The Prince of Egypt: The Musical (2022)

Shot in London's West End, the film of the stage production of the musical of the film is showing in UK cinemas at the moment. It's billing itself with a quote from Stefan Kyrias that "musical theatre doesn't come bigger than this" and even though it's been a hit on the West End where it played to packed out audiences, I'm surprised to see quite such a crowd turn up to see it on a damp Thursday evening in Leicester, with tickets twice the price of watching a standard movie.

Dreams works' The Prince of Egypt (1998) was a massive hit when it launched 25 years ago. The studio was just starting out, hadn't yet been defined by the Shrek franchise and the promise of The Prince of Egypt was quite something. The blend of traditional hand-drawn animation and restrained-but-tactical use of the emerging CGI made for some spectacular scenery and action sequences. 

Of course stage musicals, even filmed ones, are a very different medium to cinema and while there was an arena version of Ben-Hur some years ago the director of this musical, Scott Schwarz (son of the film's composer Stephen Schwarz) decided to take things in a different direction. Instead of simply compensating or making-do Schwarz leans into musical theatre's strengths, particularly dance and more expressionistic use of the stage and props. At the same time the stage's backdrops are video projected. 

Both the choreography and the backdrops produce rather mixed results. The opening number, "Deliver Us!" is strong and merges seamlessly in to "Hush Now my Baby". This ends with an incredible piece of chorography where the dancers reproduce the effects of the waves with incredible grace, energy and unpredictability which is simply astonishing. 

But then, as with the movie, we're introduced to the adult Moses and Ramses in the chariot racing scene. Yet instead of the whooshing, fast-cut action of the movie, Moses and Ramses are hoisted up by some of their fellow cast members and they bump around occasionally leaning left or right to indicate turning or avoiding obstacles. Compared with the opening number this is a major disappointment. I should add here I know little about stage-musicals or choreography, so if you do know about those things don't listen to me. I'm writing this just as a punter.

The video backdrops fare likewise, the room with the hieroglyphics, which created such a memorable scene in the movie is decorated entirely differently. This is a wise move because that scene is re-enacted with a mix of minor backdrop motion and (primarily) choreography and it works very well. But the detail of these decorations is nicely executed. At other times if feels much is lost from the days of traditional backdrop being pulled up or down behind the curtain. The changes are smoother, but it feels like the level of artistry has dropped. Also if there's an artistic reason why one of them looked like the screen ratio was wrong (an oval-shaped sun) then it escaped me.

These are some of the changes the musical (and specifically this production of it) makes to the film. The most notable is a number of new songs which again vary in quality, though they've not had the benefit of a quarter of a century of getting ingrained in my consciousness. There's nothing as instantly transfixing as "There Will be Miracles" (which is still great here), but one or two feel on par. 

We also lose "Playing with the Big Boys", which I was never particularly enamoured by. This is in part because the twin roles taken by Steve Martin and Martin Short in the movie are condensed into one. Hotep, played with real menace by Adam Pearce also has a greatly enhanced role. Rather than comic relief (although he does produce some, as well as a touch of magic) he's portrayed as more of the power behind the throne. His endorsement of Seti and his father's reign as Pharaoh has proved decisive and can easily be withdrawn. Pearce absolutely makes the most of his build and unsymmetrical features, effortlessly moving between contrasting moods like his voice which performs both some of the lowest notes in the production and some of the highest among the male cast. Apparently he's done Sweeney Todd, my favourite musical, in the past. I wish I could have seen that.

Another fantastic performance is Christine Allado's as a surprisingly sexy Tzipporah. Exhibiting both fierce and tender sides she is captivating in almost every scene she features in. And again, her role is enhanced from that in the movie where she pretty much disappears once Moses gets God. Here it's her and Miriam that provide Moses emotional support in the latter stages of the film. Aaron is relegated even further into the background. Alexia Khadime's Miriam brings real excellence to her songs, by far the stand-out performer. Luke Brady as Moses are Liam Tamne as Ramses are fine, and their emotional heft grows surprisingly as the film goes on, but it's the supporting characters who really steal the show.

The other two changes are around the burning bush scene and the plagues. Here again the choreography does a lot of the heavy lifting, but it feels like too much weight is put on its shoulders. The idea of having a chorus of voices speak as the voice of God is theologically and artistically interesting, but somehow feels underwhelming. In similar fashion the plagues rush by, it's difficult to really discern when one ends and the next starts. Perhaps that's not a major issue, and perhaps the intent is to leave the audience experiencing a degree of disorientation to convey the experience of the ordinary Egyptians, but for me it fell a little flat, that is, at least until the final plague.

 The initiation of the Passover and the death of the first-born Egyptians is always a tricky moment in Moses dramas. How much sympathy can you give to Ramses and the ordinary Egyptians without making God seem like the villain? How much joy can the Hebrews experience without minimising the Egyptian suffering? Here the balance is stuck by the women of Egypt walking on stage cradling what look like their now lifeless babies. Then each in turn shakes out the blanket their baby is wrapped in and it cascades down, but the baby is gone. The blanket is laid out of a block before them and they fall to their knees behind it. It's an emotionally powerful scene, and a reminder of the suffering that happens to the ordinary people, and particularly the women and children behind the scenes of this conflict and countless others up to the present day.

I must admit I was a little caught off guard by the film's emotional impact on me. I sat on the front row of quite a big theatre and could therefore see even very subtle tears from the performers. This was one of the strengths of watching this as a film. I can't imagine most of these tears would be visible for those watching the event live in the theatre. Of course even though the film was shot while the play was being performed to a live audience, obviously the actors knew that it was also being filled. Were the tears part of their method, or a little extra for those of viewing in close-up ion a big screen.

With a filmed theatre experience like this, it's hard to know where the line falls between the responsibilities of Scott Schwarz as director of the play and Brett Sullivan's as director of the film. Most of the ones discussed so far will be down to Schwarz, but that still leaves an awful lot to Sullivan. 

Take for one example the one shot that really surprised me. Presumably it was Schwarz's decision for children of Israel to move down the aisle as part of the Exodus, but presumably it was Sullivan's decision to film this in a panning shot from in front of the audience. As the film audience we'd been aware of the live audience throughout, clapping and cheering in between numbers, for example, but the frontal pan revealed something else: they were all wearing covid-masks. This added a major note to the context of the film. We thought the audience were like us. But they weren't. They were those poor people struggling to put normal life back together again after the worst global health crisis of our lifetimes. Our past selves, perhaps attending a public event for the first time since lockdown. Perhaps nervous (as I was in my first post-covid theatre trip) of catching or spreading something. And that this happened at the moment the Israelites also finally received their (real and far more viral) freedom certainly added something.

That nuance is made all the more interesting given how the filmed-stage musical compares with the original movie. In the original, Ramses acts the way he does because he feels the weight of his father's warning not to be the weak link, but it's nevertheless framed as Ramses' decisions and the theme of personal responsibilities – particularly the different ways that Ramses' and Moses handle them. Here however, it's different. The musical lessens Ramses' responsibilities for his actions by  putting additional pressure on him. His father's warnings not only relate to maintaining continuity with the past, but also to his present situation and his family's future. Seti's dynasty's hold on power is fragile. He and Ramses rely on the political good favour of Hotep and the priests as well as other Egyptian aristocratic families such as that of his wife Nefertari and the people in general. For a while the emphasis shifts from personal responsibility to problematic power structures.

As anyone who has seen the musical will know [Spoilers: select text to read] faced with hunting down the Hebrews as they flee across the bed of the Red Sea, Ramses decides to let them go free, his kingdom will survive without them. Hotep and some soldiers charge on in ahead, As a result Ramses survives, and lives to rule without Hotep's malign influence. It's interesting how this changes things. Historically we know that Ramses was capable of political spin, but there's no evidence on the Egyptian side that an exodus of slaves did his rule any real harm. Moreover, in the original story Ramses is the representative of Egypt and is the bad guy. Earlier retellings of the story, including the 1998 film, have maintained that, but sought to makes a key element of the story an Anakin→Vader-type narrative. Now we're back to the uncomplicated bad guy again, only this time he's just an Anubis in sheep's clothing.* It's interesting to see how this appears to favour the benevolence of monarchs above that of priests. [End of spoilers].

Overall, while it seems unlikely those who disliked the original film will be any more taken with this boomeranging adaptation, except perhaps for Sean Cheesman's at times inspired choreography. But for those who loved the original, or who are just intrigued by fresh adaptations of the biblical narratives, then this is certainly an interesting take on the original, both capturing enough of the essence of the original across the change of medium, while also bringing some fresh and distinctive elements.

The Ten Commandments (1923)

Nearly 20 years ago now I started writing a book about portrayals of Moses on Film. I abandoned it long ago, even the few chapters I had written would pretty much writing from scratch were I to pick it up again, so whilst I've written and reviewed it extensively in the past, I've never actually posted anything here on it, so I figured it was time to remedy that. Much of what follows was written back then so is not my best work, but nevertheless hopefully it's useful.

Given his reputation today it seems hard to believe that there was a time when Cecil B. DeMille was a leading figure in Hollywood but had not yet made a biblical epic. By 1923 he already had 45 films to his name and only decided to make a film on the Ten Commandments after running a competition to "get the idea for his next picture” .Eight entrants snagged the $1000 prize money, but one stood out for its hookline “You cannot break the Ten Commandments - they will break you".

DeMille’s and his screenwriter Jeanie MacPherson decided to split the film into two parts, with a Prologue concentrates on the story of the Exodus giving way to a modern morality tale, for the remainder of the filmDeMille and his built and then subsequently buried the massive sets in Guadalupe, Santa Maria in California's Mojave Desert 

Among the film's many distinctions are that it was amongst the first to use of Two Strip Technicolor. DeMille put it to good use, in particular as a device for highlighting the emotions of the Hebrews as they left the promised land. The use of the Technicolor, the orthodox refugees and the soundtrack at this point make this scene one of the movie’s most enduring.

