Recalling DeMille’s epic showmanship

Watching the comprehensive new Turner Classic Movies documentary “Cecil B. DeMille: American Epic,” airing in two parts today and Wednesday at 5 and 8:30 p.m. on the cable network, one can’t help notice that even film history repeats itself.

This year, Mel Gibson came under fire from Jewish organizations that complained his blockbuster “The Passion of the Christ” was anti-Semitic. DeMille incurred the same problems back in 1927 with his epic about Jesus, “The King of Kings.”

Even though he had a rabbi on the set, “I think some of the people on the set who were Jewish had questions,” says granddaughter Cecilia DeMille Presley. “I think they wanted some things changed. He didn’t want this to be an anti-Semitic film because he wasn’t. So changes were made.”

The name of DeMille, a true showman, on a marquee was often a bigger draw than the stars of his pictures. Breaking into films with the feature-length 1914 western “The Squaw Man,” DeMille became one of the most successful directors of the silent era. Though he had missteps in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s, he regained his foothold in Hollywood with the 1932 religious epic “The Sign of the Cross,” a sexually provocative, violent and extravagant melodrama about the Christians and the Romans.

His late niece, choreographer Agnes DeMille, once noted that with “The Sign of the Cross,” the filmmaker hit on a formula that would fuel subsequent successes such as “Cleopatra,” “Samson and Delilah” and “The Ten Commandments” -- a mixture of “extreme religious fervor and extreme sexuality.”

Produced and directed by Kevin Brownlow (“Buster Keaton: A Hard Actor to Follow”) and Patrick Stansbury, “American Epic” offers a complex look at the man who was described as both “a thoroughly bad director” and “the greatest showman on Earth.” The documentary is narrated by Kenneth Branagh and features vintage interviews with DeMille himself, and talks with actors Charlton Heston and Angela Lansbury, composer Elmer Bernstein and contemporary directors (and fans) Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.

TCM will air several DeMille films following the documentary, including “The Sign of the Cross” (at 6 tonight), “The Squaw Man” (at 9:30 tonight), “The Cheat,” “Madam Satan,” “The Crusades,” “The King of Kings” and “Dynamite.”

-- Susan King