological mother Yochabel, also played Charlton Heston’s mother in Ben-Hur (1959) the same year. She was only ten years older than her on-screen son.

When Yul Brynner found out he would be playing Pharaoh Rameses II opposite Charlton Heston’s Moses and that he would be shirtless for most of the film, he began a rigorous weight lifting program because he did not want to be physically overshadowed by Charlton Heston (which explains his buffer than normal physique during The King and I (1956), another film he was set to work on at the time.

Audrey Hepburn was originally slated for the role of “Nefretiri”. Cecil B. DeMille reluctantly decided to pass on her after it was judged that she was too “slender” (i.e., flat-chested). Anne Baxter, who was eventually cast in the role, had originally been a contender for the role of “Sephora.”

Decades later, some of the props used in this film – in particular cups, glasses and tableware – turned up in an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987) called “Tapestry”.

One day in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, a casting director for this film approached Jack Peters and his son Jon Peters to ask if Jon wanted to appear in the film, as multitudes of people with dark hair and complexions were needed to cross the Red Sea. Jon was chosen to ride a donkey and lead a goat by rope. He was so excited that he refused to wash off his makeup when he went home at night.

Gloria Swanson was originally cast as Memnet, but she was then having difficulties getting a backer for a musical stage version of Sunset Blvd. (1950) so she had to depart from the project (The musical eventually had to be abandoned in the early 1960s, even after a cast album was recorded during out-of-town tryouts).

Pre-production work on this film included over 1,200 storyboard sketches.

The script contained 308 pages with 70 speaking parts.

This is perhaps the only Paramount film in which the VistaVision “Motion Picture High Fidelity” logo, together with its accompanying musical fanfare, does not appear at all.

The film is usually very slightly edited for TV transmission, although because of commercials, most showings clock in at close to four-and-a-half hours. This has led to some humorists commenting that it had been “trimmed to seven commandments”.

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