Cecil B DeMille

[domino harvey]

CECIL B DEMILLE
(August 12 1881 - January 21 1959)



"The public is always right."


FILMOGRAPHY

SILENT
The Squaw Man (1914) R1 Alpha / Warner Archives MOD
Brewster's Millions (1914) LOST
The Master Mind (1914)
The Only Son (1914)
The Man on the Box (1914)
The Call of the North (1914)
The Virginian (1914) R1 Passport
What's His Name (1914)
The Man from Home (1914)
Rose of the Rancho (1914)
The Ghost Breaker (1914)
The Girl of the Golden West (1915)
After Five (1915)
The Warrens of Virginia (1915)
The Unafraid (1915)
The Captive (1915)
The Wild Goose Chase (1915) LOST
The Arab (1915)
Chimmie Fadden (1915) LOST
Kindling (1915)
Carmen (1915) R1 VAI / R1 Image
Chimmie Fadden Out West (1915)
The Cheat (1915) R1 Kino
Temptation (1915) LOST
The Golden Chance (1915) R1 Image
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1916)
The Heart of Nora Flynn (1916)
Maria Rosa (1916)
The Dream Girl (1916) LOST
Joan the Woman (1917) R1 Image
Lost and Won (1917)
A Romance of the Redwoods (1917) R1 Alpha / R1 Passport
The Little American (1917) R1 Jef Films
The Woman God Forgot (1917)
Nan of Music Mountain (1917)
The Devil-Stone (1917)
The Whispering Chorus (1918) R1 Image
Old Wives for New (1918) R1 Image
We Can't Have Everything (1918) LOST
Till I Come Back to You (1918)
The Squaw Man (1918)
Don't Change Your Husband (1919) R1 Image
For Better, for Worse (1919)
Male and Female (1919) R1 Image
Why Change Your Wife? (1920) R1 Image
Something to Think About (1920)
Forbidden Fruit (1921)
The Affairs of Anatol (1921) R1 Image
Fool's Paradise (1921)
Saturday Night (1922)
Manslaughter (1922) R1 Kino
Adam's Rib (1923) R1 Grapevine DVD-R
The Ten Commandments (1923) R1 Paramount
Triumph (1924)
Feet of Clay (1924) LOST
The Golden Bed (1925)
The Road to Yesterday (1925) R1 Alpha
The Volga Boatman (1926) R1 Kino VHS/LD
The King of Kings (1927) RA Flicker Alley / R1 Criterion
Walking Back (1928) R1 Grapevine DVD-R
The Godless Girl (1929) RA KLSC / R1 Image (OOP)

SOUND
Dynamite (1929) R1 Warner Archives MOD
Madam Satan (1930) R1 Warner Archives MOD
The Squaw Man (1931) R1 Warner Archives MOD
The Sign of the Cross (1932) R1 Universal
This Day and Age (1933) R1 Universal Vault MOD
Four Frightened People (1934) R1 Universal
Cleopatra (1934) R1 Universal / RB MoC
The Crusades (1935) R1 Universal
The Plainsman (1936) R1 Universal
The Buccaneer (1938) R1 Olive
Union Pacific (1939) R1 Universal
North West Mounted Police (1940) R2 Odeon (UK)
Reap the Wild Wind (1942) R1 Universal
The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944) R2 Universal (Spain)
Unconquered (1947) R1 Universal
California's Golden Beginning (1948, short subject)
Samson and Delilah (1949) R1/A Paramount
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) R1 Paramount
The Ten Commandments (1956) R1/A Paramount


FORUM DISCUSSION
Cecil B DeMille Collection
114 / BD 34 Cleopatra
Hollywood (Kevin Brownlow)
266 King of Kings
1920s List Discussion and Suggestions
Passport Video
Pre 1920s List Discussion/Suggestions
the Western List Discussion and Suggestions

(Compiled by domino harvey, Jonathan S, kingofthejungle, Rev.Powell)

[domino harvey]

If anyone can help me with home video releases for some of the missing silents, please PM me or post 'em in this thread and I'll adjust the first post

[Rev.Powell]

Dunno about the silents but there's a UK region 2 release of North West Mounted Police. Looks pretty nice.

[domino harvey]

Cool, added it in-- thanks!

