Cecil B. DeMille
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It’s all true to Spielberg’s life, including three younger sisters, his childhood film projects referenced by name, and his early fear of movies, as seen when Sammy’s parents carefully explain how the pictures work before blowing his mind with The Greatest Show on Earth (1952).
And it all started with a fateful night out in 1952 to see “The Greatest Show on Earth,” the first time in a movie theater for wide-eyed 6-year-old Sammy (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord).
The Fabelmans begins with young Sammy becoming inspired by a trip to the theater to see Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth .
Some of those experiences — including seeing Cecile B. DeMille’s “The Greatest Show on Earth” as a boy and getting some simple but crucial advice from a filmmaking idol as a young man — are dramatized in “The Fabelmans,” a largely but not wholly autobiographical coming-of-age tale that wrestles with themes such as family, control and isolation.
When Burt and Mitzi take Sammy to “The Greatest Show on Earth,” he’s terrified at first (“Dreams are scary”); his father patiently explains the concept of persistence of vision, literally breaking an otherwise mysterious medium down to its physiological elements.
Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)
Directed by Ridley Scott
influenced by The Ten Commandments (1956), The King of Kings (1927), The Sign of the Cross (1932), Samson and Delilah (1949)
Themes Plot
The popularisation of epics in the vein of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments and William Wyler’s Ben Hur is also political.
Scant, that is, when compared to Cecil B. DeMille, who needed a good 220 minutes back in 1956 in “The Ten Commandments.”
Ridley Scott’s grand and goofy take on Cecil B. DeMille’s holiday chestnut, The Ten Commandments, is a scant two-and-a-half hours compared to Paramount Pictures’ 1954 three-hour-plus marathon, and while Exodus is not quite as much fun (the reflective properties of Yul Brynner’s pate are sorely missed), it is very much in the tradition of Fifties and Sixties-era Biblical epics – and much more entertaining than Darren Aronofsky’s recent Noah.
Scott, a filmmaker who can often paint stunning visions on a wide canvas and still delve around the narrow, detailed corners of a story, gets lost in a production that’s every bit as grand and massive as either of Cecil B. DeMille’s versions of The Ten Commandments .
Unlike Cecil B DeMille's classic “The Ten Commandments” (1956) or the animated “The Prince of Egypt” (1998), it’s not funny or campy enough to be purely entertaining.
In the almost 60 years since Cecil B. DeMille made “The Ten Commandments,” movies have gotten very good at creating seas of blood, frog infestations and plagues of locusts.
When he notices a train unexpectedly approaching, the excitable Charles yells "Production value!" and sets the camera to include it, little knowing that a pickup truck will pull onto the tracks and be deliberately positioned to create a collision that will far exceed the spectacle of the train wreck in Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth, Abrams' and Spielberg's acknowledged inspiration for the sequence.
After a while, the film references – Goonies, E.T., Close Encounters, Cloverfield, Aliens, Poltergeist, and The Greatest Show On Earth - seem to be more important than the story fused together from all these various parts.
Our young, undersupervised heroes are filming a cheesy zombie movie one night at a closed Ohio train station when they are nearly flattened by a train wreck straight out of Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Greatest Show on Earth.”
The Prince of Egypt (1998)
Directed by Simon Wells
influenced by The Ten Commandments (1956)
Plot Visuals
But in Rameses, in him we can see the pain of being abandoned by a loved one, and while reducing the Exodus story to "Pharaoh was upset at Moses and took it out on the Hebrews" is terribly theology, it's remarkably compelling drama (this is all ultimately taken from the 1956 epic The Ten Commandments , but the DreamWorks version is infinitely more intimate than DeMille's starchy melodrama).
The tale has inspired countless plays, a renowned oratorio (Handel's "Israel in Egypt"), and one of the most beloved epic motion pictures of all time (Cecil B. De Mille's The Ten Commandments).
No one is denying that the parting of the red sea scene from "The Ten Commandments" is a powerful special effect (especially for it's time).
It was produced by a man named Samuel Bronston, who for a short span of time in the '60s was hellbent on making himself a star in the world of florid history epics: the cynical among us might notice that Cecil B. DeMille had just died, leaving a vacuum in the world of gigantic spectacles, one that a a cunning producer might be able to jump into, especially if he had the balls to title his first movie in that vein almost, but not quite, the exact same as DeMille's much-loved 1927 The King of Kings , to which it is otherwise not related.
Curse of the Golden Flower (2006)
Directed by Zhang Yimou
influenced by The Ten Commandments (1956)
Visuals
There is no imitative quality to "Curse of the Golden Flower," but for cinastes it will recall the grandeur of the Babylonian sequence of D.W. Griffith's "Intolerance" and of Fritz Lang's "Die Nibelungen," Shakespearean tragedy in general and in particular "Ran," Akira Kurosawa's version of "King Lear." "Curse" also has some of the heady floridness of Cecil B. DeMille's second version of "The Ten Commandments."
The Odyssey (2026)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
influenced by The Ten Commandments (1956)
Visuals Themes
There are moments that evoke the awe of “Lawrence of Arabia,” the monumental scale of “The Ten Commandments,” and even the existential grandeur of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
In the 1950s and 1960s, The Ten Commandments, (1956), Ben-Hur, (1959) The King of Kings, (1961), and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) had white American actors of non-Greek descent playing Ancient Greeks.
