The Ten Commandments (1923)
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Screenwriter: Jeanie Macpherson
Starring: Theodore Roberts, Leatrice Joy, Richard Dix, Rod LaRocque, Nita Naldi

It is impossible to watch the first 45 minutes of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 silent epic The Ten Commandments without your mouth hanging open in awe. The sheer artistry on display is astounding, from the art direction, to the cinematography, to the technical effects. Helmed by one of cinema’s most successful and influential pioneer directors, The Ten Commandments offers the very best of what movies can be, and 100 years later stands as a testament to the innovation and technical achievement of the early days of moving pictures, a reminder of the shoulders that artists today stand upon. According to The Film Foundation, it was Paramount’s highest-grossing film for 25 years. While DeMille’s 1956 remake of the film starring Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner is probably the version best remembered by audiences, thanks in part to ABC’s yearly tradition of airing the film the week before Easter, the original 1923 version is just as spectacular and worthy of praise and appreciation. At times bewildering and heavy-handed, The Ten Commandments is a sprawling morality tale that often loses the plot, but nevertheless offers us a fascinating glimpse into the primitive days of filmmaking, as well as the ideals and expectations of post-war America.

The Ten Commandments begins with a title card that explains how the modern world considered the laws of God to be “old fashioned,” but following the bloodshed of the first world war, that same world, now bitter and broken by death and destruction, “cries for a way out.” What follows is a 45 minute prologue retelling the Exodus from the first testament of the Bible, in which Moses (Theodore Roberts) leads thousands of enslaved Israelis from Egypt. But when the Pharaoh’s son cannot be revived by his Gods, Ramses (Charles De Roche) chases after them. Moses parts the Red Sea, goes to the Mount to receive the ten commandments and inflicts the wrath of God upon the Israelis when he returns, because they have forsaken God while Moses was away and are now worshipping a golden ram. The sinners pay for their disobedience; they are struck down by lightening.

Fans of the 1956 version might be a little bit confused about what happens next.

As the frame fades to black, the film jumps ahead to modern day, where the devoutly religious Martha McTavish (Edythe Chapman) is telling the story of “The Ten Commandments” to her two sons, John (Richard Dix) and Dan (Rod La Rocque). While John is a lowly carpenter and content to remain so, Dan has big plans for his future; plans that do not include respecting the teachings of God, much to the horror of his mother. Dan and John soon fall in love with the same girl, Mary (Leatrice Joy), which sparks a chain of events that lead to a deadly conclusion.

This last half of the film is a morality play about the dangers of falling from God’s grace, which the film never lets you forget. The dialog is so over the top it borders on self-parody. It’s way too on the nose and beats you over the head with its message. It’s hard not to laugh when Martha, horrified that Mary and Dan are listening to music and dancing on Sunday, dramatically smashes the record against her giant bible. As Shawn Hall pointed out in The Everyday Cinephile, “The choices of the characters are dictated by the morals the filmmakers are trying to teach the audience, not their inner motivations and desires.” Modern audiences, who are overwhelming less religiously minded than they were 100 years ago, might have a difficult time swallowing the film’s black and white morality, but this part of the film didn’t fare very well with audiences at the time of its release either, who saw it as a downgrade from the breadth and scope of the prologue. According the The Film Foundation, Variety at the time called it simply “ordinary.”

There’s a reason why, in DeMille’s 1956 remake, the Exodus and parting of the red sea serves as the climax of the story. It’s the most exciting part. Starting the 1923 version with this sequence, DeMille set his audience up for disappointment. There’s just no matching its insane spectacle and technical prowess. According to The Film Foundation, the sets for the prologue were built by 500 carpenters and 600 painters and decorators. The sets, including a 120 feet tall temple, were massive. This was a hugely expensive production, and it still looks expensive after all these years. It’s also worth noting that several scenes in the prologue were in color, including the parting of the red sea and the fire used to hold back the Egyptian chariot riders. According to The Musuem of Modern Art, DeMille used several techniques for adding color during the silent era including tinting, spot-coloring and techicolor. If anything, The Ten Commandments dispels one of the pervasive myths about older films: that they were all in black and white, and that color did not happen until decades later. These scenes thankfully remain in tact, thanks to restoration done by the George Eastman Museum, which used DeMille’s personal 35mm copy as one of the sources.

