Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:13:38.908Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

God's Law and the Wide Screen: The Ten Commandments as Cold War “Epic”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Alan Nadel
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Cecil B. deMille's Ten Commandments can be read as a major product of American cold war ideology, highlighting and localizing the foci of America's political, theological, and economic conflicts. The apparatus of wide-screen technology resolves these conflicts visually by mediating a series of gazes in an economy that equates God's perspective with American interests during the cold war and those interests with the rigidity of gender roles, the commodification of women, the representation of “true” Jews as proto-Christians, and the reclamation of the Middle East as legitimately within the American (Christian) sphere of influence. In making “truth” and “freedom” contingent on Christian doctrine, deMille distinguishes himself from the filmmakers investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and, as the son of a would-be minister turned playwright, he also redeems himself for being a maker of false images by suggesting that the supplementary status of film can allow the true representation of God's Word.

Type
Cluster: Readings of Narrative, 1937-87
Information
PMLA , Volume 108 , Issue 3 , May 1993 , pp. 415 - 430
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Bazin, André What Is Cinema? Trans. Gray, Hugh. Berkeley: U of California P, 1967.Google Scholar
Blanshard, Paul God and Man in Washington. Boston: Beacon, 1960.Google Scholar
Bordwell, David, Staiger, Janet, and Thompson, Kristin The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Carter, Paul Another Part of the Fifties. New York: Columbia UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Ceplair, Larry, and Englund, Steven The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–1960. Garden City: Anchor-Doubleday, 1980.Google Scholar
Charity, A. C Events and Their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and Dante. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1966.Google Scholar
Danielou, Jean From Shadows to Reality: Studies in the Biblical Typology of the Fathers. Trans. Hibberd, Wulstan. London: Bums, 1960.Google Scholar
Davies, W. D The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1964.Google Scholar
Dayan, Daniel “The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema.” Movies and Methods. Ed. Nichols, Bill. Berkeley: U of California P, 1976. 438–43.Google Scholar
de Certeau, Michel Heterologies: Discourse on the Other. Trans. Massumi, Brian. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986.Google Scholar
de Lauretis, Teresa Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
deMille, Cecil B The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille. Ed. Hayne, Donald. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1959.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques “Plato's Pharmacy.” Dissemination. Trans. Johnson, Barbara. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981. 61–171.Google Scholar
Dowdy, Andrew The Films of the Fifties: The American State of Mind. New York: Morrow, 1975.Google Scholar
Edwards, Anne The DeMilles: An American Family. New York: Abrams, 1988.Google Scholar
Erins, Patricia The Jew in American Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Farnham, Marynia, and Lundberg, Ferdinand Modern Woman: The Lost Sex. New York: Harper, 1947.Google Scholar
Fiedler, Leslie “Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey.” Partisan Review 15 (1948): 664–66.Google Scholar
Fiedler, Leslie Love and Death in the American Novel. New York: Dell, 1960.Google Scholar
Friedan, Betty The Feminine Mystique. New York: Norton, 1963.Google Scholar
Froula, Christine “When Eve Reads Milton: Undoing the Canonical Economy.” Critical Inquiry 10 (1983): 321–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gabler, Neal An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. New York: Crown, 1988.Google Scholar
Gaddis, John Lewis Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. New York: Oxford, 1982.Google Scholar
Gati, Charles, ed Caging the Bear: Containment and the Cold War. New York: Bobbs, 1974.Google Scholar
Gilbert, James Another Chance: Postwar America, 1945–1968. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Gilman, Sander Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Glasson, T. Francis Moses in the Fourth Gospel. Naperville: Allenson, 1963.Google Scholar
Gordon, Tamar Inventing Mormon Identity in Tonga. Diss. U of California, Berkeley, 1988.Google Scholar
Heath, Stephen Questions of Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1981.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herberg, Will Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology. Garden City: Anchor-Doubleday, 1960.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Kennan, George “The Sources of Soviet Conduct.” Gati 9–24.Google Scholar
Koury, Philip A Yes Mr. DeMille. New York: Putnam's, 1959.Google Scholar
Mailer, Norman “The White Negro.” Advertisements for Myself. New York: Putnam, 1959. 337–33.Google Scholar
Marsh, John The Fulness of Time. London: Nisbet, 1952.Google Scholar
Marty, Martin E The New Shape of American Religion. New York: Harper, 1959.Google Scholar
Mason, Joseph B History of Housing in the U.S. 1930–1980. Houston: Gulf, 1982.Google Scholar
May, Elaine Tyler Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York: Basic, 1988.Google Scholar
May, Lary Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983.Google Scholar
Miller, Douglas T., and Nowak, Marion The Fifties: The Way We Really Were. New York: Doubleday, 1977.Google Scholar
Mulvey, Laura “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16.3 (1975): 6–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nadel, Alan “Rhetoric, Sanity, and the Cold War: The Significance of Holden Caulfield's Testimony.” Centennial Review 32 (1988): 351–35.Google Scholar
Navasky, Victor Naming Names. New York: Viking, 1980.Google Scholar
Nichols, Bill Ideology and the Image: Social Representation in the Cinema and Other Media. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Noerdlinger, Henry S Moses and Egypt: The Documentation to the Motion Picture The Ten Commandments. Los Angeles: U of Southern California P, 1956.Google Scholar
Oudart, Jean-Pierre “Cinema and Suture.” Screen 18.4 (1977–78): 35–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Podhoretz, Norman “My Negro Problem—and Ours.” Commentary 35.2 (1963): 93–101.Google Scholar
Ross, Andrew No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture. London: Routledge, 1989.Google Scholar
Said, Edward Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978.Google Scholar
Salt, Barry Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis. London: Starwood, 1983.Google Scholar
Schwarz, Ted Arnold Friberg: The Passion of a Modern Master. Flagstaff: Northland, 1985.Google Scholar
Silverman, Kaja The Subject of Semiotics. New York: Oxford UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Steinberg, Cobbett S Film Facts. New York: Facts on File, 1980.Google Scholar
Stewart, Susan On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, and the Collection. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1984.Google Scholar
The Ten Commandments. Dir. Cecil B. deMille. Paramount, 1956.Google Scholar
Truman, Harry S “The Policy of Containment: The Truman Doctrine.” Gati 3–9.Google Scholar
Turner, Graeme Film as Social Practice. London: Routledge, 1988.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Charles “Cecil B. De Mille.” American Directors. Ed. Coursodon, Jean-Pierre, with Sauvage, Pierre. Vol. 1. New York: McGraw, 1983. 91–99.Google Scholar
Wood, Michael America at the Movies: or, “Santa Maria, It Had Slipped My Mind.” New York: Basic, 1975.Google Scholar