Film Review
The king of the great historical epics,
Ben-Hur is a towering monolith to
the arrogance and ambition of Hollywood, made at a time when the whole
edifice of the studio system was teetering on the brink of
collapse. By the late 1950s, television posed a serious threat to
cinema and looked set to replace it as the medium of mass
entertainment. Studio executives believed there was only one way to
save the show: give audiences bigger and better pictures. MGM gambled
virtually everything it had on making this film - 15 million
dollars. Had the gamble not paid off, the studio would have gone
bust. As it turned out, the film was a box office hit and MGM
managed to stave off bankruptcy. Although bloated,
over-long and occasionally unbearably pretentious,
Ben-Hur is undoubtedly one of
Hollywood's artistic triumphs, a stunning spectacle that continues to
impress with its epic scale and sheer lunatic ambition.
This was the third screen adaptation of Lew Wallace's 19th Century
novel
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.
MGM's 1925 version, starring Ramon Novarro and Francis X. Bushman,
directed by Fred Niblo, was the most expensive silent film ever made,
with a cast of 125,000. This was preceded by a 15 minute short by
Sidney Olcott, Frank Oakes Rose and H. Temple, first released in 1907.
The 1959 version of
Ben-Hur
dwarfs virtually every film that had gone before it. The most
expensive film ever to have been made at that point, it made use of 300
sets and took six years to prepare. Its high point is of course
the legendary chariot race scene, which was directed not by William
Wyler but by Andrew Marton. One of the true achievements of
Hollywood, this sequence is extraordinary in both its scale and its
execution, a masterpiece of staging and editing that has never been
surpassed. The sequence was shot over a three month period on the
biggest film set in movie history, an 18 acre site at the
Cinecittà Studios in Rome, with around 10,000 extras.
Ben-Hur was a major commercial
and critical success. It virtually swept the board at the 1960
Academy Awards ceremony, winning a record eleven Oscars, a tally not
matched until
Titanic in
1998, including awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor
(Charlton Heston), Best Color Cinematography and Best Score.
Today, it is widely considered one of the greatest films of its genre.
The film is certainly impressive but it is not flawless. The
opening sequence depicting the birth of Christ is an immediate
turn-off, looking like something that Spielberg may have knocked out on
a bad day (it is brilliantly parodied by the Monty Python team in their
1979 historical spoof,
Life of Brian).
Indeed, it is the film's awkward flirtations with religiosity that mar
its artistic integrity and weaken it as a piece of drama. At
times,
Ben-Hur feels like
just another piece of Christian propaganda rather than what it should
be, a poignant story about one man's redemption from the deadly
sin of vengeance. Fortunately, the film is so well crafted (the
design, direction and photography are all very nearly faultless) that
any deficiencies in its screenplay are easily forgiven.
Ben-Hur is pure, lavish spectacle,
an epic story told on an epic scale, and therein lies its enduring
appeal.
© James Travers 2009
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Next William Wyler film:
The Children's Hour (1961)
Film Synopsis
Jerusalem, 27 AD. Recently appointed commander of a Roman
garrison, the Tribune Messala greets his old friend Judah Ben-Hur with
warmth and affection, but their reunion turns cold when their political
differences become apparent. Messala wants his friend to use his
wealth and influence to persuade his fellow Judeans to give up their
opposition to the Roman occupation, but Judah refuses, knowing that he
can never betray his people. What was once a firm friendship
becomes bitter enmity, which turns to hatred when Messala has Judah and
his family arrested for what appears to be an attack on the new Roman
governor. Judah is condemned to spend the rest of his life as a
galley slave, whilst his mother and sister are thrown into a
dungeon. Three years later, Judah is serving on the flagship of
the Consul Quintus Arrius. When the ship is sunk by Macedonian
pirates, Judah saves his master from drowning. On their return to
Rome, Arrius trains Judah as a charioteer and later adopts him as his
son. A free man, Judah heads back to Jerusalem, only to learn
from a slave girl he once loved that his mother and sister have died in
prison. In truth, they are still alive but living as outcasts in
a leper colony outside the city. Thirsty for revenge, Judah
decides to compete against Messala in a chariot race, determined to
ruin and humiliate his enemy...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.