Movie Review: The Ten Commandments

I want to make my blog fresh and up to date, so what better way than to review the 1956 movie, "The Ten Commandments"!

Cecil B. DeMille's classic biblical drama. It was awesome. I've never seen it before. The unfortunate part is that the second DVD got scratched (we suspect my 11-month old son is the culprit), and we were not able to properly finish the movie. However, what I did see was pretty amazing. Charlton Heston gives such a powerful performance. What struck me is that he is such a great powerful, authoritative speaker, and yet the Bible says that Moses had kind of a speech impediment.

"Moses, however said to the LORD, "If you please, my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and tongue." - Exodus 4:10

That's why Aaron his brother would always do the speaking for him. It probably wouldn't have been as good of a movie if Charlton Heston didn't really say much though.

I like that they really took their time with this movie and made it exceedingly great. They didn't limit the story to just two hours - it's almost 4 hours! They also seemed to spare no expense in the making. There's thousands of extras in some scenes. I watched some commentary that said that Cecil had to use a firing gun to start scenes because there were so many people. It's also got the top actors of the era all included. Yul Brynner as Ramses is pretty amazing. Also for the period it's special effects were truly groundbreaking. The parting of the Red Sea is still a pretty epic scene to watch.

We stretched the viewing of the movie over the course of several days and it always left me excited to see the next part. I also really enjoyed imitating Moses by commanding my wife and son that it was now time for us to go to bed.