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Cecil B. DeMille |
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Director / Producer |
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1881 - 1959 |
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Born August 12,
Ashfield, Massachusetts, USA |
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Key Production Country:
USA |
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Key Genres:
Drama, Epic, Religious Epic, Action, Adventure, Romantic Adventure,
Western |
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Key
Collaborators: Anne
Bauchens (Editor), Hans Dreier (Production Designer), Jeanie Macpherson
(Screenwriter), Victor Milner (Cinematographer), Roland Anderson
(Production Designer), Jesse Lasky Jr. (Screenwriter), Henry Wilcoxon
(Character Player), Victor Young (Composer),
Mitchell Leisen (Production Designer), Gary Cooper (Leading Player) |
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Recommended: Dynamite (1929),
Cleopatra (1934) |
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Worth
a Look: The
Cheat (1915), The Ten Commandments (1923), The Road to Yesterday (1925),
The King of Kings (1927), The Godless Girl (1929), The Sign of the Cross
(1932), The Crusades (1935), Union Pacific (1939), The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944), Unconquered (1947), Samson
and Delilah (1949)*, The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), The Ten
Commandments (1956) |
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Approach with Caution:
The Squaw Man (1914) [co-directed by Oscar Apfel], The Plainsman (1936),
North West Mounted Police (1940), Reap the Wild Wind (1942) |
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Duds:
Madam Satan (1930) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section. |
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Links:
[
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Film Reference ]
[
Official
Website ] [
Reel
Classics ] [
Lost City DeMille
] [
Images Journal Feature ] |
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Books: [
Cecil B. DeMille: A Life in Art ] [
Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille ] [
Cecil
B. DeMille and American Culture: The Silent Era ] [
The
Complete Films of Cecil B. DeMille ] [
Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood ] [
Written in Stone: Making Cecil B. DeMille's Epic, The Ten Commandments
] |
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"DeMille's movies are
barnstormers, rooted in Victorian theatre, shamelessly
stereotyped and sentimental, but eagerly courting
twentieth-century permissiveness, if only solemnly to condemn
it. The movies are simple, raw, pious, and jingoistic; but
though DeMille was commercially cynical, his conviction in the
human relevance of his rubbish is undisturbed, and the energy of
his imagination seldom flags." -
David
Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)
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"DeMille sold the public morality and religion under the
brown paper wrappings of sex and sin. Although he made dozens of
films, his most famous remain the Biblical and historical
spectaculars, with their casts of thousands, and their
magnificent costumes, sets and effects. DeMille spared no
expense, expected 110 percent from cast and crew alike and
believed passionately in the films he made. Although the butt of
many jokes, his films made millions at the box-offices of the
world." -
David
Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999) |
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"Forget the fact that he made, in
his early years, some relatively sophisticated marital comedies
and, later, decent if unremarkable westerns; think of DeMille,
and the epic springs to mind.... Most immediately striking about
DeMille's historical extravaganzas is not the pretension to
spiritual probity but the gleeful depiction of the corruption
and lascivious decadence they purport to condemn... Excess,
behavioural and visual, is the keynote to his best-known work;
the lurid pageantry is often absurdly watchable, but the
historical and moral simplifications, coupled with wooden
acting, frequently make for dramatic tedium." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999) |
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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director
that we haven't seen include The Little American (1917), Male and Female
(1919), The Squaw Man (1931), This Day and Age (1933), Four Frightened
People (1934), and The Buccaneer (1938). |
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8- |
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"For
much of his forty-year career, the public and the critics
associated Cecil B. DeMille with a single kind of film, the
epic. He certainly made a great many of them: The Sign of
the Cross, The Crusades, King of Kings,
two versions of The Ten Commandments, The Greatest Show
on Earth, and others. As a result, DeMille became a
symbol of Hollywood during its ‘‘Golden Age.’’ He
represented that which was larger than life, often too
elaborate, but always entertaining. By having such a strong
public personality, however, DeMille came to be neglected as
a director, even though many of his films—not just the
epics—stand out as extraordinary."
-
Eric Smoodin, International Dictionary
of Film and Filmmakers |
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●
Top 250 Directors |
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●
The
Far Side of Paradise |
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●
Jean-Pierre Melville's 64 Favourite Pre-War American Filmmakers (Cahiers
du Cinema, October 1961) |
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● The Wild Bunch... 50 of the Movies' Maddest Visionaries |
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●
501 Movie Directors: A
Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers |
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See Also |
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Cecil B. DeMille's Favourites |
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Ben-Hur (1926)
Fred Niblo,
The Big Parade (1925)
King Vidor,
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
D.W. Griffith,
Cabiria (1914) Giovanni Pastrone, Going My Way (1944)
Leo McCarey,
Gone with the Wind (1939)
Victor Fleming,
The King of Kings (1927)
Cecil B. DeMille,
Samson and Delilah (1949)
Cecil B. DeMille,
The Sign of the Cross (1932)
Cecil B. DeMille,
The Ten Commandments (1923)
Cecil B. DeMille.
Source: Cinematheque Belgique (1952) |
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