The Sign Of The Cross (1932) Wonder

By 1931, Cecil B. DeMille was already known for directing biblical epics, having made the highly profitable silent film epics The Ten Commandments (1923) and The King of Kings (1927). The Sign of the Cross was his 1st biblical epic of the sound era. Being the bottom of the Depression, and at a time when studios were generally hurting financially, it wasn't a great time to be pitching epics, but somehow DeMille convinced Paramount that he could create an epic on a shoestring. He began by taking a drastic cut in pay, and convinced his crew to also work at minimum rates. He used existing sets and costumes originally created for his earlier biblical epics. On screen, he used his camera to create the impression that cramped sets were actually much larger, and used off-screen sound effects to suggest a larger world than is shown. To make crowd scenes seem larger, he filled the screen with action, or corpses, or both. This is a very violent film, and wouldn't be recommended for children even today due to the violence (and for other reasons I'll get to in a moment). In the arena scenes we're treated to Alligators feeding on a young Christian woman, elephants treading on people's heads, a gorilla raping a girl tied to a wooden pillar, people crucified and burned, men fighting with bulls and bears, women fighting with dwarfs, lions and tigers eating Christians. And since was is a pre-code era movie, De Mille was able to add even more spectacle in the form of undisguised sexuality, providing a nude Claudette Colbert (marvelous as the evil Poppaea) flirting and tempting Fredric March from a milk bath, and later depicting a lesbian 'Dance of the Hours', which occurs during an orgy. Did I mention that this is a biblical epic? Throughout, DeMille cuts back and forth between the decadence he clearly delights in showing us and the religious story that actually moves the plot of the movie. In between are a few great performances - by Charles Laughton, in brief appearances as Nero, and by Colbert, whose sensuous milk bath will be remembered as one of the great sexy scenes in cinematic history, and leaves it no surprise that she was cast by DeMille to play Cleopatra just a few years later. Paramount's gamble on DeMille payed off, by the way - The Sign of the Cross was the highest grossing movie of 1932, easily making double its cost back to the studio. You might follow this film with a viewing of Quo Vadis (1951) which has too many similarities to it to be coincidental: both films show the conversion of a Roman soldier Marcus who loves a Christian girl, both films focus on Poppaea being lustful for Marcus and demanding revenge on Christians because of jealousy, and both films depict Poppaea's beautiful leopards, though the latter film shies away from the sex and violence in the arena that DeMille had reveled in. After the Production Code was established as Hollywood law, The Sign of the Cross was heavily edited by censors, but DeMille gamely reshot new material to replace those scenes for later re-releases, keeping the movie at its original length. In 1993 the film was finally restored with all of its original scenes, and can now be viewed uncensored by modern audiences.