Amongst DeMille's motives for the film was perhaps a desire to inject some much needed morality into Hollywood which was in danger of being engulfed by the scandal surrounding (the wrongly accused) Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. It worked Photoplay, amongst others, described it as "wonderful entertainment and a marvellous sermon” and was said to have inspired large numbers of people to become rabbis, priests and ministers. More significantly the film's opening titles explicitly referenced "the shattering thunder of the World War" arguing that following the Commandments was the only "way out" of the situation happening again.

The ‘Prologue’ concentrates on the story of the exodus, from the oppression of the Hebrews through to the giving of the Ten Commandments  getting as far as the worship of the golden calf.Just as the confrontation between the Israelites and Moses is just about to reach its climax the story fades and the viewer is transported to the dinner table of a 1920’s mother telling the story to her two adult sons. The younger son, Dan declares the commandments to be “bunk" and sets about breaking as many as he can. This upsets both his fiercely religious mother and his more even-handed brother (who accuses her of using the Bible "like a whip") Of course Dan ultimately gets his comeuppance when a church he has built using shoddy materials collapses and kills his mother. Dan is forced to flee to Mexico with the authorities in hot pursuit, but is caught in a storm, ultimately, like the Egyptians being dashed into the sea.

DeMille uses lighting effectively elsewhere in the film, most notably within Pharaoh’s palace which despite its grandeur is shot as dark and dingy. It may be filled with reproductions of the treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb, but by making it seem shadowy and gloomy DeMille further stresses his point.

DeMille also uses two recurring motifs to tell his story. The most obvious is his use of the tablets which the Ten Commandments are given on. In addition to the actual tablets being seen in the story, as well as appearing as a backdrop to the intertitles on three different occasions their shape is made by light shining on stone.  The first of these is when God is about to reveal the commandments to Moses. Although it is possible that this is linked to the sin of the Hebrews below, it is more likely that it is drawing attention to the motif for use in the second half of the film. When it does occur in the second half of the film it appears to signify God’s impending judgement - firstly before the church collapses on Mrs. McTavish, and just before Dan’s boat crashes in to the rocks.

The other recurring motif is that of leprosy. The first character in the film to catch leprosy is Miriam who contracts the disease as she worships and caresses the golden calf. She repents to Moses she is seemingly healed. Leprosy enters the film again in the second half where the titles announce that Dan’s smuggled jute has come via a leper colony. A figure is shown escaping from the bags of jute, which turns out to be Sally Lang who infects Dan, who infects Mary Leigh. Sally Lang and Dan are killed as a result of the phobia generated by the disease, but Mary Leigh finds healing and redemption through listening to the words Jesus said to another leper in John’s story.

DeMille chose his long time friend Theodore Roberts to play the part of Moses, their ninth and final film with DeMille ending the relationship between the two that had stretched back to the days of DeMille’s acting career. Roberts’s Moses is portrayed as a supremely confident man, assured in the certain success of his mission. He first appears striding into Pharaoh's throne room, and is far closer to the prince of the realm that he was brought up as, than the fugitive shepherd he later became.

However, in seeking to establish the most important feature about the portrayal in Moses it is vital to remember that it is not he who is the biggest star of the film but the commandments themselves (The film is after all named in their honour). By comparison the Moses character operates only as a delivery boy/midwife. Although he seems the most important character once he has delivered the commandments into the world there is little more for him to do than to fade out and watch the decalogue take over. (This interesting device, of creating a character who appears to be the star of the film, only for them to disappear and be superseded by another, was later used to great effect by Alfred Hitchcock in Psycho). 

For the remainder of the film the other characters play their part but it is the commandments that are the real hero. Ultimately they win out and the strap line that inspired the film (“You cannot break the commandments , they will break you.”) proves its point. When the role of Moses is compared to the prominence of the commandments it becomes apparent that the major role of Moses in this film is that of a lawgiver

The result of all these elements is that we have a Moses who has nowhere left to go. He is the epitome of wisdom, trust in God. To anyone that does not know the story well he appears faultless, perhaps even sinless. Certainly incidents such as the fit of anger that saw him murder an Egyptian, or the doubts that loomed so large at the burning bush have been excluded from the film to portray Moses in the most positive light possible. What else would be appropriate for the giver of God’s laws?

Sadly the outcome is a rather one dimensional, whitewashed image of Moses, which despite its no doubt intended piety leaves him lacking any real depth. Except for a momentary look of horror when Pharaoh orders the Israelites to make their bricks without straw Moses constantly stands firm, unswayed by the situations around him. In reality the bible presents us with a very different Moses who when called by God in the opening chapters of Exodus comes up with a string of excuses rather than a confident knowing smile.

God’s role in the film however, is markedly different. Seemingly absent from the film. The idea of an unseen God is not an unusual one, but as this is a silent film he is also unheard. The only real manifestation of him is as the parter of the Red Sea, and as creator of the fireworks that accompany the unveiling of the commandments. 

Perhaps one of the reasons for this is that The Ten Commandments fails to see the idiosyncrasies in the way it proposes its remedy. Whilst it highlights God’s law as the solution to the bloodshed of the war, it inadvertently shows God killing thousands of Egyptians in the process. The irony of these deaths (of these nameless, faceless Egyptians) in a film about how God’s law can save us from the horrors of the First World War, is lost. 

polarisation occurs with Pharaoh's son. When he appears he is clearly a spoilt, objectionable child such that the audience can have very little compassion for him when he dies in the tenth plague. Yet the bible reveals nothing of his character. It would have been equally faithful to the biblical text if the son of Pharaoh had been played by a wide-eyed ‘cute’ child, and yet the death of such a child would be considerably less palatable. Regardless of the character of Pharaoh’s child, the death of the first born children, once stripped of religious triumphalism, is one of the most troubling stories in the bible.

It is in the second half of the film that God’s implied character shows through the most vividly. 

“you cannot break the ten commandments, they will break you”.

Do McTavish’s buildings fall down because he has cheated on his building materials, or because God is punishing him for doing so? The same ambiguity also surrounds the other events in the last scenes of the film. A similar question might be raised regarding Dan’s leprosy.

It is no until the penultimate scene in the film that DeMille resolves the issue for us. As the Dan’s boat is dashed against the rocks we see a light shining on them in the shape of the tablet motif. Significantly, this is the only incident in the second half of the film that could not be explained away by scientific reasoning, implying that not only did God not prevent Danny’s tragic accident, but that he specifically ordained it. God’s vengeance is meted out and the one who broke all of the commandments appears to be killed for it.

This path is presumably best illustrated by Mrs McTavish’s other son John, who, as noted above, is something of a Christ figure in the story. On the one hand he is righteous and good, but he is also loving and considerate. Perhaps more importantly for viewers in a post modern age, he is not afraid to speak out when he sees things wrong, challenging both mother and his brother in the course of the film. It is often stated that it is much harder to play a supremely good character than an evil one, and it is to the credit of both DeMille and actor Richard Dix that apart from moments of tweeness John is the most attractive character in the movie.

If DeMille intended his audience to aspire to John’s character, he perhaps also anticipated that they would best relate to the character of Mary Leigh. Essentially she is the only character in the film whose views change, moving from indifference in the opening scenes to finding forgiveness and healing in the later ones. Although she is mislead at the start of the second half, when she turns to the Christ figure for help she finds God’s grace and forgiveness. DeMille’ then essentially presents his viewers with a choice. Will they chose secularism and modernity, blinkered religious extremism, or aspire to be good, honest and compassionate?

Os Dez Mandamentos: O Filme (2016)

A few weeks ago I mentioned a series of biblical telenovelas from Brazil which typically ran for dozens of episodes for each biblical story. The Moses series - Os Dez Manadmentos ran from 2015 delivering an incredible 243 episodes by the time in ended in 2016¹ and was even covered in The Guardian. According to UOL the series had an audience of 144 million. At some point, the producers Rede Record decided to create a film version of the series that could play in cinemas. Then came reports of sold-out shows, but half-empty theatres,² presumably due to over-enthusiastic church leaders buying up tickets to give them away - a strategy used widely with The Passion of the Christ (2004)?

There's an extra layer of intrigue here as well. A significant majority of RecordTV is owned by billionaire Edir Macedo, the bishop/leader of Brasil's biggest church network Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. Macedo has been charged with various crimes, but, importantly, has never been found guilty. At the time Brazil's largest TV news website Notícias da TV reported UCKG services heavily promoting the film and encouraging people to give money to buy tickets for others. If Macedo were to have used his pulpits to promote his own business interests then that would seem to be something of a conflict of interests. Either way, the film took 116 million Brazilian dollars at the Brazilian box office in the end, making it the highest grossing home-grown film for 2016, taking only a little less than the film which topped box office sales in Brazil overall that year, Captain America.³

The film itself largely recycles material from the TV show, which is hardly surprising given that so much material was available. Having not seen the original series I don't know if any new footage was shot, or if the film's framing narrative - which has Joshua recall the events that have happened as the Hebrews prepare to conquer the Promised Land - was a new device for the film, or was carried over from the series. Either way the film soon flashes-back to the Egyptians murdering Israelite baby boys, and only rarely returns to the Joshua scene.

However, this framing device fundamentally alters the message of the Moses story. Instead of being a story of gaining freedom from oppression and slavery, it becomes about God's "promise to our people that we would become a great nation". There's echoes here of Macedo's 2008 book "Plan for Power: God, Christians and Politics" where he describes God's "great national project" for Brazil. "To be an Evangelical in Brazil is like being a foreigner in Egypt at the time of the Pharaohs...Moses’ mission was to liberate the people of Israel, recover their citizenship and guide them to possession of their own kingdom".⁴

Moses' father Amram is shown as a slave, but one who can slip away to attend to Moses' mother Jochebed when she goes into labour - an interesting take on how we typically imagine slavery. Interestingly, the first shot of the Hebrew slaves is a "God shot" looking directly down on a team of slaves dragging a huge statue of the Pharaoh. When Moses' basket ends up in the arms of Pharaoh's daughter, Miriam's suggestion of a Hebrew wet nurse results in Moses being allowed to return to his parents, but then, when he is around five years old, we're showed him wrenched away from his mother and returned to the princess.

