Cinema: New Picture, Nov. 30, 1959

Ben-Hur (M-G-M). “My God!” gasped Major General Lew Wallace. “Did I set all this in motion?” In 1899, the hard-riding, hard-writing Civil War commander was already appalled by the smashing success of his first historical novel, Ben-Hur, which in 19 years had sold 400,000 copies. And that, though the general did not live to see it, was only the beginning. By 1920, a stage version of the general’s work had been running 21 years, had been seen by 20 million fans, had grossed $10 million. In 1926, M-G-M turned it into the first of the cinemammoths, a $4,000,000, two-hour spectacle starring Ramon Novarro as Ben-Hur and Francis X. Bushman as Messala. By 1936, the film had grossed almost $10 million, and the book had become the biggest bestseller (more than 2,000,000 copies) in U.S. history, not counting the Bible.

Last week, after five years of preparation, 6½ months of shooting in Italy, nine months of editing in Hollywood, and a massive publicity campaign, M-G-M displayed a new version of Ben-Hur that is far and away the most expensive movie ever made—it cost $15 million to produce, $1,500,000 more than The Ten Commandments—and also one of the longest—3 hr. 37 min., not including a 15-minute intermission. Only Gone With the Wind (3 hr. 42 min.) and The Ten Commandments (3 hr. 39 min.) ran longer.

Ben-Hur, 1959, by MGM’s statistics, is adorned with more than 400 speaking parts, about 10,000 extras, 100,000 costumes, at least 300 sets. One of them, the circus built for the chariot race in Rome’s Cinecitta, was the largest ever made for any movie. It covered 18 acres, held 10,000 people and 40,000 tons of sand, took a year to complete, and cost $1,000,000. The race itself, which runs only nine minutes on the screen, ran three months before the cameras and cost another million. Three months before the shooting stopped, Production Manager Henry Henigson had a serious heart attack, and two weeks later Producer Sam Zimbalist had a fatal one. By the time the cameras had finally stopped rolling, MGM’s London laboratories had processed, at a cost of $1 a foot, some 1,250,000 feet of special, 65-mm. Eastman Color film.

Out of this sea of celluloid, a masterful director, William (Wuthering Heights, The Best Years of Our Lives’) Wyler, has fished a whale of a picture, the biggest and the best of Hollywood’s super-spectacles. The story of Ben-Hur is reasonably faithful to the general’s stirring “Tale of the Christ.” Prince Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston), a rich Jew born about the same time as Christ, falls out with his childhood friend Messala (Stephen Boyd), commander of the Roman garrison in Jerusalem, who demands that Ben-Hur inform against other Jewish patriots. When Ben-Hur refuses, Messala condemns him to certain death as a galley slave and shuts up his mother (Martha Scott) and sister (Cathy O’Donnell) in a pestilential dungeon. Ben-Hur is freed from the galley, taken to Rome and adopted by a Roman admiral (Jack Hawkins) whose life he has saved. As soon as possible, he goes back to Palestine, hears that his mother and sister are dead, enters against Messala in the chariot races and rides him into the ground. But Messala has his vengeance. With his dying breath he tells Ben-Hur that his mother and sister are alive, but are lepers. Heartbroken and crazed with hate, the hero sets out to raise a rebellion against Rome, but he is caught up in the procession to Calvary, and becomes a Christian. The picture ends with Christ’s death and the hero’s rebirth.

The film has its failures. The movie hero is pretty much an overgrown boy scout who never experiences the moral struggles that beset the hero of the book. Then, too, the story sometimes lags—not, oddly enough, because it is too long but because it is too short. For the final script, M-G-M eliminated an entire subplot that gives the middle of the story its shape and suspense. But the religious theme is handled with rare restraint and good taste. The face of Christ is never fully revealed. The Sermon on the Mount, The Trial. The Ascent of Calvary and The Crucifixion are pictured, without breathless reverence, in a matter-of-fact manner, as contemporary political events.

The script, written by Karl Tunberg, and touched up by S. N. Behrman, Gore Vidal and Christopher Fry, is well ordered, and its lines sometimes sing with good rhetoric and quiet poetry. The actors, for the most part, play in the grand manner, but with controlled firmness. Actor Boyd carries off the prize with a virile portrayal of Messala, and Hugh

Griffith provides some skillful comic relief as a sheik who is crazy over horses. But what matters most and comes off best in the picture is the great scenes of spectacle, particularly the chariot race, a superbly handled crescendo of violence that ranks as one of the finest action sequences ever shot. All by itself it would be worth the price of admission.

Great credit goes to Producer Zimbalist, Scenarist Tunberg and Director Wyler, but the greatest belongs to Wyler. His wit, intelligence and formal instinct are almost everywhere in evidence, and he has set a standard of excellence by which coming generations of screen spectacles can expect to be measured. His virtues have been agreeably rewarded. Friends report that his percentage-of-profits deal with M-G-M will put him on easy street for the rest of his life. But it is probable that MGM, which was in a shaky financial spot when the project was launched, will not have any trouble keeping up the payments. Ben-Hur has run up the biggest advance sale ($500,000) in film history, and the studio expects it to run at least two years at high-priced, ten-a-week showings in selected theaters, and to make more money than The Ten Commandments, which has already grossed more than $50 million.