Ben-Hur

Directed by William Wyler
1959

Cast Charlton Heston, Jack Hawkins, Stephen Boyd, Haya Harareet, Hugh Griffith, Martha Scott

Ben-Hur (1959) is MGM's three and a half hour, wide-screen epic Technicolor blockbuster - a Biblical tale, subtitled A Tale of the Christ.

Director William Wyler's film was a remake of the spectacular silent film of the same name (director Fred Niblo's and MGM's Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)). Wyler had been an 'extras' director on the set of DeMille's original film in the silent era. MGM's Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), featuring a cast of 125,000, cost about $4 million to make after shooting began on location in Italy, in 1923, and starred silent screen idols Ramon Novarro and Francis X. Bushman. This figure is equivalent to $33 million today - it was the most expensive silent film ever made. Both films were adapted from the novel (first published in 1880) by former Civil War General Lew Wallace.

This remake was inspired by the fact that three years earlier, Cecil B. DeMille and Paramount had remade the 1925 version of his film as a successful 50's epoch Biblical tale titled The Ten Commandments (1956). The heroic figure of Charlton Heston (an iconic and righteous Moses figure) would again be commissioned to play the lead role in this film of a Jewish nobleman (the Prince of Judea) - after the role was turned down by Burt Lancaster, Rock Hudson and Paul Newman. In the plot, prince Judah Ben-Hur was enslaved by a Roman tribunal friend (with a homosexual subtext provided by co-writer Gore Vidal), but then returned years later to seek revenge in the film's centerpiece, a chariot race. Ultimately, he would find redemption and forgiveness in the inspiring and enlightening finale.

The colorful 1959 version was the most expensive film ever made up to its time, and the most expensive film of the 50s decade. At $15 million and shot on a grand scale, it was a tremendous make-or-break risk for MGM Studios - and ultimately saved the studio from bankruptcy. [It was a big dual win for MGM, since they had won the Best Picture race the previous year for Gigi (1958).] It took six years to prepare for the film shoot, and over a half year of on-location work in Italy, with thousands of extras. It featured more crew and extras than any other film before it - 15,000 extras alone for the chariot race sequence.

Ben-Hur proved to be an intelligent, exciting, and dramatic piece of film-making unlike so many other vulgar Biblical pageants with Hollywood actors and actresses. Its depiction of the Jesus Christ figure was also extremely subtle and solely as a cameo - it never showed Christ's face but only the reactions of other characters to him.

It was one of the most honored, award-winning films of all time. It was nominated for twelve Academy Awards, Best Picture, Best Actor (Charlton Heston - his sole career Oscar), Best Supporting Actor (Hugh Griffith), Best Director (William Wyler), Best Color Cinematography, Best Color Art Direction/Set Decoration, Best Sound, Best Score, Best Film Editing, Best Color Costume Design, Best Special Effects, and Best Screenplay (sole-credited Karl Tunberg). It was the first film to win eleven Oscars - it lost only in the Screenplay category due to a dispute over screenwriting credits (Maxwell Anderson, Christopher Fry, and Gore Vidal were all uncredited). Titanic (1997) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) are the only films to tie this phenomenal record, although unlike this film, they came away without any acting Oscars. Many felt that Heston's performance was inferior to other nominees in the Best Actor category: Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot or Laurence Harvey in Room at the Top, and James Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder.

The chariot race sequence in the Roman Circus (an amazing replica) is one of the most thrilling and famous in film history. [Homage was paid to it with George Lucas' pod-race in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999).] The site of the race, the Circus Maximus, was constructed on over 18 acres of backlot space at Cinecitta Studios outside Rome, and the filming of the sequence took over three weeks. Except for two of the most spectacular stunts, both Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd did all their own chariot driving in the carefully-choreographed sequence. There are contradictory reports about the fatality of a stuntman during the dangerous scene in the film, yet no published discussions of the film mention the accident, and Charlton Heston's 1995 autobiography In the Arena specifically stated that no one was seriously injured (beyond a cut on the chin) during the filming of the scene.

Awards:
Academy Awards
Best Motion Picture,
Best Leading Actor for Charlton Heston,
Best Supporting Actor for Hugh Griffith,
Best Director,
Best Set Decoration, Color — Edward C. Carfagno, W. A. Horning, and Hugh Hunt,
Best Cinematography, Color,
Best Costume Design, Color,
Best Special Effects,
Best Film Editing — John D. Dunning and Ralph E. Winters,
Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture and
Best Sound

Golden Globe Awards:
Best Motion Picture, Drama,
Best Motion Picture Director,
Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture for Stephen Boyd,
Special Award to Andrew Marton for directing the chariot race sequence.

BAFTA Award for Best Film,
New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Picture
DGA award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Motion Picture

In 1998, the film ranked #72 on the American Film Institute list of the Best American Movies of All Time, and #56 at AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers. In 2001 the film ranked #49 on the American Film Institute list of the Most Thrilling American Movies. In 2004, Ben-Hur was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2005, the music score of the film ranked #21 on the American Film Institute list of the Best Score of American Films. In 2007, AFI listed Ben-Hur at #100 for AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition).