Cinematically, Jesus can be a bit boring, so it makes sense that Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ—an 1880 novel about a Jewish prince (Charlton Heston) who falls into Roman slavery, then rises through the ranks in search of revenge, all while Jesus conducts his ministry in the background as a silent supporting character—has received the big-screen treatment on multiple occasions. And boy did it get the treatment in 1959 with Ben-Hur: Panavision! Technicolor! An overture and intermission! And 11 Oscar wins, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director for William Wyler.
It’s Wyler’s presence that is the most curious. Well-established by that point, with two Best Director wins already in hand (Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives), Wyler’s touch feels stultified by the mass and seriousness of the material. The handsomely filmed spectacle works fine (though I prefer Stanley Kubrick’s staging of a similar story one year later, with Spartacus). It is, surprisingly, the intimate dialogue sequences, of which there are many, that are missing the magic of Wyler at his best. Visually, he and cinematographer Robert Surtees (who also won an Oscar) manage drama with clever key lighting, especially in certain nighttime scenes, but this can’t make up for the trudging pace of the scenes or the drawn-out style of the line delivery. Every beat is held longer than it needs to be, every expression is given more time than necessary, and the actors’ movements seem to take place in slow motion. Just because it’s a Bible story doesn’t mean it has to be told in the style of Sunday school.
Still, let’s not glide over the spectacle of Ben-Hur too quickly. An early sequence of Heston’s Judah Ben-Hur chained, along with a hundred or so others, to oars in the bottom of a slave ship has a rhythmic composition and intensity, especially as they are commanded to pull faster and faster—movement that is matched by Ralph E. Winters’ and John D. Dunning’s Oscar-winning editing. The matte paintings of the stormy sea itself—indeed, of all the vast vistas we see—are exquisite. And the film’s most famous sequence—a chariot race in which Judah squares off against his childhood-friend-turned-Roman-rival (Stephen Boyd)—is as thrilling as any contemporary action scene, with an active camera that at one point moves around a turn with the horses, in effect leading them through the scene.
Heston makes for an imposing physical presence here and elsewhere, while also showing an uncharacteristic softness and charm in the film’s early scenes. If he eventually gives way to the gritted-teeth growling for which he was mostly known, at least the movie is big enough to handle it. Few of the supporting performances register as strongly; the other Oscar-winning turn comes courtesy of Hugh Griffith in brownface, bugging out his eyes as Sheik Ilderim.
All in all—and there’s a lot of “all” here—Ben-Hur is a peculiar project, especially with its biblical bookends dramatizing the birth and crucifixion of Jesus, essentially sandwiching a sword-and-sandal epic anchored by one of our most outsized stars. Consider it The Passion of the Heston.
(4/18/2024)