[kingofthejungle]

There's an R1 DVD of Carmen available from VAI, and a DVD-R of Adam's Rib from Grapevine.

Glad to see a DeMille thread, I've been exploring his filmography lately, and there's really a lot there to appreciate. Sign of the Cross is one of the most jaw-dropping Pre-Code films I've seen. Where else in cinema do piety and perversion so comfortably intermingle?

[domino harvey]

Yeah, I picked up several DeMille titles last summer after rewatching Brownlow's Hollywood and was surprised there wasn't already a thread for him despite some existent discussion elsewheres. Looks like as good an excuse as any to finally dig in with a couple as I take a breather from the current lists projects. And thanks for the info!

[Jonathan S]

The Virginian (1914) - Passport (Cecil B DeMille Classics Collection)
Carmen (1915) - also Image (coupled with The Cheat)
A Romance of the Redwoods (1917) - also Passport set
The Little American (1917) - Jef Films
Why Change Your Wife? (1920) - Image
The Affairs of Anatol (1921) - Image
The Volga Boatman (1926) - Kino VHS/LD (multi-tinted)
Walking Back (1928) - Grapevine DVD-R

The now deleted Passport set includes many of the other later silents, but - as noted in some Amazon reviews and discussed on Nitrateville - it's obvious these were mostly ripped from David Shepard's Image and Kino editions. From the one or two I sampled, the Passport versions removed the tints and added vastly inferior music scores. Even in the case of The Volga Boatman (denied an official DVD release), my multi-tinted Kino VHS was superior in every way to the Passport knock-off.

The Passport transfers not from those sources are quite poor - probably from VHS and/or 8/16mm dupes - as noted in the reviews on Silent Era, such as this one, though I don't know is the Jef issue is any better.

Highly noteworthy is Kevin Brownlow's two-hour documentary, Cecil B. DeMille: American Epic, televised here in the UK at least, though I'm not aware of any home video release.

The same is true for the edition of The Godless Girl produced by Kevin Brownlow's Photoplay Productions. This has a superb orchestral score by Carl Davis not found on the Treasures from the American Archives Vol.3/Image release noted above.

[domino harvey]

Lots of good info, thanks for sharing. Will definitely check out that Brownlow doc, as it's available via back channels

[domino harvey]

Watched my first two DeMille silents today thanks to Kino's Manslaughter/the Cheat double feature. An interesting pairing given that both films concern stentorian rebuffs against the foolishness of wealthy young women. Manslaughter takes it to an absurd degree, paralleling its central figure's legal trouble with the maid she presses charges against for stealing a ring to pay for her sick child's treatment. The film sees the rich woman's actions here as wrong, yet that's bizarre since she clearly broke the law and the film goes to great lengths to make its bribed policeman into a hero after he dies whilst in the process of upholding the law by rectifying his earlier mistake. The movie's highly moralistic, but in a strange way, as the solution to everyone's problems is seemingly to hit rock bottom and then get pulled up off the floor by someone who's already hit rock bottom before you. I didn't find the film particularly interesting from a filmmaking standpoint, I must be honest, but I've certainly seen worse contemporary silent films. The Cheat isn't much better, but it benefits from a shorter running time and a more perverse treatment of its lurid subject matter, wherein a rich woman yet again gets herself into trouble by accidentally signing away her body to a lecherous Asian dandy who, in the film's most striking scene, literally brands her as his (the audience sees this coming a mile away, but it's still pretty insane). I did chuckle at the quote I chose to represent DeMille in this thread, as the film ends with a seeming endorsement of mob rule!

So, not an auspicious start, but I still have more DeMille silents to try on.

[Jonathan S]

For me, DeMille's most interesting silent is The Whispering Chorus. It's a must-see for anyone wanting to study proto-noirs.

I do think his films (more than most) need to be considered in the context of their precise date. Like Griffith, he was an innovative and imaginative film-maker in the 'teens, but was overtaken by others and seemed content to repeat his successes more or less. I do find The Cheat remarkably compelling for a 1915 feature. But it's hard to separate in my mind all those racy (for their time) marital pictures, with their endless bathroom scenes, of the late 'teens and early 'twenties. I prefer The Godless Girl to his other 1920s movies, though the Carl Davis score helped a lot.

