First story: Ancient Egypt. Moses sends plagues until pharaoh Ramses concedes and allows the Hebrew slaves to walk free. But the pharaoh changes his mind and sends the Egypt army to attack the Hebrews, yet they are drowned in the Red Sea. On Mt Sinai, Moses gets the 10 commandments from God... Second story: atheist Danny and his brother, carpenter John, have a religious mother, Martha. When Danny finds a girlfriend, Mary, he leaves the house because he does not believe in the 10 commandments. Danny becomes a corrupt contractor, using too little cement to gain profit, but when his cathedral collapses, it kills his mother. Plagued by guilt, he demands pearls he gave to a prostitute. She refuses, Danny kills her and flees on a boat during a storm, crashing and dying.
Director Cecil B. DeMille is one of the few authors who themselves directed a remake better than the original, yet that was not such a difficult task to accomplish in the case of this 1923 film—"The Ten Commandments" from '56 is not a great film, yet it is easily superior to the very flawed and preachy original. For one thing, the 1923 version is kind of a cheat: only the first 40 minutes depict Moses and the Exodus story, while the remaining 80 minutes depict a modern story about atheist contractor Danny and his rejection of the 10 commandments, yet they are exhaustingly boring, didactic and strain the viewers' attention. DeMille's remake focused only on the Exodus, abandoning the modern story, which was enough by default to surpass the original, which fell deeply into the territory of Christian propaganda. The sole 1st segment is fairly interesting, with rudimentary yet fascinating special effects (parting of the Red Sea; the "reverse shots" of explosions announcing the 10 commandments on the Sinai) and a few monumental images (a queue of thousands of Hebrew people stretching across the desert dunes) which indicated DeMille's sense for the spectacle. The 2nd segment is terribly thin and overlong by comparison, a dated and blatantly obvious religious morality play—atheist Danny is predictably ruined even though the 10 commandments never mention corruption, with the melodramatic scene of his mother dying from the collapsed cathedral built by corrupt cement, whereas there is even a scene where Danny escapes on a boat named "Defiance". This disparity damages the film, but the 1st story has enough power to save it.
Grade:++
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