Ben-Hur (1959) Review

The chariot race is why the film is still shown, and it deserves its legend. Second-unit directors Andrew Marton and Yakima Canutt staged it in an eighteen-acre arena carved out of a rock quarry, and the nine minutes of hooves, wheels, dust and splintering chariots remain a benchmark for practical action. The galley sequence, with Jack Hawkins's consul watching Charlton Heston at the oars, and a sea battle done with miniatures in an MGM tank, nearly match it.

Around them is a long, reverent pageant. Heston, who won the Oscar, is more imposing than expressive; John McCarten of The New Yorker wrote that he spoke English as if he had learned it from records. The dialogue, reworked by Gore Vidal and Christopher Fry among others, veers between stiff and portentous. Stephen Boyd's Messala has the film's only charged relationship; Vidal later claimed he persuaded William Wyler to have Boyd play it as a spurned lover, a conversation Wyler said he did not remember.

The Christ story runs in the margins, with Jesus's face never shown, and the lepers and crucifixion carry the solemnity Time Out mocked as a four-hour Sunday school lesson. It won a record eleven Oscars, and Miklós Rózsa's score was the longest yet written for a film. It is a monument, and it plays like one.