Land of the Pharoahs (Howard Hawks, 1955) The Ten Commandments (1923)

Howard Hawks' answer to Cecil B. DeMille. 

 

Didn't pay much attention to it, to be honest. I just had it on TV while I did some other stuff. With Jack Hawkins, Joan Collins, and Dewey Martin, and I don't remember who else. It looked amazing. Had thousands of extras. Technicolor. Filmed in Egypt and Italy. I heard it did poorly in theaters but was an early success on television.

 

The Ten Commandments (1923)

 

I had watched the silent version of Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments a few days earlier. It wasn't what I expected.

There was nothing uplifting or inspirational about the Ten Commandments themselves, but the movie takes several minutes spelling out each one, like no one ever heard of them before. Then Moses murders three thousand of his followers for worshiping a golden calf. It was the most innocuous pagan idol imaginable, but they had to make it look depraved with a big giant calf-induced orgy.

At that point, the story switches to what was then the present day. We see a dour old woman reading the Bible to her two adult sons. It becomes a Gallant and Goofus story. One son listens piously. The other acts likes a normal person having this forcibly read to him for the umpteenth time. The deranged old women yells at him that he'll get what those three thousand murdered Israelites got!

"Laugh at the Ten Commandments all you want, Danny," the good brother says, "but they pack an awful wallop."
 

The non-believing brother violates each commandment and does pretty well for himself. I assume something happens to him later, but I lost interest by then.

 

The Pharoah's son meeting Moses. They try to make him look like a jerk so we'll be glad when The Lord murders him along with all the other firstborn children of Egypt, but I'd say the kid was proven right. It's like an Iraqi child meeting Madeline Albright.