1923 - THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, first DeMIlle version

There are film historians who think that Cecil B. DeMille's first version of the biblical story about the Jew's exodus from Egypt,  is a lot better than his Vista Vision epic which he filmed in 1956,  the older version  certainly moves along story telling wise much better than the ponderous and very long version he remade with Charlton Heston.

DeMille and his writer Jeanie MacPherson sure keep things hopping along.  A decision to essentially split the film into two different stories allowed for DeMille to pour on the spectacle of the Bible story with large sets and impressive special effects for 1923.

 After the parting of the Red Sea in the first half of the film, the story jumps ahead to the present day and we get a tale that dramatizes the different Commandments as they apply to modern life. The modern tale is about two brothers, one who follows the Commandments and the other who doesn't and even  bad mouths God.  You know how he is going to end up.

 

Silent film brought out the best in DeMille, his staging and direction of the film is at times quite impressive.  Silent film also helped rein in the worst aspects of his film making, essentially sparing the audience from having to endure the ponderous dialog and wooden performances that usually plagued his sound films.

 

This film is an impressive achievement.  The running time is 136 minutes.

1947 - UNCONQUERED, Another DeMille epic impressive and ridiculous.

Here he goes again.  DeMille films another historical epic where he uses American history to warp and shape it to his needs.  In this case it's the Pontiac Rebellion of 1763.  Or it's Gary Cooper and Paulette Goddard vs white villain Howard De Silva who is selling what else, guns to the Indians.

All of the interesting DeMille stuff is here the methodical staging of scenes that are reminiscent of tableau's, the odd use of back project during the epic action scenes and most interestingly the manipulation of Paulette Goddard in some sort of sexual torture fetish scene.

As typical with DeMille, the actors are directed to play it very broad.  Since this is a larger than life story Gary Cooper can pull it off.  The underrated Paulette Goddard is the chief female that everyone slobbers over.  Goddard plays a slave so she is subject to all sorts of  the usual DeMille perversions.

Well how to rate this film?  The 40's technicolor is gorgeous, the mishmash of historical figures (oh look it's George Washington) is as wacky as usual.  The plot, overlong and convoluted as usual.  A typical late 40's DeMille film.

146 minutes, written by Charles Bennett, Fredric M. Frank, Jesse Louis Lasky Jr. and Jeanie MacPherson.

1956 - THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, on Blu Ray.

DeMille's final film probably sums up all of the good and bad things about career.  DeMille had an interesting visual sense based on old Victorian and Renaissance paintings and he certainly knew how to deploy large numbers of extras for maximum visual impact.  At the same time DeMille was not the greatest director of actors, he liked things played very broad.  There was no subtlety in a DeMille film.  DeMille also like to use stories from the Bible and American history as a basis for his films and by the time he had dramatized them they bore virtually no resemblance to actual historical events but could be pretty darn entertaining.

The Ten Commandments was a big production for DeMille.  It had the "cast of thousands," impressive scenes, dramatic use of color and lighting and a large of cast of very good actors.  It also had one of the most ludicrous stories about the life of Moses ever put on film.  Since so little was known about Moses, DeMille and his writers were free to invent large chunks of his life story.  In The Ten Commandments DeMille had come up with a bizarre story about a three way love triangle between Moses, the Pharaoh and the Pharaoh's wife which boarders on the tasteless.

Still, this is an amazing film and also a very long one.  This thing just goes on and on and DeMille's cast really pours it on with enough scenery chewing acting to make Al Pacino look subtle.  Amazingly, DeMille was 75 years old when he made The Ten Commandments.  He suffered a heart attack during this production but he continued to direct the film to completion.

Paramount has put together a stunning Blu-ray of the The Ten Commandments.  This film looks really good.

220 minutes,  the screenplay was by a bunch of DeMille cronies,  Aeneas MacKenzie,  Lasky Jr., Jack Gariss and Fredric Frank.

1952 - THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, is certainly one of the longest.

Clocking in at over 2 hours this Cecil B. DeMille corn fest finally wears out it's welcome towards the last 20 or 30 minutes of the film.  For all the subplots and characters in the film, the story has a "seen it all before" quality and seen it made a lot better by other people.

The cast is certainly unusual.  The insufferable Betty Hutton is the female lead who manages to fall in love with two men.  If there was one thing that Betty Hutton could never project as an actor that was sex appeal.  If you needed a loud mouthed overbearing and clueless personality Hutton was the one to cast.  Cornel Wilde is the trapeze artist who is a continental European Lothario in the best tradition of "B" movie screen lovers. His French accent is really terrible.

 

 Charlton Heston is the brooding circus manager.  Heston wants to bring the circus to all the small towns of America but he is so intense and scary in his performance he would make an audience want to run to one of those new fangled outdoor drive in 50's movie theaters instead.  In the supporting cast is one of the 50's hottest actors, Gloria Grahame who nobody seems to hit on much.  I guess when you have Betty Hutton around why would you want Gloria Grahame.  Finally there is James Stewart playing "Buttons a clown."

After what seems like hours and hours of circus parades and clown antics the film climaxes in a spectacular train wreck sequence.  The sequence would have been even more spectacular if the train didn't look like a model that was filmed in some kid's hobby corner.  DeMille always made epic films with less than epic special effects.

