Ben-Hur

The Best Picture Oscar for 1959 went to Ben-Hur. It won 11 Oscars, then a record (it has since been tied by Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King). It was the most expensive movie made up to that time, and it had the largest single set ever constructed for a movie (the circus for the chariot-race scene--18 square acres). In an era when films were creating spectacles to compete with television, Ben-Hur was the biggest of them all.

It had been a gamble for MGM. They hired William Wyler, who was known more for intimate dramas, to direct, and let him have all the money he needed ($15 million), but it was the equivalent to an all-in bet in poker, as if the film flopped MGM would be in bankruptcy. The gamble paid off, as the film made five times back its cost.

As yesterday was a rainy Sunday, it was a perfect time to put in the DVD for the film, which runs over three-and-a-half hours. I don't think I had ever seen it all the way through before. I'd certainly seen parts of it--they used to show it on the 4:30 movie, but it would take them all five days of the work week to do it. I don't think I saw it when it debuted on network television, back in 1971, when CBS showed it in a four-hour block on Sunday night, one of the few times 60 Minutes has ever been pre-empted.

The 1950s are known for spectacles, as they were trying to lure people away from their TV sets, and Biblical epics lent themselves to spectacle. Ben-Hur is not strictly a Biblical epic--it's based on a book by Lew Wallace, a former Civil War general, written in 1880 that was turned into a successful stage show (complete with chariot races!) and then a silent version from 1925. The character of Jesus Christ is on the periphery--the film opens with the nativity, and then Christ's life is like a penumbra around the story of the title character, a prince of Judea, who is betrayed by his childhood friend, a Roman soldier.

Wyler took the picture because he wanted to make all kinds of movies, and this was his chance to, as he put it, "make a Cecil B. DeMille picture." He also earned a million dollars, the highest payday up to that time for a director. And while the film is huge, with elaborate sets, costumes, a sea battle and the legendary chariot race, it's also a character study. There is a cast of thousands, but less than ten main characters.

Charlton Heston, who had already played Moses, is the title prince. Judea is occupied by the Romans, but he has reason for optimism when Messala (Stephen Boyd) takes command of the region, for they were boyhood friends. But Boyd wants Heston's help in putting down rebellion, and Heston won't betray his people. While watching the new Roman governor parade by their house, Heston's sister accidentally knocks a tile loose, which causes the governor to be injured. Even though he knows they are innocent, Boyd has the whole family arrested.

There's a famous story about the relationship between Ben-Hur and Messala. Gore Vidal, who worked on the script, says that he wrote in a homosexual subtext, with Boyd playing the spurned lover. The story goes that Wyler and Boyd knew about it, but Vidal was cautioned not to tell Heston. It's hard to know if it's true, but if you watch the scenes between them knowing this it seems authentic.

Of course Heston ends up a slave in a Roman ship galley, pulling on an oar (and reminding one of the old joke--"There's good news and bad news. The good news is that you are getting extra rations. The bad news is that the captain wants to go water-skiing"). During a battle he ends up saving the life of Jack Hawkins, a Roman consul who is so taken with him that he adopts him and turns him into a first-class charioteer. Heston wants his revenge on Messala, and returns to Jerusalem, hoping to find his mother and sister.

This is one of those movies that fall in the "they don't make 'em like this anymore" category. It was the era of matte paintings, a lost art in the CGI era. It took them a year to shoot it (the chariot race alone took three months) and there's a certain care to the whole thing that seems quaint. Of course there's a lot of eye-rolling while watching, particularly in some of the early scenes. Heston, in some ways perfect for these sorts of parts because he played them without irony, is a huge ham. But as the movie rolled along I got hooked, and though the Christ stuff is bit heavy-handed, it wasn't as obvious as some of the other films of the era, and not as preachy as the novel. I'm a cranky old atheist, but I don't have a heart of stone, so even I get choked up when Ben-Hur's mother and sister are miraculously cured of their leprosy.

The centerpiece of the film is the chariot race, a ten-minute scene that is a clinic in how to make an action sequence. It is impeccably thrilling. It was actually directed by second-unit man Andrew Merton, with able assistance from stunt director Yakima Canutt (his son Joe doubled Heston, and performed the ass-over-applecart stunt when Ben-Hur's chariot jumps over another). The scene is shown without musical accompaniment or dialogue, and is an incredible representation of speed. One notes that during the entire scene, Heston never whips his horses, while Boyd beats his to a fare-thee-well, reinforcing the Christian anti-violence theme.

Wyler takes a hackneyed genre and elevates it, by using subtle lighting and innovative editing. There are still some bones to pick--Hugh Griffith, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as the Sheik who hires Heston to race for him, is a British actor playing an Arab with what looks like shoe polish on his face. The sea battle, which was ahead of its time then, now looks dated, as they used miniature ships. But it's the little things, such as Christ's face never being shown, and the moment when Heston recognizes him as the carpenter who gave him water when he was a slave--"I know this man!" Heston says, as only Charlton Heston can say it. Those are the things that stick with a viewer after watching this gargantuan film. I wouldn't put among the greatest American films ever made, as some do, but it is a worthy enterprise, perhaps the greatest epic ever made.