Ben-Hur (1959)
Directed by William Wyler

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.

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...