Early in this movie we learn that Egypt has already been visited by nine plagues, none of which we get to see. "What's the deal?" we ask ourselves. This is especially perplexing considering that the movie is two hours and sixteen minutes long. Even the tenth plague, the one where all of Egypt's firstborn die, is disappointing, for the deaths are only implied: We see the Pharaoh's son alive; later we see him dead. That's the last straw, of course, and so the Pharaoh tells Moses to take his people and get out.
As we all know, people pick and choose the parts of the Bible they agree with and ignore the rest. One of the items people usually ignore is the one in Exodus 12:35-36, in which the Jews loot Egypt before they leave, taking the Egyptians' gold and silver jewelry and some nice clothes as well. Force apparently was not used. They simply told the Egyptians they only wanted to borrow the stuff, and the Egyptians fell for it because God put them in a lending mood. The intertitle in the movie says, "And they despoiled the Egyptians of jewels of silver, jewels of gold, and raiment." It was stealing, of course, but that's all right, because they hadn't yet received the Ten Commandments from God, one of which says, "Thou shalt not steal." So, they didn't know any better.
It would have been nice if their "borrowing" the gold and silver had been depicted in the movie, but all we get is just one lousy intertitle. Immediately after, all you see is a bunch of people leaving Egypt. It makes you wonder why they even bothered to put it in the movie. It also makes you wonder if that was the real reason the Pharaoh changed his mind and chased after the Jews: "Hey! They borrowed our gold and silver jewelry, and I'll bet they don't intend to return it. Let's go get it back."
We finally get some spectacle when the Jews come to the Red Sea. Not bad, considering. Then Moses climbs the mountain to receive the title commandments. While he is away, the Jews begin to party. And now we realize why it was necessary to include the part about the gold and silver. How else would the Jews have been able to make a Golden Calf? But it would have been crude to show the Jews actually stealing the stuff, so we get just enough information in the intertitle so we don't wonder where a bunch of slaves got all the gold to make a great big idol. In other words, an explanation for how the Jews got enough gold to make a Golden Calf was needed, but the embarrassing manner in which they obtained that gold is downplayed.
Miriam, Moses's sister, displays much of her body and gets all sensual with the Golden Calf. Dathan, who is no good, starts to make love to her, but then he sees she has leprosy. Now, in the Bible, God does eventually inflict Miriam with leprosy because she objected to Moses marrying a black woman from Ethiopia, "Numbers 12," but in this movie, she gets inflicted with the disease during the Golden Calf party. Moses breaks the tablets in anger, Miriam begs him to heal her, and God lashes out with bolts of lightning, ending the party.
It is at this point that we find out why we were shortchanged on the first nine plagues of Egypt. After only fifty minutes of screen time, with almost an hour and a half to go, the movie jumps to the present, and we discover that we have been watching a visualization of the story in "The Book of Exodus" as it was being read by a woman to her two adult sons, Johnny and Dan.
At the beginning of the movie, there is a prologue that tells of how belief in God had come to be thought of as a "religious complex," and how people had come to think of the Ten Commandments as old fashioned. But then came the World War. "And now a blood-drenched bitter world—no longer laughing—cries for a way out." That way, of course, is the Ten Commandments, the Law without which men cannot live.
The World War must have already worn off on Dan, however, and it isn't long before his mother turns him out of the house for being a no good atheist. What follows is a crazy plot in which Dan marries Mary, the two of them promising to break all ten Commandments.
We don't see Dan and Mary making any graven images of God, but other than that, they do presumably break the other nine Commandments, and the juicy ones are actually depicted. Dan cheats on Mary, having an affair with a woman, Sally Lung, a woman half French and half Chinese. As for the Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," Dan inadvertently does in his own mother when the cathedral he was building with shoddy cement collapses on her. And it turns out that the ship that brought in the cheap material for making that cement passed by an island that was a leper colony, from which place Sally Lung stowed away. Dan gets the disease, and he ends up giving it to Mary, just before he ends up dying in his effort to escape the law.
