Movie : The Ten Commandments (1956)

The Ten Commandments is a 1956 motion picture that dramatized the Biblical story of Moses, an adopted Egyptian prince-turned deliverer of the Hebrew slaves. It was released by Paramount Pictures in VistaVision on October 5, 1956. It was directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starred Charlton Heston in the lead role. Co-stars included Yul Brynner as his adoptive brother, Pharaoh Ramesses II, Anne Baxter as Nefretiri, John Derek as Joshua, Edward G. Robinson as Dathan, Yvonne De Carlo as Sephora, Cedric Hardwicke as Pharaoh Seti I, Vincent Price as Baka, and John Carradine as Aaron.

The Ten Commandments is partially a remake of DeMille’s 1923 silent film. Some of the cast and crew of the 1956 version worked on the original. It has since been remade again as a television miniseries broadcast in April 2006.

Adjusted for inflation, it is the fifth-highest grossing movie of all time domestically, with collections of $838,400,000. In non-adjusted dollars, it held the record as the highest-grossing film with a religious theme until the 2004 film The Passion of the Christ. In 1999, The Ten Commandments was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. In June 2008, AFI revealed its “Ten top Ten”-the best ten films in ten “epics” American film genres-after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. The Ten Commandments was acknowledged as the tenth best film in the epic genre.

The most spectacular scene in the movie is the parting of the RED SEA. Remember, it was shot in 1956 when today’s animation techniques were not known to man. Its still a mystery how the scene was created. See the video clip below to see the parting of red sea scene and a general story outline.