Jonathan Rosenbaum has just posted a review of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956) that he wrote for the Chicago Reader when the film was re-issued way back in 1990. Very interesting stuff. I would quibble with a few of his statements of fact and at least one of his more minor interpretations — I do think, in fact, that the film inclines us to believe that Joshua and Lilia get together in the end — but the broader contours of his argument seem sound to me. I especially like his points about the changing nature of special effects over the past half-century, and how parts of the film are even, in some ways, anti-spectacle.
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