History Trivia / TheTenCommandments1923

* AbandonedSet: Cecil B. [=DeMille=] had an entire Egyptian city built in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes of California for the film. Though ordered to demolish the set once filming wrapped, [=DeMille=] instead left most of it to be buried in the sand without the local county knowing. He mentioned this in his 1959 autobiography, joking that archaeologists of the future would be immensely confused to find all these "Egyptian" architecture and artifacts thousands of miles away from Egypt. This comment sparked the interest of filmmaker Peter Brosnan, who in 1983 went out and organized an expedition to discover the city for real. He did, and excavation on the site has continued, though not always smoothly, ever since.

** In Jeanie [=MacPherson's=] original script, the mother was more explicitly condemned for her intolerant fundamentalism. In the final film, this was downplayed to the point where the mother comes off as a little old-fashioned, but essentially harmless and well-meaning.

* AbandonedSet: Cecil B. DeMille had an entire Egyptian city built in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes of California for the film. Though ordered to demolish the set once filming wrapped, DeMille instead left most of it to be buried in the sand without the local county knowing. He mentioned this in his 1959 autobiography, joking that archaeologists of the future would be immensely confused to find all these "Egyptian" architecture and artifacts thousands of miles away from Egypt. This comment sparked the interest of filmmaker Peter Brosnan, who in 1983 went out and organized an expedition to discover the city for real. He did, and excavation on the site has continued, though not always smoothly, ever since.

* PublicDomain: Now this in the US as of January 1, 2019. By then, it was already in the public domain in most other countries.

* FollowTheLeader: It's often thought that the film took some inspiration from Creator/DWGriffith[='s=] ''{{Film/Intolerance}}''. At the very least, the film critics of 1923 were quick to see similarities.

* OfficialFanSubmittedContent: After the failure of his previous movie, [=DeMille=] held a contest to ask the public what his next film should be about. The winning entry came from F.C. Nelson of Lansing, Michigan. Nelson's pitch opened with the line, "You cannot break the Ten Commandments — they will break you."

** The modern-day story was filmed in UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco, which might not be doubling since it's never specified what city it's meant to take place in. The scenes of the church under construction were filmed at the Saints Peter and Paul Church, which really was under construction at the time. You can see the completed church in ''Film/DirtyHarry'' and ''Film/WhatsUpDoc''.

** The movie was originally conceived as an AnthologyFilm. It would have been a series of ten vignettes, each one dedicated to one of the commandments and showing the consequences of breaking it. Finding that this disjointed structure didn't work dramatically, [=DeMille=] and screenwriter Jeanie [=MacPherson=] changed it to being about a single character who breaks all the commandments.
** In Jeanie [=MacPherson's=] original script, the mother was more explicitly condemned for her intolerant fundamentalism. In the final film, this was downplayed to the point that the mother comes off as a little old-fashioned, but essentially harmless and well-meaning.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: The movie was originally conceived as an AnthologyFilm. It would have been a series of ten vignettes, each one dedicated to one of the Ten Commandments and showing the consequences of breaking it. Finding that this disjointed structure didn't work dramatically, [=DeMille=] and screenwriter Jeanie [=MacPherson=] changed it to being about a single character who breaks all the commandments.

** The modern-day story was filmed in UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco, which might not be doubling since it's never specified what city it's meant to take place in. The scenes of the church under construction were filmed at the Saints Peter and Paul Church, which really was under construction at the time. You can see the completed church in ''Film/DirtyHarry'' and ''Film/WhatsUpDoc''.

* CaliforniaDoubling: The Egyptian scenes were filmed in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes in northern Santa Barbara County. The totally epic Egyptian set was buried in the sand after filming, allegedly on the orders of Creator/CecilBDeMille himself, who did not want to see a rival filmmaker piggyback on his hard work. Starting in 2012, archaeologists have been uncovering the site. The Red Sea sequence was filmed at Seal Beach, California. The modern-day story was filmed in UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco, which might not be doubling since it's never specified what city it's meant to take place in. The scenes of the church under construction were filmed at the Saints Peter and Paul Church, which really was under construction at the time. You can see the completed church in ''Film/DirtyHarry'' and ''Film/WhatsUpDoc''.