Ben Hur (1959)

Have you noticed how some classic films are remembered more for the circumstances around their making than for their content? When people talk about Citizen Kane, it’s Orson Welles’ personality or media magnate William Randolph Hearst’s efforts to prevent it from being made. With Gone With the Wind, it’s the casting choices and the directorial changes. With Apocalypse Now, it’s Marlon Brando’s huge salary and girth and Martin Sheen’s health problems. And with Ben-Hur, it’s the big budget, the gamble it was for the near-bankrupt MGM studio, the treatment of stuntmen and animals during the filming (concerns that more appropriately apply to the 1926 version of Ben-Hur), and just about everything else you could think to discuss other than the actual film.

So it might come as a surprise to learn that Ben-Hur is an extremely successful film in its own right – regardless of the hoopla that surrounded director William Wyler’s foray into the biblical epic genre. This movie is big and impressive, and it successfully plays out a classic tale of an underdog with right on his side who triumphs over corruption.

Although many viewers tend to believe that this is a fact-based story, it is a quintessentially American fiction that could as easily have been set in the American Revolutionary war as in the holy lands during the time of Christ. Wyler’s decision to cast British actors in the Roman roles and Americans as oppressed Jews enhances this parallel. You half expect Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) to toss bundles of tea off the side of the galley in which he’s forced to row, from which he escapes, rescuing a high-placed Roman (Jack Hawkins) in the process, thereby securing his freedom from slavery.

This is a story of oppression and principled rebellion, of friendship turned to hate and of religious conversion. Pro-Christian sentiment permeates the film and Ben-Hur’s conversion to Christianity marks the film’s conclusion. However, those less interested in the religious theme will have no difficulty being entertained by the huge action sequences – particularly the film’s naval warfare scene and the memorable chariot races.

While it’s exciting, Ben-Hur is also over-long. Clearly, Wyler felt that the spectacle was enhanced simply by the movie being lengthy, so scenes that might have lasted 15 seconds are routinely stretched out to two or three minutes. If these excessive scenes had been trimmed, at least half an hour could have been shaved from the movie without cutting a line of dialogue.

Even at three and a half hours, the movie works. Heston is not a great actor, but his personality and demeanour are well suited to this role of a heroic and highly principled man called upon to grimace or ride a chariot more than he is to speak or deliver subtle emotion.

Ben-Hur is memorable for its huge sets, thousands of extras and spectacular stunts; it’s also an entertaining and compelling drama that may be shallow, but is too exciting and appealing for that to be much of a concern.

Brian Webster