Who better to direct a new Hollywood epic on the life on Moses than Steven Spielberg?
Deadline.com reports that Spielberg has read the script for Gods and Kings, written by Michael Green and Stuart Hazeldine—and that Warner Bros wants him for the job.
There’s something instantly appealing about the thought of Spielberg directing Hollywood’s first major live-action take on Moses’ story since Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 crowning achievement, The Ten Commandments.
Spielberg’s career as a filmmaker owes a great deal to DeMille. In fact, the first film Spielberg ever saw, at the age of seven, was Cecil B. DeMille’s penultimate picture, and the movie that made Charlton Heston a star, the Academy Award-winning The Greatest Show on Earth.
It was a portentous convergence in many ways. DeMille’s long career of popular success had been a Barnumesque pursuit of showmanship and spectacle on a grand scale, and the DeMille film set Spielberg on a similar course of Hollywood showmanship. Spielberg wasn’t just bitten by the movie bug. He was inspired to make grand spectacles and popular entertainments, openly playing to audience emotions in a way that courted the same critical charges of sentimentalism leveled against DeMille.
Like DeMille, Spielberg has enjoyed extraordinary popular success over multiple decades working in a variety of genres. Although DeMille was never a devout Episcopalian, he valued his religious heritage, and had an ecumenical belief in religion as such that comes through in his films. Spielberg likewise has never been a very observant Jew, but has come to identify with his Jewish roots (most notably in Schindler’s List and the Shoah Foundation project), and a certain ecumenical openness crops up here and there in his work (most notably the use of the Gospel story in Amistad).
Spielberg’s films include a number of homages to DeMille and signs of specific influences:
- DeMille’s The Ten Commandments is seen on TV in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
- The Greatest Show on Earth includes a spectacular circus train wreck that young Steven Spielberg emulated in his earliest home movies shooting model train wrecks with his father’s 8mm camera. Young Indiana Jones encounters a circus train in the prologue to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This summer’s Super 8, produced by Spielberg, includes an over-the-top train wreck set piece (as well as boys filming model train accidents with a father’s camera).
- In The Ten Commandments, DeMille uses billowing clouds over the Red Sea and Mount Horeb to evoke the presence of God. Spielberg uses similar billowing cloud effects over the Well of Souls in Raiders of the Lost Ark and over the climactic opening of the ark. Similar billowing clouds appear over the mountain in Close Encounters where men encounter visitors from heaven, though not divine ones.
- In a related but distinct image, in The Ten Commandments DeMille depicts the heavenly Passover destroyer as an eerie mist creeping along the ground. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spielberg portrays the destroying powers issuing from the ark of the covenant with wispy, vaporous effects. DreamWorks Animation’s The Prince of Egypt synthesizes the two, using vaporous manifestations issuing from heaven to depict the Passover destroyer.
- DeMille’s pillar of fire in The Ten Commandments is also echoed in both Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Prince of Egypt.
Spielberg has already broached the Moses story once or twice, most notably in Raiders of the Lost Ark, which refers to the Moses story as the basis for the supernatural artifact that drives the action, and also in The Prince of Egypt, which he did not produce but was still involved in. DreamWorks’ strategy of soliciting input from religious leaders of various religions—Christian, Jewish and Muslim—parallels DeMille’s strategy in developing various religious epics, including The Ten Commandments.
A Moses story is the sort of project that could possibly inspire and challenge Spielberg to strive for a crowning achievement comparable to The Ten Commandments in DeMille’s career.
Certainly he would want to bring an authentically Jewish sensibility to the story—in contrast DeMille’s opus, which, while respectful of Judaism, has been called “the most goyishe Jewish film ever created.”
At the same time, Spielberg would probably wish, as with The Prince of Egypt, to respect Christian as well as Muslim attachments to the story. It would probably stick closer to the biblical narrative than DeMille’s film, though like any film it would also be a product of its own time and place.
A successful Spielberg-directed Moses story could be a cultural landmark of immense significance. It could have an impact on a scale similar to The Passion of the Christ, but without the polarizing controversy. It could give a fundamental biblical story new currency for generations to come. Like DeMille’s film, it might even help renew awareness of the Ten Commandments and the foundational role of the Judeo-Christian heritage in Western civilization.
Of course there’s no guarantee that it would do any of these things. Depending on the screenplay (I have no idea what it looks like) and how Spielberg handles it, it could be terrible. Even on a best case scenario, it seems likely that there would be at least some drawbacks, and that caveats of some sort or other will be necessary.
Still, the prospect of Spielberg directing a Moses story is one of the most immediately inspiring proposals I’ve heard in some time.
Mr. Spielberg, please sign. So let it be written, so let it be done!
* * *
P.S. What do you think of this idea? What are your favorite DeMille or Spielberg films? What is your favorite cinematic take on the Moses story so far?
Comments
Post a Comment
There are so many great stories in the BIble that would make awesome big-budget movies. If they were faithful to the Bible, they would have a HUGE audience just like Passion of the Christ. WHY does Hollywood not get that? I would love to see a faithful, big budget special effect Noah story (lets not even talk about other supposed attempts to do Noah).
There are great stories in the Bible, but not many with a cultural cache and dramatic power in a league comparable to the Passion story. The story of Moses and the Exodus is one of the few in that league.
