The Ten Commandments (1956)

Hard as it may be to believe with the hundreds of films I see each year, there are some "classic" movies that I have never seen and this is one of them -- I just couldn't be bothered previously.  But what a hoot...a veritable camp cavalcade.  It was Cecil B. DeMille's last hurrah, a remake of his 1923 silent and being the ultimate showman, everything had to be bigger and more epic than anything that had come before.  There is a well-known conversation between Harrison Ford and George Lucas when the former read the "Star Wars" script; Ford said, "You can write this sh*t, but I can't speak it".  Well the script here is from the same school with lines that are laughable in the mouths of most of the actors.  Oddly enough, only Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as Rameses manage to inhabit their roles believably; most of the other actors seem totally anachronistic.  In particular Anne Baxter as Nefretiri looks as if she is still trying out for a part in "All About Eve" and the various dancing girls come across as escapees from a Busby Berkeley musical. But it would be churlish to fault DeMille's vision, as long as one is prepared to admit that this is his very personal view of the biblical tale.  The scale of the production and the special effects are still impressive and I now regret that it has taken me this long to see this incredibly well-done but hilarious movie.