Ten Commandments expert Katherine Orrison Interviewed at Christianity Today

A few years ago, I did a lot of research on Cecil B. DeMille's Moses films The Ten Commandments (1923 and 1956. Somewhat annoyingly, shortly after I had written everything up, I discovered that Katherine Orrison had written a book solely devoted to the later Charlton Heston film. Fast forward a few years to 2004 and we find that Orrison is now doing a commentary on the special edition DVD of The Ten Commandments (1956). As I mentioned a week or two ago, a new The Ten Commandments boxed set has just been released with both versions of the film included. Orrison has also done a commentary for the silent (1923) version of the film as well for this set and accordingly Peter T Chattaway has interviewed her for Christianity Today.

From the interview it's nice to see that Orrison has such a deep love for the film. I hope that comes across in her writing as well as in this interview. One of the things that interested me was that it seems that there was some doubt whether to include on the DVD the opening scene where DeMille comes out from behind the curtain to address the audience. This scene is certainly remarkable for it's uniqueness, and it seems strange that the DVD producers could even have considered removing it. It's such an integral part of the film. I wonder if it was Orrison's reaction that persuaded them to change their minds.

Peter says at his FilmChat Blog that he's going to post the full interview there shortly. I'm looking forward to it, perhaps it will finally convince me to get around to buying the book.