The Ten Commandments (1923)

Even after subjecting myself to the more famous ten commandments movie, I figured I should watch the older, silent version  that came in the same boxset that I'd borrowed from the library (also directed by Cecil B. DeMille).  I really enjoy silent films and like the overly exaggerated movements of the actors as well as how all the women are robust in a 1920s sort of way.  The movie begins somewhere in the middle of the Moses plague story and goes on until the revelation of the commandments.  This happened by Moses climbing the forbidden holy mountain and god revealing the commandments in sky lettering not unlike a fireworks display (in English).  Moses then rushes to carve the rules into the side of the mountain (in some made up pictographic language).  This was all complete with that hokey wind chime sound effect that you hear in things like Celine Dion concert DVDs (you know the sound I'm talking about).  Other than that the soundtrack is pretty standard organ stuff, giving the film even more of a corny Sunday feel.

 By the time the story was nearly finished, it was only some halfway through the 130 or so minutes I knew the movie to be.  What could the other half possibly be, I wondered?  Of a sudden the Moses story finishes and the film cuts to an old lady closing the Bible.  Evidently she had been reading the story to her boys, and apparently this family had waited until the kids were almost in their 30s to discuss religion as the reading of the story of Moses prompts a falling out between this religious sap of a mother and one of her "heathen" sons.  He goes off and gets rich at the expense of others but in the end he "breaks the ten commandments and they break him."  More garbage promoting atheism as a lack of morals, complete with atheists getting leprosy.  If this movie had skipped all the moral modern-day mumbojumbo after the Moses story, I would've ventured to say that it was better than the Charlton Heston version by virtue of being shorter.  Still, I might give this film another chance if I could see a live performance.