Forgotten Commandments

1932's "Forgotten Commandments" is a 65 minute Paramount production utilizing 21 minutes of footage from Cecil B. DeMille's 1923 silent version of "The Ten Commandments," complete with subtitles, although the two thirds of new footage is done like a regular sound film. Set in modern Russia, which emphasizes the state over family (many portraits of Stalin are clearly seen on the walls), and starring Gene Raymond as happily married Paul Ossipoff, who is gradually lured away from his loving wife Marya (Marguerite Churchill) by seductive temptress Anya Sorina (top billed Sari Maritza). Paul is the new assistant for Prof. Marinoff (Irving Pichel), a firm believer in the state over the individual, who nonetheless becomes typically jealous once he learns that his beautiful Anya refuses to be faithful to him. The silent footage of Moses leading his people from Egyptian bondage is used in the sequence of an elderly priest (Harry Beresford) relating the story to a group of children unfamiliar with the Bible. It was a good idea for DeMille to do the 1956 remake, as none of the actors in the silent version can hold a candle to Charlton Heston or Yul Brynner, but the parting of the Red Sea is impressive for 1923. Early roles for many familiar faces, such as Kent Taylor, in one late scene as another assistant of Marinoff's, Edward Van Sloan as a doctor, Joe Sawyer as a new recruit, and a teenage Sidney Miller as one of the students listening to the tale of Moses. Van Sloan, Marguerite Churchill, and Irving Pichel would all work together again in 1936's "Dracula's Daughter" at Universal. In only his fourth feature film is 26 year old John Carradine, unbilled as he usually was at the time, in the kind of Orator part that first brought him to the attention of Cecil B. DeMille, throwing back his long hair as he speaks passionately about the workers and the state, right in the very first scene. Decades later, Carradine, Gene Raymond, and Kent Taylor would all be reduced to working for schlock huckster Al Adamson, while a second billed Carradine would be joined by a much older Sidney Miller in Woody Allen's episodic "Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask" (1972). In another curious irony of casting, Carradine would be a part of DeMille's 1956 remake of "The Ten Commandments," playing Aaron, brother of Moses, here played by James Neill, who had already died in 1931, one year before this feature saw release (Theodore Roberts, who played Moses, passed on in 1928).