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Run-of-De Mille Pictures
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Sohrab Ardeshir
Film-going audiences through the ages have always been fascinated
with ‘‘the Spectacle’’. There is something
vastly appealing, albeit ghoulish, in seeing hundreds of extras
being thrown to the lions in an arena, frying on the top floor
of a blazing skyscraper or plunging to their doom in a disabled
aircraft.
Hollywood,
ever-ready to give the public what is wanted, obliging churned
out large numbers of big-screen epics, ranging from the sublime
to the ridiculous.The more classical ones, like Spartacus,
El Cid and Lawrence of Arabia, succeeded in achieving a certain
dignity and grandeur. But in the 70’s, when spectacles
started losing their appeal for the increasingly youthful
film audiences, producers began churning out large-scale ‘disaster’
films, like Airport, The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon
Adventure with impressive visuals, but inane stories.
A rare
exception was Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which
managed to impress the highbrows and the masses. Within a
few years, sci-fi spectacles had become the rage. From the
’70s onwards, films like the Star Wars trilogy, Alien
and the Terminator series broke all box-office records.
Initially,
dialogue was something of a problem for Hollywood’s epic-makers.
What kind of voice did an ancient Pharaoh have? What kind
of English sounded convincing coming from the mouth of Cleopatra,
Samson or Noah? Some producers settled for mock-serious conversations
in their films, which ranged from tongue-in-cheek to outright
absurd.
‘‘It’s
strange to see you working,’’ Cleopatra (Claudette
Colbert) tells Caesar (Warren Williams) in De Mille’s
1934 epic about the Queen of the Nile. ‘‘I’ve
always figured you either fighting... or loving.’’
‘‘I’ve had experience with fighting,’’
says Caesar coyly. ‘‘But not with loving?’’
asks Cleopatra. ‘‘Not with pretty little Queens!’’
Caesar tells her. In The Ten Commandments (1956), Anne Baxter
exclaims: ‘‘Oh Moses, you splendid, stubborn, adorable
fool!’’
However,
some Hollywood spectacle makers took quite seriously the challenge
of making heroic figures talk nobly, but naturally, in their
films. They came to the conclusion that, on the whole, British
performers did better hoity-toity talk than their home-grown
performers. An exception was Charlton Heston, who handled
epic talk with ease and confidence. Directors soon learnt
that the trick was to keep conversation to a minimum in films
about the ancient world. In epic movies it was dramatic action,
and not dialogue, that counted.
The name
most commonly associated with epic films is perhaps Cecil
B De Mille. The public adored his films, and the critics panned
them. They acknowledged that his biblical spectacles did famously
at the box-office, but they deplored his poor taste and blatant
sexploitation. Accused of making money out of nudity, especially
in his biblical films, he would say, ‘‘I didn’t
write the Bible and I didn’t create sin.’’
In 1922,
De Mille offered $1000 for the best idea for his next picture.
He received thousands of letters from around the world, but
liked best a short note that read: ‘‘You cannot
break the Ten Commandments they will break you.’’
He settled on The Ten Commandments as the title of his next
film.
In one
of the film’s most important scenes, Moses descends from
Mount Sinai with the sacred tablets and the Israelis gathered
at the base of the mountain look at him with awe and reverence.
De Mille shot the scene several times, but was so disappointed
with the expressions on their faces that he finally called
a break. Suddenly a bell in a nearby church started tolling.
De Mille quickly gathered the cast together and announced
that a cast member had died, leaving behind a widow and a
eight children. He asked for two minutes’ silence. As
everyone stood there, shocked and saddened, the cameras began
grinding away. It was a complete hoax, but the resulting scene
was considered one of the film’s high points.
De Mille
hired lions for The Sign of the Cross. In one scene they were
to run up some stairs and attack the Christian martyrs. When
the time came to film the scene, the lions lazily lay down
near the steps instead of running up them. De Mille, unsatisfied
with the trainers’ unsuccessful attempts to rouse the
lions, himself grabbed a chair in one hand and a stick in
the other, and continued to lunge at the lions till they reluctantly
performed. According to De Mille’s grandson, if you listen
closely to the film’s soundtrack, you can hear his grandfather
in the background yelling, ‘‘Damn it, get going!’’
The lions
got going all right, but they got even too. In the arena sequence,
when the trainers were goading them into action, several young
males casually left their mark on some of the players. ‘‘This
is an outrage!’’ thundered De Mille. ‘‘Those
goddamned lions of yours are urinating on my Christian martyrs!’’
Sohrab
Ardeshir is a theatre actor, (sardeshir@yahoo.com)
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