Sadly Over-hyped

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Yikes! De Mille's erotic raunchy graphic and splendid SIGN OF THE CROSS made at Paramount in 1932, and his first talkie bible study is a movie you not forget. It is infamous and famous for many sights and other comments here will give you the reaction to the graphic cruelty of the truly shocking Arena/Gladiator scenes. The ridiculously entertaining asses milk bath with nipples ahoy and Claudette's milky breasts, the very funny dialog of daily life amid the splendor, the horror of the rape and torture of a teenage Christian boy, the eerie similarity to the 1932 German persecution of the European Jews, the depression era parable of the idle rich uncaring at the financial death of the 1930s masses, the dazzling costumes (no bras in Rome either), the claustrophobic street sets with rushing horses and fights in corners, all in all create an amazing action tableau like a pencil sketch bible book drawing brought to life. The film's art direction and set design and costumes are especially evocative of 'a silent epic with sound' and one easily can transfer the idea of seeing the 1925 BEN HUR with sound as SIGN OF THE CROSS favorably compares. The Arena montage scenes are really shocking. The Moon Dance is outrageous lesbian swankiness and gorgeous as all hell... well pagan hell as depicted by the morally austere Demille. Great moving wallpaper for your next party if played on a big TV and without sound with your CD collection going instead. If you agree that SIGN OF THE CROSS made in 1932 is really a 1920s silent film with dialog, have a look at FOLLOW THRU made two years earlier in 1929 and in color and as jazz modern today in it's creative style. CROSS plays like an ancient movie but FOLLOW THRU still plays new.

1932 – the height of the depression, Paramount studios in financial straits, Hollywood's output limited to small-scale dramas and bedroom comedies – and Cecil B. DeMille decides to make an epic. There are many classics among the "small" pictures of the early-30s, but it's good to see that someone was, against all odds, still carrying the torch for grandeur and spectacle.Of course, Sign of the Cross is still an epic of its poverty-stricken time. There are no stupendous sets or masses of extras, but DeMille always knew how to make our eyes deceive us. A huddle of a dozen people filling the screen looks like a crowd. Five men on horseback shot from a low angle looks like a stampede. In the scene where Titus and Favius first meet, the camera wheels round and backs away at the same time, giving the impression that the street scene is much more than a cramped indoor set. And DeMille's use of lighting (here courtesy of Karl Struss who was Oscar-nominated for his efforts) really pays off, with fuzzy half-light and shadows disguising the lack of lavishness.Better yet, the constrained budget seems to have pushed DeMille to concentrating more on the poetry and beauty of what we see. Unable to dazzle us with scale or special effects, he makes full use of his talent for flowing, dreamlike imagery. Sign of the Cross features some of the smoothest camera-work and carefully choreographed movement of extras of this period. He even makes effective use of slow-motion with the pouring goats milk. DeMille was not the only director to turn to simple camera trickery when money was tight – Rouben Mamoulian's earliest pictures for example are end-to-end cheap tricks. It's just that DeMille is doing it better than almost everyone else – it adds sparkle to the picture without being distracting.But it's not just with the images that DeMille shows his talent. Unlike some directors who were sceptical about the coming of sound and tried to work around it, or some producers who naively thought it automatically made pictures twice as good, DeMille really explores the possibilities of sound. In an early scene, we cut to a close-up Elissa Landi while we hear from off-screen the calls of Romans searching for Christians. We see her reaction to the calls, and this is something that could not be achieved so succinctly in a silent movie. A more obvious example is the torture scene, where we hear the boy's screams, while the camera is pointed elsewhere. The point is, we do not need to see him being tortured because the scream alone has enough impact. However what we do see – the eagle of Rome, a sentry unconcernedly marching back and forth, a flaming torch – adds layers of meaning to the scene.Of course, this being DeMille, and it being the "pre-code" era, he also seeks to dazzle us with a bit of bare flesh and other assorted depravities. It's one of the great ironies of DeMille's work that his pictures often revel in the very "immorality" they seek to preach against. So the poster advertising the attractions at the Colloseum is as much to whet the appetite of the real-world audience as to show the barbaric tastes of the Roman one. DeMille spends ten minutes of screen time (not to mention more precious money on tin-hat manufacture and zoo rental fees) on the promised blood-fest, which can only be for our entertainment since it is inconsequential to the plot. And, in another bit of audio/visual juxtaposition, while the martyrs' chanting drowns out the "Naked Moon" song, it is the notorious Lesbian dance that DeMille shows us, not the Christians outside.The acting in Sign of the Cross is a bit of a mixed bag, although it is of a higher standard than many of the DeMille talkies. Charles Laughton is hammily brilliant, laying down a blueprint for Emperor Nero which Peter Ustinov would follow to a well-deserved Oscar-nomination in Quo Vadis (1951). However Laughton's part is fairly small, and the screenplay makes Claudette Colbert the real villain. Colbert is fantastic, playing the Empress as an ancient world vamp, giving by far the best performance of the bunch. It's almost a shame that It Happened One Night re-invented her as a major romantic lead, because she really was at her best when she played villains.The weakest link in Sign of the Cross, as with many DeMille pictures, is the screenplay. However DeMille's inventiveness, careful construction and strong imagery, not to mention the fact that his pictures are great fun if you don't take them too seriously, transcend the limpness of the script. It was perhaps because DeMille refused to allow his style to be compromised by a limited budget that makes many of his 1930s pictures among his greatest.

