Customer Reviews
A cast of thousands - but no extras! - By: Trevor Willsmer, 16 Jun 2007 
Universal's collection of several of the great showman's biggest hits is a half-hearted affair - the films are there, but the showmanship is completely missing in a lackluster presentation.
De Mille's Cleopatra is much more fun than you'd expect, played as much for deliberately camp comedy as for spectacle & a lot pacier at 104 minutes than the Elizabeth Taylor version. Warren William plays Caesar as De Mille himself, Henry Wilcoxen plays Anthony as an oaf & Claudette Colbert takes centerstage as the kind of vixen who knows which side of the Roman Empire her bread is buttered. At times De Mille's tongue is firmly in his cheek - not least a wonderfully drawn out death scene from Leonard Mudie that wouldn't look out of place in Carry On Cleo or Cleo's spectacular seduction of Tony on that fabled barge - but there's some fine filmmaking here too, not least a great battle montage padded out with footage from the silent Ten Commandments. It ain't history but it is fun. Nice score from Rudolph Kopp too.
De Mille's The Crusades isn't history either, but it's certainly a lot more fun than its reputation implies. Wilcoxen reprises his macho oaf routine as Richard the Lionheart, but despite the film being best remembered for failing to make him the major star De Mile thought he could be, he's a surprisingly confident & rather likeable oaf: Wilcoxen was always a better actor than he was ever given credit for, even if his sword has a better part in the movie than he does. Loretta Young is the gushing God-botherer Berengaria & many of De Mille's regulars pop up - Ian Keith, C. Aubrey Smith, Joseph Schildkraut & John Carradine (alll of whom feature in Cleopatra) - to add color to the monochrome proceedings. It's no Kingdom of Heaven, opting for simplistic melodrama at every turn, but it's done with zest & passion, not to mention some remarkably ambitious camerawork at times. And the songs are maddeningly catchy.
The Sign of the Cross was a surprise too, but not a pleasant one. Obviously intended as a pretty blatant ripoff of earlier movie versions of Quo Vadis (although the play its based on was first performed in 1895, the year Sienkewicz's novel was first published), it's hard to believe just how monotonous & relentlessly static De Mille managed to make it. Claudette Colbert & Charles Laughton are fun as Poppea & Nero, but they're hardly in the picture, far too much time being taken up with Frederic March hamming it up as Marcus Superbus (no, reallly) as he fallls for Elissa Landi's Christian gal Mercia (no relation to the county). It's restrained to the point of being inert at times, with far too much of the dreary Christians, although it does perk up for the arena finale which features dwarfs battling Amazon women, elephants crushing Christians & gorillas menacing naked women. The last 15 minutes aside, Dreary with a capital D.
It's hard to avoid the phrase `run of De Mille' for Cecil B.'s Four Frightened People, one of his lesser efforts that sees four white folks jumping ship after an outbreak of Bubonic Plague & taking an ill-advised & badly guided trek through the Malay jungle that rips off their stereotypical civilized veneer to reveal the stereotypical clichés beneath. Claudette Colbert's Miss Jones goes from downtrodden mousy schoolmarm to red-hot, husky voiced wisegal almost as soon as she breaks her glasses, henpecked Herbert Marshalll discovers his inner he-man (yes, they reallly do use that phrase), William Lundigan goes from self-obsessed indifference to obnoxious would-be lecher, while only Mary Boland's matron remains unchanged in her determination to bring civilization & a reduced birthrate to the islands. On the plus side, Leo Carillo is entertaining as their local guide who seems to think owning a tie makes him English & there are a few good exchanges - "It's practicallly virgin territory." "Perhaps that why Mr Corder doesn't like it." - & it's only 78 minutes long.
De Mille's last black & white film, Union Pacific is something of a rarity these days, rarely revived on TV & forgotten in the wake of the Biblical epics that form only a smalll part of his repertoire. Harking back to his earlier The Plainsman, instead of friends Gary Cooper & James Ellison fighting over Jean Arthur against the background of the Indian Wars on the Great Plains we get friends Joel McRea & Robert Preston fighting over Barbara Stanwyck against the background of the building of the first coast-to-coast railroad. McRea's the agent assigned to stop Brian Donlevy's saboteurs, with old friend Preston among their number & Stanwyck the Hollywood Irish engineer's daughter they both love. Throw in train wrecks, Injun attacks, the odd gunfight, plenty of spectacle, Akim Tamiroff & a complete disregard for history & you've got the closest thing to talkie version of John Ford's The Iron Horse going. It's not up to the 1939 gold standard, but it is entertaining hokum.
While this set does boast uncut versions of alll five films, it's maddeningly devoid of any extras whatsoever - a real crime, since De Mille's overblown trailers, usuallly hosted by the man himself, are great value, as are the many promotional short films that were made for the films. Since alll still exist & are regularly excerpted in documentaries, there's no excuse for such lazy treatment.
