Oscars Retrospective: Ben-Hur (32nd Academy Awards Review)

 

Ben-Hur Suite~Miklós Rózsa - Ben-Hur

Ben-Hur: A Novel of Christ was originally published in 1880 during the height of the American Gilded Age by Lew Wallace. Wallace, besides holding the dubious distinction of being one of the dumbest generals on the Union side of the American Civil War (which is saying a lot), was an agnostic who used his writing of the novel as a tool to examine his own faith or lack thereof. The book became one of the great American novels and would be one of the earliest film epics adapted to the screen in Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ (1925). MGM poured outrageous sums of money into this silent epic, trying to make it a highlight of the era of silent epics that would soon go away with the rise of sound.

While history may not repeat itself, it sure as Hell can rhyme. Fast-forward thirty years and the Biblical epic is raging throughout 1950s Hollywood like a storm. After Paramount’s The Ten Commandments became the biggest box office draw of the decade up to that point, MGM’s bosses decided they wanted a piece of the pie and realized that they still had this very lucrative IP sitting on a shelf somewhere. So, yes, Ben-Hur is basically the most expensive cash-in of all time, being the costliest film ever made up to that point. Its budget was over $15,000,000 ($158,000,000 in 2024 money), during a time period when films rarely exceeded $5,000,000 budgets. The money would pay off, as Ben-Hur would be a complete blockbuster, the highest-grossing movie of the decade, swept the Academy Awards and was lauded as one of the great films of its day.

It’s the year 26 A.D. and Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) is a Hebrew merchant prince living in Jerusalem that enjoys a privileged life with his mother Miriam (Martha Scott), sister Tirzah (Cathy O’Donnell), steward Simonides (Sam Jaffe) and childhood girlfriend Esther (Haya Harareet). Their lives are upended as Ben-Hur’s childhood friend Messala (Stephen Boyd) has returned to the city as the head of a Roman legion. While the two are initially ecstatic to see each other, things start to take a turn for the worse as Messala is part of the incoming Roman legion that wishes to subjugate the Hebrews. The two old friends fall out and, when Ben-Hur is accused of a crime that he didn’t commit, Messala has few qualms about sentencing Ben-Hur to slavery, enslaving his family and completely taking over Jerusalem. The rest of the epic is Ben-Hur slowly working his way out of chains to return to Jerusalem and seek revenge on the man who ruined his life.

Considering how it was specifically designed as a cash-in/competitor to The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur does naturally invite some comparisons. Director William Wyler admitted that he wished to outdo Cecil B. DeMille, would later boast that he made the thinking man’s Biblical epic as a clear slight to DeMille and eventually would joke that it took a Jew to make a good movie about Christ. This is the kind of snobbish remark that naturally invites us to take this man’s legacy down a peg and show how far up his own ass his head was. Both Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments are in the same strata of quality and style; if you think one of them is a schlocky movie without much subtlety, you’re going to think the same of the other. Subtlety was never exactly DeMille’s strong suit and, in fairness, neither was it Wyler’s. Still, one of these movies won the Academy Award and the other one did not. Is Ben-Hur better enough that it warranted a comment like that?

The man also directed The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) so overly long sanctimony was clearly nothing new for him.

Both movies share some plot beats in the first half as both involve royal princes who are betrayed and exiled from their home before slowly journeying back home to achieve greatness. Charlton Heston is obviously as excellent here as he was Moses, playing a great man who’s been abjectly humiliated and the audience is rooting for his redemption. It’s hard to describe but Heston perfectly gets down this Biblical majesty that most other actors would kill to have. Most people who try to pull off this “great man” persona can come off as full of themselves but Heston manages to come across as both majestic and humble. And, similar to his portrayal Moses, most of the 3-hour-long movie rests on his shoulders and he carries every last second.

But similar to how the best characters in The Ten Commandments were Yul Brynner’s Rameses and Anne Baxter’s Nefretiri, by far the most complex and interesting character in Ben-Hur is the villain, Messala. The movie takes an engagingly long amount of time in the first act just establishing the friendship between Ben-Hur and Messala which serves to make the knife twist that much stronger when the betrayal does happen. Though that’s not the only reason why he is the character in the film with the most amount of depth.

Ben-Hur has gotten a second wind in gay cinema circles with many critics stating, most famously in the documentary, The Celluloid Closet (1996), that Messala is a closeted homosexual in love with Ben-Hur. The theory goes that while the overtone is that Messala has been radicalized by Rome, the undertone is that Messala is behaving with a level of vindictiveness that could only exist from a jilted lover. The film obviously never has any lines indicating this (Lord knows they’d never get away with that back then, especially in a Biblical film) but it’s one of those things that’s strongly implied. One of the movie’s (five) screenwriters stated that this was definitely the intention, another stated that it wasn’t and director Wyler and actor Boyd always evaded the question when asked.

