"Cecil B. De Mille was, of course, fond enough of this title to use it again for his 1956 epic. But don't let expectations based on the fifties version prejudice this much odder and relatively intimate film. The silent version opens with four ponderous but spectacular reels-with the expected cast-of-thousands and still-breathtaking special effects-about the ordeal of Moses under the dominion of the Pharaoh but with a vengeful Old Testament God on his side. But just as we settle into the Holy Land, the scene shifts to (of all unholy places) Jazz-Age San Francisco, where a devout mom copes with her sharpie son Rod La Rocque, who's keen on breaking every Commandment. Good-brother and romantic rival, the carpenter Richard Dix warns (in what must surely be one of the great silent intertitles), 'Laugh at the Ten Commandments all you want Danny, but they pack an awful wallop.' 'Deed they do, 'deed they do. Before too long San Francisco cathedrals are collapsing, earthquake or no. The moralism of the film was just what Paramount needed after the series of scandals centering on its stars and directors that had led to the formation of the Hays office the year before, but the preaching here is tolerably restrained. There's no denying that, at nearly three hours, the plotline and pacing are a mess, and that the modern tale too has its weighty, ludicrous side. (Wait for Nita Naldi as the 'beautiful woman from the Molakai Leper Island.') Still, taken in a spirit lighter than the film, it's a lot of fun." Scott Simmon