It would be unfair to say that the second half of the film, which overstays its welcome, isn’t entertaining and engaging, despite how seemingly mundane it is. There are several sequences of note, worthy of the same praise given to those within the prologue. The destruction of the church near the end of the film is stunning, as is the scene in which Mary takes the elevator up to top of the Church’s roof. This part of The Ten Commandments is also elevated by its lead performances, especially Dix’s. He is so deeply charming and handsome as John; his unbuttoned vest and buttoned up shirt, sleeves rolled up to the forearms, could probably make anyone see the light and convert. Several actors in The Ten Commandments eventually made the leap to talkies, and Dix notably became a big-box office draw for RKO in the 1930s and was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in 1931’s Cimarron. The performances are nuanced and natural, which might come as a shock to modern audiences who might still hold false beliefs about how acting in silent films was generally over the top and goofy. While it’s true that screen acting was still in its infancy in 1923, and some of it was over the top, a lot changed between when the first pictures were released and the filming of The Ten Commandments. In the early 1900s, the craft of screen acting evolved at lightning speed, becoming more naturalistic, and it’s wonderful to see a glimpse of that evolution in The Ten Commandments.

Will Hays was officially named head of the newly formed Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America in 1922, and his primary job was to quell dissent among Hollywood’s critics when it came to censorship and the increasing moral ambiguity of its stars. In the early days of filmmaking, various censorship boards in the United States would cut anything and everything that did not meet societal standards of decency and propriety from films, so it is worth noting that the Paramount did not cut a single second of The Ten Commandments (per The House of Fradkin-stein). This is astonishing considering there is a frame in which Miram, Moses’ sister, gets her breast fondled in full view of the camera. It’s interesting that, while on the surface, The Ten Commandments is preoccupied with telling us a moral tale in showing the downfall of Dan McTavish, the film also shows a lot of decidedly ungodly things including murder, adultery, and greed in great detail. As author and professor William D. Romanowski pointed out, “A devout Episcopalian and Bible literalist, DeMille was also a consummate Hollywood showman with a keen sense of audience desires.” Known for baiting the censors, one has to wonder if DeMille was trying to have his cake and eat it too.

It is a miracle that The Ten Commandments survived past the early 1900s. As Eva Gordon explained in her biography of forgotten silent film star Theda Bara, no one really cared about preserving silent films (the earliest of which had become obsolete far before talkies arrived) until it was too late. By the 1930s, the fragile nitrate film stock was already disintegrating or bursting into flames. Fox Films, which later became 20th Century Fox, lost all of their silent films in a vault fire. But The Ten Commandments is one of the lucky ones. It prevails as one of the Hollywood’s most dazzling epics. Even today, it surpasses some modern blockbusters in technical and artistic achievement. The runtime may be bloated and the second half suffers because of its one-dimensional characters and uninspiring narrative, but The Ten Commandments remains one of the best spectacles in Hollywood history, a film that paved the way for a generation of epic storytelling to come.

Score: 21/24

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In truth, all these aspects have to be considered, including more abstract qualities such as themes and impact on the course of cinema and wider society. In short, the films I have included are ones that have profoundly moved me in some way. Cinema is art that has the honour of enchanting us through its enriching in both the dimensions of time and space. And art therefore shall be assessed in this list by its emotive qualities.

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10. Ben-Hur (1959)

Kicking off the list is William Wyler’s directorial crowning achievement, the second of three Hollywood adaptions of Lew Wallace’s novel: “Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ”. This film is often considered to be the definitive religious epic, with enough sweat and sand to be the envy of all other rival sword and sandal flicks.

