Passover and Easter are only a few weeks away, and you know what that means — a new batch of religious movies re-issued, or released for the first time, on DVD!
Top of the list is the 50th anniversary edition of The Ten Commandments, the 1956 epic that has been released on DVD a few times before — so you might say this one isn’t that big a deal. But look! This time, it comes with the original silent 1923 version of the film! Looks like Paramount took their cue from Warner’s recent boxed set for the Ben-Hur films. This set comes out March 21, only twelve days from now.
And speaking of boxed sets, on May 23, MCA will release a ‘Cecil B. DeMille Collection‘ containing five of his earlier talkies, including The Sign of the Cross (1932) — sort of a rip-off of Quo Vadis?, featuring Peter and Paul and Nero and a Roman soldier who falls in love with a Christian woman — and The Crusades (1935), one of the few major Hollywood productions about this subject.
But first, before any of these, there is Tuesday’s release of David and Bathsheba (1951), starring Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward!
MAR 19 UPDATE: Whoa, how did I miss this one — looks like The Story of Ruth (1960) came out last Tuesday too! Cool.
MAR 21 UPDATE: My interview with Katherine Orrison, who provides audio commentaries for both versions of The Ten Commandments on the new DVD, is now up at CT Movies. I may put a longer version of the interview up here in a few days.
MAR 28 UPDATE: The longer version of the interview is up! And I have now posted some screen captures comparing and contrasting the black-and-white and colour versions of the 1923 film’s Exodus sequence (Technicolor? or “hand-tinted”?).
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