The King of Kings (1927)

THE KING OF KINGS  (1927)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Cecil B. DeMille
    H.B. Warner, Ernest Torrance, Dorothy Cumming,
    Joseph Schildkraut, Jacqueline Logan, Joseph Striker,
    Sam De Grasse, William Boyd, Montagu Love
DeMille's silent version of the life of Christ plays fast and loose with the gospels while delivering all the sin and sanctity that were the director's trademark. It's really a series of exquisitely composed tableaux, a couple of them in early Technicolor, and if the pace sometimes drags, what you see on the screen never looks less than spectacular. The lavish decadence of Mary Magdalene's court has everything to do with DeMille and nothing to do with first-century Palestine.