Indeed, no aspect of the movie falls short of this description, from the next level ham acting from Charlton Heston in the titular role to the now infamous chariot scene which boasted an 18 acre set and 15,000 extras. Each element complemented a story of immense highs and lows filled with treachery, revenge and redemption.

The film’s extremely brief depiction of Christ remains one of the most popular with a rarely bestowed Vatican approval – a faceless Christ helping the ailing Judah Ben Hur with the gentle offer of water remains spine-tingling to this day. Consequentially, MGM’s gamble paid off, with the film’s return saving the studio from bankruptcy (for when accounting for inflation it is the 13th highest-grossing film of all time). It would also earn critical and peer approval, becoming the first film to earn the legendary 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture.

Ben-Hur is now such an integral part of Western Pop Culture it is often imitated but never bested, with numerous homages and parodies from the pod race in The Phantom Menace to the hilarious “A Star is Burns” episode of ‘The Simpsons’.

9. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

Not only is this one of the most beautiful films to look at on this list, it is also the foundation of one of the biggest empires of the modern era.

The film project, based on The Brothers Grimm fairy tale, was nicknamed “Disney’s folly” during its production, as it was expected to flop. However, the revenue it earned was responsible for building the Disney Studios at Burbank: accounting for inflation, it remains the highest grossing-animated film of all time.

It would be difficult to argue that Snow White doesn’t deserve this accolade, considering its innovation and the sheer effort in creating the first-ever feature length animation – there are several stories of animator frustrations regarding the months of agonising labour put into sequences of cell-animation that would only last one minute on screen (the dwarves “Heigh-ho” march) or would be cut entirely.

These hand-drawn and hand painted efforts (actual rouge was used for Snow White’s rosy cheeks) were not in vain considering their legacy. The meticulous animation resulted in unforgettable characterisation, notably the Queen’s regal villainy and the charm of the dwarfs, particularly Dopey. The enormous production efforts poured into Disney’s gamble means this animation stands out as the most beautiful to this day, particularly in comparison to Disney’s Xerox era. Furthermore, Snow White was the last true animation trailblazer for decades until the advent of Computer Generated animation, meaning the success of most 2D animation productions is owed to Snow White.

Beyond animation, Snow White was a trend setter to other industry practices being one of the first movies to sell related merchandise on its release (which became another significant cornerstone of the Disney empire) alongside a released soundtrack – with Disney’s music now being just as famous as its animation.

As Snow White edges closer to its century anniversary, the film’s place on this list is validated by the fact that children around the world continue to be intrigued and enthralled by this film. Even if the Disney empire eventually collapses, the continuing popularity of Snow White means the name will still be regarded as legendary.

Planet of the Apes (2001)
Director: Tim Burton
Screenwriter: William Broyles Jr, Lawrence Konner
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Helena Bonham Carter, Tim Roth, Michael Clarke Duncan, Paul Giamatti, Estella Warren, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, David Warner, Kris Kristofferson, Erick Avari, Charlton Heston 

Various writers and directors at 20th Century Fox had been trying to get a new Planet of the Apes off the ground for over a decade by the time Tim Burton signed on to the project. A sword-and-sandals epic, but with apes, had been mooted, as had a simian Arnold Schwarzenegger actioner. After years of deliberation, in July 2001 Burton’s lavish franchise reboot was released (after a truncated production) to decidedly mixed results. 

While attempting to rescue a chimp test subject from the vacuum of space, astronaut Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg) is sucked into a portal and arrives on a strange planet with intelligent apes as the dominant species and humans as their slaves. Meeting human-sympathising ape aristocrat Ari (Helena Bonham Carter), Leo leads a Homo sapien prison break and embarks on a quest to an ape holy ground that contains the remains of his spacecraft, meanwhile the human-hating autocratic ape General Thade (Tim Roth) and his army seeks to wipe out the slave rebellion.

