Why don't some people like the 10 Commandments?
08.06.2025 10:45
Cecil B. DeMille—never one to settle for a good ripping yarn—tarted up this good ripping yarn with every device, technique, and name-brand face he could get his hands on. If he had lived long enough, he would have inserted the Super Bowl into the Academy Award ceremonies to give them a little pizzazz. This movie has more pizzazz in its eye make-up than most movies have on premiere night.
There are several reasons.
Charlton Heston was just marking time until he reached his peak in Planet of the Apes and Soylent Green.
The subtle menace of Vincent Price and John Carradine would have been better deployed in horror or suspense movies.
The movie is based upon a pastiche of several books that attempted to add believable, relatable, intimate human drama to a famous legend, resulting in a movie that is epic in its perverse improbability—which is the only thing that keeps it from being epic on the merits of its perverse contrivances.
Yvonne De Carlo failed to project the gravitas that would serve her so well on The Munsters.
Q: Why don't some people like the 10 Commandments?
It should have been an opera.