And so Moses grows up in the palace, very much one of the royal household. He is aware he is adopted, but not that he is Hebrew. Indeed as with the three most famous Hollywood versions of the the story, Moses' young adulthood is closely connected to that of Pharaoh's future heir Ramesses.⁵ As with The Prince of Egypt (1998) and Exodus: God's and Kings (2014) the two men are close friends. There are plenty of nods to these films as well. In one scene Moses and Ramesses fight alongside one another in battle with strong echoes of the 2014 film. Moments later Moses unrolls a scroll bearing hieroglyphics that look like they were practically peeled off the walls of the set of Prince of Egypt.

In contrast to those films, however, certain elements of the film's style are very different from the aesthetics of America and Europe. Some of these are questions of convention rather than a universal measure of quality that is, um, set in stone. There's frequent use of slow-motion, time-lapse sequences, and montage, often in combination. The film's colours will also not be to everyone's taste. Likewise the reliance on melodrama - for example, when Moses re-enters Pharaoh's throne room after a forty year absence his wife drops her goblet and a slow-motion shot captures the wine spilling all over the floor. But two faults in particular plague this production (sorry the puns will stop shortly). Firstly, the film's CGI backgrounds are often blended poorly with live-action footage of the actors. On a small screen it looks bad, so I can only imagine how it would seem in a cinema. Secondly, the lighting, particularly for the interiors, looks off.

Much of this is because the film is an edited down version of a much longer show filmed in a typical soap-opera style. To record so much material in a short space of time (and cheaply) fixed, even, lighting is used for an entire scene rather than varying the key, fill and back lighting each time the camera moves. It also accounts for the overly melodramatic moments in the production. And, of course, the reduction of such a volume of material into a mere two hours goes partway to describing the heavy reliance on montage. At times a brief montage feels like highlights of entire episodes' worth of footage, such as the sequence of Moses' courtship of Zipporah. Likewise, towards the end of the film, the incidents between the Sea of Reeds and giving of the Ten Commandments - so often omitted entirely - are presented in a 90-second montage featuring the sweetening of Marah's bitter water, the provision of quails and manna, and the victory over the Amalekites. Similarly it occasionally feels like the cuts have been a little too abrupt.

At times the filmmakers rely on the audiences familiarity with the text. Indeed, perhaps we should say 'texts', as viewers who either know the original telenovela, or who are familiar with The Ten Commandments (1956), The Prince of Egypt and Exodus: God's and Kings will have more idea than those who only know the first few chapters of the Book of Exodus. I kind of like the way the telenovela draws heavily on the three Hollywood films, but in being abridged in this fashion it also leaves fleeting traces of the fuller work. There's a whole subplot, I'm sure, around the palace servant who overhears Moses confessing his killing of the Egyptian to Ramesses and then informs the king, but all we see is a brief shot of her listening through a crack in the door.

This hint of intertextuality contrasts with the film's attitude to the text of Exodus itself. Whereas scholars have long asserted that the "finished" form of Exodus was concocted several centuries after Moses using several pre-existing sources, here we see Moses writing Genesis and the start of Exodus. Aaron looks on admiringly and he is even more impressed when Moses' starts predicting what the finished text will say about the (still future) events of the Exodus. It's a strange inversion of the biblical angle on the teaming up of Moses and Aaron. In the Bible Aaron is brought in to compensate for Moses' poor vocal skills: here he is impressed by his brother's impressive oration. This is perhaps typical of the film's highly idealised and sexualised Moses figure, played by the Guilherme Winter. In The Ten Commandments, for example, Charlton Heston loses all sense of his earlier sexual availability once he encounters God; here Winter continues to smoulder long afterwards.  Moreover, he is also more active and virile than his cinematic predecessors. I can't recall another Moses who runs after his commissioning at the Burning Bush, so it's particularly striking towards the end of the film to see him sprinting back to urge his people through the walls of the Red Sea, with shouts of "Vamos!"

It's a sign of how greatly CGI has revolutionised visual effects that the Burning Bush scene is barely worthy of comment. Back in 1957 this scene - modest by comparison with its equivalent in this film - was much discussed and ultimately the only Oscar which DeMille's film won was for Visual Effects. Here the scene is fine, its just perfunctory rather than profound, spiritual or moving. Perhaps this is highlighted by the reception Moses gets when he first returns to Egypt. Ramesses, now Pharaoh, welcomes him with open arms, as do the rest of his former family. As Moses explains to Aaron later "it was really hard to see the happiness and love they showed me". Only Ramesses' son Amenhotep seems to take exception to Moses, glancing dismissively at him and questioning the poverty of his clothing. In fact the costuming is really on point here. Even before Moses enters the palace there's a stark contrast between the pristine and luxurious Egyptian costumes and the shabby, well-worn outfits of Moses and his brother. I don't recall Moses ever seeming so out of place in the palace.

Despite the warmth of Ramesses original welcome his attitude quickly seems to change, seemingly without a great deal of motive. This is not a problem the Bible - which often doesn't explain the motives of its characters and, in this case, never contends that Ramesses and Moses even knew each other - but having built a great deal of affection between the two men (including Moses saving Ramesses' life) the change of heart rings a little false. It's perhaps a casualty of having to abridge the original footage so drastically. The subtlety of the gradual deterioration in the two men's relationship left on the cutting room floor. Obviously things only deteriorate further once the ten plagues arrive.

If the first half of the film was typified by its soap-opera origins, then the second half, once Moses returns to Egypt, is far more dominated by effects and CGI. While the Burning Bush scene was somewhat underwhelming, the plagues are depicted much more successfully. Clearly a great deal of thought, planning and money was sent on this section which is apparent from the first plague. The water turning to blood provides the film with two of its most arresting images. Firstly, Pharaoh's wife caught swimming in a pool comes up for air literally covered head to foot in blood. Moments later her husband dips his hand in water only for them to emerge covered in blood. Both elements draw on horror tropes and the metaphor with the latter is made more effective due to the shot foregrounding Pharaoh's bloody hands in front of his horrified face. The grossness of the plagues is similarly reinforced with all ten being depicted, and particularly the infestations of frogs, lice, flies and locusts. Meanwhile a great deal of the budget seems to have been spent on the seventh plague. The "making of" documentary on the DVD largely concerns itself with this scene emphasising the "flashing fire" within the hail, causing some fairly spectacular, if a little over the top, footage. Finally, the death of the firstborn is shown, not by a creepy green mist as in 1956, but by streaks of bright white light, which prove no less terrifying. The terrible inevitability of what is happening is brought home by showing the moments leading up to Amenhotep's death. The film has stacked the pack somewhat by making Amenhotep seem unlikable, but those present have heard Moses' words. Their surface scepticism quickly dissipates as they see the streaks of light encircling them. There's a moment of fleeting defiance before the sheer inevitability of the situation reaches its grim conclusion.

Following the plagues, where thousands of frogs and swarms of locusts filled the screen, we get grand exodus scenes intended to look as if millions are leaving ⁶. The newly liberated Hebrews quickly encounter the pillars of cloud and fire, the latter of which is particularly well-rendered. Likewise, the path through the Red Sea looks very impressive. Miriam makes an interesting comment here about the sea-bed: "its dry". This rather sums up this film's approach to the miraculous parts of the texts. Various productions from the 1956 The Ten Commandments onwards have attempted to try and give some scientific plausibility to the supernatural elements. The 1975 mini-series Moses largely minimalised the plagues, for example, while Exodus/: God's and Kings brought in a sceptical expert to provide an explanation. This follows a similar explanation in DeMille's film where Rameses ⁷ gives the following monologue:

...word came of a mountain beyond the Cataracts which spewed red mud and poisoned the water. Was it the staff I gave you that caused all this? Was it the wonder of your god that fish should die and frogs should leave the waters? Was it a miracle that flies and lice should bloat upon their carrion and spread disease in both man and beast? These things were ordered by themselves, and not by any god.

Here however, not only is there no attempt to rationalise these supernatural acts, it intensifies them and links them to Moses' pronouncements. When Exodus 14:16 refers to "dry land" it's usually understood as idiomatic, rather than literal as Miriam's words stress here. The film is robustly and unapologetically Pentecostal in its approach with a strong emphasis on Christianity, miracles and prosperity. This is taken a step further in the words used in the supposedly Jewish Passover Seder which stress phrases about "redemption through the lamb".

This Christianisation of the text is, of course, something that also typifies DeMille's two versions of the story, and as the film progresses, DeMille's approach becomes more and more dominant (not least because The Prince of Egypt and Exodus: Gods and Kings more or less finish after the Red Sea). The scene where Moses receives the Ten Commandments is hugely reminiscent of DeMille. Tongues of fire engrave the rock with the words of the Decalogue - indeed a flaming hand stretches out to touch the rock as the first words are inscribed - and all ten are read out in full. One difference, however, is the way the giving of the different commandments here is inter-cut, perhaps interrupted, by scenes of the people worshipping the golden calf. DeMille's film maintained the purity of the moment. Here following God is contested, an ongoing battle.

Indeed once Moses returns and orders those 'faithful' to God to rally round, the film then starts to return to the footage of Joshua at the start. The Joshua footage is interspersed with that of Levites surreptitiously killing those who had not sided with Moses; of the people walking purposefully across the desert; and the 120 year old Moses writing a few final words ⁸. The words Joshua speaks become more clearly recognisable as those from the first and last chapters of the Book of Joshua, "Are we going to submit to God or our own pride?" he shouts fiercely, daring anyone to defy him.  The film increasingly resembles Braveheart (1995) as it draws to a close with the words "Now is the time to conquer what is ours", seemingly regurgitating the words from Macedo's book.

