Trying to ‘out De Mille De Mille,’ specifically THE TEN COMMANDMENTS/’23*, young Warners exec Darryl F. Zanuck tethered Old Testament Noah to a modern WWI story. But where C.B. front-loaded his Biblical story against a modern tale of architect brothers, Zanuck opens with WWI, then goes back to The Flood. Showmanship! Originality! (Even a tie-in novelization - see poster.) And for good measure, steals iconic bits from Moses & Samson to beef up the narrative. Then sound came in and Zanuck added a few awkward Talkie sequences to stay au courant. (A brief speaking appearance from a remarkably assured Myrna Loy; cataclysmic sound effects; mix-and-match classical music score.) Luckily, this unpalatable hodgepodge gets lux treatment from supercharged director Michael Curtiz, his fourth film with Dolores Costello, German love interest to American soldier boy George O’Brien in WWI/Noah’s daughter-in-law married to O’Brien in the second half. It’s all pretty ludicrous, pure Hollywood hubris, and a great flop at the time. Yet unmissable when seen in the UCLA 2006 restoration out on Warners Archive.
DOUBLE-BILL: *De Mille’s concurrent biblical pageant, KING OF KINGS/’27, skips the modern parallel storyline. Stick with Zanuck’s template, De Mille's 1923 TEN COMMANDMENTS, with C.B. near his best.
No comments:
Post a Comment