Welcome back to I’d Like To Blank The Academy’s “Summer of Sweat,” in which we watch long-ass movies all summer long! In this year A.D. MMXXIII, we now turn our attention to the 1959 biblical epic Ben-Hur. Follow Judean prince Judah Ben-Hur as he seeks revenge against his childhood friend for falsely imprisoning his family. Watch as he learns that the real journey is the friends and potential Messiahs he meets along the way. Or something like that.
Previews
What, if anything, did we know about this coming attraction before we watched it?
Ellen: Another classic “my Dad sat us down to watch this” kind of movie. It was probably over multiple nights, and all I really remember is that the chariot effects were actually pretty good!
Tyler: Okay so this is the one with the chariot race? I have a vague recollection of watching that scene (and only that scene) somewhere but lacked any context whatsoever. Let’s go get some context!
Plots & Feelings
This one’s pretty self-explanatory.
Short Version (courtesy of IMDb): After a Jewish prince is betrayed and sent into slavery by a Roman friend in 1st-century Jerusalem, he regains his freedom and comes back for revenge.
Long Version (modified from Wikipedia and formatted to fit your screen):
A baby is born1 in Bethlehem among the shepherds and visited by Magi in a cave.
Tyler: I am not afraid to admit that during this sequence I thought that Ben-Hur was Jesus.
Ellen: But hey, now we can add Ben-Hur to the auspicious pantheon of ILTBTA Christmas movies!
Tyler: Indeed! And after the four-and-a-half minutes of black screen leading into Lawrence of Arabia, I appreciated the extremely overt OVERTURE signage this time around. But six-and-a-half minutes?! C’mon now.
In A.D. 26 Jerusalem, Judah Ben-Hur, a wealthy Jewish prince and merchant, lives with his mother, Miriam, and younger sister, Tirzah. The family's steward (read: slave), Simonides, has a daughter named Esther. Judah grants Simonides' request for Esther to marry a freeman and gives Esther her freedom as a wedding gift. Apart since childhood, Judah and Esther quickly fall in love.
Tyler: I got more “wow you’re hot now that you’re an adult” vibes than “love” coming from Judah but sure whatever.
Ellen: I will say though, aside from the fact that the power dynamic is completely unhinged, at least they have known each other forever and a sort of longing-to-love path is believable.
Judah's Roman boyhood friend, Messala, returns to Jerusalem as commander of the Fortress Antonia. He fully embraces Rome's glory and imperial power while Judah remains devoted to his faith and the Jewish people's freedom. When Messala demands that Judah surrender potential rebels to Roman authorities, Judah refuses. He tells his family they will never see Messala again.
Ellen: Look I know we do this a lot, but how am I to resist chanting “kiss kiss kiss!” at these boys?
Tyler: Oh my goodness the homoerotic undertones between these two are palpable. “You're a Roman and I'm a Jew” … might as well be Romeo and Juliet.
The new Judean governor and his procession enter the city. As Judah and Tirzah watch from the upper terrace, loose roof tiles fall2, spooking the governor's horse and throwing him off. Messala realizes it was accidental but condemns Judah to the galleys and imprisons Miriam and Tirzah. When Simonides attempts to intervene, Messala arrests him as well. Judah vows revenge upon Messala.
Ellen: Specifically, Judah vows to mess Messala up upon his return, and Messala just repeats “return?” ABSOLUTELY ICY.
Tyler: (skull emoji)
As Judah and other slaves are marched to the galleys, they stop in Nazareth to water the Romans' horses. He begs for water, but the Roman commander refuses. Judah collapses but is revived when a local man gives him a drink.
Tyler: Are we to believe Jesus’ vibes are just so strong that he can silently stare down that angry guard and not get whipped or yelled at?
Ellen: Yes.
Tyler:
After three years as a galley slave3, Judah is assigned to Roman Consul Quintus Arrius' flagship. Arrius notices Judah's determination and self-discipline and offers to train him as a gladiator or charioteer, which Judah refuses. When the Roman fleet is attacked by Macedonian pirates, Arrius orders Judah to be unchained. The ship's hull is rammed, flooding the galley. Judah frees the other rowers, then rescues Arrius, who was thrown overboard. Clinging to wreckage and believing his fleet lost, Arrius attempts suicide, but Judah stops him. After being rescued, Arrius learns the battle was won. He later petitions Emperor Tiberius to free Judah, and adopts him as his son. During his time in Rome, Judah becomes a champion charioteer.
