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The Ten Commandments

Year:

1923

Running time:

146 mn

Nationality:

USA

Language:

English

Genre:

Drama, Peplum, Sword and Sandal, Biblical, Silent Film

Director:

Cecil B. DeMille

Producer:

Famous Players, Lasky, Paramount Pictures

Screenwriter/s:

Jeanie MacPherson

Cast:

Theodore Roberts, Charles de Rochefort, Estelle Taylor, Julia Faye, Terrence Moore, James Neill, and others

Other websites:

Trailer:

Summary of the film
The first part tells the story of Moses leading the Jews from Egypt to the Promised Land, his receipt of the tablets and the worship of the golden calf. The second part shows the efficacy of the commandments in modern life through a story set in San Francisco. Two brothers, rivals for the love of Mary, also come into conflict when John discovers Dan used shoddy materials to construct a cathedral. (Filmaffinity)
The pylon, the statues of the pharaoh and the sphinx revisited by Paul Iribe, pioneer of Art Deco (Screenshot by the author)
In the palace, the queen and her attendants in pharaonic costumes reworked by Mitchell Leisen (Screenshot by the author)
The architecture of the palace combines pharaonic motifs and Art Deco style (Screenshot by the author)
The pharaoh's costume revisited in an Art Deco style, notably in the design of the nemes headdress and the jewellery (Screenshot by the author)
Egyptomania narratives or motifs
On 21 May 1923, Cecil B. DeMille began the shooting of his silent film The Ten Commandments, whose prologue describes the departure of the Hebrews from Egypt in captivity, in his usual style combining excess and kitsch. At Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes in California he had a life-size (35 m high) set built for the gateway to the Pharaonic city, in the form of a pylon, i.e., the classic façade of an Egyptian temple, which was preceded by four seated colossi of Ramses II and an alley of 24 sphinxes. The sphinxes were curiously aligned in a fan-shape. It was in front of this colossal set that he filmed, as he had learned from his master D.W. Griffith and strongly inspired by Edward John Poynter's painting Israel in Egypt (1867), the 2,500 extras accompanied by 3,000 animals simulating the departure of the Hebrews. This bare-bones set, decorated only with hieroglyphs in relief, reworked and indecipherable, was inspired by authentic Pharaonic motifs revisited in the spirit of Art Deco... despite the publicity boasting the accuracy of the reconstruction. Cecil B. DeMille had entrusted Florence Meehan, a specialist in ancient art, with the task of bringing back the film's documentation from Egypt (Exhibitors Herald, 1923, 6 January), but it was Paul Iribe, a French artist who pioneered the Art Deco movement, who designed the sets. He created some of the models, such as the canine form of the god Anubis, inspired directly by finds in Tutankhamen's tomb (KV 62), which had been discovered in 1922 and was already highly famous at the time. In Art Deco style, he designed the sumptuous interiors of the Egyptian palace, including columns adorned with geometric motifs. In the throne room, most of the furniture was modernised in a hybrid style: a ‘throne-sphinx’ decorated with cartouches, floor lamps and lotus wall decorations. Costumes and ornaments were created by Mitchell Leisen with the same distancing style: a ‘curved’ nemes-headdress, shaped crown, slender uraeus, poulaine shoes, etc.
At the end of his shooting in Guadalupe in July 1923, Cecil B. DeMille partially buried in the sand of the dunes the plaster set of the pylon and its row of sphinxes. In 1991, and again in 2012 and 2014, excavations recovered certain elements, such as the sphinx fragments, which are now on display in the small museum at the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center.

Author: Jean-Luc Bovot

Other information
Bryan, B. 1924. Movie Realism and Archaeological Fact. Art and Archaeology XVIII/24: 140-144.
Not available
Dumont, H. 2009. L'Antiquité au cinéma. Vérités, légendes et manipulations: 45-46, 99. Lausanne: Nouveau Monde.
Open access
Moser, S. 2020. Painting Antiquity: Ancient Egypt in the Art of Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Edward Poynter, and Edwin Long: 154-164. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press.
Not available
Rafaelic, D. 2021. Ancient Egypt in Cinema, in A. Bednarski, A. Dodson, S. Ikram (eds), A History of World Egyptology: 479. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
Access with registration and payment.
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Abraham I. Fernández Pichel

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Abraham I. Fernández Pichel - Rogério Sousa - Eleanor Dobson - Filip Taterka - Guillermo Juberías Gracia - José das Candeias Sales
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Alfonso Álvarez-Ossorio - Jean-Guillaume Olette-Pelletier - Marc Orriols-Llonch


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