A kind of a disappointment from Cecil B. DeMille, but the film made a lot of money by 1950's standards.

152 minutes.  Written by Fredric M. Frank, Theodore St John,  Frank Cavett and Barré Lyndon.

1915 - THE CHEAT, early silent film from DeMille

The best of Cecil B DeMille's films are his silent ones.  In these films he literally ran amok with lots of unsubtle sexuality and at times sadism.  In the last 10 minutes he would stick in some hooky morality lesson to appease the censors but who was he kidding?

The Cheat is a very early DeMille film and doesn't exactly have a lot of his visual style but it does show the beginning of his technique. 

The most interesting aspect of The Cheat is the casting of Sessue Hayakawa as the oriental businessman who brands everything he owns.  In this case it's the wife of a businessman who steals money from the Red Cross in order to sustain her lavish lifestyle.  The wife also borrows money from Hayakawa who wants his pound of flesh and it's bring out the branding iron for her.   Hayakawa is remembered as the Japanese commander in The Bridge on the River Kwai, but in this film he's the dashing cad.

The Cheat is loaded with racism, sexism, misogyny and lots of sick stuff.  DeMille is clearly trying to get away with as much as he possibly can in this film.  He crams in a lot for a film that is under an hour

59 minutes

1939 - UNION PACIFIC, is DeMille's very entertaining western.

This is a large scale Western film, from Cecil B. DeMille. The film is long but completely entertaining.  DeMille has loaded Union Pacific up with lots of fights, a soap opera love triangle, and two spectacular train wreck sequences. 

The plot is about the building of the transcontinental railroad, Barbara Stanwyck and actor from Brooklyn is stuck playing and Irish engineer's daughter complete with stereotypical accent.  Joel McCrea who was a capable light comedian plays the railroad troubleshooter who is such a tough guy he wears his guns backwards.  Brian Donlevy frequently played bad guys and he again gets the honors in this film.  Finally, Robert Preston, an actor who struggled in films is the 2nd lead bad guy.  Preston didn't his the big time until he starred in The Music Man on Broadway.

Frequently criticized for his lack of sophistication, Cecil B. DeMille was an extremely good at producing and directing films that were very successful with the public.  DeMille also had a much more impressive visual sense when it came to staging films than he was usually given credit for.  Union Pacific is a well staged and photographed film.

Union Pacific is a very good piece of commercial enterainment, from a master commercial filmmaker.

135 minutes

1922 MANSLAUGHTER - More outrageous DeMille Sex and Sin stuff.

Cecil B DeMille and his writer/mistresses Jeannie MacPherson put together an "everything but the kitchen sink" story for this film.  A rich, shallow woman  accidentally kills a cop and ends up going to prison. Prison life redeems her and turns her into a good church going Christian.  The synopsis can't even begin to cover the amount of plot and melodramatic situations DeMille crammed into an hour and forty minutes.

The silent films of DeMille are generally considered his artistic peak.  This film isn't up to the silent version of The 10 Commandments that I saw but it is certainly a lot of fun with never a dull moment in any of it.

 

Just to give you the idea of the bizzaro nature of this film, DeMille, includes two ancient Roman orgy sequences which have absolutely nothing to do with anything in the film.  These scenes appear to have been included just as an indulgent whim.  One of the orgy scenes, has a couple of lesbians making out in plain view of the camera which is  pretty amazing stuff for 1922.

DeMille was frequently criticized for the poor handling of actors in his films but his star Leatrice Joy,  does a very good job going from playing a spoiled partying playgirl to a born again Christian.

Obviously Leatrice Joy is more fun to watch being naughty than nice.  She did a lot of her own  driving during the car chase scenes.   DeMillle was a big believer in actors doing their own stunts even if it meant risking their lives at times.  


Cecil B. DeMille, was criticized for being somewhat of a right wing moralizing hypocrite throughout his career but he certainly understood how to mix dirtiness with piety, something a lot of Christians are still very adept at.

In DeMille's case his moralizing is extremely entertaining in this film. 

1930 - DeMille's amazing sex musical MADAM SATAN

 A wife discovers her husband is cheating on her with a night club singer. She decides to humiliate him by dressing up as a character at a masquerade party known as Madam Satan.

 

The masquerade party happens to be on a dirigible which gets struck by lightening. The dirigible races out of control and breaks in two. The partiers in full costume, parachute out of the dirigible to save their lives and that's the normal stuff in this film.

Here is an excellent example of DeMille the filmmaker indulging his fantasies and fetishes in the very public forum of a film musical. The women are basically dressed in lingerie or strange bizarre costumes throughout the film. The musical numbers are dadaist in their conception and execution. The "Cats on the Catwalk" production number with the costumed party people hopping their way up a catwalk dressed as pussycats is a very very strange thing to see. Then there is the electric man production number (see above picture). Apparently this goofball doing his so called dance routine as a bolt of electricity was a major influence on Agnes DeMille who went on to choreograph Oklahoma.

It's easy to use the word "heightened reality" but is seems to fit a film like this.

I've seen a lot of DeMille films, but I've never seen a film like this one. A stunning film.

 116 minutes. Written by Jean MacPherson DeMille's mistress.