The Ten Commandments: DeMille’s masterpiece, 70 years later

As we enter the Sacred Triduum, Hollywood is celebrating Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), if not always the underlying message contained on those two ancient stone tablets Moses received at Mount Sinai c. 1446 BC. The American biblical epic, starring Charleton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as Pharaoh Ramses II, was a filmmaking masterpiece three years in the making. Narrated by DeMille himself, it tells the story of Moses as an infant, as related in Exodus 2:5, rescued by Pharoah’s daughter, played by Nina Foch, who, discovering the crying babe lying in a papyrus basket in the...