YMMV / The Ten Commandments (1956)

• Accidental Innuendo: Sephora's "Moses, there is a man among the sheep!" has been getting snickers for generations.
• Adaptation Displacement: Everyone knows it's an extremely loose adaptation of the Book of Exodus, but this movie is also an extremely loose adaptation of three different novels, the writings of Philo and Josephus (which Cecil B. DeMille's acknowledges in his opening remarks), and The Qur'an, and a remake of DeMille's own 1923 movie of the same name.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: "Baka" was an actual ancient Egyptian name, with there having even been a prince, possibly a pharaoh, with the appellation. ^note It means "His soul (ba) is in his ka." Roughly speaking, the ba is personality, self, returning daily to watch over living loved ones; the ka, the actual life force, spends its days in heaven. Both rejoin the body at night, guided by the power of the ren — the name.
• Audience-Coloring Adaptation:
  • Suffice it to say that most post-1956 adaptations of the Exodus story bear the unmistakable fingerprints of The Ten Commandments. Most notably, it's down to this film that the Pharaoh of the Exodus is almost always identified as Rameses II in popular culture.
  • Many adaptations since have portrayed Moses as being raised as a prince and potential heir to the Pharaoh, while also unaware of his heritage until shortly before or after his murder of the overseer. Neither of these plot elements are present in the original Exodus. In fact, it is strongly suggested there that Moses was aware of his true heritage all his life.
• Award Snub: DeMille failed to receive a nomination for Best Director. Quite a few people believe DeMille should have won Best Picture for Ten Commandments instead his earlier win for The Greatest Show on Earth .
• Awesome Music: The soundtrack, but especially the freeing of the slaves. It was composed by Elmer Bernstein, after all.
• Complete Monster: Dathan begins life as a Hebrew slave who sells out his own people to become an overseer. Upon discovering the true identity of Prince Moses as a Hebrew slave, Dathan sells him out to Prince Ramses in exchange for power, status, and the Hebrew woman Lilia as his personal Sex Slave. Dathan takes up a position of authority over the Hebrews, working countless innocents to death and disability while sending Lilia's beloved Joshua to the horrific copper mines of Geber. Siding against Moses at every turn, Dathan finds himself exiled with the rest of the Hebrews. He promptly tries to convert the others to idolatry and tries to sacrifice Lilia to the statue of a golden calf.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Charlton Heston and Vincent Price play enemies in this film — both men would later play the lead role in cinematic adaptations of I Am Legend, Price in The Last Man on Earth and Heston in The Ωmega Man.
  • Rameses is not a fan of Moses. Nor was another character Yul Brynner played in another popular 1956 movie.
  • So, the overseer who gets killed by Moses is named Baka, eh?
• Hollywood Homely: The "plain" Sephora, played by Yvonne De Carlo◊.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Nefretiri becomes bitchier and bitchier as the movie goes on, but it's easy to understand and sympathize given the conditions, especially when her son dies.
  • Rameses II can definitely be seen as this, as the plagues bringing down his kingdom are his own fault.
  • In a more humorous sense, Jannes the High Priest as Moses and God consistently humiliate and discredit him and his gods in front of Rameses II and the Royal Court.
• Memetic Mutation: "Where is your God now?" (A line which appears nowhere in the movie, incidentally.)
• Moral Event Horizon: When Rameses orders the death of the firstborn of Israel.
• Narm:
  • Any time Nefretiri says Moses. "Moooses, Moooses..."
  • A good chunk of the movie swings between this and Narm Charm. It was already kind of old-fashioned for 1956, as more films were being made with naturalistic acting. However, DeMille was a Victorian born and bred, and conceived this picture as a series of theatrical set pieces, called tableaux. You can almost see the curtain fall at the close of each scene. And so the actors spoke that way too. An anonymous poster on The Data Lounge sums it up:
    Hint: this film has no dialogue only exclamatory sentences to no one in particular.
  • The expressions on the three women's faces as Moses parts the Red Sea. The women, like the close-ups of Moses with the massive clouds behind him, were photographed by Wallace Kelly, A.S.C. in Farciot Edouart's process (rear projection) department, These striking portraits were again part of DeMille's Victorian artistry.
  • The absolutely terrible acting of the woman who spots Pharaoh's troops coming — "The chariots! Run! Run for your lives!" (Like many of the extras who played the children of Israel, she was an Egyptian local and not a professional actress.)
• Remade and Improved: This film was Cecil B. DeMille remaking his earlier 1923 silent film by the same name. Although the 1923 version was considered groundbreaking in its day, the 1956 version is widely regarded as an improvement thanks to cutting the modern storyline and focusing solely on the Exodus.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Robert Vaughn makes his film debut as a spearman/Hebrew at the Golden Calf.
  • Clint Walker has an early role in this as the Sardinian Captain, the captain seen with the viking hat in the background in the pharaoh's room.
• Signature Scene: Moses parting the Red Sea, along with his delivery of "BEHOLD, HIS MIGHTY HAND!!!"
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Nina Foch is clearly wearing a white cap in lieu of white hair to demonstrate Bithiah's aging in the time between Moses' exile and his return. Egyptian ladies did sometimes wear snoods like that, especially when traveling; so it works in context.
  • The film contains a lot of Chroma Key, which was invented sixteen years earlier for The Thief of Bagdad. Let's just say the technology was still primitive in 1956.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The parting of the Red Sea, accomplished by digging out two parking lots and the section of street between them, to create an artificial waterfall on either side (as miniatures were deemed unconvincing). Years later, it's still the greatest scene ever photographed.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
  • The movie is about godly people seeking freedom from a pagan dictator. In his introduction, Cecil B. De Mille discusses the central theme of the film as about whether men are free individuals or the property of the state. Considering the era this film was produced in, this becomes a subtle dig at that other great world power at the time.
  • One of the film's themes is that people should be ruled over by set laws rather than the unrestricted whims of a dictator. Thus, the Ten Commandments are framed in quasi-Enlightenment terms as a proto-version of the Magna Carta or the U.S. Bill of Rights. Reinforced by DeMille encouraging the Fraternal Order of Eagles to distribute the now-controversial sculptures of the Ten Commandments tablets to courthouses across the country.
  • He's also making a clear Shout-Out to the Civil Rights Movement, in which he fervently believed.
• The Woobie: Lilia. Almost becomes a sex slave to Baka, separated from Joshua and forced to give in to Dathan to save Joshua, and nearly becomes a human sacrifice. The lyrics to her Leitmotif are "Death cometh to me to set me free".

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