The Ten Commandments (1956) review

If you happened to have either (a.) gone to Catholic school (which I did) or (b.) attended Sunday lessons, this should sound quite familiar to you: baby Moses is sent down the Nile River in a basket after the paranoid Pharaoh demands the murder of male babies, he's (ironically) rescued by the daughter of the Pharaoh, becomes a general (Charlton Heston) and falls in love with Nefretiri (Anne Baxter), but eventually learns about his humble past, is turned into a slave, marries Sephora (Yvonne De Carlo), encounters a flaming bush and then leads his people out of Egypt, infuriating Rameses II (Yul Brynner).  This four hour epic is a labor of hubris by director DeMille - who provides the introduction as well as the narration - and well-regarded by not only the religious community but also Hollywood itself, and yet both the acting and dialogue are corny (Moses speaks in platitudes and covers the Big Issues of existence and destiny), and I wonder what it would have looked like had it been made by a filmmaker with a genuine spiritual side instead of a showman primarily motivated by "the spectacle" of it all.  It saves its two most eye-catching sequences for the last forty-five minutes - the parting of the Red Sea and the Almighty Himself engraving the stone tablets with ten very good rules for life on Mount Sinai - even though it takes a bit of patience to get there ... although not as much patience as wandering around a desert for forty years without a Dunkin' Donuts nearby.