Feature
Scandals, Sandals & Biblical Epics
The Dramatic Life, Faith & Films of Cecil B. DeMille
In case you haven't noticed, Tinseltown is turning out biblical films on a scale not seen since the 1950s. With the showings of Noah, Heaven Is for Real, Son of God, God's Not Dead, Left Behind, Exodus, and Mary, Mother of Christ, 2014 has been called the "year of the biblical movie." It is a genre and trend traceable to the cinematic influence of Cecil B. DeMille.
Box office hits like Quo Vadis (1951), The Robe (1953), and Ben-Hur (1959) made the fifties a golden era for the biblical epic. But it was DeMille's Samson and Delilah, the number-one moneymaking movie of 1949, that launched the era, and his Ten Commandments (1956) influenced filmmaking well into the next decade, which saw the release of The Story of Ruth (1960), King of Kings (1961), and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).
A Filmmaker's Filmmaker
Arguably the most successful filmmaker of his time, Cecil B. DeMille made over seventy movies in a forty-year career that began long before the "talkies."
Wearing his signature outfit of jodhpurs, knee boots, riding crop, and sometimes side arm (for snake protection, he claimed), C. B., as he was known in the industry, directed "casts of thousands" on elaborate sets that were trendsetting for their authenticity and grandiose scale.
Because he began in the early days of motion pictures, over fifty of DeMille's films are silent, and nearly sixty are "pre-code" (i.e., pre-1934). Fans who remember him for his biblical epics may be surprised to learn that many of his pre-code films contain much that is salacious and anachronistic. Even Sign of the Cross (1932), a love story set in the early Christian era, includes nudity, sexual images, and an orgy complete with a lesbian dance.
DeMille made the first of his seven religious-themed films in 1920. Something to Think About starred Gloria Swanson as a woman who, through the religious faith of a housekeeper, is motivated to honor a promise she made to a handicapped suitor. His last religious film, The Ten Commandments, was the most spectacular, most critically acclaimed, and highest-grossing picture of his long, illustrious career.
A filmmaker's filmmaker, DeMille's body of work is a testament to his ambition, creativity, and skill. But it is also evidence—or, perhaps, a product—of a certain tension between the faith he professed and the life he lived.
Spiritual Formation
In his book, Cecil B. DeMille—A Biography of the Most Successful Film Maker of Them All, film critic and biographer Charles Higham peels back the -Barnum-esque patina of his subject to reveal a man of uncommon complexity. Higham had access to all of the filmmaker's correspondence, notebooks, and other historical documents—courtesy of DeMille's daughter, Cecilia Harper—and conducted interviews with dozens of friends and colleagues. What he found was that under the skin of egotism, arrogance, and ruthless self-promotion was "a devout believer in the Bible who saw himself in a missionary role, making the Scriptures attractive and fascinating to the masses in an age of increasing materialism and heathenism."
Regis Nicoll is a retired nuclear engineer and physicist who is a Colson Center Fellow and Christian commentator. He currently writes for BreakPoint, Crosswalk, and Salvo magazine, and serves as the lay pastor of an Anglican church plant in Chattanooga (www.hamiltonaf.org).
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