Tyler: Wait so all of a sudden Judah’s a master charioteer and the commander is a father figure? I know it would make an already long movie even longer, but it's such an odd bit of character development to completely skip over. Same with him being on ships for three years: there needs to be a better way to reflect the passage of time if it's just gonna skip around.
Ellen: I didn’t mind the time jump on the ship - the increasing-pace rowing demonstration/face-off was plenty. But I agree that it felt like I missed a few key scenes!
While returning to Judea, Judah meets Balthasar and Arab Sheik Ilderim4. Seeing Judah's prowess as a charioteer, the sheik asks him to drive his four horses in a race before the new Judean governor, Pontius Pilate. Judah declines, despite knowing that Messala is competing. Balthasar tells Judah about a prophet he seeks who preaches love and forgiveness, and urges Judah to cast off his consuming hate and vengeance5.
Ellen: Do you think Judah gets along so well with the horses because they have the same teeth??
Tyler: Haha I also love these horses being treated like well-behaved children. But I'm oddly afraid that at least one of them won't survive this movie! Antares got name-dropped too much for me to not get attached!
Ellen: Speaking of Antares, raise a glass to the upcoming launch!
In Jerusalem, Judah returns to his abandoned house and finds Esther, who never married, living with her debilitated father and also Malluch, a mute former prisoner. Messala imprisoned and tortured Simonides, who has protected Judah's fortune nonetheless. Presenting himself as Quintus Arrius' son, Judah confronts Messala and demands to know Miriam and Tirzah's fates. Messala orders their release from prison. Both have contracted leprosy and are secretly expelled from the city. Before traveling to the Valley of the Lepers, the women find Esther and beg her to conceal their condition from Judah. To stop him searching, Esther tells Judah they are dead.
Tyler: Making poor Esther not tell Judah is annoying and selfish. Almost the entire movie is about Judah going to the ends of the earth to reunite with them and now he’s being lied to that they’re dead? I’d rather them actually kill them off or wait until later in the movie to reveal that they’re actually alive.
Ellen: I have to assume this is a cultural thing that makes more sense in context?
Tyler: Also, an important question raised by my mom: how'd they contract leprosy if they were locked in a jail cell together?
Ellen: I can’t imagine their food safety or cleanliness standards were the highest…
Tyler: I guess I don’t entirely know how leprosy is spread. Thanks science!
Intermission
Even though ILTBTA is free, please indulge us further and enjoy this quick “advertisement.”
This installment of ILTBTA is brought to you by … The Great Circus of Rome!
Come one, come all, step right up and witness the spectacles of the Great Circus! Be you Roman, Jew, or Arab, our skilled charioteers and magnificent horses are sure to thrill and delight you.
And when it comes to those discerning customers for whom the simple joy of competition and athletes (both human and equine) at the height of their powers is not enough, fear not! Place bets of up to a thousand talents on your favorite, and cheer or cry along with the crowd as they’re brutally run over by their competitors or dragged by their horses.
Use promo code ILTBTA when purchasing your tickets to receive XIX.LIX% off! Come enjoy the circus: the only clowns here are the chariot race losers.
Seeking revenge, Judah agrees to drive Sheik Ilderim's horses against Messala in the chariot race. The sheik goads Messala into making an enormous wager on himself before revealing Judah is his driver. During the race, Messala drives a chariot with steel blades on its sides to disable competitors6. He attempts to destroy Judah's chariot, but wrecks his own instead. Dragged behind his horses, he is trampled by another chariot, while Judah wins the race. Before dying, Messala tells Judah his mother and sister are alive in the Valley of the Lepers.
Tyler: Woof that chariot race is really something!
Ellen: This and maybe the rowing scene are all most people remember about this movie, so I was surprised when it came up so fast in the second act.
Tyler: Maybe that’s why the pomp and circumstance before the actual race takes so long? They wanted to give people time to come back from the bathroom during intermission?
