The Ten Commandments

Even with its 220-minute running time, Cecil B. DeMille's spectacular 1956 remake of his own 1923 silent classic chronicling the Old Testament story of Moses (here with a perfectly cast Charlton Heston) cannot incorporate all of the multitudinous narrative strands from the complex source material, so DeMille wisely elects to restrict the narrative to key events and interpretations of the personalities involved. Knowing what the public wanted, DeMille packs the film with miraculous events, with the signature parting of the Red Sea earning the film an Oscar for Special Effects, acing out Forbidden Planet. The full cast credits read like a Who's Who of the acting profession (Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, Yvonne De Carlo, Vincent Price, John Carradine, etc.), with Yul Brynner a natural as the stubborn Egyptian pharaoh Rameses. Nominated for Best Picture, The Ten Commandments makes its second appearance on DVD in a “special collector's edition” that boasts a stunning Technicolor widescreen transfer, a solid Dolby Digital 5.1 remixed soundtrack, and a few notable extras: DeMille historian Katherine Orrison's fun and informative commentary track, and a new 38-minute six-part documentary featuring, among others, DeMille's granddaughter (who says, in a bit of unintentional humor, that Heston boned up on his Moses character by reading “tombs”--a mispronunciation of “tomes”), and a two-minute newsreel clip of the New York premiere. Highly recommended. (R. Pitman)[DVD Review—Mar. 21, 2006—Paramount, 3 discs, 220 min., G, $24.99—Making its third appearance on DVD, 1956's The Ten Commandments (50th Anniversary Collection) features a great transfer and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. DVD extras on this release include all of the extras from the last release plus DeMille's original 1923 silent version of The Ten Commandments with audio commentary by Katherine Orrison (author of Written in Stone: Making Cecil B. DeMille's Epic), and a 15-minute segment on the hand-tinted footage of the Exodus and parting of the Red Sea sequence. Bottom line: if you don't own the earlier version, this two-fer—with the 1923 original—is definitely the one to have.]