Thanks for the memories!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Going on 90 years since it was first released, the original The Ten Commandments can still overawe you with the spectacle of both the biblical prologue and the modern story. Modern in the sense that it was set during the Jazz Age Roaring Twenties, the 1923 when Paramount released what would become that studio's biggest moneymaker up to that time.You'll recognize the biblical prologue if you've seen the 1956 remake, it is almost a 45 minute scene for scene remake of the time that Charlton Heston and John Carradine arrive at the Egyptian court until the destruction of the Golden calf. They weren't giving Oscars back in 1923, but the parting of the Red Sea was incredible for its time and would have given Cecil B. DeMille yet another Oscar for the same event.You won't recognize a lot of the biblical prologue cast, but they were part and parcel of a DeMille stock company that he developed during silent era and continued to a lesser degree after the coming of sound. Best known probably was Estelle Taylor who was married to Jack Dempsey at the time as Miriam, the sister of Moses. The bulk of the film is the modern story which has the theme break the Ten Commandments and they'll break you. The stars are Richard Dix and Rod LaRocque a pair of brothers, one good and one bad, sons of a most pious mother Edythe Chapman. Dix is a good, honest, and steady carpenter by trade and LaRocque through his ruthlessness and who winds up breaking all the Commandments becomes the richest contractor in the state. LaRocque is pretty ruthless in his private affairs, he breaks the Commandments regarding those as well. He marries Leatrice Joy who Dix likes as well, but then gets a fetching Eurasian mistress in Nita Naldi. Nita is in the slinky and sexy tradition of all DeMille's bad girls. It all ends really bad for LaRocque as his sins catch up with him. During the modern story DeMille hand with spectacle is a good one in the scene of the church collapse and later on during the climatic escape LaRocque is attempting to make with a speedboat on a stormy night at sea.The influence of DeMille's educator father Henry and his friend David Belasco are strong here as they are in all DeMille work. The modern story is the kind of morality play that Belasco would produce and write for the stage for years. It's from the Victorian era, but the Roaring Twenties audience wanted something that reflected traditional values occasionally as if nervously waiting for its excesses to catch up. It's partly the reason why they could find comfort in a Congregationalist president of the USA in Calvin Coolidge. Though the story is unbelievably dated, DeMille's cinematic techniques are hardly that. The original Ten Commandments in many ways will tell you about its creator warts and all.

Isaw both versions of Ten Commandments on a special DVC, so I suppose one would call it Tenty Commandments.I also watched the commentary for both films. The poem on the page where Mary Leigh writes Good Bye near the end of the prologues is the poem Helas by Oscar Wilde. The narrator of the commentary did not know this, so I feel that I have staged something of a coup. It does not look like the place in the book where Mary pressed the orange blossoms, she takes them out then flips a few pages before writing.The narrator also compared the rock where Danny wrecks his boat to Mount Sainai, but it looks more to me like the rock at the edge of the Red Sea, the Israelites destination, and figuratively the Rock on which Pharao crashed. The Orthodox Monastary of Saint Catherine at the foot of Mount Sinai is called a Greek ORTHODOX monastery in some of the commentary on the 1956 film. The Orthodox Church of Sainai is an independent Orthodoc Church, it is the Church of Sinai, so the monastery is a Sinai Orthjodox monastery. It is a common misnomer to call any Orthodox Church the Greek Orthodox Church. The Greek Orthodox Church is the Church of Greece only, other countries have their own Orthodox Churches.

Like the new miniseries and the 1956 masterpiece, the 1923, when it covers from the Bible, only takes text from one book out of four books on Moses' life, the book of Exodus. However, it only covers a tiny bit of Exodus as it goes to modern times halfway through the film, and it explains (silently) the meaning of God's laws. What it does cover from the Torah, though, is very accurate. Very accurate, until the actual giving of The Ten Commandments! Accurate with the other scenes on releasing the slaves and parting the sea, but when it gets to the scene that makes the title, it is horrible! Miriam performs ADULTERY on the Golden calf, not only idolatry, but ADULTERY, when I believe she didn't really get involved with the Golden calf anyway! Anyone who has read the book of Numbers knows how Miriam turns against Moses' wife and judges her for her nationality, well hows this, instead, the writers made her turn into a leper for worshiping the Golden calf! Wrong place, wrong story! They must be pathetic writers I tell you! Another thing, if you want to know how the Israelites were really punished from the idolatry at the Golden calf, think slaughter with swords like the Bible says, not getting swallowed by the Earth like the film makers made it! If you want to see them get swallowed by the Earth, look in Numbers, where they question Moses' leadership, and the Earth swallows them up, and it is called the swallowing of Korah! This happens in the 1956 one too! Wrong place Mr. DeMille! I give two stars for how much this film covers, and three stars for how accurate it is. Although inaccurate, still watch it, just don't take it seriously!

Cecil B. DeMille's original silent version of the Ten Commandments is mostly a heavy-handed morality play set in 1923. The prologue, which runs just over 40 minutes, shows an abbreviated version of the Biblical story of the Exodus. Most of the dialogue is taken from the Bible. Despite the technical limitations of the era, it succeeds as a fast-paced spectacular. The parting of the Red Sea is just as awe-inspiring in its own way as in the remake, and it's always interesting to see how silent actors compensated for the lack of sound with facial expressions and exaggerated gestures. The musical score is fantastic and everything clips along at a nice pace. As with the remake, it's never subtle, but it's never boring, either.I wish I could say the same about the main part of the feature. After Moses punishes the Hebrews for worshipping the golden calf, the film moves to the present day (1920s). A mother reads to her grown sons from the Bible. The two brothers are basically Goofus and Gallant. From here, everything is completely predictable.It's well done so that one can overlook the lack of subtlety. DeMille has a very explicit religious message, and he's not above bludgeoning the viewer over the head with it. That was the style of the day, and the limitations of the silent film force a certain amount of overstatement.However, unlike most films of this period, this one goes on far too long. It's about ninety minutes but seems far longer. The bad son goes out into the world, declaring that he's going to break all 10 Commandments! Naturally, he becomes a successful businessman... while his humble older brother (a carpenter, naturally) tries not to envy him or covet his wife. There's never any doubt about how it's all going to end: DeMille's message is that "the wages of sin is death", but he takes far too long to get there.The complete film is about 135 minutes, which must have been an epic length for that era. I would have enjoyed it more if the modern story had been trimmed by about 15 minutes.In his way, DeMille was the forerunner of Mel Gibson. Both are gifted filmmakers with devout religious beliefs --- short on subtlety, heavy on the bloodshed and headlong action. The 1956 remake of Ten Commandments is a spectacular example of epic film-making, and as this 1923 silent original is now included as an extra disc in the DVD, it's worth checking out. I can't imagine wanting to sit through the modern story again, though; I'll probably shut it off once Moses segues off screen.