Review of THE LOST WORLD OF DEMILLE

From the Fall 2020 issue of Cineaste. — J.R. The Lost World of DeMille By John Kobal. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2019, 424 pp., illus. Hardcover: $36.00. Kindle: $25.00. Filmmakers and spectators both suffer substantially from the sort of critical typecasting fostered by the marketplace and its reliance on advertising shorthand. I once heard Terry Gilliam complain that he was surrounded by people trying to come up with “typical Gilliam touches” when those were just the sort of things he wanted to avoid. And even when I was in grammar school, Cecil B. De Mille, another large-scale director, was one of the few movie auteurs along with Disney, Ford, and Hitchcock whose artistic identity I could readily recognize, even though, as Luc Moullet points out in his 2012 book about DeMille, L’Empereur du mauve (literally, “The Emperor of Purple”), the overblown contrivances and vulgarities of DeMille’s pictures, combined with their popularity, virtually excluded him from art and serious criticism as far as the U.S. was concerned. The DeMille profile that I recognized in the Eisenhower era was basically that of a Republican patriarch who delivered epic adventures and Biblical spectaculars, an impression broadened only slightly by his 1952 circus blockbuster The Greatest Show on Earth. Read more

Mar 4, 2025 - 01:58

From the Fall 2020 issue of Cineaste. — J.R.

The Lost World of DeMille

By John Kobal. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi,

2019, 424 pp., illus. Hardcover: $36.00. Kindle: $25.00.

Filmmakers and spectators both suffer substantially from the sort of critical typecasting fostered by the marketplace and its reliance on advertising shorthand. I once heard Terry Gilliam complain that he was surrounded by people trying to come up with “typical Gilliam touches” when those were just the sort of things he wanted to avoid. And even when I was in grammar school, Cecil B. De Mille, another large-scale director, was one of the few movie auteurs along with Disney, Ford, and Hitchcock whose artistic identity I could readily recognize, even though, as Luc Moullet points out in his 2012 book about DeMille, L’Empereur du mauve (literally, “The Emperor of Purple”), the overblown contrivances and vulgarities of DeMille’s pictures, combined with their popularity, virtually excluded him from art and serious criticism as far as the U.S. was concerned. The DeMille profile that I recognized in the Eisenhower era was basically that of a Republican patriarch who delivered epic adventures and Biblical spectaculars, an impression broadened only slightly by his 1952 circus blockbuster The Greatest Show on Earth. Read more