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The King of Kings Our rating: Your rating:   MPAA rating: Not Rated Directed by: Cecil B. DeMille Runtime: 2 hours 35 minutes Cast: H. B. Warner (Jesus), Dorothy Cumming (Mary), Ernest Torrence (Peter), Joseph Schildkraut (Judas Iscariot), James Neill (James), Jacqueline Logan (Mary Magdalene) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

The success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ has brought renewed attention to the old biblical epics, and if there is any one film that shares Gibson's visual sensibility and his pious but sometimes lurid flair for melodrama, it would have to be Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings, new on DVD today as the latest classic release from Criterion Collection. Both films feature a hedonistic banquet populated by laughing revelers and a leopard on a leash. Both films feature a crow perched on a thief's cross. And both films feature fantastic earthquake sequences after Jesus dies—though no one can match DeMille, who seems to think he's making another Moses movie, for sheer over-the-topness.

The King of Kings was first released in the spring of 1927, and it was the middle chapter in a sort of informal biblical trilogy that DeMille produced, beginning with the original, silent version of The Ten Commandments (1923) and ending with the early talkie The Sign of the Cross (1932), which depicts Nero's persecution of the early Christians. Despite being a silent film itself, The King of Kings remained popular well into the sound era, so much so that no other major Hollywood movie about the life of Christ was made for over 30 years, until Nicholas Ray directed the similarly-titled King of Kings in 1961.

DeMille, working from a script by Jeanie Macpherson, rearranges episodes from the Gospels in ways that are startlingly original yet quite effective. The film begins when Jesus (H. B. Warner) has already embarked on his ministry, so it does not depict his birth or his baptism by his cousin John—but it does depict Satan's temptation of him, by setting it in the Temple after Jesus has kicked out the money changers. As the crowds praise Jesus and hail him as their king, Satan (Alan Brooks) offers him the kingdoms of the world; and while this clearly isn't quite how the Gospels describe these events, the combined sequences do heighten our awareness of the earthly power Christ could have claimed for himself, but did not.

H.B.Warner plays the role of Jesus

Alas, The King of Kings also reflects DeMille's belief that you needed to promise audiences a bit of sin in order to lure them into the theatre, so long as you punished or redeemed the sinners and thus satisfied the more religious members of your audience; he made his films for flappers and fundamentalists alike. Thus he begins the film on a rather ludicrous note, with a lavish party hosted by a scantily-clad Mary Magdalene (Jacqueline Logan), who is depicted here not only as a prostitute—a western tradition for which there is no biblical warrant—but as a seducer of kings who burns with jealousy when she hears that her lover, Judas Iscariot (Joseph Schildkraut), now follows the carpenter from Nazareth.

Fortunately, DeMille drops this ersatz love triangle relatively quickly, and the rest of the film proceeds quite reverently. While there is no basis for the tradition that Mary was a harlot, the Bible does tell us that Jesus cleansed her of seven demons (Luke 8:2), and DeMille, to his credit, is one of the few filmmakers to depict this. When she arrives in her chariot—pulled by five plumed zebras!—and demands to see this healer for herself, Jesus promptly casts the Seven Deadly Sins out of her, in a series of multiple-exposure shots that are impressive even by today's standards. In this as in other things, DeMille was all in favor of biblical authenticity if it meant another eye-opening, jaw-dropping special effect.

Some aspects of the film seem more dated now. H. B. Warner's performance as Jesus has its merits, but lends itself all too well to the wimpy "meek and mild" image that more recent filmmakers have tried to undo. In addition, Warner was 51 when the film came out, and must rank as one of the oldest actors to have ever played the Savior onscreen; presumably his age was meant to communicate Jesus' wisdom and authority. In contrast, the Virgin Mary is played by Dorothy Cumming, who was only 28; presumably her youth, and her nun-like attire, were meant as a nod to Catholic beliefs about Mary's incorruptibility.

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