As the film opens in 64AD Rome, the city is burning and Nero (Charles Laughton) is playing his hand held harp. He comes up with the idea to blame all the social, political, and economic problems on the nascent Christians, some of whom who are old enough to have witnessed Christ's crucifixion. This leads to one of the better portrayals of the Colliseum "games" that's ever made it to the big screen and surely must have made Depression weary viewers forget their problems for the time being. The love story of the relationship between prefect Marcus Superbus (Frederic March) and the young Christian woman Mercia (Elissa Landi) seems like a distraction, though it was probably necessary to counterbalance the salacious depictions of debauchery, especially Claudette Colbert's bathing scene in milk brought to her by slaves, and a wild dance that goes on while the Christians sing hymns as they're being led to the Colisseum dungeon. I think Frederic March probably became great sometime after this film, but Laughton, who doesn't get that much screen time, is great as Nero the hedonist and also as a serious ruler. But what will surely capture attention is the finale, which goes on quite extensively, and which DeMille in pre-code fashion, let it all fly, while bringing an effective and moving human touch to the suffering.

An early talkie at times just as visual as the great silent movie, The Sign of the Cross does suffer with silly dialog and over the top acting.However, here's a chance to see a young Charles Laughton playing a fiddle to burning Rome. It's very funny on how bad it is. He and Claudette Colbert steal each scene that they're in.In fact, Claudette raising her arms in a bath filled with milk where one can glimpse her nipples is a lot of fun to watch. When she commands her girlfriend to take her clothes, get in the pool and let's talk is what pre-code is all about. Too bad there wasn't more of those.Elissa Lundi, top-billed, is too much a sob sister and one wonders why Frederic March would prefer her to Claudetter is anyone's guess. March displayed an intensity that was his trademark as he got to star several high production films of the 1930's. One of those is Les Miserables, an excellent film in which he reunites with Laughton.The scenes with the Christians are very much a dirge, full of piety and for me, doesn't ring true at all. A good part of the film has March saving a reluctant Lundi that will conclude with both being eaten by the lions. These scenes I found to be quite dull.The best reason to see this film to with DeMille's genius of recreating ancient Rome. This would have been better if this was made as a silent. As if, though, this film is the one that reestablished him as king of box office, the George Lucas of his day.Colbert comes off the best as the vampish Empress. She's quite beautiful in this and she would star in even a better DeMille film - Cleopatra - and costar with Clark Gable in one of the best Frank Capra's movies - It Happened One Night. So, she's the next best reason.