Il segno della croce

My favorite DeMille film. Charles Laughton and Claudette Colbert are delicious as the debauched emperor and empress of Rome. Prominent supporting players Arthur Hohl and Harry Beresford appeared in two horror classics (ISLAND OF LOST SOULS and DOCTOR X, respectively) the very same year. John Carradine can be seen as a condemned Christian on his way to the arena (you can also hear his voice as a spectator and as a gladiator). Very sharp viewers can also spot Dave O'Brien (a condemned Christian) and Kent Taylor (a disinterested spectator). Three famous scenes still impress today: Poppaea's milk bath; Ancaria's attempted lesbian seduction of Mercia; the outrageous arena sequence featuring beheadings, burnings, impalements, hungry crocodiles, untamed apes, bears, tigers and, of course, lions. Only C.B. could have gotten away with this in 1932! The closing cast list includes the characters Viturius, Servillius and Philodemus, but I'm not sure who they are. Viturius may have been Marcus' soldier-aide, although he doesn't look as burly as Richard Alexander. The other two must be Strabo's ugly, brutish companion and the old Christian man protective of the little orphan girl.

Great old DeMille flick about the persecution of Christians in ancient Rome. The movie starts with Emperor Nero (Charles Laughton) laughing and playing music while Rome burns. When someone reminds him that the people might hold Nero responsible, he quickly decides to blame the unpopular believers of the new Christian religion. As Christians are being rounded up and killed, Roman prefect Marcus (Fredric March) falls in love with a Christian girl (Elissa Landi). This doesn't sit well with Empress Poppaea (Claudette Colbert), who's in love with Marcus, and she conspires to have the girl arrested.

Charles Laughton gives an outrageously hammy performance and I loved every second of it. I wish he had been in the film a lot more. Fredric March is good, as always. Lovely Elissa Landi does an admirable job in probably her biggest role but she's eclipsed by Claudette Colbert. What this film is perhaps most famous for is the scene where Colbert takes a bath in donkey milk, in which we see quite a bit of what God gave Ms. Colbert to work with. She's a beautiful woman and it's a very sexy scene. The sets and costumes are great, as one expects from a Cecil B. DeMille picture. It's just a really good film, entertaining and dramatic, with some provocative bits of sex and violence that will surely please pre-Code fans. If for no other reason, see it for Colbert.

Hollywood legend has it that DeMille cast Claudette Colbert as Poppaea by asking her if she'd like to play the "wickedest woman in the world". Who could refuse an offer like that? There are already quite a few excellent (and fun) reviews in this column now, but in view of the DVD release I'd like to add a few things. This lavish picture shows DeMille at his best, worst, most decadent and most unusual. I first saw the expurgated World War II era re-release on TV ages ago, and wasn't much impressed. My father said they'd bowdlerized it a lot, so I was curious to see the 1932 original when it appeared on VHS a few years back. "Astound Me" Diaghilev once famously said to Cocteau; and astounded I was. I was expecting a lot more craziness, but I wasn't expecting to see elephants stepping on men's heads or naked women being eaten by crocodiles. Released in December 1932 it is marginally a pre-code movie, but surely only DeMille could have gotten away with it. This movie has nothing to do with Hollywood of the Thirties; this is Hollywood of the Twenties having one last outrageous fling, with all its sex, drugs, decadence, and all round insanity. The movie plays very much like a silent; perhaps it should have been a silent, thus sparing us its greatest defect, which is some of the worst dialog ever perpetrated. Fredric March as Marcus, the male lead, struggles manfully with awful lines throughout; but it is the visual aspect which dominates one's attention. Consider Colbert's legendary bath in a veritable swimming pool filled with milk (and she's really naked under all that milk). A friend, played by Vivian Tobin with kittenish glee, arrives; they exchange a few verbal barbs worthy of a pair of snarky teenagers, then Poppaea simply says "Take off your clothes. Get in here and tell me all about it." Anyone who thinks the naughty implications of this were inadvertent in innocent old 1932 hasn't spent much time in Hollywood Babylon, to say nothing of Hollywood Rome. Colbert is a delight throughout; her scenes with Fredric March play as high comedy. As he desperately tries to assert his nobility and self control, Colbert effortlessly demolishes his dignity with the perfect lazy grace of a leopardess. And let's not forget Charles Laughton, whose Nero is a masterpiece of omnisexual megalomania. Only Peter Ustinov in the 1951 "Quo Vadis" could better him.

