For a long time, producer/director Cecil B. DeMille was the most famous filmmaker in the world and was only knocked off that pedestal by Alfred Hitchcock in the ’60s. His imperious personal style has become part of the director archetype in the public mind. DeMille made a wide variety of films throughout his career, but the ones he was best known for were his biblical and historical epics. These films were heavily promoted by school and church groups as enriching moral entertainment for the whole family. Meanwhile, the canny showman had recognized that sex and violence were the ultimate selling points for any film, and if he could wrap them in a veneer of scriptural and historical respectability, he could have it both ways. He could sell tickets with scantily clad (sometimes nude) actresses and sexually provocative situations without being seen as a smut peddler. This series presents three of DeMille’s most outrageous and successful films — a smorgasbord of bare midriffs, S&M, violent spectacle, and more made on the grandest scale Hollywood could imagine at the time.
