Please forgive the rather lame gag in the title. Those familiar with late nineteenth-century nonsense poems, not to mention classic musical Singin’ in the Rain will doubtless roll their eyes, but I couldn’t resist. In fact, on the doozy front, Moses supposes erroneously regarding one of the films I’m about to discuss, but I’ll come to that in a moment.
Since today is Passover, it seemed an opportune time to write about the most significant Moses movies in motion picture history. The epic Old Testament tale of a man called by God to free his people from Egyptian slavery has been told many times in cinematic and televisual form, from early silents such as Cecil B De Mille’s first version of The Ten Commandments (1923) to British/Italian TV series Moses the Lawgiver (1973), which starred Burt Lancaster. The account of Moses, found in the book of Exodus, is a fantastic story ripe for visual retelling. Understandably, it became a cinematic staple over the last century.
Here then are the three most well-known celluloid renderings, each taking a rather different angle. It should be noted that none of these are biblically accurate in the truest sense, as the account in Exodus contains a number of bizarre, baffling elements often overlooked by filmmakers. This is fair enough, because quite honestly who can make head or tail of the bit when God, having already sent Moses to Egypt to free the Hebrews, meets him in the desert on the way, intending to kill him. Then his wife Zipporah quickly circumcises their son and touches Moses’s feet with the foreskin, which apparently changes God’s mind. Er… OK.
Many theologians have attempted to explain this (and other) inexplicable incidents in the Moses narrative, but I’m still none the wiser. On top of this, filmmakers often add their own extra-biblical elements, as is apparent in all three of the following films.
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