The Ten Commandments

 

The Ten Commandments (1956) of Cecil B. DeMille

I was not yet out of my single digit age in the early 1960s. That is when my parents took me to see the movie, The Ten Commandments.

Why they did that, I failed to ask when they were alive, and now I cannot ask. A huge gap in the history of my upbringing. Getting personal here, but I need that to soothe my conscience, to speculate why my parents did what they did, not only in this matter but in many..

When the parting of the Red Sea came on the scene, the audience fell silent and my parents shushed me. And, that scene made an impact on me. I have that scene etched in my brain. I was in the US, one state removed from the eastern shore, for more than 12 years. And, I am happy that I did not visit the western coast, particularly the LA area. That is weird, isn’t it?

Had I made the pilgrimage to Hollywood studios, I would have been told how the sea split and joined again, devouring the Egyptian army and lapping the feet of the Exodusees once they reached the shores of Sinai. That would have been a true disaster, for me. The magic of that scene, as imbibed in the unfolding years of my childhood would have been lost.

I have watched the full movie, segment-wise, on YouTube (Faith genre) maybe two dozen times, and even today I feel the magic of not only that scene, but also the waters of the Nile turning into blood, the creeping “night mist”, as Yul Brynner, famously claimed, and taking his generals down contemptuously for being afraid, (my father did not explain to me who is “a first born” perhaps because I am his first-born!), the staff of Moses turning into serpents and on and on. I thank my parents for taking me to see that movie.

The following is an unsequential list of the other scenes on which I have comments:

Anne Baxter, as Nefertiti, steals the scene when she confronts Rameses (the younger) when he returned from the Red Sea without the blood of Moses on his sword. The contempt in her face when her husband was about to strike her–in the face of death– is unforgettable.

In the scene when the palace courtiers warn Ramses (elder) of a deliverer of the Jews being born in Egypt, his edict was announced as from “Ramses the First”. This was bad. Why? Ramses I, the “First” emerges only after Ramses II is christened! Before then the “I’ carries no heft. Those of you who have seen any missive from the GoI would notice that the first paragraph is unnumbered, and the numbering starts with “2” in the second paragraph; I have wondered about it for long and conclude that the letter writer though he thought he could finish it in one paragraph, could not. Hence, the “2” leading the second paragraph, without the “1” in its preceding one!

When the Jews are released from “Bondage” (the way it is pronounced by the two Ramses, and Moses, almost “Bandage”, grates on my nerves), the wheel of their carts are almost solid (with two small segments carved out from around the inside of the perimeter of the wheel), but the wheel of the Pharaohs’ chariot and those of his army men were of the spokes-and-wheel type. That is a technical point, torque and angular motion, showing the Egyptians as ahead of the Jews – not so now!

The cinemascopic scene in which Nefertiti watches the Pharaoh’s army leave Goshen (?), and a number of scenes of similar effects as warranted by the script, are breathtaking. Perhaps those who saw (I have not seen) “Cleopatra” from the stable of the same director would respond with a “Meh...”

I knew that the scene of the “Burning Bush” has been retained in my mindscape from the 1960s. In one of the Tamil stage dramas of R. S. Manohar, the holy fire in a ritual was nothing more than strips of orange paper with a pedestal fan from outside of the scene blowing air to flutter strips! Was something similar done in The Ten Commandments’ “Burning Bush” scene? I don’t know. It is good that I have stayed without knowing for more than six decades. It is still magic for me.

I will stop here. I would continue to watch the movie and if I came across any more such comments, I would not fail to register it in my space.

Raghuram Ekambaram