YMMV / The Ten Commandments (1923)

• Adaptation Displacement: Displaced, of course, by the 1956 remake.
• First Installment Wins: An odd example of this occuring within a single movie. The opening Biblical scenes are much better remembered than the modern story, to the point that the 1956 remake dropped the modern story and instead expanded the Biblical part to feature length. Furthermore a 1927 review from the New York Times said of The Moon of Israel: "There is naturally much that is mindful of Cecil B. DeMille's Film The Ten Commandments in The Moon Of Israel, but Mr. Curtiz fortunately has no modern story to tack on to his Egyptian passages. This is an excellent production."
• Tough Act to Follow: This is often cited as a reason why the modern story seems so underwhelming. How could it possibly match the epic scope of the opening Biblical scenes?
• Values Dissonance:
  • Atheism leads to a life of debauchery, corruption, and ultimately murder. Thus sayth Cecil B. DeMille.
  • The portrayal of Sally Lung is as orientalist as you would expect for a film from 1923. And while the film never outright states that interracial relationships are wrong, you get the sense that that's because the film was made for an audience that already took that for granted.