Starring Theodore Roberts, Charles de Rochefort, Estelle Taylor
Produced by Paramount Pictures
In the deserts of Egypt, taskmasters force slaves to carry a statue of the Sphinx to a new resting place. Never mind that the Hebrews are tired and thirsty. If one of them is run over in the process, so be it. It is all to honor the Pharoah and his Egyptian deities. Who will save the people?
Moses, of course. With Aaron by his side, he has already unleashed nine plagues upon the people of Egypt, but now he is delivering his worst threat: the death of the first born sons of the country. The Pharoah laughs the threat off and calls in the dancing girls. That is a decision the leader soon regrets.
As Egypt wails from the slaughter of its children, the Pharoah discovers the death of his own boy. Grief-stricken and scared, he releases the Hebrews from their bondage and Moses leads them into the desert. The Egyptian leader quickly changes his mind and pursues the nomads in chariots. They come to the Red Sea. Things get biblical. There is a parting, some stone tablets and a golden calf...
...All of which, we discover, are being read from the Bible by a woman in the 1920s to her two children Danny and John. Both love their mother, but Danny is convinced that the ten commandments are outdated. He meets and marries a fellow heathen girl and sets out to break the commandments. After three years, Dan is a successful contractor, while John is still a lowly carpenter. Dan decides to cut corners building a new church in town by skimping on the cement to sand ratio. Will Dan's attempt to break the commandments be fruitful? Do you really have to read the rest of this review to know the answer?
Let's start with the good. In the Egyptian prologue story, the effects are spectacular. The parting of the Red Sea looks superb, with some great visual trickery showing the Israelites crossing between the walls of water. The sets, exteriors and costumes all evoke a great sense of time and place.
Still, the prologue has story problems. We get one sequence of the "evil" Egyptians, are quickly told that there have been nine plagues and next thing you know the first born are getting whacked. I already know the story and the movie is relying on that. If it weren't, Moses isn't much better than Pharoah in terms of his arc.
After the Israelites have escaped and are camped on the bottom of Mt. Sinai, the effects work kicks in again. The delivery of the word of god involves some impressive explosions and a bolt of lightning to actually carve the tablets from the stone. The spectacle of it is better than the story though.
Once we go to the modern tale, the movie almost becomes a comedy. Here we have Dan who decides to break all of the commandments. And for the rest of the movie, he is obsessed with this. He's constantly bringing it up. It just never feels like an authentic reaction. You also have to question the wisdom of a woman who marries a guy with adultery and murder on his to-do list.
After Dan's life goes to hell (oh, spoiler: the guy who decided to disobey God has things go to hell in his life), the true subtlety of screenplay kicks into full gear. Dan attempts to escape the authorities in his motorboat named "Defiance." When the engine stalls, Dan and the boat are dashed against a cliff. But not before Dan looks up and sees the cliff transform into the two stone tablets with the ten commandments. The message hits you with the subtlety of an anvil falling from ten stories up.
There is a lot more about the "modern" story that is ponderous and ludicrous, but it is not really worth going into. As a screen test for DeMille's remake with Charles Heston, this is four stars. As something for the crew of Mystery Science Theater 3000, four-and-a-half. On its own, it's sadly:
*1/2
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