My personal opinion? This is definitely the intention and I fully believe that Boyd was directed with this motivation in mind. This isn’t one of those overt reaches of confirmed straight characters that people want to shoehorn as being gay (Frodo and Sam in The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955) being probably the most famous example) or subtle hints that might take you a rewatch to pick up on (the title character in Little Caesar (1929) or Bill Rawls in The Wire (2002-2008)). It’s very easy to figure out in your first viewing that Messala is 100% a closeted homosexual. All through the first act, Messala is constantly giving Ben-Hur the bedroom eyes and when he meets Ben-Hur's betrothed Esther, you can see Messala practically seethe with rage.

This hidden motivation is what makes Messala a great villain and makes him the most fascinating character in the movie. It’s typical in most revenge movies to make the main villain a former best friend of the main protagonist but given a homosexual undertone seems to add a lot of fuel to Messala’s proverbial fire. Even if you were to ignore this context, though, he’s just a great villain who does everything possible to make our protagonist’s life a living Hell.

Everytime this character is on-screen, he completely steals the show.

The rest of the cast is serviceable though not especially memorable. A pretty strange choice occurred as the film won two acting awards: Best Leading Actor for Charlton Heston and Best Supporting Actor for Hugh Griffith as Sheik Ilserim, Ben-Hur’s ally and benefactor who helps him make his way home. While Griffith does play a fun character, a man who clearly is only interested in money and Ben-Hur's profitable talents as a gladiator and charioteer but slowly grows to care for his ward, he’s definitely not performance of the year good. The character is pretty forgettable in all honesty and his archetype is not anything new or done in such a way that would’ve stood out at the time. It’s not an earned win and the prevailing thesis is that the Academy wanted to acknowledge the talents of the supporting players of Ben-Hur but, since the most interesting character was Boyd’s portrayal and they wouldn’t have wanted to award a performance to a queer character, they just dropped the tier down to the next-most complex character in the movie. Though, honestly if you’re going to engage in the politics of prejudice, they could’ve just ignored the character altogether and subbed it out for another performance from another movie but I digress. Besides Heston and Boyd, none of the performances in this film are really all that memorable.

What is memorable are the action set pieces. The original Ben-Hur from the 20s was already a considerable groundbreaker at the time for its special effects and MGM took it upon themselves to top them in every way possible. Unlike The Ten Commandments, which depicts multiple miracles, Ben-Hur defined action set pieces and is a possible contender for the first modern action movie. Of particular note is the naval battle (which, while dated today, is still pretty awesome), several pieces of gladiatorial combat and, ultimately, the climactic chariot race between Ben-Hur and Messala.

This scene is probably about 90% of the reason why this movie is a landmark (also spoiler warning).

        This is far and away the most famous and iconic scene in the movie and it is awesome as well as probably the first modern action movie scene. Action movies before this were either swashbucklers, plane dogfights and, in the rare case where fisticuffs were bared, were pretty clumsily choreographed. This chase, on the other hand, is the beginning of modern stunt work and exciting set pieces. It’s easily the highlight of the film and a perfect showdown between our hero and villain. It had audiences on the edge of their seat back in the day and is still an invigorating watch so many years later. The lack of music allows the sound effects of the horses to stand out more and feel like you're right there in the arena with the charioteers.

Despite its length, Ben-Hur does move at a pretty good clip for the first 2 hours but where the movie ultimately falls apart in the last third. That chariot chase you see up there seems like it should be the final climax but it actually occurs around the two-third marker of the film; Ben-Hur keeps going for another hour after that. Just from a crowd-pleasing angle (which is what this movie is clearly trying to be) this is already a major mistake. There is no topping that chariot chase and the movie never even bothers; there is not another single action sequence for the rest of Ben-Hur’s long running time. You could make the argument that maybe that this is the moral, about how accomplishing vengeance doesn’t make us happier and only faith in the Lord can, but this is the biggest problem with the movie.

The big MacGuffin of the last film is Ben-Hur’s mother and sister. Without giving too much away (because what happens is actually a pretty nice surprise), Messala did something to Miriam and Tirzah and Ben-Hur spends an excruciatingly long amount of time figuring out how to get them out of this situation. The problem? These characters have barely ever appeared in the movie up to this point. During the first act showing Ben-Hur’s pre-slavery life, the focus is almost exclusively on Ben-Hur, Messala and Esther. Miriam and Tirzah exist as window dressing and virtually no time is spent showing Ben-Hur’s relationship with them. So when the film changes gears to Ben-Hur trying to save his mother and sister, it honestly doesn’t hit as hard as it should. They exist simply as plot devices, not full characters that we should feel sorry for and want to see rescued.