As treatments of the Book of Exodus go I enjoyed this one more than I expected. The lighting and the attempts to blend actors into CGI scenes occasionally let it down, and I must admit that I'm not a fan of the multiple slow-motion montages that recur throughout the film. Nevertheless, for those who know the story it gives a reasonably coherent version of events, even if the characterisation is a little flat in places. This is somewhat ironic as the telenovela is largely based on building back stories for all the characters. Where this lets the film down is in the portrayal of the Egyptians. It's not unusual for a Moses film not to sympathise with them, but the scene of the bodies of hundreds of soldiers floating face down in the Red Sea passes without comment, despite being such an arresting image. Perhaps it could be argued that this tones down the text of the Bible, where Miriam sings a whole song celebrating the way in which "Horse and rider have been thrown into the sea" (Ex 15:21). Where this becomes problematic is the way in which the film's validation of Joshua seems to align with Macedo equating his non-Evangelical countrymen with the Egyptians. Sadly, the film's dehumanisation of them (not to mention of the non-faithful Hebrews) casts a shadow across an otherwise interesting project.

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1 - IMDb. Other sources cite 150 or 176 episodes.
2 - http://cinema.uol.com.br/noticias/redacao/2016/01/28/os-dez-mandamentos-estreia-com-lugares-vagos-em-sessoes-esgotadas.htm - Retrieved from web.archive.org
3 - According to Brazilian Film database Filme B. This is roughly $20 million.
4 - Cited and translated in Zaitchik, Alexander  and Christopher Lord (2019) "How a Demon-Slaying Pentecostal Billionnaire is Ushering in a Post-Catholic Brazil" in The New Republic, Feb 7. Available online: https://newrepublic.com/article/153083/demon-slaying-pentecostal-billionaire-ushering-post-catholic-brazil.
5 - I find no direct traces to DeMille's original The Ten Commandments (1923) and, of course, one of the other screen adaptations of the Moses story might also have exerted some kind on influence on the filmmakers.
6 - In the "making-of" DVD the filmmakers refer to the 600,000 men referred to in Exodus 12:37 (and they stress that this is not counting the women and children).
7 - This is how the credits to the 1956 film spell his name. The credits for this film use Ramsés, so I have anglicised this as Ramesses (as per Wikipedia and my own natural inclination towards Ramsees). Others uses Ramses. Exodus: Gods and Kings uses "Rhamses".
8 - Earlier we see him writing Genesis and the beginning of Exodus.

The Ten Commandments (1956)

The paradox of The Ten Commandments is that it is one of the easiest films to mock and parody, and yet it's magnificence is such that whenever discussion arises about the biblical epic, and indeed biblical films in general, it's name is never far away.

The films more risible moments begin from the very start as, rather than adopting a more conventional opening, director Cecil B. DeMille steps out from behind the curtain and delivers an almost ten minute lecture arguing for his film's historical credibility. There follows around ninety minutes of fictional hokum as DeMille invents a backstory, a cadre of friends and potential foes, and strings them together with such unintentionally hilarious lines like "Oh, Moses, Moses, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool!".

And yet, at the same time these scenes also provide some of the film's most stunning moments. Take for example the scene where Moses erects an obelisk as his "brother" Ramsees stands limply by (the phallic symbolism is comically transparent). Yet, despite the fact that Moses completion of the task is never in doubt, DeMille manages to make dramatic and indeed spectacular footage from what is essentially, a construction scene. Thousands toil away in the immense heat of the desert, orchestrated  by one man's extraordinary vision, expertise and dedication to create an extraordinary masterwork - a description that suits both what we see on screen and what is going on behind the scenes.

Such parallels between DeMille's story of Moses and the modern day abound, not least because DeMille is determined to convert the story of the Exodus into a Cold War parable. DeMille's lecture at the start of the film concludes that "The theme of this picture is whether men are to be ruled by God’s law, or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator like... Ramsees" even adding "This same battle continues throughout the world today." The film carries this through in almost every respect from the casting of Russian-born Yul Brynner as Ramsees, through to the all American Heston striking a statue of liberty pose in the film's closing shot.

The film also goes out of it's way to elaborate on the parallels between Moses and Jesus, themselves the results of the Gospel writers' attempts to cast Jesus as a new Moses. As my friend Peter Chattaway observed, almost 20 years ago now, "Pharaoh orders the death of all newborn boys in Goshen, not because he is afraid of population growth, but because a star has prophesied the birth of a deliverer in their ranks". Moses' mother uses the words of the Magnificat when she finally meets her adult son. Joshua calls him "the chosen one". Others talk of how they dared not “touch the hem of his garment”. Moses himself explains his encounter with God at the burning bush in phrases that sound like the Gospel of John, "the Word was God", "his light is in every man" and so on. By reversing what Matthew and the other Gospel writers are trying to do DeMille effectively casts Moses in his own shadow.

The groundwork DeMille puts in during that opening ninety minutes pays off. The burning bush scene may not have aged well, but the scenes where Moses commands his former rival Ramsees to let his people go are as taut as Bryner's shendyt. Ramsees is still trying to win an old argument, but Moses moved on long ago. All the while the spurned Nefertiri is trying to keep the whole thing spinning in an attempt to hurt the man who spurned her and the one who didn't.

When the script finally starts to cover the actual biblical story, the spectacle becomes no less impressive. The eeriness with which the Angel of Death's green mist creeps through the Egyptian streets is a fitting climax to the nine plagues which have gone before. The scene of the Israelites leaving Egypt - a scene which actually delivers on the oft used strap-line "a cast of thousands" - deftly manages to combine the sheer scale of the event with the the individual and personal. An elderly man's dying wish here, and young girl and her dolly there, DeMille manages to take these small moments and make us imagine the impact of that multiplied ten thousand times.

Then, of course, there is the parting of the Red Sea. Film scholars still debate whether or not this version of the tale outdid his earlier silent version from 1923. Either way, both are hugely impressive even in the face of the tidal wave of CGI that dominates special effects today. The two scenes have had such a cultural impact that many today are shocked to discover the Bible actually describes a far more gradual process of the waters parting. So much for the film's repeated line "So let it be written. So let it be done".

And then, finally we get the obligatory orgy and the arrival of the titular commandments. Given his history DeMille was unlikely to pass up the chance to show scantily clad bodies writhing before the golden bull, but it's actually the sparks flying through the air to engrave the Commandments on the rock face which stick in the memory. As with the crossing of the Red Sea, the scene itself bears little resemblance to the corresponding passage from Exodus, where Moses is at the foot of the mountain with the people by his side, but such is the impact of this film that it's rare to find someone who thinks of either scene like the book.

The costumes are, of course, fantastic and the immense sets are first class. Heston, Brynner and John Derek's muscles gleam. Anne Baxter purrs, Vincent Price camps it up and Cedric Hardwicke gets to drily deliver wry witticisms. Even Edward G. Robinson, who fell foul of Joseph McCarthy, gets to join in scowlingly dismissing Heston's bright-eyed pronouncements. Meanwhile Elmer Bernstein - a relative unknown at the time - underpins the story with his classical score. Amazingly whilst the film lasts for 220 minutes, it never feels like that long, no doubt explaining why despite the $13 million it cost to make, it made almost ten times that at the box office and no doubt made it's budget many times over in reruns, home video sales and regular broadcasts at Christmas and Easter.

But perhaps the most significant thing about The Ten Commandments is how it has become the definitive film for so many different categories. Despite decades of westerns and parlour comedies, it's this film that comes to mind when people today think of Cecil B. DeMille. Regardless of Ben-Hur's eleven Oscars, it's The Ten Commandments that is seen as the quintessential Charlton Heston performance. And, of course, it stands as the definitive example of the biblical epic. Few films indeed can claim to be so typical of, and central to, their genre as this. Double Indemnity for film noir. Star Wars, perhaps, for science fiction. Like them it deserves to be put on a pedestal and celebrated, even if we recognise that part of the reason it is so monumental is because time has moved on and we are unlikely to see anything quite like it ever again.

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Chattaway, Peter (1999) "Lights, Camera, Plagues!: Moses in the Movies" in Bible Review 15:1, February.

Wholly Moses! (1980)

Such was the unexpected financial success of Monty Python's Life of Brian that other filmmakers quickly decided to follow suit. With the taboo broken, and most of the objections to irreverent biblical comedies having already been faced down, producers Freddie Fields and David Begelman, the ex-president of Columbia, hastily developed plans for a comic film which would appeal to a similar audience. For Begelman it was also a shot at redemption following his sacking from Columbia for forgery. Teaming up with writer Guy Wood they devised a movie that traced the contours of Python's film, only relocating the story to the time of Moses rather than that of Jesus.

Wholly Moses shows a staggering lack of originality in this respect. Not only is it a biblical spoof, which also happens to star a famous Oxbridge comedian, but it's a film where the hero's life comes into very close proximity with a famous biblical figure. Whereas Python's Brian is mistaken for the Jewish Messiah, so this film's lead, Herschel (Dudley Moore), tracks the life of Moses. On the day that Moses' parents set him adrift on the Nile, so too does Herschel's father place his son in an ark on the river, only for the baby Moses to nudge Hershel's basket past the princess's palace. As an adult Herschel also has to flee to the desert where he meets Jethro and marries one of his daughters, Zrelda. Shortly afterwards Herschel mistakenly hears a voice from heaven instruct him to set his people free, without realising that the voice's intended target, Moses, is getting the full works around the corner.

