One of the great epics- worth a high mark for the chariot race alone

Rating: 9/10 (9 September 2010)

"Ben-Hur" was the Big Film of 1959, big in every sense of the word. It was big in terms of the amount it cost to make, a then-record $15 million. (This record was to be shattered four years later by another epic, "Cleopatra", which cost around three times as much). It was big in the sense that it was made on a grand scale; grandeur was generally a hallmark of the epic genre, but "Ben-Hur" is the grandest of the grand. And it was big in terms of its success, both at the box-office and at the Academy Awards, where it won a record eleven Oscars, a feat since equalled but never surpassed.
The film is an example of what might be called the "post-biblical" epic. Such films (other examples include "The Robe", "Quo Vadis?" and "The Silver Chalice") were popular in the fifties and told fictional stories based upon the early years of the Christian Church. The protagonist, Judah Ben-Hur, is a wealthy Jewish aristocrat living in Jerusalem at the time of Christ. He is sent to the galleys as a slave, and his mother and sister imprisoned, after they are falsely accused of attempting to assassinate the Roman Governor of Judea. The man who condemns them, the military tribune Messala, was Ben-Hur's childhood friend, but the two have quarrelled and are now bitter enemies. (The cause of their quarrel was Ben-Hur's refusal to name those Jews who are hostile to the Roman authorities; was this a veiled reference to McCarthyism?) The story then follows Ben-Hur's further adventures; as a galley slave he saves the life of the Roman commander and is rewarded with his freedom and becomes the man's adopted son. He is obsessed, however, by his desire for revenge against Messala and to discover what has happened to his mother and sister. Like Lew Wallace's novel on which it is based, the film has an explicitly religious theme, and the story of Ben-Hur is told against the background of the ministry of Jesus and the birth of Christianity.
During my youth in the seventies and eighties the epic was deeply unfashionable. "Spartacus" was sometimes mentioned as an honourable exception because of the general esteem in which Stanley Kubrick was held, but others of the genre were often mocked as vulgar and overblown, soap operas on a colossal scale. This attitude, however, has changed over the last two decades, especially since "Gladiator", the first great modern epic, won the Oscar for Best Picture. The genre (like all film genres) could vary enormously in quality- "The Silver Chalice", for example, is a particularly poor example- but the great epics like "Ben-Hur" are now much more widely appreciated than they once were.
That does not mean it is a perfect film; it falls just short of the "perfect 10" mark; in particular, some of the minor characters are not so good. The obscure Israeli actress Haya Harareet, for example, seems rather flat as Ben-Hur's love-interest Esther; her casting, moreover, spoils the pattern whereby all the Jewish characters have American accents and all the Roman characters British ones. Hugh Griffith's Arab sheikh today looks more like an embarrassing ethnic stereotype than an Oscar-wining performance. (Griffiths won for "Best Supporting Actor", although George C Scott was much better in "Anatomy of a Murder").
Those, however, would be my only criticisms. Charlton Heston is today perhaps the actor most associated with the epic style and starred in what I would regard as three of the four greatest epics, "The Ten Commandments", "Ben-Hur" and "El Cid". (Spartacus is the fourth). Here he not only brings the required strength and dignity to the title role but also makes a great action hero. (Among other things he learned to drive a chariot for the part). His "Best Actor" Oscar was certainly well-deserved, and it is strange to think that he only got the part after several others turned it down. There are good supporting performances from, among others, Jack Hawkins as Arrius and Stephen Boyd as the villainous Messala whose cynical Realpolitik leads him to betray his old friend. (Incidentally, I do not believe Gore Vidal's story of a "hidden subplot" about a gay relationship between Messala and Ben-Hur, with Boyd and William Wyler but not Heston in on the secret, if only because Vidal was simply recycling an old theatrical anecdote about Tyrone Guthrie, Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson).
One of those who turned down the leading role was Burt Lancaster, who allegedly "didn't like the violent morals in the story". (Paul Newman turned it down on the grounds that his legs didn't look good in a tunic- probably a polite way of saying that he didn't want to do another epic after the disastrous "Silver Chalice"). If the story about Lancaster is correct, I doubt if he can have read the script to the end, because the film emphatically conveys a Christian message of forgiveness over revenge. (It's a lot less violent than some of Lancaster's own films from this period). Yet unlike many films (including some epics) with a religious theme the religious content never becomes preachy or intrusive. The general ethos can perhaps be described as "muscular Christianity", a combination of Christian morality with a gripping adventure story. And nowhere does it become more gripping than in that famous chariot race, perhaps the greatest single action sequence ever filmed. The film is worth 9/10 for that alone.
On a final note, Miklós Rózsa's musical score also comes close to justifying that mark by itself.