A lot of Cecil B. DeMille's films haven't aged well and this was indeed one of them. Perhaps we've grown a bit too sophisticated for something like the Sign of the Cross. It certainly couldn't be made today.
This in fact was a key film in DeMille's career. He had left Paramount in the mid twenties and first had his own production company and then did some films at MGM which didn't do so well and he was let go. DeMille was considered washed up when Paramount took him back and he had to have a hit.
He chose to make a second movie of a Victorian morality play about early Christian martyrs by Wilson Barrett who was a famous English stage manager/actor/playwright entitled The Sign of the Cross. The title refers to the cross the early Christians made as a sign of recognition in the Roman Empire. In the early years of Anno Domini discretion was certainly in order.
The Sign of the Cross was the sort of stuff DeMille grew up with at the end of the 19th century. At the same time he knew that sex sold movie tickets. So in his silent film period he perfected a formula to glorify the religious but also show the sins of the world they were trying to fight.
DeMille as a young actor and budding playwright before he turned to film was also heavily influenced by David Belasco who wrote a lot of morality type plays which would be laughed off the stage today. But Belasco also given the limits of the stage tried to produce the kind of eye catching spectacle that DeMille perfected on screen.
This is the background DeMille brought to his films and it's never more obvious on the screen than in The Sign of the Cross. The plot is that young Marcus Superbas, prefect of Rome and general debauchee, finds a young discreet Christian girl named Mercia. Fredric March as Marcus is quite taken with her, Mercia as played by Elissa Landi has a purity and a sweetness that he doesn't usually find with the crowd he hangs out with.
Later on she's taken in a general round up of Christians and March intervenes for her. That displeases Empress Poppaea played by Claudette Colbert who Marcus has been a favorite of. She influences Emperor Nero to execute her in the arena with the rest of the Christians.
In his autobiography DeMille took some bows for discovering Charles Laughton who played Nero and got his first real notice in America with this film. What he doesn't tell you is that DeMille and Laughton fought like crazy over the actor's interpretation of Nero. Laughton, a closeted gay man himself, played him as an effeminate gay fop and it was his interpretation that we see today. Probably Laughton's own homosexuality brought a dimension to the part that another actor could never have achieved. His performance holds up today if the film itself doesn't.
In DeMille style the film goes back and forth from the debauchery of Rome to the purity of the Christians. One scene I guarantee that will send a revival audience rolling up the aisles is the one where March brings Landi to his villa where the weekly orgy is in progress. He tries unsuccessfully to seduce her and figuring she's not into guys has a woman try to seduce her with some lesbian siren song. Her song and vamp dance are drowned out by the Christians outside, singing hymns on the way to the arena. It's an absolute and positive hoot, but I'm sure 1932 audiences were titillated. I'm also sure it wasn't in the original play.
Actually homosexuality runs pretty rampant in this film. During the arena scene you see Laughton being waited on by what looks to be his boy toy. And earlier in the film young Tommy Conlan gives up the Christian meeting place through torture. We don't actually see the torture, but there's definitely a look of lust in the eyes of the torturers.
Add to that Claudette Colbert looking quite seductive indeed in her milk bath. No wonder she got to play Cleopatra later on for DeMille. This was all pre-Code and you could get away with a lot.
The Sign of the Cross made a ton of money for Paramount, justifying the expensive outlay for them during the Depression. It put DeMille back on top and he stayed at the top and with Paramount for the rest of his life. But for today's audiences the film is horribly dated.
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