TEN COMMANDMENTS, THE - DVD review

I remember when I first saw "The Ten Commandments" with my parents in 1956, I was more than a little awestruck by the sheer size of the production. I mean, this thing was bigger than "Gone With the Wind," and to a kid, that meant big! Ever since then, "The Ten Commandments" has been my benchmark of comparison for all super spectaculars, even though my DVD viewing of it was the only time I'd seen it in more than forty years.

Director Cecil B. DeMille went out in a blaze of glory with this epic, and, maybe a little surprisingly, it holds up well even by today's high-tech standards. It all seems a bit more hokey now than it did those many years ago, of course, the acting appearing somewhat stilted and the situations melodramatic; but it's still fun and fascinating, and a special treat for the eyes.

Everyone knows the story from having been to the movies or read the Book. It's nothing less than the life of Moses, his rearing as a Prince of Egypt, his leading the Hebrew slaves out of Egyptian bondage, and his receiving the Ten Commandments from the hand of God. Charlton Heston plays Moses (or Moses plays Charlton Heston, I can't remember which; Heston played so many bigger-than-life characters in the fifties and sixties, it's hard to know). He's stiff, to be sure, but he invests the character of Moses with an appropriate solemnity, majesty, and humanness.

Yul Brynner plays Moses' nemesis, the stiff-necked Pharaoh Rameses; Anne Baxter and Yvonne DeCarlo are the women in Moses' life, Nefretiri and Sephora; Edward G. Robinson is Dathan, the sniveling, traitorous Hebrew overseer; Debra Paget is Lilia, the beautiful slave girl old Dathan covets; Judith Anderson is the creepy servant (shades of her Mrs. Danvers in Hitchcock's "Rebecca") who knows all about Moses' secret Hebrew identity; and John Derek is appropriately hairy and heroic as Joshua, the young Hebrew leader. Also in the cast are Nina Foch, Vincent Price, John Carradine, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and, in a cameo appearance, H.B. Warner, who played Christ in DeMille's 1927 "King of Kings."

The film is introduced and narrated by DeMille himself. The entire cast perform as though they know this is an "Important Motion Picture," every utterance a solemn pronouncement or proclamation, like a campus production of "King Lear." More posturing and pomposity transpire than we generally tolerate on the screen nowadays, but in spite of this, or maybe even because of its campiness, the film remains enjoyable, delivering plenty of drama and moving forward at a healthy clip.

Much of "The Ten Commandments" was filmed on location in the Middle East, and it is in these scenes that the visuals are most impressive. Big, beautiful panoramas of mountains and desert are quite stunning. In contrast, the studio shots seem all the more stage-bound, but that is a convention of movies we all live with.

Still, it's the big special effects that remain in memory: The glorious city and temple-building scenes, the Burning Bush, the plagues on Egypt, Moses receiving the stone tablets, and, certainly, the parting of the Red Sea, still looking every bit as astonishing today as it did those many years ago.

Video:
The controversy over this DVD release will be Paramount's decision to issue it on two discs. Yes, it's long at over three-and-a-half hours, but no more so than could have been accommodated on two layers of one disc or on flip sides of the same disc. The idea, of course, is to spread the film out as much as possible so that the compression can be lessened and the bit rate improved. Whatever you say to the contrary about using two discs, the bit rate is, indeed high, and the picture quality is quite good. It's not much of an inconvenience to the user, in any case. The break comes at intermission, and one needs to get up at that point, so I suppose it all evens out in the end.

The movie is presented in a 1.85:1 ratio anamorphic VistaVision. This is, in fact, close to its original theatrical-exhibition screen size, but, funny, I remember it being much wider (VistaVision screen sizes varied from 1.66:1 to 2.10:1), and in its later rerelease it was matted to 2.20:1. The colors are vividly bright, almost gaudy, in the fashion of many films of the fifties. Definition is decent, with some color bleed-through leading to a minor blurriness occasionally noticeable; but mostly the hues are too brilliant for utmost realism, a fault of the original film stock, no doubt. Further in its favor, though, the DVD exhibits very few noticeable artifacts, except for a few dancing pixels and wavering lines here and there.

Audio:
The film's sound of the day was a true stereo, although obviously early stereo because this was 1956 and not many theaters were equipped to deal with it. Voices come off best, music less effectively. The sound has a degree of hardness, roughness, and hollowness about it. But its front stereo spread is good, and in its Dolby Digital 5.1 remastering the rear speakers are fed suitable information. The default audio is Dolby Surround, so if you have Dolby Digital capability, remember to make your adjustment via the setup menu before you begin.

Extras:
Paramount provide little beyond the film, which seems extraordinarily miserly of them given the importance of the event. There are the two options for sound I mentioned; English and French language choices; forty-eight scene selections; and a few trailers from the film's initial release and its subsequent rerelease. Well, the film's the thing, I suppose.

Parting Thoughts:
"The Ten Commandments" remains a monumental spectacle and a delightful extravagance. I continue to enjoy it despite its sometimes campy overtones. As Pharaoh says, "So let it be written. So let it be done."