Will the Promised Land Be a Green Screen?

     When I was a kid I was enthralled by a scene in Cecil B. De Mille's 1956 remake of his own silent version of The Ten Commandments: the parting of the Red Sea by God, acting through the Prophet Moses, assisting the escape of the Jews from the pursuing Egyptians.  With no religious education, I didn't know the underlying theology of the story of how the Jews, captive in Egypt, are rescued by a strange outcast, Moses, an Egyptian holy man who uses the power of God, his staff acting as an intermediary focusing divine power through a human agent.
     The film aired, and still airs, on Easter Sunday, a peculiar association, since Easter concerns Christ's resurrection.  Most years in the 1970s I waited eagerly for the moment when, late in the film, the waters open to admit the fleeing Jews, Moses (played by a young Charlton Heston made to look grizzled and windblown) standing on a promontory, staff held outwards, clouds roiling in the background.  The parted waters resemble two rough and flowing walls, held back by supernatural willpower.  When the Egyptians enter the "valley," the waters collapse on them, chariots overturn and men and horses scream.
     I discerned in later years that backwards editing was used to make the waters seem to flow upwards into a waterfall position.  An editor, acting under De Mille's instructions, I suspect, played God in that shot.
     This effect, not computer generated but reflective of the knowhow of top flight special effects artists of the 1950s, seized my attention every time I saw it.  One disadvantage in watching that film on Easter Sunday on network television was the lengthy time slot, around four and a half hours in the 1970s; now five hours, since TV networks have given more and more time to advertising.
     I saw The Ten Commandments on DVD a few years ago, all three hours and forty minutes of it.  I'm even more impressed with the film, overall, than when I was a child.  It suffers from De Mille's heady and stilted dialogue, where everything, since the subject derives from Biblical (weighty) sources, must supposedly be presented as ponderous and grave.  De Mille's 1949 Biblical epic, Samson and Delilah, although lighter in tone in spots, suffers from the same kind of pretentious unintentionally humorous humorlessness, with the great Hedy Lamarr providing personality and pulchritudinous delight as the anti-heroine.
     De Mille, contrasted with today's filmmakers who attempt historical epics, had style and a degree of restraint not apparent in, for instance, the latest Ben-Hur, a remake of a remake.  I haven't seen this film, but from the trailers it looks as CGI-saturated as the remake of The Clash of the Titans.  In the 1950s, crowd scenes in epics required large masses of people in costume.  The 1959 Ben-Hur had a naval battle, a spectacular chariot race, and the wide scale grandeur and realistic feel of filmed locations impossible to achieve, yet, with today's green screens.
     I don't like to be old-fashioned for the mere sake of it, but there is much in old fashion that works, like punctuation and correct spelling.  I'm for new fashion, too, and the avant-garde; that which hasn't yet been tried or thought of.  Remaking Ben-Hur as the latest CGI marvel will just give way in a few years to more advanced CGI.  De Mille's final film, The Ten Commandments, though utilizing the latest (for the mid-1950s) visual effects, doesn't derive its greatness from those fascinating moments.  The special effects act as accents, assists, to a film that's grounded in story, acting, directing, editing, cinematography; in a word, filmmaking.  Whether the new Ben-Hur is also grounded in the essentials that make a good film remains to be seen.  I'm willing to give it a chance, but the way it's been packaged in the trailers makes it look like an action-fest with a hollow core.
     Films need not be Pop Rocks.

                                                                              Vic Neptune