The 1956 Charlton Heston movie The Ten Commandments is one of the greatest spectacles to ever grace the silver screen and is indisputably a great work of art, but did it have a positive effect on the world? I’m not so sure.
Special effects-wise, the movie aged so well in large part because a lot of thought went into what to show and what not to show. Every movie big and small needs to stay within the confines of the budget available and what is possible. Miracles that were too difficult to replicate with 1956 movie magic happened off screen. In the scene when God turned Moses’s staff into a snake there wasn’t a way to show it eating the snakes conjured up by the Pharaoh’s magicians so the camera just cut away at that moment. The cherry-picked miracles, like the Nile turning to blood, were done well and it was unnecessary to show the entire roster of plagues to befall Egypt.
Works of the supernatural do not necessarily need to look “realistic” either. The pillar of fire that stopped the Pharaoh’s army near the Red Sea was obviously super-imposed in post production, but such a miraculous event doesn’t need to look realistic. It looks just as good or better than the CGI fires of films today. A fire that looks realistic but doesn’t obey the laws of physics is often less convincing than a magic fire.
Then there is the matter of good taste. More screen time could have been committed to showing the misery inflicted by the plagues, but then one would have to ask if that’s necessarily a good thing. Consider for example the drowning of Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea. This scene could have been longer, but would the extra violence be necessary? Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky shows at length the drowning of the German army, followed by an equally long sequence of the wounded Russian soldiers dying in the field. Alexander Nevsky was heavy-handed propaganda and intentionally so. Now compare this with Ridley Scott’s Napoleon (which I reviewed here). Napoleon has the scene with the Austrian and Russian army drowning. There wasn’t any particular point except that Scott could recreate a scene from an old movie. That would be good for the demo reel of an ambitious film student, but not necessarily something audiences wanted or needed to see.
But in The Ten Commandments, viewers just see a few seconds of men, horses, and chariots disappearing under the sea and that’s all we needed. Instead, the movie focuses on the reaction of the Pharoah, who can only slink away in despair at his army being annihilated by the hand of God, not the first or last person for such a thing to happen to.
The miracle-to-screen-time ratio is actually quite small. Out of a 220 minute movie, there is maybe ten minutes of miracle-making, and that’s okay. Audiences of the time could be trusted to appreciate plot and dialogue without a new spectacle shoved into their faces in every scene. It is quite clear from recent Marvel movies that today’s script writers are terrified of the audience getting bored. There must be wall-to-wall action in every scene, and any conversation that goes on for longer than five seconds must be crammed with jokes. No sad or serious moment can be allowed to stand on its own without being immediately followed by a joke.
I even liked the stereotypical love triangle between Moses, the beautiful Nefretiri, and the future pharoah Ramses. It is a perfectly plausible thing to happen among the small group of people growing up in the royal court and adds personal conflict to what otherwise bare-bones Biblical morality tale. Pharoah Ramses has personal reasons to be provoked by Moses’s intrusion back into Egypt and this explains why he continues to be so stubborn long after it would have been sensible to give up. He is getting emotionally cucked by a guy he thought he got rid of years ago. Even when Nefretiri decided she no longer loved Moses and hated him this wasn’t an improvement. “Moses, Moses, Moses!” Ramses scolded her. “That’s all you ever think about!”
The love drama all wraps up neatly too. Nefretiri shames Ramses into following Moses to kill him, to which he replies he will kill her as well when upon his return. Ramses comes back (minus an army) and is about to make good on his threat when she asks if he had killed Moses. Ramses had quite obviously not killed Moses, so drops his sword and sits down on the throne beside her. I thought this was a great way to conclude the Egypt saga, and it implies there was some begrudging marital reconciliation between them after this.
All praise aside, I have to ask why do we need this movie. The Ten Commandments is a partial remake the 1923 silent film of the same name and by the same director, Cecil B. DeMille. I can imagine he may have had strong personal motivation to make this film before his death. His greatest story wouldn’t have had any lasting legacy if it wasn’t recreated with sound. Even back then very few people still watched silent films. But the world had changed in other ways since 1923 and The Ten Commandments may not have belonged in the new world.
If his film could just be treated as the work of Hollywood fiction it is then all would be well. But The Ten Commandments cannot be treated as fiction, and it amplifies real-world political messaging whether or not that’s what the director intended.
Between 1923 and 1956 there was the most important war in history, and undoubtedly the biggest lesson from that war was that genocide is bad. Humans hadn’t collectively had such a realization before, and it might have happened this time because there was just so much genocide and everyone was tired of it.
Unfortunately, genocides can’t be undone, and realizing genocide is bad creates a difficult moral problem for countries founded on genocide, like the USA. What Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had done wasn’t actually worse or more deliberate and calculated than what European settlers had done to Native Americans, so what to think of all that now?
Something else happened between movies as well, the creation of Israel. By 1956, Israelis and Americans became entwined and co-dependent. Israel could not exist without the USA and the USA could not exist without Israel. Yet this should not be surprising, because both nations have essentially the same origin story. Both were founded by genocide ordained by God. The Hebrews had their Promised Land and instructions to wipe out everyone already on it, and the USA had Manifest Destiny, which had been at least in part inspired by the first Promised Land.
But there’s a problem. The Biblical tale of the enslavement and exodus from Egypt and the cleansing of the Promised Lands are, as far as anyone can tell, complete works of fiction. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of the Hebrews moving to Egypt, being enslaved there, or leaving. Egypt had a written language and meticulously recorded everything of any significance, and they never mentioned such a thing. This is not a harmless fairy tale either because it is the main religious justification for Israelis to slaughter the “Amakelites,” their slur for the Semites inconveniently already living in their Promised Land.
Justifying Israeli genocide required enthusiastic American participation. What better way to do this than convince Americans that they are one and the same as Israelis? The term “Judeo-Christian” first came into widespread use in the USA in the 1930s by the National Conference for Community and Justice a Christian/Jewish social justice movement. At the time, the American establishment needed to differentiate itself from German fascism while also opposing Russian communism. Interestingly, before this, “Judeo-Christian” was usually in reference to Jews who had converted to Christianity. Traditionally, the New Testament, particularly the Gospels, were the most important part of the Bible.what was happening now was entirely different. Jews do not need to convert to Christianity and accept Jesus as their lord and savior. The whole Jesus story became overshadowed by the exciting genocides of the early books of Moses. It was all downhill from here. Nowadays, preachers openly say America is a “Judeo-Christian nation” without dying from cringe like they should.
In the end, Americans overwrote our own religion and myths with someone else’s, and for a very ugly reason. So as much as I enjoyed The Ten Commandments, it is not a story I can support.
Ian Kummer
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Well, it’s an interesting review and a sad conclusion which is likely to be correct, but the movie is still very good.
I think we can still rely on the Ten Commandments without following the Talmud.
Ps: God said Vengeance is mine and helped the Jews out, but he never approved or allowed genocides.
Sorry Maria, but your god specifically ORDERED the Hebrews to commit genocide.