The story of Noah and the flood would make an interesting challenge, but a filmmaker of sufficient imagination and inspiration might make a go of it. One thing’s for sure: You would need to take a lot of creative license to make a good movie out of the Noah story.
The Nativity Story is a nice film and reasonably faithful to the infancy narratives, but it lacks the imaginative power and dramatic energy that makes for compelling cinema. What excites me about Spielberg doing Moses and the Exodus is that he’s a great filmmaker and I think he’s unlikely to do this story unless he can make a great film.
They should make a trilogy movie called “Kings.” First movie is about Saul, the second about David, and the third about Solomon. The can use the Books of Samuel,Kings, and Chronicles. There is so much drama between these men and God, and these men and their people, it should be a blockbuster. But of course, these movies will have to be 3 hours long.
Just so long as the Ark of the Covenant still melts people’s faces…
Victor: That isn’t until the sequel set at the dawn of the Davidic era. First the ark falls into the hands of the Philistines, who put it in their temple before the idol of Dagon. But then David topples the statue in order to bust out of the temple wall.
Then when the priests of Dagon open the ark, they start catching fire and exploding and stuff, so they put the ark on a cart and try to move it to an undisclosed location. But David catches up to the cart, slides underneath it, hangs from behind by his slingshot, and captures the ark, bringing it back to Jerusalem. But then the cart tips and the ark almost falls, and that’s when poor Uzzah’s face melts off when he puts out his hand to steady it.
Then David is afraid of the ark, and puts it in a box and hides it with a lot of other things in the Well of Souls.
“Who better to direct a new Hollywood epic on the life on Moses than Steven Spielberg?”
I would say, just about anybody, as long as they are not currently directing films in Hollywood. That this poster boy for arrested development is even still making films is one of life’s great mysteries.
I like it, @SDG! But instead of a slingshot, can David have a more updated version, like a hookshot—part claw, part grappling hook with barbs on the ends of the hooks—attached to a cable and shot from a steampunk-esque spring-loaded prosthetic arm-type appliance. This claw can also grab people’s heads, and then it can retract really quickly. If we can also work in something like “Give me some sugar, Bathy” when he meets Bathsheba, I think we’ll have a hit when we show the trailer at Comic-Con.
Oh, and we also need giant ants… And saucer men from mars. No one will take the Ten Commandments sequel seriously without them.
Dan: You have something against arrested development, friend?
No, seriously, while Spielberg can do gritty, grown-up fare like MUNICH, I think his best films are his most wide-eyed—and this project could conceivably bring out the best of all Spielbergs. Anyway, I’d love to see him take it on.
Victor: Giant ants are so 1950s. Have you seen what they can do with CGI locusts these days?
As for saucer men from Mars, I think all credible authorities agree they don’t hold a candle to saucer women from Mars.
I can’t think of a director other than Spielberg to direct a new film on Moses’ life. Scorsese and the Coens tend to be too dark, and don’t always respect all faiths. Christopher Nolan probably has the talent, but a Biblical epic wouldn’t suit his film noir style. Possibly Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings and even King Kong proved that he has the talent for grand, epic films, even if most of his other films are misfires.
And my favorite Spielberg films are Schindler’s List, Jaws, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
My favorite Ten Commandments film is the 1956 DeMille version.
I thought Darren Aronofsky wanted to do a Noah movie?
Also, I can’t believe they haven’t made a film about Judas Maccabee, one of the manliest rebels in history.
Umberto,
Mel Gibson and Joe Eszterhas are working on it.
I would welcome a new version although I love the De Mille one mainly because of Charlton Heston. Hopefully Spielberg’s version could be more in align with the Bible. Didn’t Moses ‘stutter” and his brother Aaron have to actually speak to the Pharoh?
I believe Spielberg would make a great movie out of this, if he sill stayed close to the story. His special affects would probably rival those of De Mille, and I bet he could make the scene of the Red Sea more believable.
Hopefully too, he can get some great actors that could portray Moses and Aaron as well as the Pharoh and eliminate the love scenes Moses had. We certainly need these movies now!
Did someone say “saucy women from Mars”? Do you have a URL for that??
Elise: Looks like someone agrees with you about the Noah’s ark story potentially making a great movie: Darren Aronofsky, director of Black Swan. He’s got a Noah’s ark movie project in the works.
The story quotes him thusly:
He sounds serious. This could be interesting. That’s three different biblical stories in Hollywood development: Noah’s Ark, Moses and the Maccabean war, which actually is actually being developed by TWO rival projects. Could we be witnessing the Biblical epic become a viable genre again?
One of my favorite biblically-based fiction novels was on the life of Elijah (and Elisha).
Talk about drama!
Fire from heaven, Jezebel, et al!!
I really want to see this epic made.
As far as I know it’s never been done.
“Spielberg’s films include a number of homages to DeMille and signs of specific influences:”
At the beginning of The Ten Commandments we see the Paramount logo, with Mt. Sinai replacing the standard Paramount mountain. I’ve always suspected this inspired Spielberg to have the Paramount logo at the beginning of each of the Indiana Jones movies morph into various mountains.
<a >buy tramadol</a> tramadol ibuprofen - tramadol many get high
If you have heel or leg pain a set of shoe lifts might be just what you need to discover some relief
http://www.best-of-robotics.org/1st_researchcamp/MyrnaJlg
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give The National Catholic Register permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.