Reviewing Movies

When people use the expression, they don’t make ‘em like they used to they could truly be talking about movies like Gone With the Wind, Doctor Zhivago, or The Ten Commandments. Made in an age before computers and CGI these movies featured casts of thousands and special effects that were cutting edge at their time. Movies that unfold seemingly in real time with running lengths in excess of 3 hours they had Overtures, Intermission, and Exit music. The credits began the movie rather than playing to an empty house after the audience has stormed out of the theatre.

Much of the storyline concerning the life of Moses in Cecil B. de Mille’s Ten Commandments is conjecture and the events in Jewish History portrayed are literal transcriptions of mythic texts. I will never forgive ‘Moses’ for abandoning the fifth commandment and becoming president of the NRA. In the day actors did not have personal trainers or spend months in the gym before a shoot.

When he got to the Reed Sea DeMille realized his epic had reached marathon proportions and jumped immediately to the volcano at Sinai. The gang had great fun staging the bacchanal under the mountain, then jumped 40 years to Mount Nebo in sight of the Jordan. In the scheme of things the commandments are an afterthought. Rather prophetic that the people were busy breaking them while God was inscribing them.

Given the vast amount of material with which the Israelites left Egypt carried on makeshift carts the desert must have become littered with the items abandoned along the way.