Moses Moses

(tt) It being Easter they have been playing the Cecil B de Mille 1959 "Ten Commandments" which I first saw in England when I was 12.  The scene where the dear old  lady oiling the pyramid stones nearly gets squashed until gallant Moses cuts her tangled garments free gave me nightmares for weeks.

 I would like to encourage you to see it and here is one of my favourite bits for excellent dialogue which I am sure captures the way everyone talked in those biblical days.

Nefertiri, played with sultry whisky-breathed ease by the delicious Anne Baxter, tries to rekindle a long lost passion wiith the now god charged Moses, who is  dragged into semi- life by Charlton Heston. Mr H seems to have actually been possessed by the potency of his part and probably walked three feet above the sands in his own mind.

  NEFFY: Oh, Moses, Moses.

Why, of all men, did I fall in love with

a prince of fools? Why must you deny

me and yourself?

MOSEY:  Because I am

bound to a God and to a people and

to a shepherd girl.

NEFFY:  A shepherd girl. Does she... grate garlic on her skin?

Or is it soft... as mine?

Are her lips chafed and dry as the desert sand,

or are they moist and red like a pomegranate?

Is it the fragrance of myrrh that scents her hair...

or is it the odor of sheep?

I think the sheep wins. It hasn't any lines.