This is on the surface a standard lions vs. Christians epic, but it ain't one to take your Sunday School class to. Under no circumstances should this be viewed by kids, even today. Much of the imagery is equivocal, to put it politely, especially during the big arena show that fills the last half hour. And then there's Marcus' big party, where Joyzelle Joyner performs a dance that is startlingly obscene for 1932.

All of this is ravishingly photographed by cameraman Karl Struss, one of the great artists of monochrome, who makes every shot a work of art. There is one scene in the house occupied by Mercia and her aged guardian, where the old man is seen in a hallway with a gate and small yard beyond; in the yard is an urn. The whole shot is lit by a single brilliant light blasting down on the urn, with bounce boards sending the light gently into the house. This violates all the rules of how to light a scene, but the effect is magical. A quick word should also be put in for Rudolph Kopp, who supplied the music (curiously uncredited); he actually has a go at recreating an authentic ancient Roman sound (no actual ancient Roman music survives).

But the core of the picture is the last part, the ultimate Roman circus. DeMille does something genuinely startling here. First he invites us, a little salaciously, to watch the spectacle, which begins with gladiatorial combat, but proceeds to darker and darker exhibits, many of which are genuinely disturbing (I wasn't kidding about the naked women and the crocodiles; wait until you see the Gaulish Amazon women vs. the Pygmies). As it gets more and more evil, we keep cutting to vivid closeups of the audience that we have been invited to join; some excited, some revolted, some merciless, some bored to distraction, some filled with pity, some sadistic, some almost drooling with voyeurism; they are us, and we are them. DeMille has had the effrontery to show us our own faces as we feast our eyes on all this exquisitely photographed mayhem. It's not easy to watch, and I know of nothing else quite like it prior to Stanley Kubrick.

1932 – the height of the depression, Paramount studios in financial straits, Hollywood's output limited to small-scale dramas and bedroom comedies – and Cecil B. DeMille decides to make an epic. There are many classics among the "small" pictures of the early-30s, but it's good to see that someone was, against all odds, still carrying the torch for grandeur and spectacle.

Of course, Sign of the Cross is still an epic of its poverty-stricken time. There are no stupendous sets or masses of extras, but DeMille always knew how to make our eyes deceive us. A huddle of a dozen people filling the screen looks like a crowd. Five men on horseback shot from a low angle looks like a stampede. In the scene where Titus and Favius first meet, the camera wheels round and backs away at the same time, giving the impression that the street scene is much more than a cramped indoor set. And DeMille's use of lighting (here courtesy of Karl Struss who was Oscar-nominated for his efforts) really pays off, with fuzzy half-light and shadows disguising the lack of lavishness.

Better yet, the constrained budget seems to have pushed DeMille to concentrating more on the poetry and beauty of what we see. Unable to dazzle us with scale or special effects, he makes full use of his talent for flowing, dreamlike imagery. Sign of the Cross features some of the smoothest camera-work and carefully choreographed movement of extras of this period. He even makes effective use of slow-motion with the pouring goats milk. DeMille was not the only director to turn to simple camera trickery when money was tight – Rouben Mamoulian's earliest pictures for example are end-to-end cheap tricks. It's just that DeMille is doing it better than almost everyone else – it adds sparkle to the picture without being distracting.

But it's not just with the images that DeMille shows his talent. Unlike some directors who were sceptical about the coming of sound and tried to work around it, or some producers who naively thought it automatically made pictures twice as good, DeMille really explores the possibilities of sound. In an early scene, we cut to a close-up Elissa Landi while we hear from off-screen the calls of Romans searching for Christians. We see her reaction to the calls, and this is something that could not be achieved so succinctly in a silent movie. A more obvious example is the torture scene, where we hear the boy's screams, while the camera is pointed elsewhere. The point is, we do not need to see him being tortured because the scream alone has enough impact. However what we do see – the eagle of Rome, a sentry unconcernedly marching back and forth, a flaming torch – adds layers of meaning to the scene.

