DeMille,’’ says of the director’s 1956 masterpiece, the last film he ever directed: “It’s a summation that very few artists are able to pull off. Scott Eyman, author of the superb “Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. “They had to be cut into the prints some had hand-tinting and others had Technicolor.’’ “There were two-color sections that were used in a lot of the prints but not all of them,’’ Smith says. The somewhat faded and scratched Technicolor and hand-tinted sequences, which come from DeMille’s personal prints donated to George Eastman House could not be restored sufficiently to integrate into the entire film. The 1923 version, restored for the 50th anniversary DVD in 2006 was remastered in high definition at that time. Because Blu-ray can give you a sharper image than the theatrical film, sometimes you have to de-focus a little bit so you don’t see things that weren’t visible in the original presentation.’’ When we separated them, you can see things like guys on the production crew with sunglasses and a lemonade stand. “There are seven to eight layers of images in all the big special effects shots. “Those tend to fade more quickly in films of that era,’’ Smith says.

The latter was more challenging, Smith says, because it contains far more special effects shots, including the parting of the Red Sea. The longer first part of the movie, and the shorter post-intermission conclusion. The restoration was a massive job that was handled as two separate features.

“You can’t make anything off the negative because it’s an obsolete format, but the good thing is that it sat untouched in the vaults for decades.’’

“It was a double-edged sword,’’ Smith says. The spectacular new restoration of the 1956 feature in VistaVision (an anachronistic, non-anamorphic process that photographed each sumptuously detailed image on two frames of 35mm film that were run horizontally through the camera) was overseen by Paramount’s Ron Smith. There are also two-disc set on Blu-ray and DVD with only the 1956 feature, the documentary and other special features. Included are both versions of the movie, including two-strip Technicolor and hand-colored sequences from 1923 an excellent new 75-minute making-of documentary by Laurent Bozereau a commemorative book and reproductions of the original program and correspondence. I reviewed the six-disc limited edition gift set, a box with a cover image of the Red Sea that parts when opened to reveal a pair of tablets – three discs in Blu-ray and two in the DVD format. It was impossible to fully cover the Blu-ray debut of “The Ten Commandments’’ (both the 19 editions), out Tuesday in the print edition in my print edition piece on Sunday.

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