…he would still fit in a Cecil B. DeMille film…
Gladiator (2000)
Directed by Ridley Scott
influenced by The Ten Commandments (1956)
Plot Visuals Themes
In a story that borrows heavily from The Ten Commandments, with generous sprinklings of Braveheart and Spartacus thrown in, Crowe plays Maximus, the winningest Roman general since Julius Caesar.
No director or studio since the ‘50s-into-‘60s heyday of Technicolor spectacles (The Ten Commandments, Cleopatra) would attempt a historical film of this magnitude, with full recreations and casts of thousands.
Actually, it is similar to The Ten Commandments .
The environmental apocalyptic sequences showed Baumbach has a potential flare for epic action and could compete with the likes of Roland Emmerich with a homage to Cecil B. DeMille’s Angel of Death scene from “The Ten Commandments” (1956).
Noah (2014)
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
influenced by The Ten Commandments (1956)
Characters Themes Visuals
It isn’t “The Ten Commandments” and Crowe is no Charlton Heston.
While director Darren Aronofsky (“Black Swan’’) isn’t above trying to goose his Scripture with a little PG-13 sex and violence, as entertainment, this epic ultimately lands roughly midway between Cecil B. DeMille’s high-camp “The Ten Commandments’’ and the high-art provocations of Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ.’’
The result is a movie that forgoes all the fun of the Cecil B. DeMille era of “The Ten Commandments” or “Samson and Delilah.”
A thousand-foot-high tidal wave swamps the East Coast, and I couldn't help thinking of the parting of the Red Sea ( "The Ten Commandments" ).
But the effects computers at Industrial Light and Magic are working overtime, too, producing cataclysmic shots reminiscent of Titanic , Twister, and even The Ten Commandments.
The story of Cleopatra, the most famous queen in the history of the world, has been irresistible to filmmakers throughout history, for all the obvious reasons; indeed, it was Fox's second film of that title, following a long-lost 1917 film starring Theda Bara in the title role (an intervening film also titled just Cleopatra was made at Paramount in 1934, with Claudette Colbert; many other films primarily or incidentally about the Ptolemaic queen came out in several different countries along the way).
Cleopatra’s royal entertainments for Marc Antony are her version of the Goldwyn Follies, with showgirls in revealing costumes prancing through absurd set pieces.
It’s a fantastical family adventure that combines the sheer scope of films like “Ben-Hur” and “The Ten Commandments,” with their vast palatial sets and processionals with hordes of extras, infused with the extravagant space battle scenes from the “Star Wars” films.
Details, like Abel's ritual of visiting Joseph's grave on Christmas Eve rather than the anniversary of his death, or Junon's trek to midnight mass as most of the family watches "The Ten Commandments" on television, are on the nose about the different personal rituals each family has.
First, everybody slumps in front of “The Ten Commandments” on TV, turning glazed eyes upon the mighty beard of Charlton Heston as he conjures the parting of the Red Sea.
The Nativity Story (2006)
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke
influenced by The Ten Commandments (1956)
Visuals
And it definitely lacks the pomp and circumstance that made arguable classics out of such films as the 1956 version of "The Ten Commandments."
Turning away from the splashy spectaculars of the Cecil B. DeMille school ("The Ten Commandments," "The Sign of the Cross," etc.), Hardwicke and screenwriter Mike Rich have opted instead for a reasonably realistic treatment of the story of Mary and Joseph.
Killing Jesus (2015)
Directed by Christopher Menaul
influenced by The Ten Commandments (1956)
Themes
The typically dour and dusty “Killing Jesus” (National Geographic, 8 p.m.), based on the Bill O’Reilly book, of all things, is the first of what will be three new such films this season — all inspired by the success of “The Bible” a couple of years back and “The Ten Commandments” a half century ago.
Back before John Ford and Cecil B. DeMille elevated the genre from pulp pablum to legitimate pop-art with their 1939 hits Stagecoach and Union Pacific , many of the most popular Westerns featured clean-cut, smiling do-gooders like Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and yes, John Wayne, who were quick with a gun but quicker with a song.
The script for Ghoulies, written by Luca Bercovici and Jefery Levy, does contain a few instances of cleverness (it's brimming with movie references, from Rosemary's Baby to The Ten Commandments), but there's just not enough here to warrant a recommendation.
Gladiator II (2024)
Directed by Ridley Scott
influenced by The Sign of the Cross (1932), The Ten Commandments (1956)
Themes Visuals
It is basically the sibling rivalry of Cecil B. DeMille's “The Ten Commandments” (1956) meets “Spartacus” (1960), but without as much colorful pageantry, more wooden dialogue and zero theatricality.
It has a modern outlook but provides a throwback, too, to the genre’s florid history – a flirtatious Claudette Colbert marinating in her milk bath in 1932’s The Sign of the Cross, or a pouting Peter Ustinov as Emperor Nero lounging about in silks and velvets in 1951’s Quo Vadis.
The Passion of the Christ (2004)
Directed by Mel Gibson
influenced by The King of Kings (1927)
Visuals
The crucifixion is much more real, unlike anything we've seen before, from 1927's silent film "The King of Kings" to George Stevens' classic, "The Greatest Story Ever Told."