Of course, this being DeMille, and it being the "pre-code" era, he also seeks to dazzle us with a bit of bare flesh and other assorted depravities. It's one of the great ironies of DeMille's work that his pictures often revel in the very "immorality" they seek to preach against. So the poster advertising the attractions at the Colloseum is as much to whet the appetite of the real-world audience as to show the barbaric tastes of the Roman one. DeMille spends ten minutes of screen time (not to mention more precious money on tin-hat manufacture and zoo rental fees) on the promised blood-fest, which can only be for our entertainment since it is inconsequential to the plot. And, in another bit of audio/visual juxtaposition, while the martyrs' chanting drowns out the "Naked Moon" song, it is the notorious Lesbian dance that DeMille shows us, not the Christians outside.

The acting in Sign of the Cross is a bit of a mixed bag, although it is of a higher standard than many of the DeMille talkies. Charles Laughton is hammily brilliant, laying down a blueprint for Emperor Nero which Peter Ustinov would follow to a well-deserved Oscar-nomination in Quo Vadis (1951). However Laughton's part is fairly small, and the screenplay makes Claudette Colbert the real villain. Colbert is fantastic, playing the Empress as an ancient world vamp, giving by far the best performance of the bunch. It's almost a shame that It Happened One Night re-invented her as a major romantic lead, because she really was at her best when she played villains.

The weakest link in Sign of the Cross, as with many DeMille pictures, is the screenplay. However DeMille's inventiveness, careful construction and strong imagery, not to mention the fact that his pictures are great fun if you don't take them too seriously, transcend the limpness of the script. It was perhaps because DeMille refused to allow his style to be compromised by a limited budget that makes many of his 1930s pictures among his greatest.

Rome - First Century A. D. Nero, the mad Emperor & Poppaea, his vile Empress, engage in every sort of vice & degradation. Wanton cruelty becomes a spectator sport and virtue & innocence are denigrated. Slowly, however, a new Power is growing. People calling themselves Christians are secretly spreading their Faith ever more widely. They are horribly persecuted, but they continue to multiply. Which will eventually triumph - the might of Imperial Rome, or the gentle ones who follow THE SIGN OF THE CROSS?

This Cecil B. DeMille epic is a vivid retelling of the struggles of the first Christians. Paramount gave the film a lavish production and DeMille wrings every drop of piety & puerile interest possible from the plot. Fredric March is stalwart as the Roman official who falls in love with a beautiful Christian girl. While his ultimate conversion wouldn't convince the average modern Baptist, he holds his own in scenes with other performers whom are allowed to behave outrageously. Elissa Landi is sweet as the virtuous Believer, effectively underplaying her role.

`Do you want to play the most wicked woman in the world?' DeMille asked Claudette Colbert one day on the studio lot. She did & she does memorably, from her eye-popping milk bath scene to her revenge on her would-be lover. Sniveling, whining and wearing a huge fake nose, Charles Laughton is pure effeminate evil as Nero (notice his catamite), a foul blot on the face of humanity & stealing all his scenes from everyone else. History tells us that Nero eventually murdered Poppaea by stomping her to death...

Ian Keith is enjoyable as an unpunished villain. Ferdinand Gottshalk & Vivian Tobin are effectively degraded as Roman bacchants. Film mavens will recognize the voice of John Carradine, calling `We who are about to die, salute you!' out of the arena to Nero; he can later be spotted in the role of a Christian martyr ascending the dungeon stairs to his death.

DeMille had just returned to Paramount from a 3-year, 3-picture stint at MGM, where he was remarkably subdued. Back at his home studio he was allowed more license. Wrapping a little sermon up in a lot of sin, he filled this pre-Production Code drama with plenty of the latter. When THE SIGN OF THE CROSS was re-released in 1944, many cuts had to be made. The film now having been restored, it's not difficult to guess which sections those were. The Dance of the Naked Moon & much of the antics in the final arena sequence are beyond the bounds of good taste, but certainly not beyond the bounds of Cecil B. DeMille.