Planet of the Apes 2001 seems to be aiming to offer a very different experience to the 1968 classic of the same name – it wishes to be more epic and grand, but it can never quite escape its forebear’s shadow, and occasionally actively invites the comparison. The effects and makeup of the original might look relatively archaic today, but the complex themes and indelible imagery still hold up and then some. The story changes that screenwriters William Broyles Jr and Lawrence Konner decide to make serve little discernible purpose and the dialogue they decide to keep and re-purpose proves to be ill-thought-through: there’s an early groan-inducing species inversion of the original film’s most famous line, and later there’s a direct quote of the other famous line delivered by a cameoing, apeified Charlton Heston, seemingly under duress. 

This is not Mark Wahlberg’s best work sadly, partly because there’s very little opportunity for him to be earnest, which is what he’s best at, and partly because they filed off every edge of his character until he resembled little more than an astronaut Action Man. Luckily Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Roth make up for his shortcomings, projecting theatrical flourish, humanity (ape-manity? simian-ity?) and a remarkable amount of pathos as different kinds of outcasts from their society, all from behind Rick Baker’s detailed but hugely restrictive prosthetics.

Elsewhere the very best character actors inhabit the ape suits, from a dignified David Warner as a senator to a rumbling Michael Clarke Duncan as a general and Paul Giamatti, whose irredeemable, slimy coward slave trader is a particular highlight and seems to have arrived from a different and far funnier film.

It’s the rich and detailed production design that nearly saves the 2001 Planet of the Apes from bland mediocrity and is particularly memorable for not being typically Burton-y in its aesthetic. Burton is a strange choice for this material in general, with very few instances where you can tell it’s even him at the wheel, and he seems to have largely avoided further studio franchise fare on the back of a bad experience here – he declared afterwards he would “rather jump out a window” than do a sequel. The film’s production is now known to have been incredibly rushed and hobbled by studio interference, and Wahlberg has publicly declared that the script wasn’t good enough from the beginning and that a director like Burton should have been left to do what he does best. What else can be said but that Wahlberg was right.

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The film uses a lot of common fantasy epic tropes that would soon be enshrined thanks to the releases of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter in quick succession later the same year. An unlikely group form a party to go on a quest; a prophecy is foretold; a series of skirmishes and chases break up their long journey leading up to a final decisive pitched battle, and then it all comes down to a one-on-one fight between the main hero and villain.

The fight scenes are pretty well done in general, and you have to feel for the poor stunt performers’ lower backs and legs after spending so long running on all fours as chimps, but the wirework used to make the apes leap ten feet in the air looks pretty laughable, as is the obvious and distracting use of stock sound effects including the infamous Wilhelm Scream in the big battle scene towards the end. 

While the original run of Apes films weren’t always the most tonally consistent films in the world (veering from high-concept parable to cheap schlock cash-in), at least they didn’t give you mood whiplash. On the one hand you have Roth playing a Shakespearean baddie and there’s a creepy scene of a privileged ape family picking out a little girl to be their house pet, and on the other you have something that feels like it has fallen out of a Carry On film when our heroes are being chased by soldiers and run through an ape brothel, interrupting an undressed lady ape teasing her customer. 

Surely if there’s one thing you don’t change in a Planet of the Apes remake it’s the ending? Whether more faithful to the Pierre Boulle novel or not, the new one just doesn’t make a lick of sense and is clearly just there to shock everyone who thinks they know which American landmark will be involved, or worse to set up a never-made sequel that might hypothetically have explained it.

Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes wasn’t a complete disaster – the production design remains outstanding and a couple of the better performances manage to make a connection – but almost every aspect of the storytelling was miscalculated and it still completely fails not only to live up to the original film or offer something memorably different. Tim Burton and 20th Century Fox left us with a dull, gritty re-imagining that doesn’t know what it wants to be, what it’s trying to say or how to keep its audience’s attention.

8/12

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