Sadly the one aspect of Life of Brian which the team behind Wholly Moses fail to reproduce is the sharpness of its humour. Not only are its jokes fewer and less pointed, but they are also not very amusing. Moore always seemed somewhat bereft when separated from his comedic partner Peter Cook. His success in 10 the year before was due more to its melancholy romantic elements more than its humour. His other major success, the Jeeves and Wooster-esque Arthur, (1981) owes its success as much to John Gielgud's waspish valet as to Moore's alcoholic millionaire. Here he later reflected that he had "allowed himself to be flattered and 'wet-noodled to death'" (Paskin 203).

That said, the lack of humour is not so much Moore's fault, as Wood's script. There are perilously few good moments in the script, as evidenced by the fact that Richard Pryor also struggles in his cameo as Pharaoh. Director Gary Weis had a strong track record with comedic material from his time at Saturday Night Live (along with the film's female co-star Laraine Newman), but in his first proper feature film he struggled to pull things together or make the most of the comedic talent at his disposal.

As the film's problems became apparent various changes were discussed to try and get things back on track. At one point there were plans to add a narrator. Whilst that idea was never fully developed, eventually the filmmakers decided to add modern day scenes at the start and the end of the film. As with Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) the narrative starts and ends on a bus in the desert. Their Moore's language scholar Harvey Orchid, strikes up a friendship with Newman's character Zoey. During an unscheduled stop the pair wander off and stumble across some ancient scrolls telling Herschel's tale.

Whilst Weis' direction is pedestrian, cinematographer Frank Stanley, who had worked with Moore on 10, does manage to capture some nice scenes of the blue skies over Death Valley. Occasionally the odd bit of slapstick works and fans of DeMille's second version of The Ten Commandments (1956) will appreciate the recycling of it's famous dictum "So let it be written. So let it be done."

Despite numerous troubles on the set and a critical slating, the film performed impressively during it's opening week, though business quickly trailed off. Orthodox Jewish groups however called it "the most vicious attch on the Jewish religion in the history of the American movie industry" (Paskin 205).  Undeterred, the following year, the Jewish writer and director Mel Brooks featured Moses in a short scene in A History of the World: Part 1, where a butter-fingered Moses drops a third tablet leaving commandments eleven to fifteen smashed on the floor. It's a scene that in seventy seconds manages to conjure up more laughs than Wholly Moses does in over an hour and a half and carved out its place as comedy's most memorable depiction of Moses. Moore struck gold with Arthur, and Begelman went off to be head of MGM. Weis and Wood barely worked in the movies again.

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Paskin, Barbra (1998) Dudley Moore: The Authorized Biography. London: Pan Books

Moses und Aron (1973): Schönberg's Portrayal

This is part 4 of a series of posts about Straub and Huillet's film adaptation of Schönberg's opera "Moses und Aron". You can read them all here. Still from the 1968 performance in Düsseldorf.
As I demonstrated in my previous post on this subject, Schönberg uses a variety of musical techniques to portray the leading characters in his opera in various different ways: he uses sprechstimme to emphsise Moses' difficulty with speech; he uses the perfection and inclusivity of twelve-tone serialism to display the perfection of God; and, he has Aron distort the God's initial tone row to highlight the compromises and distortions that Aron makes in order to enable the people to comprehend the God that is reaching out to them.

I want to expand these observations now to look at Schönberg's portrayal of the four key 'characters' in the opera.

Moses - The Inflexible Idealist
In contrast to most dramatisations of the life of Moses, Schönberg's opera truncates almost his entire backstory. There is no account of his birth, his parents, his sister Miriam, or his upbringing in the Egyptian court. There is a brief mention in act I scene 3 of his murdering the Egyptian guard and fleeing, but no mention of his subsequent meeting with Jethro, or his marriage to Zipporah. Schönberg, then, has little interest in Moses' biography, only in his theology and his present beliefs.

As with the majority of artistic portrayals, Schönberg seeks to depict Moses as a character of particular significance and prominence. As Sir John Tomlinson puts it "Moses is an exceptional character...he’s not normal" (Opera on 3). It is he alone who hears God speak. Yet whilst this is a special privilege, it also carries a significant burden. Moses has a unique insight into the nature of God, but he struggles to percive how he can communicate it, not least because he is a man who can only speak in a world where everybody sings.

Initially, Moses is optimistic and seems to believe he will be able to explain to others the insight he has gained. However, his experiences with Aron and then the people lead him to realise that his task is a difficult one.

Paramount in Moses' understanding is his determination that images are at best an inadequate way of communicating the nature of God and, at worst, dangerously heretical. "For this Moses...the second commandment, which prohibits images of God, is not merely a fundamental condition of Jewish monotheism and a meaningful life, it is virtually the only condition". (Goldstein 163).

Moses strongly maintains this position in the face of mounting opposition. Whilst Aron initially seems willing to try and understand, a combination of his failure to fully grasp Moses' ideal and his natural pragmatic streak lead him to reject his brother's position. The people show even less inclination to adopt Moses' imageless faith than Aron, indeed seemingly the biggest reason Aron seeks to amend Moses' message is to fashion it into a form which will be both comprehensible and acceptable to the people.

However evidence begins to emerge that Moses' position is even more extreme than God's. Towards the end of act I, and in the face of Moses' refusal to compromise, Aron performs of the two biblical miracles, the transformation of Moses' staff into a snake and the leprous hand. But these two signs appear to be acts of God, miracles performed to communicate to the people. It seems that God has more belief in the validity of imagery than his most faithful servant.

As the second act begins, the extent of this problem becomes clearer. Ultimately "Moses' conviction that God cannot be represented and that truth, and not beauty, must be maintained, makes him an ineffective leader. " (Batnitzky 2001: 12). He is unable to lead the people, because he lacks their support. When he leaves them to spend time with God they rebel against and seek not a image from God such as the signs, but a human-made image of God.

By the time Moses finally appears in Act II, the people have delved into a full blown paganistic orgy. Indignant at what he sees and emboldened by his time with his god he orders the golden calf "Vergeh" ("Begone") and it disappears. He then scolds Aron, the two argue over the way they have each sought to lead the people. When Aron tells Moses he is too closely bound to his ideas ("Du bist an deinen Gedanken gebunden!"), Moses argues that the two tablets bearing the Ten Commandments which express this same idea. When Aron retorts "die auch nur ein Bild" ("They are also images") Moses smashes the two tablets. In contrast to the biblical account where Moses does this in anger, here it is to express the intensity of his belief and the extremes he will go to in order to follow them. But yet again God seems to undermine Moses' strict idealism. As with the end of act I, where Moses' staff became a snake, here God sends the pillars of fire and cloud. Whilst Moses initially expresses it as a "Götzenbilder!" ("Godless image!") he quickly realises that he too has fashioned a false image "So habe ich mir ein Bild gemacht, falsch". The libretto's final words in Act II are a stage direction "Moses sinkt verzweifelt zu Boden." ("Moses sinks to the ground in despair").

Whilst many productions of the opera end it at this point, thus leaving their audience with the sympathetic impression of a great man overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge he faces, Schönberg clearly intended something different as indicated by his work on the unfinished third act. Whereas Act II ends with a Moses who "seems less angry with what has happened than despairing" (Cooke, Opera on 3) when we rejoin the action at the start of Act III he appears a far more strident and determined figure. He conducts a token trial of Aron before condemning him and whilst Aron is ultimately released, the events leading up to this announcement have been so horrific that he falls down dead.

The unfinished nature of the third act is interesting because it raises further questions as to whether Moses is meant to be the hero or the villain. Are we to meant to aspire to be like him, or to be different from him? If the opera ended at the end of Act II then whilst Moses' inflexible idealism has not persuaded his people, or even his brother, to follow him, he has stuck steadfastly to his beliefs. Was he right to do so? However, if the opera ends at the end of Act III, then Moses has ultimately become something of a monster, a man who abuses his brother to the point of death over an issue of theology.

In Schöenberg's own life there are two important parallels to consider. The first is the rise, and then fall, of Hitler and the Nazis and anti-Semitism inherent in their ideology. But, again, there are two opposing interpretations. Is Moses the Jewish hero standing up against the appropriation of images in the face of sizeable opposition as Goldstein suggests (165)? Or is he, by the end of Act III at least, a dangerous idealist who ousts his brother to become a somewhat brutal dictator?

The other parallel is Schöenberg involvement with a movement to unite the Jewish people in their own state, not only for their own safety, but also in order to preserve the idea of the unrepresentable God. Indeed, according to Goldstein, Schönberg "was willing and ready to assume the leadership" of this movement in particular because of "his hardheadedness, his obduracy", his inflexibility and devotion to the idea" the very traits he bequeathed to Moses (Goldstein 166). Schönberg seemingly creates Moses into the kind of person he perceived himself to be. It is possible Schönberg saw himself as a kind of Moses figure. Certainly he was "(i)nspired by the biblical figure of Moses" both in the pioneering nature of his music and his politics (Feisst 83)

Perhaps, it is because of these questions and seeming contradictions that Schönberg found it impossible to finish the work. Whilst he identified with his image of Moses, he was also wary of the dangers of an unblinking devotion to an idealistic cause.

Aaron
The title - "Moses und Aron" - reflects the dispute at the heart of the work. It's two eponymous leads personify the different sides of the debate over the question of whether an incomprehensible God can be, or indeed ought to be, represented using imagery. Thus Aron is presented as a counterfoil to his brother. If Moses is the inflexible idealist, Aaron is the pliable pragmatist, always seeking to find a compromise in order to ensure the people as a whole move forward together. "While for Moses God is and remains invisible and ineffable, an idea that cannot be represented (‘Unrepresentable God!/Unspeakable, ambiguous idea!’ [194]), Aaron, occupied with formulating expressive means sure to please, insists on the efficacy of constructing familiar and attractive images of the deity" (Goldstein 156). Whereas Moses fixates more on the abstract, Aaron "seeks a representation of God tailored to the people’s needs and to the religious and social conventions known to them" (Goldstein 156).

