Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt have no other gods before me. I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. DeMille and Loyal Griggs in The Ten Commandments DeMilleĬharlton Heston and Anne Baxter in The Ten Commandments ( 1956 ) Cecil B. The Ten Commandments 1956 - Moses (Charlton Heston) Cecil B. It’s a story most people can’t afford to forget.The Ten Commandments 1956 - Cecil B. So an annual rewatch of the story’s most epic retelling feels like the right activity on this weekend. Little Christian kids learn the story in Sunday School.Īnd something about the tale inspires political rhetoric as well: Moses has been invoked by political leaders from Winston Churchill to Barack Obama, and the story of the Exodus was a major part of the imagination behind the movements driving the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement in the United States.įreedom, courage, and a hope for liberation - that’s what people have been taking away from the story of the Exodus for millennia. A version of the story appears in the Quran, which mentions Moses more than any other character. Each year, Jewish people celebrate the story of Moses freeing the nation of Israel from slavery and leading them to the Promised Land. Perhaps the most powerful thing about The Ten Commandments, though, is that we keep watching it - and the story keeps being relevant, regardless of the viewer’s religious affiliation. Yul Brynner as Ramses in The Ten Commandments. Clocking in at 220 minutes long - with intermission! - it takes the audience on quite a journey. The screenplay necessarily diverges from what just appears in the biblical text, but the movie was deeply researched, drawing on religious texts, scholarly research, and ancient historians like Josephus to fill in the narrative blanks. It’s a coming-of-age story for Moses, a tale of rivalry between two brothers, and a heroic tale of deliverance all rolled into one. (In the habit of the era, the casting is ludicrously whitewashed.) The Ten Commandments reenacts the events of the biblical book of Exodus, with Yul Brynner as Ramses opposite Heston’s Moses, and Anne Baxter playing Nefertiti, the queen and the third point in the movie’s big love triangle. DeMille took the familiar story and made a big, melodramatic epic that’s more operatic than merely cinematic. It never occurred to me as a kid, but of course The Ten Commandments was airing on Easter because the holiday usually coincides with the celebration of Passover: The story of the children of Israel being led out of slavery in Egypt and into freedom in the Promised Land is celebrated during Passover, and that’s the story of The Ten Commandments.
But I’d nestle into the couch and munch on a chocolate bunny while I watched Charlton Heston, playing an impossibly blue-eyed Moses, confront Pharaoh and part the Red Sea. I never got to watch the whole thing, because inevitably I missed the start time. (It’s been airing since 1968, and this year it’s on the night before Easter.)
It’s one of my favorite childhood memories: Every year on Easter, after the family festivities were over, I’d go downstairs and turn on our big old TV set, and ABC would be airing The Ten Commandments. The movie of the week for April 15 through 21 is The Ten Commandments, which is available to digitally rent on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, and Vudu. What you can count on is a weekend watch that sheds new light on the week that was. Old, new, blockbuster, arthouse: They’re all fair game. Every weekend, we pick a movie you can stream that dovetails with current events.