The Exodus is probably the most dramatic story in all of the Old Testament, which is probably what made it so appealing to Cecil B. DeMille, the founding father of American cinema. Attracted to epic stories with blockbuster appeal, DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956) not only remains the sixth highest grossing movie of all time, when adjusted for inflation, but also continues to be how many people are introduced to the Bible in general and to the events of the book of Exodus in particular.
At the time DeMille made his movie, many in Hollywood joked that based on its scale and cost, as a sheer undertaking, DeMille’s effort was second only to that of Moses during Exodus itself. In 1952, he bought the rights to novelist Dorothy Clarke Wilson's best-seller, Prince of Egypt, and began to mine it for subplots to go along with the Biblical account as pre-production began. Jesse Lasky and Fredric Frank penned the screenplay, and Charlton Heston was selected to play the lead role. DeMille was impressed not only by the actor’s depth of Biblical knowledge but how his visage resembled the one on Michelangelo’s famous sculpture of Moses in the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome.
As filming began, DeMille hired 20 assistant directors who spoke English and Arabic to direct 8,000 extras for filming on location in Egypt and in the Sinai, while back in Los Angeles on the Paramount lot, over 60 sets were being prepared, some taking up an entire sound stage. Over 70,000 props were being created, and a team of florists was planning to gather lilies from Hawaii, lotuses from British Guiana, and garlands from Ethiopia to do their work.
Hollywood legends Edith Head and Dorothy Jeakins oversaw costumes with a team of designers and sketch artists, as well as 125 tailors and dressmakers, to make some 25,000 costumes. Ten jewelers made 1,100 pieces of jewelry while 2,500 pairs of made-to-order sandals were crafted by a little-known California shoemaker named Salvatore Ferragamo. The movie’s score by Elmer Bernstein was soon to become iconic, and the film’s special effects, especially those associated with the parting of the Red Sea, were the most innovative ever produced up to that time. Both on screen and certainly behind the scenes, Cecil B. Demille’s The Ten Commandments represented, at that time, the greatest assemblage of artisans and craftsmen ever to come together to create a single work of art.
In his 2020 book, Art and Faith: The Theology of Making, Makoto Fujimura, a renowned painter himself, turns to the book of Exodus to point out the remarkable fact that two Hebrew artists from the group that Moses brought out of Egypt, are tasked with making the Ark of the Covenant to house the Ten Commandments and are identified as the very first examples in Scripture of people who are filled with the Holy Spirit.
Then Moses said to the Israelites, “See, the Lord has chosen Bezalel, son of Uri...and He has filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and all kinds of skills to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver, and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of artistic crafts.
And He has given both him and Oholiab son of Ahisamak...the ability to teach others. He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as engravers, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple, and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers—all of them skilled workers and designers.
Following up on this insight, Fujimura suggests that creating art is a mystical yet reliable way to come to know God, the ultimate Creator.
When I asked our church’s own J Hill—an artist and instructor at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts Glassell School of Art—about this, he agreed whole-heartedly with Fujimura.
“Yes,” J said. “It requires a certain attentiveness, a connection between yourself and what I can only say is the Holy Spirit. Oddly, in some ways,” J profoundly added, “the finished work is only a by-product of that connection.”
What J is saying is whether it’s one of his sculptures, a Fujimura painting, a DeMille film, or going back further, an ark two Hebrew artists designed to house the Ten Commandments, or even the creative act of writing the dramatic book of Exodus itself, the Holy Spirit keeps calling us into God’s New Creation work in this world.
God—Thank you for the creative communion we’re offered through Your Holy Spirit. Amen.
