post

The King of Kings (1927)

The last major Jesus-focused film of the silent cinema era was Cecil B. DeMille’s 1927 release “The King of Kings.” The production offered heaping servings of DeMille’s vices and virtues as a filmmaker: an astonishing sense of visual spectacle and the uncanny ability to make an epic move at a swift pace, coupled with a bizarre sense of dramatic puerility laced with the obsessive need to improve upon holy source material with old-fashioned vulgarity.
Continue reading

post

The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille (2017)

Cecil B. DeMille’s first foray into Biblical spectacle was his 1923 epic “The Ten Commandments,” which features a recreation of ancient Egypt – complete with 20 sphinxes and four massive statues of Ramses – built on the beaches of the town of Guadalupe in California’s Santa Barbara County. When production was completed, DeMille worried that his massive sets would be commandeered by rival filmmakers, so he had them buried in the sands.

Continue reading