The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille

"The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille" is about an effort to unearth one of the largest movie sets...that of the 1923 version of "The Ten Commandments". Instead of filming the desert scenes in the Middle East (as they did with DeMille's remake), this one was made in the town of Guadalupe, Califoria...a barren area of sand dunes pretty much in the middle of no where. Surprisingly, this story took far longer than expected. While initial digging at the site began in 1990, it wasn't until nearly 30 years later that the project was continued. Why? Well, two reasons. The first was money...it cost money to do this sort of work and getting consistent funding was an issue. The second, the bigger issue, was bureaucracy. The film turned out to be a great example of how government can run amok...and has less interest in the good of the people and more in creating roadblocks for the sake of roadblocks. In other words, because a few small minded people could stop the dig, they often did...even when they had written permission by state officials allowing the dig to take place. And, sadly, this happened again and again and again! To me, this is THE story...how nameless non-elected folks did their best to destroy this project....because they could. This film is about this process...and at least how the dig continued through the years, off and on as best it could. In addition to chronicling the dig, the film spends a lot of time discussing director Cecil B. DeMille's life, career and both his Ten Commandments films.

Overall, this project was obviously a labor of love. Because the documentary was made on the cheap, I can forgive some less than perfect cinematography. In fact, given what they were up against...it is an incredible movie. Fascinating and maddening at the same time. The worst part about all this controversy is that the set was never made to last....and because so many roadblocks were put in place, most of the set was never unearthed and will soon literally vanish.

Like all similar great works, this is the story of a man driven to accomplish a goal, and the setbacks he faces. This example is also a window on important film history, including the history of the great Cecil B. Demille.

If you're like me and enjoy history, film and archaeology, this documentary involves all three! How could I go wrong? And this story is located near my home, in Guadalupe, CA. The filmmaker begins to research the story in 1982! Over the next 30 years, he tries to uncover what happened to Cecil B. DeMille's 1923 set of the Ten Commandments that was built in the Guadalupe sand dunes. The filmmaker's quest ends up becoming a part of the narrative. I loved the local history, the old film footage, and nostalgia. Hearing that 95% of silent films have been lost over time, it seems important to find something from one of the most famous films ever made. Just a fantastic story of perseverance! I hope this gets picked up and shown or distributed somehow. I was lucky to see this at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Sometimes it's easy to forget just how long Hollywood has been making movies. It is difficult to believe that it's been going on for well over 100 years. And yet so much of the history of Hollywood has disappeared even though the means to preserve it have increased over the decades. When you read a list of lost films that are known but no longer exist it is astounding. Recently efforts have been made to preserve the John Wayne directed and starring film THE ALAMO, only made as far back as 1960 and yet deteriorating as we speak in the vaults of MGM.

But what if you learned that there was a bit of history of classic silent film making that still existed? Not a page or two of a film script or a few feet of film but almost an set built up from scratch to be a part of one of the most expensive and awe inspiring films of its time. An entire city buried in the dunes of California and undiscovered for decades. Wouldn't that be something worth discovering?

Such was the mindset of film maker Peter Brosnan when he heard the story about the buried sets for Cecil B. DeMille's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. Not DeMille's 1956 classic but his first take on the film released in 1923. After hearing the stories about the construction of the massive set used in the film and how it was demolished when the film finished, his curiosity got the better of him.

In 1982 he went to Guadalupe, CA, and met some of the folks who lived there and talked to them about the production. A few of them were even in the film and still living. Through the information he gathered he went to the nearby dunes where folks had noticed that while the sand shifted and changed the shapes of the dunes they didn't seem to affect just one of them there. This was where the set had been.

Using a combination of the story of Cecil B. DeMille and his career and the search for this lost city, Brosnan tells a fascinating story that offers not just the tale of his search but a source of information about the way films were made when they first began. For instance one might ask why, after constructing such a huge and costly set, would DeMille order it destroyed? The answer, provided in the film, is that had he left it standing other studios would have swooped in to use the same set for their own movies, many of which would have been rushed into production to beat the release of his film and thus making the sets seem old to movie goers by the time his film came out. By tearing them down and burying them he prevented that from happening.

Bouncing back and forth with the historical aspects of making the film is Brosnan's own journey into both digging up the lost city and his making a film about it. If ever there were a tale about bureaucratic red tape, the need for less government intervention and corruption it is this story. Brosnan didn't try to dig up the city once but several times over the years. The end result was that it took over 30 years to finally get the story told and the film artifacts recovered. And by then time had taken its toll on them.

I'll admit that for many this film has a dry subject matter to be discussed. But when you consider the historical aspects of the film it becomes a fascinating movie. In the end not everyone who signed on to be involved in the project is still alive, the financial people behind it change from one to another, voices from people who were in the film are lost as they pass away and the town of Guadalupe learns to embrace their film heritage.

It may not be a blockbuster film or have a chance of beating out the next Marvel hero to grace the screen. But the movie is interesting and worth watching to learn about his lost city. Who knows, maybe there are more lost treasures just waiting to be found. For now enjoy the story of this one.