The Ten Commandments

The film splits in two. The first part tells the exodus from Egypt and Moses receiving the commandments. The second is set in San Francisco in the twenties: of two brothers, one chooses to live by the commandments while the other deliberately breaks them all and rises as a building contractor. Cecil B. DeMille directed. Its famous quality is scale. Gelatin and a water tank were used for the parting of the Red Sea, and an enormous set was built for the Egyptian section in the Guadalupe dunes in California. Dismantling the set would have cost too much once shooting ended, so the studio buried it where it stood. The sand covered it over the years, excavations from the eighties onward brought pieces back up, and there is a museum in the area today. The modern section is the film's real idea: the commandments are presented not as rules from history but as moral choices in the present. It was among the most expensive silent productions, and DeMille filmed the story again in 1956. Who it is for: viewers curious about silent cinema and large-scale studio production. Who it is not for: anyone who will find the moral lesson of the modern section excessive; the film never deviates from it.