Going back to The Ten Commandments, that movie also has an interesting digression in its third act. Moses escapes Rameses about two-thirds of the way through that movie and the last act is him carving the actual Ten Commandments and dealing with the idolatry of the Golden Calf. Making a movie with this sort of plot change for the last act can be difficult but DeMille had a more clever way out. In The Ten Commandments’ case, the leader of Followers of the Golden Calf is a treacherous Hebrew who had appeared earlier in the film as an informer for the Egyptians. By giving the final antagonists a face who had appeared throughout the rest of the movie, this makes the adapted story feel like a complete whole.

1950s studio heads after the release of a Biblical blockbuster.

Ben-Hur’s last act feels like a preachy Deus Ex Machina by comparison because the characters that it revolves around had been such non-characters up to that point. Which wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that the movie is 3 hours long. It drags SOOOOOOOO much in the last act and by the end of it you’ll probably be literally praying for it to be over. (So, no, not only is this movie not better than The Ten Commandments, it’s not nearly a good enough movie to warrant Wyler’s smug comment.)

What’s weird is that, despite my complaints, I think everything up before the chariot race is a pretty damn good movie. It’s paced very well, interspersing the action set pieces at just the right amount of time when you’re starting to get bored of dialogue. It’s a good revenge tale, the production design is, of course, incredible, it has a great villain and the film’s simultaneously minimalist yet overwrought portrayal of Jesus Christ (Claude Heater) is effective. It just gets really, really bogged down in the last third. And this isn’t just something my modern-day millennial ADD-ridden brain notices; while Ben-Hur was lauded as its release, some critics did criticize it for being longer than it needed to be.

Though, I guess if we’re being totally fair, during this time period of overly-long film epics, you could probably count the number of them that were actually worth their running time and don’t feel needlessly padded out on your fingers. Ben-Hur was a mega-blockbuster when it came out and, as mentioned, completely swept the Oscars. That usually doesn’t happen unless you get some real generational-defining epics and, clearly, this was it for the 50s crowd.

So, with that in mind, could this be called movie of the year?

In case you missed it:

1st Academy Awards (1927/28): Wings/Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans: Part 1, Part 2

2nd Academy Awards (1928/29): The Broadway Melody: Part 1, Part 2

3rd Academy Awards (1929/30): All Quiet on the Western Front: Part 1, Part 2

4th Academy Awards (1930/31): Cimarron: Part 1, Part 2

5th Academy Awards (1931/32): Grand Hotel: Part 1, Part 2

6th Academy Awards (1932/33): Cavalcade: Part 1, Part 2

7th Academy Awards (1934): It Happened One Night: Part 1, Part 2

8th Academy Awards (1935): Mutiny on the Bounty: Part 1, Part 2

9th Academy Awards (1936): The Great Ziegfeld: Part 1, Part 2

10th Academy Awards (1937): The Life of Emile Zola: Part 1, Part 2

11th Academy Awards (1938): You Can't Take It With You: Part 1, Part 2

12th Academy Awards (1939): Gone With the Wind: Part 1, Part 2

13th Academy Awards (1940): Rebecca: Part 1, Part 2

14th Academy Awards (1941): How Green Was My Valley: Part 1, Part 2

15th Academy Awards (1942): Mrs. Miniver: Part 1, Part 2

16th Academy Awards (1943): Casablanca: Part 1, Part 2

17th Academy Awards (1944): Going My Way: Part 1, Part 2

18th Academy Awards (1945): The Lost Weekend: Part 1, Part 2

19th Academy Awards (1946): The Best Years of Our Lives: Part 1, Part 2

20th Academy Awards (1947): Gentleman's Agreement: Part 1, Part 2

21st Academy Awards (1948): Hamlet: Part 1, Part 2

22nd Academy Awards (1949): All The King's Men: Part 1, Part 2

23rd Academy Awards (1950): All About Eve: Part 1, Part 2

24th Academy Awards (1951): An American in Paris: Part 1, Part 2

25th Academy Awards (1952): The Greatest Show on Earth: Part 1, Part 2

26th Academy Awards (1953): From Here to Eternity: Part 1, Part 2

27th Academy Awards (1954): On the Waterfront: Part 1, Part 2

28th Academy Awards (1955): Marty: Part 1, Part 2

29th Academy Awards (1956): Around the World in 80 Days: Part 1, Part 2

30th Academy Awards (1957): The Bridge on the River Kwai: Part 1, Part 2

31st Academy Awards (1958): Gigi: Part 1, Part 2