Unarguably the Best Motion Picture EVER MADE !

Rating: 10/10 (13 November 1999)

The epic BEN-HUR characterizes the highest epochs of emotional expression while vividly and forcefully depicting most subtle human values, sentiments and the fighting spirit as displayed during times of turmoil and upheaval.
Besides the screenplay, cinematography and music match utopian standards of perfection. Miklos Rozsa has choreographed the traumatic flow of events with such a touching/revealing music score that enlivens the soul of all and sundry.
The spectacular chariot race is a memorable and perfect piece of action ever to be filmed. In all its grandeur, the good thing is that Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd did most of their chariot racing by themselves except for a few dangerous stunts. The somersault of Ben Hur's chariot over the two fallen chariots is performed by (Chariot Action Director)Yakima Canutt's son Joe, who got slightly injured in his chin during the tossing over scene from the chariot's bogey. William Wyler has refuted any claims of a fatal casualty happening during the filming of this 11 minute spectacle.
The screen presence of the lead actors (Charlton Heston, Stephen Boyd and Jack Hawkins) playing the characters of Judah Ben-Hur, Messala and Quint Aries is so deeply imbued with the cinematic flow of tumultuous events and coupled with excellent music and cinematography that the audience are bound to be hypnotized with its magnetic appeal unless a viewer has a puerile or immature imagination.
BEN-HUR was filmed in 1958, released in 1959 and the story relates to a period, two thousand years back in time. However, the viewers will never loose its captivating and spellbinding appeal which circumvents mankind's quintessential values namely, hope and misery, faith and tyranny, humility and cruelty, forbearance and revenge, love and hatred and disease and death.
The immense scope and scale of BEN-HUR can never be under-rated, although, it requires a deep insight for a keen eye to explore a most intricate play of historical drama depicted in this biblical epic.
SOME WORDS ABOUT WILLIAM WYLER :
What I can best say about Wyler is that he was a complete film making institution in his own person. He had the keen imagination and skill to effectively craft and portray sublimely moving and sentimental scenes which resonate the latent emotions and evocative thoughts of the audience.
Moreover, he nurtured an excellent ability to translate symbolic emotional expression in an academic manner on the tinsel screen thereby at times, crafting spectacular melodramatic sequences that happen to be a valuable asset of the motion picture industry.
Unlike, Hitchcock, he did not concentrate on picturing sudden/unusual/paranoid and metaphysical events to form the bedrock of his cinematic genius. Instead, he always focused on the more real-to-life human values while eying the big picture and rendered a forceful moral bottom line to enthrall the audience. Last but not the least, Wyler was able to craft a historically spectacular movie, which could not be equaled in its excellence by any director/producer up till now, in spite of handy computer effects/graphics and the many breakthroughs in filming techniques.