The only times I have written about one of my all-time favorite movies and guilty pleasures, Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 epics of epics “The Ten Commandments,” I concentrated just on one aspect of the movie, the most ethical and historically significant part, the striking quote put in Moses’ ( that is, Charlton Heston’s) mouth by seven credited screenwriters.

It comes in the memorable scene where the Pharoah Seti,  played by the great Sir Cedric Hardwicke, asks his adopted son and the man he had wanted to designate his successor why he had chosen to join the Hebrew slaves, and had just told the king, as Moses was confined in chains, that if he could, he would lead his people out of Egypt and against Seti, though he loved the Pharoah still. “Then why are you forcing me to destroy you?” the heart=broken old man exclaims. “What evil has done this to you?”

Moses answers:

“That evil that men should turn their brothers into beasts of burden, to be stripped of spirit, and hope, and strength – only because they are of another race, another creed. If there is a god, he did not mean this to be so!”.

Less that a year before the film went into theaters to become one of top box office hits in Hollywood history, on Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus.  On Dec. 6, 1955, the civil rights boycott of Montgomery city buses, led by Rev. Martin Luther King , began. January 1956 saw Autherine Lucy, a black woman, accepted for classes at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, the first African-American ever allowed to enroll.  On Jan. 30, the Montgomery home of Martin Luther King, Jr. was bombed. February 4 saw rioting and violence on the campus of the University of Alabama and in the streets of Tuscaloosa.  On the 22nd of that month, warrants were  issued for the arrest of the 115 leaders of the Montgomery bus boycott. A week later, courts ordered Lucy, who had been kicked out of the school, readmitted, but the school expelled her.

On many civil rights timelines, 1956 is not even mentioned. The History Channel’s civil rights movement time-line leaps from Rosa Parks in 1955 to 1957, when “Sixty Black pastors and civil rights leaders from several southern states—including Martin Luther King Jr.—meet in Atlanta, Georgia to coordinate nonviolent protests against racial discrimination and segregation.” But in 1956, audiences all over America were marveling at “The Ten Commandments,” with its anti-slavery message placed in a religious context over and over again.

This was a civil rights movie with a strong civil rights message packaged as a Bible spectacular, and it could not have been better timed. In fact, I believe it was a catalyst, and remarkably one fashioned by one of Hollywood’s most hard-line conservatives, Cecil B. DeMille, a supporter of the Hollywood blacklist and Joe McCarthy. If there was a 20th Century equivalent to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the novel credited with making previously apathetic citizens aware of the horrors of slavery, it was DeMille’s movie. It could not have been an accident. 

There is a lot of ethics to ponder in the movie, though the nearly four-hour marathon is so full of other distractions that it isn’t a mystery why most viewers miss the  ethical problems involving loyalty, gratitude, whether the ends justify the means, and the burdens of leadership. When Moses is considering giving up his royal status (and likely ascension to the throne of Egypt) to join his people, the Hebrews, as slaves, Moses is asked by Nefertiri (Ann Baxter in a scenery-chewing tour-de-force), his lover and would-be future queen, if he wouldn’t serve his people better by achieving power as an Egyptian monarch than by accepting the fate of his heritage.  I noticed today that my late wife Grace, in one of her rare forays into the comment wars, wrote in part,

“Nefertiri, the witch, had bad advice for Moses. Luckily he didn’t take it. I learned early from my father, who was high in the administration of a Protestant denomination (and a PhD. philosopher), and who could have been elected a Bishop if he had played his cards right. When one day I suggested to him that he should play the right game (stay out of the Civil Rights Movement, e.g., and DON’T do things like march from Selma to Montgomery with Martin Luther King — too controversial at the time), so that he could actually be elected Bishop and then would have the real power to make the kind of positive change he wanted to make. His answer to me was, “I’m only afraid that if I played the game well enough to be elected Bishop, by the time I got there I might have forgotten what I wanted to do with that power in the first place.” God or no God, too few people (like elected officials, e.g.) stop to think what they give up — and who they owe — to get elected, and what it does to their attitudes, ethics, and behavior when they get there. Moses saw the same handwriting on the wall. Stay an Egyptian long enough and pretty soon you’ll start liking it enough to forget your heritage and your grand plans for freeing the Jews.  The courage of Cecil B. DeMille is absolute; and despite the current inability (or because of that inability) for Hollywood to create this kind of uber-spectacular — with all its casting problems and occasional hilariousness — this classic is worth seeing more than once.”

I see “The Ten Commandments” every year, and notice new pleasures and puzzles every time.  Martin Scorcese has said that its one of his  favorite movies and that he’s watched it 50 times…that’s nearly 200 hours. Take Scorcese’s advive (and mine) and don’t focus on the pageant-style acting and florid dialogue—they work because DeMille and his cast commits to the style and because the subject matter is so otherworldly and majestic that it seems right somehow. 

The film is also a teaching aid for how not to be a leader. Ramses, played by the film-stealing Yul Brenner, is incapable of making a smart decision, or sticking to any decision. He lets his emotions and the chiding from his bitter wife confuse his perception repeatedly; he is weak, then harsh, then weak again. He’s also really, really slow to catch on: when you’ve had flaming hail rain down on you, you’ve seen the Red Sea part and have had your army blocked by a pillar of flame, I think it might begin to occur to you that you’re seriously outgunned by the opposition. But no, as soon as the pillar evaporates, Ramses sends his charioteers (Wow! So many chariots!)  into the path between the miraculously suspended walls of water, never considering the rather obvious possibility that the Red Sea could unpart and drown his forces, especially since there is every reason to believe that the agency doing the parting is not fond of him or Egypt generally.

When Ramses’ lieutenant says (I’m paraphrasing), “Uh, Pharoah? Our adversary appears to be a god. Let’s get out of Dodge,” Ramses, who has promised his bitter harridan of wife that he would kill Moses with a sword stained by the blood of their first-born and now dead son, stubbornly replies that “It is better to be defeated by a god than to return in shame.” Then, when that really safe-looking path through the middle of the Red Sea opens up, the Pharoah suddenly pulls himself over to the sidelines, saying that the impending slaughter of the Hebrews is “work for butchers, not for a king,” conveniently sparing his own neck when the waters come tumbling down, killing his troops.

For Moses’ part, he epitomizes the man with a mission so important and all-consuming that he abandons his duties to his family without any hesitation or guilt. It is the curse of the Great Man (or Great Woman), choosing the greater good over those who need and trust him.