The Ten Commandments – 1956 (WINNER)
The Ten Commandments was a tour de force of amazing special effects. This movie gave audiences things they had never seen before and some of them hole up pretty well, even by today’s standards. Granted, not all the visual effects were perfect. After all, this movie came out in 1956. There was no CGI, so everything was done with practical effects. But despite some obvious imperfections, that was the very thing that made the effects so utterly amazing!
The visual effects’ biggest failings was really only two things. First was some of the blue screening effects. There were several scenes in which it was a problem, but the one that sticks out in my mind was when Moses is showing the Pharaoh the building of the city of Goshen. There are actual black lines surrounding the actors when they are looking out over the balcony. There is also a black line outlining the giant statue being moved below them. My second complaint is the scene where the staffs are turned into snakes. That effect looked pretty bad, especially compared to the awesome effects in the rest of the film.
There was the burning bush, the turning of the river into blood, the burning hailstones falling from the sky, the angel of death, the pillar of fire, the parting of the Red Sea, the hand of God burning the words of the Ten Commandments onto the stone tablets, the destruction of the golden calf. All that, and the scale of the visuals were phenomenal, enhanced by perfect matte paintings.
There were so many scenes in which the film’s director, Cecil B. DeMille, clearly spared no expense to create his grand vision of the Biblical epic, from the gigantic sets to the fourteen thousand extras, from the grand score by Elmer Bernstein to the elaborate and opulent costumes by Edith Head. Everything was done on a massive scale and it all combined to make some pretty unforgettable visuals.
But the movie’s biggest draw, its most memorable special effect, was the parting of the Red Sea. To quote Wikipedia, “The parting of the Red Sea was considered the most difficult special effect ever performed up to that time. This effect took about six months of VistaVision filming, and combined scenes shot on the shores of the Red Sea in Egypt, with scenes filmed at Paramount Studios in Hollywood.” It really is very impressive, compositing so many screen elements to make the effect look as fantastic as possible. Pure magic!
But for my money, the creation of the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments was just as impressive and just as memorable. Sure, the pillar of fire was clearly hand animated, as it had been earlier when it had defended the Israelites from Pharaoh’s armies, but for 1956, it was a spectacular visual effect. DeMille really blew the competition away with this cinematic masterpiece!