Mary tries to run away to, possibly planning to kill herself, now that she has leprosy, but Johnny stops her. He reads to her from "The New Testament," telling her about love, and in the morning she is cured of the disease. This squares with the dying words of the mother, who said she was wrong to make religion to be about fear instead of love. But it doesn't exactly square with the prologue, which said the Ten Commandments, not "The New Testament," were what people needed following the World War.
As we all know, people pick and choose the parts of the Bible they agree with and ignore the rest. One of the items people usually ignore is the one in Exodus 12:35-36, in which the Jews loot Egypt before they leave, taking the Egyptians' gold and silver jewelry and some nice clothes as well. Force apparently was not used. They simply told the Egyptians they only wanted to borrow the stuff, and the Egyptians fell for it because God put them in a lending mood. The intertitle in the movie says, "And they despoiled the Egyptians of jewels of silver, jewels of gold, and raiment." It was stealing, of course, but that's all right, because they hadn't yet received the Ten Commandments from God, one of which says, "Thou shalt not steal." So, they didn't know any better.
It would have been nice if their "borrowing" the gold and silver had been depicted in the movie, but all we get is just one lousy intertitle. Immediately after, all you see is a bunch of people leaving Egypt. It makes you wonder why they even bothered to put it in the movie. It also makes you wonder if that was the real reason the Pharaoh changed his mind and chased after the Jews: "Hey! They borrowed our gold and silver jewelry, and I'll bet they don't intend to return it. Let's go get it back."
We finally get some spectacle when the Jews come to the Red Sea. Not bad, considering. Then Moses climbs the mountain to receive the title commandments. While he is away, the Jews begin to party. And now we realize why it was necessary to include the part about the gold and silver. How else would the Jews have been able to make a Golden Calf? But it would have been crude to show the Jews actually stealing the stuff, so we get just enough information in the intertitle so we don't wonder where a bunch of slaves got all the gold to make a great big idol. In other words, an explanation for how the Jews got enough gold to make a Golden Calf was needed, but the embarrassing manner in which they obtained that gold is downplayed.
Miriam, Moses's sister, displays much of her body and gets all sensual with the Golden Calf. Dathan, who is no good, starts to make love to her, but then he sees she has leprosy. Now, in the Bible, God does eventually inflict Miriam with leprosy because she objected to Moses marrying a black woman from Ethiopia, "Numbers 12," but in this movie, she gets inflicted with the disease during the Golden Calf party. Moses breaks the tablets in anger, Miriam begs him to heal her, and God lashes out with bolts of lightning, ending the party.
It is at this point that we find out why we were shortchanged on the first nine plagues of Egypt. After only fifty minutes of screen time, with almost an hour and a half to go, the movie jumps to the present, and we discover that we have been watching a visualization of the story in "The Book of Exodus" as it was being read by a woman to her two adult sons, Johnny and Dan.
At the beginning of the movie, there is a prologue that tells of how belief in God had come to be thought of as a "religious complex," and how people had come to think of the Ten Commandments as old fashioned. But then came the World War. "And now a blood-drenched bitter world—no longer laughing—cries for a way out." That way, of course, is the Ten Commandments, the Law without which men cannot live.
The World War must have already worn off on Dan, however, and it isn't long before his mother turns him out of the house for being a no good atheist. What follows is a crazy plot in which Dan marries Mary, the two of them promising to break all ten Commandments.
We don't see Dan and Mary making any graven images of God, but other than that, they do presumably break the other nine Commandments, and the juicy ones are actually depicted. Dan cheats on Mary, having an affair with a woman, Sally Lung, a woman half French and half Chinese. As for the Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," Dan inadvertently does in his own mother when the cathedral he was building with shoddy cement collapses on her. And it turns out that the ship that brought in the cheap material for making that cement passed by an island that was a leper colony, from which place Sally Lung stowed away. Dan gets the disease, and he ends up giving it to Mary, just before he ends up dying in his effort to escape the law.
Mary tries to run away to, possibly planning to kill herself, now that she has leprosy, but Johnny stops her. He reads to her from "The New Testament," telling her about love, and in the morning she is cured of the disease. This squares with the dying words of the mother, who said she was wrong to make religion to be about fear instead of love. But it doesn't exactly square with the prologue, which said the Ten Commandments, not "The New Testament," were what people needed following the World War.