Follow TV Tropes

This is based on opinion. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list.

Following

Tear Jerker / The Ten Commandments (1956)

Go To

  • In the scene where Moses decides to live as a Hebrew, you can see a man chopping straw. He looks so hopeless.
  • When the firstborns are slaughtered. Especially the scene where we see an Egyptian cleaning his blade while the mother just stares blankly.
    • Or she was killed trying to defend her baby, which is just as sad.
  • The movie ends with Moses leaving his family and the Hebrews for a greater destiny. Doubles as a Moment of Awesome.
    "Go. Proclaim liberty throughout all the lands, unto all the inhabitants thereof!"
  • Rameses revealing that Yochabel is dead. Even the Egyptian captain Pentaur looks disgusted by his callousness.
  • Rameses is genuinely heartbroken over the death of his son. Even though Rameses was an evil bastard you can't help feeling a little sorry for him.
  • Nefretiri is too, given her frantic, Stepford Smiler denial—"He will not die!"—and the way she collapses when he's gone. After Ramses tells Moses the Hebrews are free to leave, and as Moses leaves the throne room rejoicing aloud to God, Nefretiri enters the throne room with her dead son in her arms. She has this blank look on her face and when she reaches Ramses she just says in a monotone "He's dead." It's more impactful than if she were wailing or screaming.
  • The death of Simon, an elderly slave. He dies thinking he never got to meet the deliverer. Little does he know he's been talking to him.
  • Sethi ordering that Moses be Unpersoned.
    "Let the name of Moses be stricken from every book and tablet, stricken from all pylons and obelisks, stricken from every monument of Egypt. Let the name of Moses be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of men for all time."
    • After finishing, Sethi hangs his head in sadness.
    • Sethi breaks his law to whisper Moses' name as his dying words.
    • Nefertiti's own devastation at Sethi's death, showing how genuinely fond of him she was.
  • Moses' horror at realizing Rameses has decided the final plague and what it means for Nefertiri's son. He's visibly shaken and pleads for God to turn aside his wrath.
    Moses: (voice breaking) Turn from thy fierce wrath, O Lord!
  • While Bithia joins Moses and the Hebrews in their first Passover supper, she hears the dying screams of her people. Later, she looks away in anguish when the Red Sea drowns Pharaoh's men.
  • Moses touching the obelisk marking the Egyptian border at the start of his exile. The man who would have been Pharaoh is reduced to nothing.
  • For animal lovers, the sight of the horses drowning along with the army's men.
  • Nefertiti and Moses meeting for what they think is the last time. The anguish is palpable, especially with the way Rameses taunts them beforehand by telling them that he will let Moses live rather than execute him, so that each can be forever tormented by not being with the person they love and further tortured by knowing that they're with someone else (in Moses' case), or wondering if they've moved on (which comes true in Nefertiti's case).
  • When Moses returns to Egypt, Nefertiti literally tries to reach out to him, only for him to walk away without even looking at her. In those few seconds, you can see how utterly crushed she is to realize that the man she's been pining away for for roughly a decade, the man she still loves, has long since forgotten her.
  • A slave angrily muttering "Beauty is but a curse to our women" when he sees Baka deciding to take Lilia, in a bitterly resigned tone of voice that indicates that he's seen this happen numerous times before.

Alternative Title(s): The Ten Commandments

Top