Another way to look at the dispute between the two men is to see it as competing understandings of freedom. For Goldstein, Aron is hunting for freedom from "the oppression of slavery", whereas his brother sees it more as "freedom from what is transitory" (156). Moses adheres adamantly to this second view of freedom; Aaron almost exclusively to a "freedom from physical bondage".

However, the reasons behind Aron's compromising approach are less clear. Is his pragmatism merely his desire for love, popularity or power; or rooted in a passionate love of the people, and a belief in unity, which rivals Moses' passionate defense of God's pure and unrepresentable nature; or even a combination of both?

On the one hand, it's notable, for example that when Moses first meets his brother after his encounter with God, Aron asks him - before Moses can even speak - if he is sent by mighty God ("schickt dich mir der große Gott?") and he also uses the word "Allmächtige" ("Almighty") before Moses can offer any kind of description.

Yet on the other hand Aron seems to have a genuine feeling for the the people that Moses cannot match. In the climatic fifth scene of Act II Aron declares "Ich liebe diese Volk, ich liebe für es und wikk es efhakten!" ("I love this humble folk, I live for them and want to satisfy them"). Moses counters not with is own declaration of love for the people, but for his love for his idea. When Aron suggests his brother would love the people if only he spent time with them, Moses insists that "Es muß den Gednaken er fassen!" ("They must comprehend the idea!").

By this stage what had started off as a failure to understand Moses' key message has turned sour. Whilst Moses convened with God, Aron strengthened his bond with the people. When Moses loses the argument over symbolism, he goes away broken, but returns to wrestle power back from his brother in the final act. For Wörner, Aron's distortion of Moses' message has a negative psychological effect on Aron. "The recognition of the pure idea by human imagination signifies a diminution, a darkening; and this diminution eventually turns into denial and betrayal (Wörner 67)." But it affects Moses for the worse as well making him inflexible and unwilling to declare a love for the people even if he disagrees with them.

Judging by the music, however, the suggestion seems to be that Schönberg sides with Moses more than his brother. When Aron sings, he distorts God's original tone row. "In all other contexts, Aaron’s musical characterisation is that of a sorcerer, an artist of transmutation, a seducer and demon, equivocal, restless, carrying good and evil within himself, but affecting evil, destruction." (Wörner 84).

God
At the heart of the dispute between the two leads is Moses' vision of God. Indeed the opera's opening words are Moses describing God as "Einziger, ewiger, allgegenwärtiger, unsichtbarer und unvorstellbarer Gott!" ("Unique, eternal, omnipresent one, invisible and inconceivable God!"). Quite a list of adjectives. God's response is to assert the holiness that surrounds him by ordering Moses to remove his shoes. Moses then calls God the God of his fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but tries to turn down the opportunity to be God's prophet ("verkünde"). God then talks about the enslavement of Moses' people and tells him "du mußt dein Volk daraus befrein!" ("You must free your people/folk").

What Moses takes away from this encounter in scene one we discover as he speaks to Aron in scene two and the people in scene four. In his initial conversation with Aron he describes God as "der Allgegenwärtige nicht Raum" ("The Almighty that exists outside of men") and as both "Unsichtbaren" ("invisible/unseen") and "Unvorstellbaren" ("unimageable"). Both of these terms become crucial in the discussion about God's nature the former being used nine times and the later eleven. Furthermore, as Batnitzky observes, "both Moses and Aron refer to God as unvorstellbar" going on to note the word's "connotations of unrepresentable, unimaginable, and ultimately inconceivable" (2001: 11-12).

These two terms along with "Einzige" ("unique/only one", used eleven times) and "ewige" ("eternal/everlasting", used thirteen times) form the key part of the work's understanding of God as "an ineffable deity" to the extent that he may indeed be "unrepresentable" (Goldstein 152). If Moses' is correct, then, as Tomlinson puts it, the "true idea of God is so pure that it is inexpressible” (Opera on 3).

The ideas flowing from this idea of God as unrepresentable are present in some of Schönberg's other religious works. As Steiner explains "Moses and Aaron is thematically and psychologically related to an entire set of works in which Schoenberg sought to express his highly individual, though at the same time profoundly Judaic concept of identity, of the act of spiritual creation, and of the dialogue— so inherent in music— between the song of man and the silences of God" (41). At the same time the ideas about God he is exploring also flow from many other Jewish thinkers, and say something about the Jewish people as a whole. “Like Graetz, Cohen, and Schoenberg, Freud maintains that a self-imposed, Jewish resistance to visuality marks Judaism as a rationally and morally advanced civilization” (Batnitzky 2004: 8).

Yet despite the opera's overall emphasis on God's unique, eternal, unrepresentable and unchangeable nature, it also offers several indications from a different perspective. In particular, for all Moses' insistence that God does not communicate through symbol, or perhaps even at all, we find four incidents when God does indeed appear to intervene and communicate something of himself: when the staff turns into a snake at the end of Act I; when the golden calf vanishes ("vergeht") at the end of act II scene 4; through the pillars of fire and cloud in the following scene; and the water flowing from the rock which is discussed in Act III.

Of course other explanations can always be found for such phenomena, but there's little in the libretto to give oxygen to such theories, not least because Schönberg so pointedly draws attention to the disappearance of the golden calf, which is, in any case, his own invention. There are two further considerations within the final act. The first is the suddenness of Aron's death. Whilst most commentators have inferred this was due to fear or stress arising from his confrontation with Moses, the possibility that this is God's final judgement on the dispute between the two protagonists. Secondly, Moses also appears to have finally softened slightly his previously hard-line stance on the prohibition of images.

The People
One of the relatively unusual things that Schönberg does with "Moses und Aron" is the way he makes the chorus almost into a principle character. As a group they regular speak as one voice and in dialogue with Aron and, to a lesser extent, Moses. The reasons for this seems to be Schönberg's desire to engage a modern Jewish audience in a debate about their shared future.

In particular, it is noticeable how in the very first scene, God addresses the future of his people in a way that goes beyond the text of Exodus 3-4.

"Und ihr werdet gesegnet sein.
Denn das gelobe ich dir:
Dieses Volk ist auserwählt,
vor allen Völkern,
das Volk des einzigen Gottes zu sein,
daß es ihr erkenne
und sich ihm allein ganz widme;
daß es at Prüfungen bestehe,
denen - in Jahrtausenden
der Gedanke ausgesetzt ist.
Und das verheiße ich dir:
Ich will euch dorthin führen,
wo ihr mit dem Ewigen einig
und allen Völkern ein Vorbild werdet."

"And your people will now be blessed.
Because I promise you:
Your people are the chosen people
before all the others,
They are the people of the only God.
They are thus to know him
and give worship to him alone.
Also they will undergo all trials
that over millennia
can ever be conceived.
And this I promise you:
I shall take you forward
to where united with the infinite eternal one
you will be a model for all people."

Given that Schönberg was writing during the rise of Nazi Germany and was spurred on by personal encounters with anti-Semitism, it's not hard to see what was at the forefront of his mind when he wrote about undergoing all the trials that could be conceived over the millennia. Moses' final words to the people are also significant, outlining the way the people will be repeatedly thrown back to the "Wüste" ("wasteland/desert") before ultimately concluding that "Aber in der Wüste seid ihr unüberwindlich und werdet das Ziel erreichen: Vereinigt mit Gott." ("But in the wasteland you shall be insurmountable and shall acheive the goal: unity with God.")

That said, the opera does paint the people in a very poor light. Whilst the people are initially excited by the prospect of Moses liberating them from Pharaoh, they quickly leap to calling for "Blutopfer" ("blood offerings"). Neither Moses, nor Aron, believe them capable of conceiving of God as they do, and once Moses is out of the way they quickly end up holding an orgy, murdering dissidents and sacrificing young women.

It is difficult, then, to extract what Schönberg wants to say to his own people from what he felt was necessary from a dramatic point of view, not to mention his interpretation of the biblical material. Feisst suggests that "he perceived himself as an outsider from the Jewish community, despite his desire to become accepted by this group" (84). It is, therefore, crucial to remember then that this forms part of a discussion within Judaism and also that the chorus also represent humanity in general.

Indeed one of the things Schönberg seems to be suggesting is that without order chaos ensues. This not only the expressed in the film's narrative arc, but also in the order inherent in Schönberg's use of  twelve-tone serialism. It is perhaps also Schönberg's vision of the chaos that was sweeping Europe and the threat it posed to his people. "(S)eeking the way out of a deadly wilderness. He made his way out of Europe, but could not bring his people with him" (Goldstein 167).

As discussed above, Schönberg came to the conclusion that the only solution was for an independent Jewish state (Stuckenschmidt 541-542). These beliefs can be traced back to before his 1927 play "Der biblische Weg" which reflected "Herzl's idea of a provisional Jewish state outside Palestine" (Feisst 86). Schönberg did not find the majority of his people responsive to his ideas, which is no doubt reflected in the way the chorus in "Moses und Aron" fail to join Moses' cause. Just as Schönberg felt estranged from his people even as he longed for their acceptance, so the Moses of the opera find that his "God and divine mission bind him to a people from whom he could only be estranged since his idea of God precludes any means for communicating that idea" (Goldstein 160).

It's is noticeable, too, that when the people do finally rally, it occurs between the second and third acts such that is unclear quite what he has done to turn the tide. The gap leaves room for speculation - some may even be well founded - but the lack of a clear answer reflects Schönberg's failure to find a way of convincing his people to follow him, at least until it was too late.