Dynamite (1929) demonstrates a far greater interest in the aesthetic potentials of sound than most early talkies from Hollywood, but he did not continue with those experiments.

The patriarchal tone of his films is often jaw-dropping, even by the standards of his time, and in various ways they tend to adopt a highly moralistic, Christian/right-wing viewpoint which sometimes flirts with fascism. But that is often their chief interest, especially when he salaciously revels in presenting the behaviour he purports to condemn!

[manicsounds]

Giant Sphinx from 'Ten Commandments' Film Unearthed 91 Years Later

[domino harvey]

The forthcoming UHD release of the Ten Commandments has an ominous sounding addendum

As part of the restoration done in 2010, the film was scanned in 6K and those files were the basis for this brand new Dolby Vision version, which shows off the full beauty of the original VistaVision negative. The VistaVision format used special cameras to feed 35mm film into the camera horizontally in order to capture a wider image spread over two 35mm film frames, giving VistaVision twice the resolution of regular 35mm film. In addition, Paramount spent well over 150 hours doing new color work and clean-up on the scan. The move to Dolby Vision created the opportunity to further improve the look of the film: blacks are enhanced and improvements were made to smooth out special effects mattes to create the most vibrant and pristine image possible.

[Ribs]

My assumption with a statement like that is that they've went ahead and done work to make greenscreen/CSO/whatever effect is used a tad more convincing, which is frustrating but I can see why they may have the impulse. Though this is also pointedly using the same previously extant restoration but with a new HDR grade so I am not sure I'm actually expecting it to be different as I don't really see why they would invest in doing new work for no real reason.

[EddieLarkin]

The forthcoming UHD release of the Ten Commandments has an ominous sounding addendum

As part of the restoration done in 2010, the film was scanned in 6K and those files were the basis for this brand new Dolby Vision version, which shows off the full beauty of the original VistaVision negative. The VistaVision format used special cameras to feed 35mm film into the camera horizontally in order to capture a wider image spread over two 35mm film frames, giving VistaVision twice the resolution of regular 35mm film. In addition, Paramount spent well over 150 hours doing new color work and clean-up on the scan. The move to Dolby Vision created the opportunity to further improve the look of the film: blacks are enhanced and improvements were made to smooth out special effects mattes to create the most vibrant and pristine image possible.

We understandably bristle at the mention of "smoothing" but I think they might be referring to something else here. They specifically state these improvements come from the use of Dolby Vision (HDR), which cannot be used to smooth or noise reduce an image, or any of the other shitty "improvements" we've learned to hate over the last decade or so.

But a fairly unacknowledged benefit of HDR is its ability to help CGI blend far better than it does in SDR. CGI elements often "stand out" to us but the superior dynamic range and deeper shadows of HDR help mask this effect, especially in older CGI. It may be the case that Paramount discovered their Dolby Vision grading has helped mask the matte effects of The Ten Commandments in the same way.

[domino harvey]

Full English translation of Luc Moullet’s book on DeMille

Quite an interesting book, I've been sampling it all morning. This is a much more subdued/on good behavior Moullet, so there aren't as many howlers and spurious connections as one might expect. Surprisingly Moullet, who is arguably the most MacMahoniest of the Cahiers crew, doesn't share their preference for latter sound era DeMille, clearly favoring more of the silents (and some early sound pics) - I will note, in light of BN having a KL sale, that he has a lot of praise of the Godless Girl, which KLSC just put out on Blu. Sadly, one of the titles that he refers back to a lot, Kindling, is not circulating at all right now

It spurred me on to pick up an eBay lot of DeMille's silents, and some of the KLSC releases, so I'm looking forward to catching up on some of these titles that he discusses (at some point... add it to the neverending list of halfassed viewing projects I undertake in the background at all times)

[domino harvey]

The Story of Dr Wassell (1944) Gary Cooper stars as the real life titular figure, who disobeys orders and smuggles a dozen wounded Navy seamen out of Java as the Japanese attack. It's hard to not draw lines between MacMahonists loving Walsh and loving DeMille, as they both tend to make films that seem to appeal directly to adolescent viewers (regardless of actual age). There's a lot of extremely dumb handholding here (my favorite being the hilarious shot of a wounded sailor holding a baby kangaroo to remind the viewer that he's in Australia) and, like a lot of DeMille movies (even ones I like), there's some degree of contempt for the audience, but this one just works enough for it to not matter. As far as DeMille/Cooper collabs go, this one fares better than the Plainsman and not quite as good as Unconquered, but I am surprised it has never received any DVD or Blu-ray release stateside considering the pedigree.

