What's the Big Deal?: Ben-Hur (1959)
Chariots, lepers, slave ships, and Charlton Heston. These are all things you would not enjoy sleeping on. They are also things associated with Ben-Hur, one of the most epic epics in Hollywood history. How did a lengthy Christian allegory come to hold such a prominent place in the canon? Let's run over a stuntman (that's a myth, by the way) and investigate!
The praise: No film has ever won more Academy Awards than Ben-Hur's eleven (though Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King tied it). It took the trophies for Best Picture, director, actor, supporting actor, editing, cinematography, costume design, set decoration, special effects, sound, and musical score. The only thing it was nominated for but didn't win was best adapted screenplay. It also won best picture prizes from BAFTA, the Golden Globes, the New York Film Critics Circle, and the Directors Guild of America. The American Film Institute ranked it 72nd on its 1998 list of the 100 best films ever made, and 100th on the 2007 revised list.
The context: The 1959 movie version of Ben-Hur is so famous that we tend to forget just how famous the story already was. The 1880 book it's based on, Lew Wallace's Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, was the bestselling American novel of all time until Gone with the Wind supplanted it. In 1899, with Wallace's approval, the book was adapted into a Broadway play -- complete with live horses and chariots -- that ran for 21 years and was seen by 20 million people.
The novel was then the source of a 1907 film (only 15 minutes long; it was mostly just the chariot sequence) that subsequently became the basis of a lawsuit that established the precedent for filmmakers being required to secure adaptation rights before turning books into movies. Cinema was brand-new, and it had not necessarily occurred to the medium's pioneers to check with authors and estates before commissioning screenplays. Thanks to Ben-Hur, that quickly changed.
(I urge you to read the highly amusing 1909 legal description of "making and showing a movie," as documented here: "The defendant ... employed a writer ... to write a description of certain portions of [the book]. It then produced persons and animals, and their accoutrements, to perform the actions and motions so described. During this performance a film of celluloid was rapidly moved across the lens of a highspeed camera, on which a series of negative photographs were taken, from which a positive film suitable for exhibition purposes was reproduced. These positive photographs were contained on one film, about 1,000 feet long, which, being driven at great speed across the lens of an exhibiting machine, projects all the motions of the original actors and animals in succession upon a screen." It goes on like that. Bonus: movie theaters are referred to as "theatoriums.")
The next movie version of Ben-Hur was in 1925. Produced by the newly formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for almost $4 million -- which made it the most expensive film of the silent era -- it was a hit with audiences and helped put MGM on the map. Especially noteworthy was the chariot-race sequence, which was amazing for its time and directly inspired the now-legendary 1959 version.
That version, the super-famous one with Charlton Heston, was nearly a decade in the making. MGM announced the remake in 1952, at least partly motivated by the fact that the studio had a bunch of money in Italian lira that had to be spent in that country due to postwar economic regulations, and Italy was a good, cheap place to make an epic. Sam Zimbalist was assigned as producer, a screenwriter and director were hired, and as of January 1955 there were reports that Marlon Brando would star. But various concerns kept delaying the production, and MGM finally put a hold on it in early 1956.
A year later, with every movie studio suffering from television's hold on the audience, and with MGM on the ropes financially, the studio announced that Ben-Hur was back on again. MGM was emboldened by the success of Paramount's The Ten Commandments in 1956, and by the general trend of big-screen epics based on the Bible and early Christianity: Samson and Delilah (1949), Quo Vadis (1951), The Robe (1953). Zimbalist re-assumed his job as producer; sadly, he died of a sudden heart attack while the film was being shot in Rome, and didn't get to see the fruits of his several years' worth of work.
MGM hired William Wyler (1902-1981) to direct the film, though it took some coercion. Wyler, who had been one of many assistant directors on the 1925 version, had little interest in the new screenplay (a sentiment shared by many), though he liked the spectacle. Zimbalist convinced Wyler that he (Wyler) was a good enough filmmaker that he could give the shallow story and characters some depth and intimacy. Wyler was flattered, no doubt, and he brought on additional screenwriters, including Gore Vidal, to help make Zimbalist's prophecy come true. He was also flattered by MGM's extraordinary offer of $350,000 salary -- the most ever paid to a director for a single film up to that point -- and 8 percent of the box office gross.
In keeping with that trend, the film's budget reached $15 million by the time shooting started in May 1958. Just as its predecessor had been the costliest production of the silent era, this remake was now the most expensive picture of all time. The chariot sequence alone required a year of planning and took a total of five weeks to shoot at a cost of over a million dollars. That's not counting the million dollars it cost to build the set, a massive re-creation of a historic arena that covered 18 acres and was the largest movie set ever built. (You see a pattern emerging here.) Mikos Rozsa's musical score was over three hours in length and remains the longest score ever composed for a motion picture. MGM wasn't kidding around here.
The movie: Judah Ben-Hur, a wealthy Jew in Roman-occupied Jerusalem in A.D. 26, is unjustly sentenced by Roman tribune Massala -- his childhood friend -- to slavery. Bent on revenge, Ben-Hur makes his way out of slavery and into the chariot arena, where he competes with Massala. Throughout the story, Ben-Hur's path crosses with that of Jesus (whose face is not seen nor his voice heard), and he is ultimately inspired by Jesus' message of forgiveness.
What it influenced: MGM spent $3 million to market the film and authorized a huge (some might say tacky) amount of tie-in merchandise. Everything from neckties to jewelry to chariot-shaped tricycles to toy armor to sets of "Ben-Her" and "Ben-His" towels was available, raking in some $20 million in sales in 1959 and 1960 and reminding Hollywood that there's plenty of money to be made beyond the box office. That lesson has never been forgotten.
The box office was good too, though. After premiering in November 1959, the film grossed $37 million (the top earner of the year) and made another $10 million when it was re-released a decade later. Not only did Ben-Hur save MGM from financial ruin, it inspired the other studios to spend more money on giant blockbusters than they'd previously been willing to do. Cleopatra and Lawrence of Arabia were soon to follow.
You've seen the chariot race re-created or homaged many times, including in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie (1976), Grease (1978), Used Cars (1980), The Naked Gun (1988), the pod-racing scene in Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace (1999), and a quidditch sequence in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). Ridley Scott's Gladiator was obviously influenced by the storyline as well, borrowing plot elements from Ben-Hur and Spartacus.
What to look for: After the chariot race, the most famous thing about Ben-Hur is probably how stinkin' long it is: 3 hours and 42 minutes. That's including the overture, opening credits, and entr'acte, but even if you skip those you're at an even 3 1/2 hours.
But the film's length matches its style. Wyler and Zimbalist wanted to make a formal, classical kind of movie. There's no fast editing except in the chariot race. The camera tilts and pans but doesn't move much, and never moves quickly. Pauses that feel unnaturally long to a modern ear punctuate the dialogue, and characters often look at one another silently for several seconds at a time. It isn't slow, though: it's stately. Regal, almost. Instead of gritty realism, the film goes for pageantry, with brightly colored costumes and pristine sets.
Speaking of pageantry, there's a full 11 minutes of before the chariot race actually begins. That's 3 minutes of the chariots entering the arena and doing a lap around it, establishing the geography for the viewer in addition to showing off the gigantic set MGM paid for, and another 8 minutes of pomp and ceremony. The race itself is 9 minutes long -- but those nine minutes are pretty fantastic, especially when you consider there weren't any digital effects or other post-production magic tricks at their disposal.