It is precisely because of the size of the issues raised by "Moses und Aron" that Steiner argues that the opera, both in terms of medium and message,

"belongs to that very small group of operas which embody so radical and comprehensive an act of imagination, of dramatic and philosophic argument articulated by poetic and musical means, that there are aspects of it which go well beyond the normal analysis of an operatic score. It belongs not only to the history of modern music— in a critical way, as it exemplifies the application of Schoenberg's principles on a large, partly conventional scale— but to the history of the modern theater, of modern theology, of the relationship between Judaism and the European crisis." (40)

The work which, in some ways, is based largely on just two men, explores its theme, speculates about the nature of its god, and expands its vision, not just to cover the nation in Moses' day, but also all of their descendants and, to some extent, the whole world.
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- Batnitzky, Leora. (2001). Schoenberg's Moses Und Aron and the Judaic Ban on Images. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. 25. 73-90.

- Feisst, Sabine (2011) Schoenberg's New World: The American Years. New York: Oxford University Press

- Goldstein, Bluma (1992) Reinscribing Moses: Heine, Kafka, Freud, and Schoenberg in a European Wilderness, London: Harvard University Press.

- Opera on 3: Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron, (2014) - BBC Radio 3 programme featuring interviews with Christopher Cooke, 13 June 2014. Available online -http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p020y7jq

- Steiner, George (1965) 'Schoenberg’s “Moses und Aron”' Encounter (June), pp.40-46.

- Stuckenschmidt, Hans Heinz (1977) Schoenberg: His Life, World, and Work. Trans. Humphrey Searle. New York: Schirmer.

- Wörner, Karl H. ([1963] 1959) Schoenberg’s ‘Moses und Aron’ trans. Paul Hamburger, London: Faber and Faber.

Moses und Aron (2010)

As this is a film blog, rather than an opera blog, reviewing a filmed version of a live theatre performance of Schöenberg's opera Moses und Aron is a little outside of my normal habitat, although it's not without precedent. Nevertheless with a new version of Straub and Huillet's 1973 film being released on DVD later this month, I thought it would be useful to look at some other adaptations of a complicated piece, starting with the 2010 filmed version, directed by Willie Decker.

There has been a significant growth in films of 'live' theatre performances in recent years. Going to the cinema to join in on someone else's trip to the theatre was largely unheard of a decade or so ago, yet today it's common, if not a regular occurrence, at many cinemas. By the time these performances are recorded (even if only at the point it is committed to DVD) these have moved, to a certain extent,  from the theoretical category of a broadcast into the realm of documentary. Whilst it's perhaps more of a continuum rather than two distinct poles of "drama" and "documentary" this kind of performance is far less concerned with convincing its audience that the narrative's central characters are the people they are portraying.

In a way, this takes us back towards some of the concerns that Straub and Huillet are exploring. Both 'films' give their actors costumes and sets, without expecting their audience to be able to entirely suspend their disbelief. Interestingly, in this respect it's Decker's film, which is closer towards the documentary end of the spectrum, that utilises a more typical acting style. Lead actor, Dale Duesing, for example, does a fine job of portraying the agony Moses feels at having experienced God but lacking the necessary skills to convey it to the people he has been called to lead.

The opera was staged in Bochum's Jahrhunderthalle and Decker's opening shot gives a sense of the venue's industrial past as both an exhibition venue and, later, a compressor hall. In contrast, the staging, is innovative and modern. From first view two steeply diagonal rows of seats face each other with only a narrow "stage" between them, but as things progress the seats move back and forth to create a greater (or lesser) performance between them. The orchestra sits off to the side, oftentimes concealed and, from time to time, the camera shoots across the stage from behind them.

There are various other innovations as well, though some are hardly original, such as cast members starting the performance in their seats, the use of seats on both sides also meaning that the actors ascend both sides of aisle stairs in certain scenes. In Act I much of the action takes place within a semi-transparent box which fills the stage. It's large enough that at times the entire cast stand inside it, and dominant enough to symbolise the people of Israel's captivity in Egypt. It also forms a convenient surface on which to project the images of Moses's two miracles occurring. In stark contrast to the more minimalist treatment of these incidents in the Straub/Huillet film here they are projected to such a huge size that the psychological impact of these miracles is still the focus. They two dominate the Israelites, yet the transparency of the box's sides gives an ethereality to the images. Were they something real or imagined?

The film's other props and furniture are similarly modern, ambiguous, functional and symbolic: Moses' staff resembles, in some ways, a giant pencil and is used to draw on occasion; the golden calf is neither gold. nor particularly impressive; instead of two tablets of stone Moses drags a huge sheet with the words written on them instead (pictured above). There are few other props.

Schöenberg's second act is, perhaps, best known for its orgy scene and the four characters described simply as "four naked virgins". Here, by the end, they are hoisted on people's shoulders and smeared in blood (which looks perhaps, a little too like red corm syrup). The extend scene's function in the script is to emphasise the people's need for something more tangible in which to place their faith, and the sense of what happens when it does, but I'm not convinced how well this scene works here. Does making these images so inedible not also accuse us of the same offence? Perhaps that is the point.

As is typical of most stage versions of Schöenberg's opera his unfinished third act is omitted. This means the performance ends with Moses as something of a broken man. Despite his best efforts to communicate to his people the essence of God, in fact, arguably because of it, they have ended up in idolatry, death and mob rule. The unscored final act sees Moses seize power once again and is arguably a more subversive ending. Ending the production after two acts makes Moses seem like a victim, whose lofty ideal has failed, but who remains sympathetic. His very idea of understanding God without resorting to imagery undone by the power of the imagery of the production.

Two other filmed live versions of the opera have also been released on DVD in recent years. Reto Nickler's 2006 version, performed by the Orchestra and Chorus of the Vienna State Opera dwells on the opulence of its location in the Vienna State Opera House in its opening moments. This contrasts strongly with the appearance of Moses, Aron and the rest of the company, who are costumed in the style of European Jews attempt to escape Nazi-era Germany (as Schöenberg himself was at the point at which he was struggling to complete his opera). Francois-Rene Martin's 2014/2015 version also seeks to harness powerful imagery including huge backdrops of mountain ranges, bright white suits for some of the chorus and the presence of a lone naked woman on the DVD cover. I'm not sure Schöenberg's Moses would have approved.

La Sacra Bibbia/After Six Days (1920)

With so many silent films lost to the ages, we should be grateful even for those where the remains are only part of what was originally projected. Nevertheless, it's hard not to be a little aggrieved that the print of La Sacra Bibbia (also known as just La Bibbia) that remains is a butchered version edited down for a re-issue. Indeed Sacra Bibbia was reissued at least twice, once in 1929 (as After Six Days) at the advent of the sound era, and once as late a 1946, for which a trailer was put together boasting of a $3 million and promising a cast of 10,000. The film's publicists also made much of the film being shot at the "exact locations" though the artefacts that are shown seem more like modern re-creations than the famous landmarks themselves.

The version that remains is the 1929 version, edited down from the original and replacing the original (reference free) title cards with an earnest, but dull narration. According to Campbell and Pitts La Bibbia was released as a series of one reelers (1981: 12) and a copy of the original Joseph reel found it's way into the Joye collection and survives in the BFI's archive. The fragment (which I reviewed here) indicates some of what was lost. In addition to the intertitles, the re-issue also cropped the image, disastrously on more than a few occasions.

What remains, however, is still a testament to what was the strength of the Italian silent epic. It was in Italy that the historical epic was born (Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei, 1908) and for all the attention given to Griffith's Birth of a Nation it was Cabiria that took the epic film to a whole new level. Indeed Griffith is reputed to have admitted Cabiria inspired him to make Intolerance what it was. La Bibbia retains much of the grandeur and spectacle of those films and in its own right contains numerous shots for which it deserves to be remembered.

The film was directed by Armando Vay and Dr Piero Antonio Gariazzo. These days Gariazzo is better remembered for his commentary than his filmmaking. Bertilini only mentions him for his 1919 book Il Teatro Muto and his expression of a sentiment more widely connected with Alfred Hitchcock, "Whether they are skilled or not, film actors and actresses are like puppets" (Bertilini 2013: 259).

Unsurprisingly the acting is not particularly memorable, but the compositions and imagery are what really stand out. The earliest scenes give a sense of creation and must have inspired Huston and Dino De Laurentiis' sort-of remake in 1966. Eve appears for the first time as smoke rises from Adam's sleeping body. The two frolic in the garden before embracing and taking a bit out of the forbidden fruit almost simultaneously. Moments later a furtive Cain, dominating the foreground and shooting furious looks directly at the camera forlornly pokes his sacrifice knowing it will fail whilst in the rear of the shot, almost off camera, his brother contentedly carries on.

The brief scenes of the Ark and are unspectacular, but nevertheless the curve of the unfinished boat's hull and the struts that support it form a pleasing backdrop to shots of Noah and his family. Once the rains come in earnest, however, the images are far more disturbing. First Doré's "The Deluge" is evoked as people desperately climb on a rock hoping for salvation; then a wider shot of dead bodies piled up just above the rising waters as the rains continue to lash down; then finally a double exposure brings the camera closer to some of these, now ghostly, corpses floating away whilst the camera ploughs on in the opposite direction.

However it's the Tower of Babel that lives longest in the memory. Here's it's depicted as a towering ziggurat, so colossal that it's top disappears into the clouds off the top of even an ultra-wide shot. It both reflects and emboldens Bruegel's famous painting (1563) and Doré's engraving (1865) amongst others, soaring above the seemingly minute people milling about below. Another highlight of these opening scenes is the spectacular destruction of Sodom, as the disastrous angelic visit to Lot ends in brimstone raining down on the city in a whirl of sparks and smoke.

In contrast to these more eye-catching, spectacular scenes, the Joseph episode neatly emphasises Mrs Potiphar's obsession with him, notably the voyeuristic pleasure she finds secretly watching him. In a darkened foreground she watches him silently through a grill, briefly facing the camera as she bites her bottom lip in ecstasy. The theme of the audience watching someone watching someone else has been replayed numerous times since, another reminder of Hitchcock. When Pharaoh remembers his dreams a matte shot shows cows running above his head, before animated stalks of wheat appear. The section's use of low and high angles to reinforce the power dynamics of the courtroom scene.

