The Heston version was a remake of DeMille's 1923 version.
Posted on 04/10/2006 7:18:20 AM PDT by Watershed
Director Robert Dornhelm is painfully aware that there may be a large audience out there eagerly waiting to hate his new version of "The Ten Commandments," premiering Monday and Tuesday, April 10-11, on ABC.
After all, the story of Moses leading the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt has been told before, and unforgettably, by Hollywood showman Cecil B. DeMille in his ultralavish 1956 production starring Charlton Heston as Moses. Adapted from a variety of religious novels, that earlier version introduced a number of extraneous characters and story lines to the biblical account, yet a fair number of fans today regard DeMille's epic with near-reverence.
(In fact, ABC is hedging its own bets, airing DeMille's version on Saturday, April 15, just days after this new "Commandments.")
Small wonder, then, that Dornhelm initially declined when executive producer Robert Halmi Sr. came to him with the project.
"My first reaction was, 'Why? Why should I be the sacrificial victim who gets slaughtered?' " Dornhelm recalls. "To do a television version of this huge epic (seemed foolhardy). Then I saw (DeMille's version) again and thought it really wouldn't be that hard to top, not to sound immodest. Then, when Mr. Halmi told me he wanted to make it as real as possible, that made it even more interesting."
Halmi's own interest in revisiting the story of the Exodus arose from his conviction that great stories need to be retold for new generations every 35 years or so. "And I wanted to do it as reality," Halmi says. "My characters are real. The location is real. There is as much reality costumewise, researchwise [as we could manage]. I had three different religious advisers, a Muslim, a Christian and a rabbi, going through every word of the script. I wanted to be more true to the story and its characters."
That meant, in turn, examining the principal character of Moses as a human being, not the powerful icon Heston portrayed in DeMille's account. It was Ron Hutchinson's script that helped persuade actor Dougray Scott to sign on as Moses.
"You tell people you're playing Moses in 'The Ten Commandments' and they just go, 'You're what?'" Scott says, laughing. "But I thought the writing was just terrific. I knew Ron Hutchinson from his days as a playwright in London. He was terrific then, and he has become a really good Hollywood scriptwriter. He did a great job with that story, I think, examining it from a point of view that I don't think the audience ever has seen before. Certainly it's very violent, because it really tries to capture that period of history.
"Instead of the iconic figure that Charlton Heston portrayed, you get to see and even kind of smell what Moses must have gone through."
The new version charts mostly familiar territory, especially in its first half, tracing Moses' narrow escape from death as an infant to his encounter with the burning bush and subsequently, his confrontations with the Pharaoh, Ramses (Paul Rhys), leading to the emancipation of the Hebrew slaves and their long, frustrating quest in search of the Promised Land.
Whereas Heston's Moses was a towering, thunder-voiced pillar of authority, Scott's Moses is plagued by self-doubt. He is virtually horrified to learn that God has selected him for such a formidable task, since he is painfully aware of his inner flaws.
"The character starts off at quite an intense pitch and then becomes even more intense," Scott says, "so that was the challenge for me, to see how far we could take this character on his emotional journey, this arc that he goes through and his relationships with everyone: with himself, his family, his tribe and, of course, God. Moses has to deal with his fear, his paranoia, his loneliness, his pain, his anger, his temper and his lack of compromise. He's unrelenting, and a very multilayered human being, albeit an extreme one."
Give Scott full marks for his commitment to the role, since the inner torment of his Moses comes across unrelentingly. The big question, of course, is whether viewers will want to spend three or four hours with such a tortured soul.
If some viewers ultimately find this remake too much of a downer, Dornhelm is OK with that, as long as they come to his "Commandments" with an open mind. It's the zealots who insist DeMille's version is somehow untouchable that make him see red.
"I find that notion offensive, myself," he says. "I was really impressed with [DeMille's version] when I saw it as a young boy, because it was such a wonderful cinematic extravaganza. But it was what it was. The only thing missing was Esther Williams performing one of her water ballets in the Nile. It was a show, first and foremost. And it still works very well for some people who love that spectacle. But to me, if I am talking about important issues like faith, spectacle is the last issue that I would like to deal with.
"Just because there has been this huge, colossal canvas painted with one man's vision doesn't mean we can't retell it. We've been retelling every silly police drama a million times, and nobody questions why. I've been asked this question: Why would you redo such an important masterpiece? And the answer is always, if it's a good story, and there is something we can learn from it, there are always new ways to interpret it and to gain new perspectives on it."
"And let's face it, finding actors the likes of Vincent Price, Edward G. Robinson or Yul Brynner is going to be nigh impossible..."
Agreed! To me, any movie about the Ten Commandments begins and ends with Cecil B. DeMille and Charleton Heston! (and the gallery of stars listed above)
Heck, Gideon was cowering and arguing about being the wrong guy for the job, when God called him a "mighty warrior"; He did God's bidding, and great things happened.
But not what Hollywood considers to be one. Somehow I doubt that Moses lounged around Starbucks in a Che T-shirt, sipping six dollar lattes and banging out "Power to the people!" messages on his laptop when he wasn't marching in the streets demanding "justice" for ________(insert leftist victim group of the week here).
That's true. I am also deeply suspicious, since I heard that Garmin, makers of a GPS system, have found product placement in the movie. So, the wandering in the desert time has been greatly reduced.
Not to mention, I doubt he drove a Toyota Prius to the airport to board his private Gulfstream G-4 to show how much he cared about the environment.
That seems an odd thing to say. I've seen the recent made-for-TV movies about Joseph, Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Soloman & Sheba, Sampson & Delilah and King David and I don't recall any "inserting" of homosexuality, or any mention of it at all - other than the part about Sodom & Gomorrah.
I'll bet Muslim scholars had a lot to say about the scrip since they MUST be clueless about Moses being from a religion of LIES. Mad Mo totally distorts and perverts the Bible's stories.
My son was riveted to the DVD of DeMille's version about a year ago. He tried to say the special effects were lame. He kept saying "animated". But, he couldn't tear himself from the 3 hour show.
Now, you say this new version's special effects are no better. I'm glad he saw the original first.
In this version he is "more human." He is a gay illegal alien in a wheel chair.
Damn I was sure Blackbeard attacked at least once but was driven off when Dumbo flew into his mast and broke it.
According to the script, the Jews left Egypt so quickly they didn't have time to get steamed milk for their latte.
I should have read your post before my #49. ;)
This is the Biblically accurate version, according to Exodus 4
Was the TNT version the one that had Moses saying to God, "You're such a hard God?"
Urk. I don't THINK so.
I couldn't get past John the Baptist saying of Jesus, "this is my beloved son..." in one a few years back. I know they intended it to be God's voice, but it matched John's.
As much as I liked Charleton Heston as Moses, that was probably a bad miscast of the character. Jimmie Stewart or even Don Knotts would have seemed more like the Moses presented in Scripture as a self-doubting and inarticulate man whose brother spoke for him.
Our youth pastor showed the "Pirates of Pentateuch" to the youth group, with prizes for each error they noticed. He had a lot of prizes.
If you reread the bibilcal version Moses did not have a speach problem. He was falsely trying to get out of responsibility - looking for excuses.
Again, reread the biblical version Gideon was the only brave person to go get the grain to thresh.
The Heston version was a remake of DeMille's 1923 version.
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