Regarding Moullet's takes, I was struck by his plausible argument that DeMille was in fact one of the great perverts of old Hollywood who hid behind Christianity to mask his debauched interests. One need look no further than Carol Thurston's native nurse Three Martini, who is with great care shown to take off her blouse to donate blood and later dances "like in the movies" for the wounded men as they leer and cheer-- wholesome Christian fun!

[knives]

That Moullet take has to be the only logical one and the only to square on one side Madame Satan or The Cheat and stuff like this and the religious epics on the other. He’s clearly an opportunist following the desires of his audience with the presentation.

[domino harvey]

One interesting aspect of the film I forgot to bring up is that it has an ending I’ve never seen in a Hollywood film of this era-- after the film ends, including the Paramount logo, DeMille comes back on the audio track over a black screen and announces that one of the characters depicted as dying in the film was actually discovered to be alive and currently in a POW camp. Considering the expected low fidelity to reality in a film like this, it’s a jarring touch

[bottlesofsmoke]

There's a lot of extremely dumb handholding here (my favorite being the hilarious shot of a wounded sailor holding a baby kangaroo to remind the viewer that he's in Australia) and, like a lot of DeMille movies (even ones I like), there's some degree of contempt for the audience, but this one just works enough for it to not matter.

I just read a interview with George Cukor where he talks about DeMille which reminded me of this:

I didn't realize until I saw The Ten Commandments [1956 version] just what DeMille's strength was. A long time ago I thought he was a big joke, just preposterous, and I couldn’t understand why the audience went in for it in such a big way. There were always all sorts of orgies with belly dancers, veils and all the trappings. The eroticism was a joke. Then I saw The Ten Commandments… it was preposterous from the word go but I suddenly saw something new there, something which escaped me before: the story telling was wonderful. The way that man could tell a story was fascinating – you were riveted to your seat. That's exactly what he was: a great, great story teller. It was often ridiculous with all those excesses and so forth, but the man did tell a story. That was DeMille's great talent and the secret behind his popular success.

It seems that the focus on blindingly clear storytelling, and he really does spell everything out, especially in his later films, that helps explain his popularity can also feel like a lack of faith in his audience. I certainly feel that way with a lot of his films.

Silly as some of them can be, many of DeMille's films are enjoyable just because they are such a wild ride, especially those early sound films. This Day and Age is insane, and makes up one of my favorite comparisons between two films about similar subjects: both it and Fritz Lang's Fury were written (or co-written) by Bartlett Cormack but have completely opposite on vigilant justice.

[FrauBlucher]

Domino, The King of Kings can be changed from Criterion to Flicker Alley. Speaking of which where does this rank within DeMille's canon? I'm thinking of blind buying the FA bluray

[domino harvey]

Reap the Wild Wind (1942) is incredible, surely the best possible movie of its type I’ve ever seen. Every audience goading and placating tendency of DeMille is in full effect and it’s just wonderfully propulsive and entertaining and never stops loading on the complications and drastic shifts in trajectory. Even the negative reviews on LB seem to be talking themselves out of admitting how much they like it (because this film is deeply uncool). Ray Milland rules so hard in this, too, especially when he ventriloquizes his dog

[The Curious Sofa]

Reap the Wild Wind (1942) is incredible, surely the best possible movie of its type I’ve ever seen. Every audience goading and placating tendency of DeMille is in full effect and it’s just wonderfully propulsive and entertaining and never stops loading on the complications and drastic shifts in trajectory. Even the negative reviews on LB seem to be talking themselves out of admitting how much they like it (because this film is deeply uncool). Ray Milland rules so hard in this, too, especially when he ventriloquizes his dog

This used to be a Sunday afternoon favourite on TV when I was a kid and got top marks from me for including a giant squid attack. I should check this out again as I remember it to be great fun.