Sixty-five years ago this week, struggling MGM bet that the market for cinematic biblical epics was not yet exhausted. The game paid off handsomely when the release of Ben-Hur—the sound adaptation of the best-selling novel of the 19th century—reaped box-office gold, saving the studio from bankruptcy.
In looking through my past blog posts, I was surprised
to discover that, though I had written about much connected to this
property—General Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel, a director whose one-reel 1907 short triggered a landmark copyright decision, and a 1925 budget-busting silent epic—I’d never written about the version that
thousands have seen, in theaters and on television, for the past three
generations.
This post, then, is my attempt to rectify this
situation and to give this movie all the honor it deserves.
The 1959 remake became one of the most honored films
in Hollywood history, netting Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director (William
Wyler), and Best Actor (Charlton Heston). The 11 it netted in all set a record
for the time that has only been equaled since then by Titanic in 1997
and The Return of the King in 2003.
It is also among the most influential movies in screen
history. Most recently, Francis Ford Coppola listed it among the 20 films
that inspired the epic he released a few months ago, Megalopolis.
Yet another director-producer’s debt to the film is more
obvious. The first installment in “Star Wars” saga, The Phantom Menace,
features a pod race that is a homage to the archetypal chariot race of Ben-Hur.
Even more so, the first trilogy in George Lucas’ bestselling
series, focusing on Anakin Skywalker, bears strong similarities to Lew Wallace’s
hero: another slave who makes a splash by competing in a great race, but never
really feels entirely at home in the society that now embraces him, and is
consumed by revenge for much of the action.
Ben-Hur also left its
mark on the evolution of the film epic itself. Without ever stinting on
pyrotechnics (it became the first film shot with Panavision lenses to win the
Best Cinematography Oscar), it veered sharply from the sword-and-sandals movies
associated with Cecil B. DeMille (The Ten Commandments), Howard Hawks (Land
of the Pharoahs), and King Vidor (Solomon and Sheba).
Wyler delegated direction of the chariot race sequence
to Andrew Marton and Yakima Canutt, while concentrating with his usual
perfectionism on the actors’ performances. His creation of a more intimate,
character-driven epic would release later releases such as Lawrence of
Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, Young Winston, Reds, and, only
a year later, Spartacus.
(In fact, Kirk Douglas only pursued the latter
property when he lost out in the competition to play Ben-Hur to Heston, being
offered instead the consolation prize of the titular hero’s friend-turned-enemy,
Messala—a role that he considered nothing more than a second-rate villain.)
This desire to focus on characters rather than spectacle
has led some viewers to regard the hour-and-a-half remaining after the chariot
race to be anticlimactic. But this misunderstands the nature of the property.
The movie took its cue from the subtitle of the Wallace
novel, “A Tale of the Christ,” tracking the miracle following Christ’s
crucifixion that eventually frees Judah of the bitterness that has spurred his
quest even as it deformed his life.
In their quest for character development, Wyler and
producer Sam Zimbalist (who died of a heart attack in Rome just as the movie
neared completion) employed six different screenwriters: Karl Tunberg, Gore
Vidal, Christopher Fry, S. N. Behrman, Maxwell Anderson, and Ben Hecht.
Decades after the film’s release, Vidal caused a stir with
his suggestion of a gay subtext in the Judah-Messala relationship. Audiences at
the time were less likely to notice such elements than today, and in any case
both Wyler and Heston denied them when asked about it in later years.
More likely, contemporary audiences would have
responded to the Cold War resonance of the plot.
Judah’s refusal to renounce his Jewish heritage and pursue
Roman glory with Messala triggers his family’s fall from wealth and influence,
not unlike how rejection of informing consigned a host of Hollywood talent to blacklisting
in the McCarthy Era.
At the same time, the presence of Rome as an authoritarian
power imposing its will on a restless foreign people would have reminded many
of the similar role played by the Soviet Union.