Demille's Lost City and "The Ten Commandments"

The Ten Commandments

Sunday January 8, 4:00pm The Paramount Theater

Countless slaves pull a gleaming white sphinx, inch-by-inch, across the desert sands. Brutalized by their cruel Egyptian masters, The Children of Israel toil before the monumental city gates of Pharaoh Rameses II. The opening scenes of Cecil B’ DeMille’s 1923 epic "The Ten Commandments" represent the historical spectacle of Hollywood’s silent era at its grandest and most expressive. DeMille blended the intensely dramatic performance of his actors with the spectacular architecture of his sets in a way that seemed to bring the past to life for the movie going audience. His exhaustive research and striving for authenticity was limited only by his personal satisfaction. Of the roughly 2500 extras used one tenth were orthodox Jews from Los Angeles, many, recent immigrants who felt they were living the history of their ancestors. The flight from Egypt includes the added surprise of two-color Technicolor while the scenes of decadence as the Golden Calf is worshipped by an undulating mob are as vibrantly electric as any ever filmed.
To be fair, it bears pointing out that the forty-five minute Ancient Egypt portion of "The Ten Commandments" is only a prologue to the modern story, which today seems dated and irrelevant. Two brothers, one good and one evil, alternately respect and defy the ancient laws of Moses and live with the consequences. The San Francisco setting may be of interest to anyone with ties to "the city by the bay", specifically the 1920’s North Beach neighborhood, Saints Peter and Paul Church and Washington Square Park which are all prominently featured. Sexy Nita Naldi is also delightfully vampish as the heavy-lidded other woman draped in furs. The Jeanie Macpherson screenplay attempts to draw parallels between the story of Exodus and modern life, much more successfully accomplished in Michael Curtiz 1928 epic masterpiece "Noah’s Ark", but the jazz age story can’t hold a candle to the grandeur of the ancient world. DeMille’s original does succeed if compared to the bloated, boringly over-detailed story and hammy acting of his 1956 remake. The 1923 prologue is concise, well paced and beautifully executed by comparison. The ancient Babylon of D. W. Griffith’s 1916 spectacular "Intolerance" appears staged and remote when compared to a genuine sense of seeing and feeling the "hear and now" conjured up by DeMille’s City of the Pharaoh.
Hollywood produced progressively greater and more fantastic historical epics as the era drew to a close, including the MGM spectacle "Ben Hur" in 1925 and DeMille’s "King of Kings" in 1927.

" … the spirit of the spectacle, and the joy taken in its own magic, was unique to the silent film."
- William K. Everson

The Lost City

DeMille visualized filming his biblical epic "The Ten Commandments" on location in Egypt. Lasky and Paramount refused the plan as far too expensive, instead agreeing to construction of the City of Pharaoh on Nipomo Dunes near Guadalupe California, 175 miles north of Los Angeles. A virtual city of tents was constructed to house the thousands of actors, extras, animals and crew, dubbed "Camp DeMille". As his budget costs continued to spiral upward, DeMille received panicked telegrams from the studio. "What do they want me to do? Stop now and release it as The Five Commandments?"
A byproduct of constructing colossal movie sets for historical epics of the era was the fear of seat-of-the-pants film crews jumping in after a shoot to "poach" the set, releasing quickie films before the premier of the original picture. Taking this into consideration, DeMille chose to bulldoze and bury his pricey set rather than carting it back to Hollywood in pieces, a far more expensive undertaking on an already over-budget film. He alluded to the fate of the two dozen sphinxes, each weighing several tons, in his autobiography:
"If, a thousand years from now, archaeologists happen to dig beneath the sands of Guadalupe, I hope that they will not rush into print with the amazing news that Egyptian civilization, far from being confined to the valley of the Nile, extended all the way to the Pacific Coast of North America."
There were no EPA restrictions in 1923. DeMille’s secret lay buried for sixty years until a friend told film student and documentary filmmaker Peter Brosnan a bizarre story of Egyptian ruins buried in the sands of Santa Barbara County. Inlisting the use of ground penetrating radar, approximately two thirds of DeMille’s Lost City of the Pharaoh was eventually located. Brosnan and architect John Parker then set about to secure the necessary funding for excavation and recovery of these priceless objects, but has of yet received no support from the Hollywood community. What was Brosnan’s explanation? "The rest of the world appreciates our movies as art. We look at it as a business. When Hollywood sees a way of making money out of this, then they’ll have some interest.
Gradual erosion of the sand continues to slowly dissolve DeMille’s Lost City of the Pharaoh.

http://www.lostcitydemille.com

http://ludb.clui.org/ex/i/CA4973/

DeMille Speaks!

http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/20thcentury/47-11demille-audio.html

Coming attractions, Tonight on the small screen:

"The Lively Arts", hosted by Anne Hockens, will feature the life and work of Cecil B. DeMille for its monthly episode, 7:00pm on Comcast channel 77/29.

On the big screen:

Seattle Theater Group in its continuing silent film series resumes this January with three Cecil B. DeMille films. The Ten Commandments, 1923 (01/08), a grand epic still unequalled, is followed by Carmen (01/15) and The Cheat (01/22), both from 1915, Sundays at the Paramount Theater.

For Black History Month STG and The Paramount will screen The Scar of Shame, 1926 (02/06), an excellent example of the "race movie" genre.

Next week ...

Geraldine Farrar and "Carmen"