OSCAR WILD DAY 13: BEN-HUR (1959)

Based on the highest-selling American novel of the 19^th century, this film is another example of studio-system Hollywood taking a risk and adopting a go-big-or-go-home approach to a film. It certainly went big, and it went home with a record-setting 11 Academy Awards. It was a dominant film at the box office to boot, more than tripling the #2 film’s ticket sales for the year. It is legendary for its earnings, awards, and its chariot race scene, but how much beyond these aspects does the legend persist into the current day?

Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) is a descendant of a royal line in Roman-occupied Judea. His family’s wealth and influence among the locals is no use against the Romans. Judah’s childhood friend, Messala (Stephen Boyd), returns to his friend’s homeland but is all-in on Rome’s imperialist agenda, and the two have a decisive falling out. To show Judah who’s boss, Messala uses an innocent accident to ruin the lives of Judah and his family. Imprisoned and enslaved on a Roman galley is how Judah begins his journey of seeking revenge. Fate (or is it divine intervention?) bestows its favor on Judah, as he becomes an unlikely favored son of Rome, but his journey home to deliver his family into freedom threatens to upend all that.

A rough description of this film could be at least another paragraph long because this is a very long film. Three and a half hours to be exact (if you skip the opening overture and the intermission). While patience may not be my generations strong suit, I am far from the first person to find this film’s runtime to be more than a bit too much. There is giving the audience what they want, and then there is lingering a bit too long in a scene to the point that the story starts to stall. It may have worked for audiences in 1959, who were more likely to be familiar with the source material, but the appeal of the story itself is not there anymore outside of some Christian circles.

It has to be excused because of the era in which this film was made, but Charlton Heston has the look of a prototypical Roman rather than a man of purebred Jewish stock. Sure, he played Moses, so he gets away with it here again by default, but the whitewashing of all the Jewish and Arab roles is something that sticks out like a sore thumb for those of us who grew up after Hollywood shifted to more ethnically-accurate casting. The acting also comes across as a product of a bygone era. Heston oversells several scenes with his tone and facial expressions, practically bludgeoning the audience with spoon-fed wonder, grief, or anger. We can’t look past that nowadays.

The undisputed high point of this film is the chariot racing sequence. The filmmakers built a full-scale hippodrome and the entire thing was filmed using practical effects. It’s the stuff of Hollywood legend, and this scene still holds up. Yes, a few of the charioteers are clearly lumpy prop dummies when they get run over, but the timing, choreography, and attention to detail of this scene is phenomenal and justifies all the praise you may have heard about it.

The chariot race elevates Ben-Hur from an overlong but serviceable film to a solid good film. That’s impressive work for a scene that only lasts 16 minutes. The detail in the costumes, sets, and location shots are also top-notch. If only the filmmakers could have tightened up the script a little bit more, this film would live on in the cultural consciousness for more than just the notoriety of its best 16 minutes.

FINAL RATING: 3.5 out of 5