Greatest Spectacle

Rating: 10/10 (31 May 2003)

When I first saw this movie on a big screen, I was so awed, I felt like I lived thru the era. This is probably the finest Motion Picture of all times. Now, If I have to pick some of the best Directors in North America-it had to be Wyler, Wise, Coppola, Scorsese, because of the sheer pre-production homework and the meticulous details, that the above directors put in. General Lew Wallace, spent 7 years under a beach tree, in Crawfordsville Indiana, in 1880, writing the book and it was triggered by a conversation on a train with an Aesthist. The role of Ben-Hur was offered to Burt Lancaster, who declined it, on moral grounds and Paul Newman declined it, since he had skinny legs to wear a Roman tunic!.The Chariot scene took five weeks to film, used 15,000 extras and filmed on 18 acres of land at Cinecitta Studio in Italy. This scene was a production unit, headed by the famous Stunt-King Yakima Canut and his son Joe Canutt who doubled for Charlston Heston. I have read about two panavision cameras placed along the path of the chariots and one was damaged but there were no fatalities in this incredible and awesome piece of action sequence. This is one movie I will never buy DVD since this should be watched in all it's regal splendor in a THX Theatre. I think every scene was memorable. It's difficult and almost cruel to pick one acting over other since this was the finest cast of acting talent put together for a movie. This is not a movie but a monumental spectacle to the collective talent and dedication to the craft that was prevalent in the 6o's, and the larger than life canvas envisioned and executed by a director-the caliber of Willima Wyler. There will never ever be a movie like Ben-Hur.