Mobile Navigation
On the occasion of its 50th Anniversary, UCLA Film & Television Archive is proud to celebrate the legacy of storied producer and director Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959). At the heart of this retrospective are restorations of 10 DeMille features performed by the Archive throughout its own history. A founding figure of American cinema, Cecil B. DeMille was one of filmdom's most influential and durable titans throughout a remarkable career spanning four decades, and with an influence still felt within the American filmmaking tradition. Famed as a director of spectacular entertainments, often dramatizing historic subjects, DeMille was also a frequent commentator on modern experiences and mores. Just as his attention to the battle of the sexes, and the drama of the boudoir, spanned centuries' worth of subject matter, so did his contemporary stories resound with themes of eternal human dynamics such as nobility, corruptibility and redemption, as well as American triumphalism (when America was his subject). Trained in the legitimate theater at the dawn of the 20th century, DeMille was somewhat less oriented to the Victorian-era assumptions of his contemporary, D.W. Griffith, instead embracing and celebrating the lustiness, ambition and dynamism that fuel both human history and high drama, and accepting as a given the element of human folly that gives a spin to the most compelling stories. His vast cinematic legacy, impressive in itself, has also been enormously influential in setting the tone and prescribing the scale of American film entertainment to this day. The Archive is proud of its association with the DeMille legacy, and greatly pleased at this opportunity to celebrate Cecil B. DeMille's decisive contribution to cinematic storytelling as part of it’s own year-long 50th anniversary celebration.
This series coincides with the publication of the new book, Cecil B. DeMille: The Art of the Hollywood Epic, by Cecilia de Mille Presley and Mark A. Vieira. Mr. Vieira will be on hand on January 9 to sign copies of this book.
Special thanks to: Andrea Kalas, Laura Thornburg—Paramount Pictures.