Moses' appearance on the big screen here was possibly the last time before DeMille made his indelible mark two or three years later. The differences are striking. For example rather than carrying around a mighty staff, Moses' rod is more reminiscent of a magic wand. Suddenly it feels like DeMille might have been compensating for something. Moses also has horns in the style of Michelangelo's statue (1513-1515) - just one of a number of ways in which the film's portrayal resembles the famous sculpture, something DeMille made much of when promoting his 1956 remake with Charlton Heston. That said, the crossing of the Red Sea - here portrayed using a rather clumsy matte shot - is not a patch on DeMille's first attempt just a few years later.

Indeed after such a striking first half the second part of the film is less impressive. Once Moses has installed Joshua as his successor and wandered up the mountain to meet his maker, the remaining footage skips to the story of Solomon, perhaps suggesting that a scenario or two are missing here. Solomon shows his wisdom, threatens to cut a baby in half before being wowed by the Queen of Sheba in a scene full of over-the-top headdresses. Eventually he ends up a pagan orgy with her in scenes strongly reminiscent of the later Solomon and Sheba (1959).

By then, the film, or this cut of it at least, has rather lost its way and like the Hebrew Bible itself, the narrative thread rather trails off. Nevertheless, there is so much to be appreciated in the rest of the film it is a shame that it has had so little attention,  neither amongst silent cinema fans, nor amongst academics. Even if what we have is only a pale reflection of what once was, La Sacra Bibbia deserves to be better remembered.

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- Bertilini, Giogio (ed.) Silent Italian Cinema, Bloomington: Indiana University Press
- Campbell, Richard C. and Pitts, Michael R. (1981) The Bible on Film: A Checklist, 1897–1980, Metuchen, NJ, and London: Scarecrow Press.
- Gariazzo, Piero Antonio (1919) Il Teatro Muto Turin: Lattes, cited in Pitassio, Francesco (2013) Famous Actors, Famous |Actresses: Notes on Acting Style in Italian Silent Films" cited in Bertilini, Giogio (ed.) Silent Italian Cinema, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, p.259

The Prince of Egypt (1998)

It's fair to say that when DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg began dreaming up his new studio with his partners David Geffen and Steven Spielberg he would probably have been shocked to know his studio would soon become a byword for popular but unremarkable kids' films. Katzenberg already had a prominent role at Disney doing just that, but a combination of internal politics, his frustration at getting overlooked for promotion and his desire to see animation reach greater heights lead him to launch first the DreamWorks studio with Geffen and Spielberg and then to head up its animation wing.

"I didn't want us to tell fairy tales" Katzenberg explained at the time, "I wanted us to pick an interesting, dramatic, epic...embracing all the techniques of animation"¹ It was an artistic vision that Katzenberg's team on The Prince of Egypt really bought into. As Nicola LaPorte wrote in her book charting the birth of DreamWorks "for visual inspiration, the artists had studied the painterly visuals of David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, nineteenth-century illustrator Gustave Dor&eacute's Bible woodcuts and Monet".² 

As if to underline the point Thomasine Lewis was commissioned to produce a "Movie Scrapbook" for the film which devoted a two page spread just to explain the film's emotional beat board and explaining how the "selection of colours for each scene was influenced by the emotional tone of that scene". "At the movie's darkest point, when Ramsees' son is killed, the film became monochromatic".³ I wouldn't claim to be an expert in the field of 'books written to tie-in to animated movies', but I can't think of many that would even think of going behind the scenes, let alone go into them in such detail.

The result of all this thought, care, love, referencing and attention to detail is a stunning visual experience. Created at a time when traditional, hand-drawn, animation was still strong, but CGI was finally getting to the stage where it could have an impact, the film blends the two techniques to great effect. It's as if hand-drawn knew it no longer quite had the dominance of its past and CGI had not yet got too big for its boots and so was still eager to serve.

Indeed despite voices being provided by household names such as Val Kilmer (Moses), Ralph Fiennes (Ramsees) and Michelle Pfeiffer (Tzipporah), the real stars are the incredible backdrops. Richie Chavez's sweeping deserts and Darek Gogol's towering architecture make Prince of Egypt seem bigger and more splendid even than films such as DeMille's Ten Commandments, Lean's Lawrence of Arabia and Wyler's Ben Hur; all of which are given notable tributes as the film progresses. As the Israelites prepare to leave Egypt 75 minutes in, the film's catchiest song - "There Will be Miracles" - strikes up a reprise. The accompanying images, revealing the extent of destruction wrought on this once great kingdom, flick by. Each "scene" lasts only a few seconds but many are so immense in scope that no live action filmmaker would dare to attempt them. In one sixty second section alone there are thirteen shots, many of previously magnificent structures now brought low. The cost of producing the sets for just one of these shots with live action - let alone all of them - would be impossible to justify for the brief few seconds for which they flicker across the screen.

Gogol's work is particularly notable for the way his dominating architecture is so interconnected with the Egyptian psyche. The Egyptian's all encompassing self-belief reflected in stone and marble, physically towering over the slaves building it, as if as an expression of their masters' systematic dominance. At times both Ramsees and his father Seti unknowingly match the shapes and poses of the art that both surrounds and honours them (see above). All of which forms a startlingly contrast with Chavez's more expressionistic mountains and deserts.

Yet the most celebrated sequence in the film takes place inside, as Moses' world begins to unravel with the sudden revelation that he is a Hebrew saved from the very man he had come to call father. The moving hieroglyphics scene is repeated in Prince of Egypt's prequel Joseph King of Dreams but it is not a patch on the original. Here, there's a combination of drama, inventiveness and technical mastery as the story hurries from one surface to another, simultaneously providing an objective account of the events that happened in the past alongside a subjective account of what Moses is feeling at that very moment. And then the the two threads merge as Seti coincidentally appears at Moses' side to offer an unconvincing justification which morphs into Hitchcockian strings and the camera fading to black.

What is also impressive is the way the "camera" thinks like a real camera, occasionally leaving part of the shot out of focus, or placing certain objects or characters on the edge of the frame. There are zooms and shifts in the depth of focus all of which make the images feel like they are more real than they actually are. The burning bush is first observed by the shadows and flickers it casts upon the cave wall and only then do we get the slow pan right to reveal the thing itself.

Indeed what's strange is that the weakest part of the visuals is the part that the team seemed most excited about at the time - the special effects. The burning bush, for example, becomes less interesting once it is actually appear in shot. The attempt to make the parting of the Red Sea extra dramatic results in it being over-the-top, a little too showy; likewise the pillar of fire. The plagues are a bit of a mix also. Generally they are carried out effectively - the use of fast cuts and short shots adds to the impression of terror - and generally the Angel of Death scene is eerily unnerving, but not dissimilarly the odd moment feels over fussy.

But that's a minor criticism, even less so when you consider how badly much CGI from the era has aged. Which is just as well as The Prince of Egypt does rely on its visuals to carry a lot of the plot and themes, from the way the camera moves through the mists upto the giant carved face of Pharaoh at the start, through to the various montages that accompany the musical numbers. Indeed, due to the film's relatively short running time (88 minutes, compared to 150 minutes for Exodus: Gods and Kings and 220 minutes for The Ten Commandments) these montages carry considerable weight, making the film feel like less of a musical than most of Disney's output (though more, obviously, than the majority of Moses films).

The film breaks with The Ten Commandments in other significant ways too, particularly in its portrayal of the two princes. Whilst both films contrast Moses with his 'brother' Ramsees, their characters are very different. In DeMille's film, even as an Egyptian, Moses is upright and honourable, whereas his brother is proud, arrogant and scheming. Here however, whilst both brothers are prone to bouts of teenage irresponsibility, Ramsees' problem is his worry and self doubt. As heir to the throne, his father repeatedly reminds him that he is a link in a chain going back centuries. Ramsees is weighed down by his fear of being the Pharaoh who lets his ancestors down and sees Egypt slide into ruin. It's a bitter irony that it's this fear of failure that leads him down the very path he is so desperate to avoid.

In contrast, Moses is the carefree playboy, getting his brother into trouble. When he tells Ramsees that is problem is that he "care(s) too much" his brother counters "your problem is that you don't care at all". It's not that Moses is callous - life simply hasn't exposed him to suffering. However things change for him when, in his desire to be the centre of attention, he humiliates the women who will eventually become his future wife. He laughs uproariously, but then he notices the effect his loutish behaviour has had on his victim and he's struck by a sudden pang of guilt. Moses is a hedonistic playboy with a heart. His killing of the Egyptian (above) is an accident - again the result of him witnessing a kind of suffering with which he is totally unfamiliar.⁵ As he later reflects "I did not see because I did not wish to see".

Given the degree of personal transformation Moses undergoes after his encounters with Tzipporah and Miriam, it's perhaps no wonder that the Bible's own moment of Moses' conversion is rather truncated. God commissions him and then gets angry with him for failing to grasp the point is what ends up being a few seconds. Pretty quickly, then, Moses is back in Egypt warning his much-missed brother, outsmarting lightly-entertaining priests, dispatching plagues and leading his people to freedom. The sea parts and the people go through, taking a smattering of Egyptians with them, and the film ends with Moses standing above a huge crowd nursing a couple of stone tablets. It perhaps feels a little rushed, yet, like so many of the shots that have preceded it, it is nonetheless an indelibly majestic image.

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1 - Katzenberg from Making of documentary on DVD.
2 - "The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks.", Nicole LaPorte p.116
3 - Thomasine Lewis, "The Prince of Egypt: The Movie Scrapbook - An in-depth look behind the scenes" pgs 32-33
4 - As my 7 year old son put it "you don't have to get so angry".
5 - Perhaps it's just the way my DVD player works but it you watch this in slow motion the falling Egyptian goes up instead of down, allowing the "fall" to take longer. Again the contrast of the shots from below and the overhead shot from above is particularly effective.