DeMille's movies are barnstormers, rooted in Victorian theatre, shamelessly stereotyped and sentimental, but eagerly courting twentieth-century permissiveness, if only solemnly to condemn it.
--David Thomson
Before Alfred Hitchcock became one of the few directors people knew by name the only other ones people might know were Cecil B. DeMille and, possibly, D,W. Griffith; DeMille was known because of his radio show (Lux Radio Theatre) just as Hitchcock was for his TV show. Few people today know (or care) about DeMille's films, especially his more than eighty silent films. Many of these early films capture the moods of their time:
Male and Female,
Don't Change Your Husband,
For Better For Worse (all from 1919), while others express DeMille's passion for biblical epics:
The Ten Commandments(1923) and
King of Kings (1927),
King of Kings was recently shown on Turner Classic Movies and it is a beautiful film, with the opening in Mary Magdalena's boudoir and the ending of Christ rising from the dead in gorgeous two-strip technicolor. H. B. Warner is a serene, self-assured Jesus, often shown in double-exposure among the people and shot in glowing light by cinematographer J. Peverell Marley. The title cards are almost exclusively quotes from the King James version of the bible and the images show considerable influence from painters, particularly in the crucifixion scenes (Dore and Rubens, among others). DeMille adds to our literary and visual knowledge of the Christ story with a passionate devotion to the moving images, full of compositions of light and shadow.
No comments:
Post a Comment