Tyler: Two things that immediately stood out to me are the different color horses for each racer (which was wise on the director’s part to help the viewer easily distinguish between racers) and the lack of much of a score underneath most of it. It really helped emphasize the natural sounds from the race (e.g., horses stomping, crowd oohing and ahhing, yada yada yada), but to me it sapped some of the potential oomph out of what is otherwise a fantastic bit of action.
Ellen: As I said up top, I remembered this scene looking shockingly good for the late 50s, with the notable and hilarious exception when Messala gets run over and I yelled “that’s a mannequin!”
Judah goes to the leper colony and encounters Esther and Malluch bringing supplies to Miriam and Tirzah. Esther persuades him to conceal himself as his family would wish. Judah and Esther then follow a crowd to hear what is possibly Jesus Christ's sermon on the mount.
Judah meets with Pontius Pilate7, who fears Judah's victory will stoke rebellion against Roman rule. Judah rejects his patrimony and Roman citizenship. Returning to the leper colony, he reveals himself to Miriam who says that Tirzah is dying. Judah and Esther take his family to hear Christ, but the trial of Jesus has begun. While lugging his cross through the streets, Jesus collapses. Judah recognizes him as the man who gave him water earlier. Judah gives him water but a Roman soldier intervenes. As Judah witnesses Jesus' crucifixion, Miriam and Tirzah, sheltered in a cave with Esther during a violent storm, are miraculously cured.
Tyler: This movie takes great pains to be like “Don’t get near a leper!” then hard-turns into “Yeah sure walk next to them for a while. Oh and bring them into town while you’re at it! Don’t worry about your neighbors, they’ll be fine.” It’d be like knowingly hanging out with people even though you knew you had COVID.
Ellen: Plot-wise, I understand that they wanted to get everyone to the trial, but I tend to agree, they get pretty loosey goosey with the seriousness of the disease.
Judah, freed of hate, returns to his house and finds them. Embracing, the four rejoice at the miracle.
Ellen: I find it a little silly that a movie that shadows the life of Jesus and cures leprosy with a combination of rain and blood skips the resurrection. Like, you’re pressed for time now??
Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat?
Love a good Wikipedia rabbit hole in search of some fun facts? Us too.
Ben-Hur’s Wikipedia page has some interesting facts and anecdotes that we recommend you read through, but here are a few of our favorites:
Ben-Hur is based on the 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by General Lew Wallace. The book stayed atop the U.S. all-time bestseller list until 1936’s Gone With The Wind. It was also the first book to ever be blessed by a pope when Pope Leo XIII did so.
Several film adaptations have been made, including: a shorter silent film in 1907 that didn’t get Wallace’s permission and thus became a landmark case of copyright infringement; the first feature-length film in 1925, which featured future Ben-Hur director William Wyler as one of thirty assistant directors; a 2003 direct-to-video animated version with Charlton Heston providing his voice; a two-episode miniseries in 2010 starring future The Vampire Diaries and The Originals star Joseph Morgan; and a 2016 “reimagining” that starred Morgan Freeman in the sheik role.
Ellen: Joseph Morgan never gives less than 110% in his vampire-based performances, so I’d be really curious to see that one!
Wyler was initially reluctant to direct the film, but was ultimately convinced by several things: preliminary storyboards for the now-iconic chariot race; his salary of $350,000 (plus 8% of box office earnings or 3% of net profits, whichever was greater), which was the largest given to a director at the time; a competitive desire to outdo Cecil Demille, the director of the other popular Biblical epic (and, spoiler, very-near-future ILTBTA post) The Ten Commandments; and a desire to work again in Rome, where he filmed the classic 1953 rom-com Roman Holiday.
Tyler: I’m constantly blown away by directors who are capable of making such drastically different movies like Ben-Hur and Roman Holiday. It certainly feels like directors nowadays have a particular ~style~ that they stick with.
In order to help emphasize the divide between the Romans and Jews, Wyler cast British actors as Romans and American ones as Jews, since he believed American audiences would find the British accents sufficiently aristocratic. He also had Stephen Boyd (who played Messala) wear brown contact lenses, since both he and lead Charlton Heston had blue eyes, as another way to emphasize their differences.
Before landing on Charlton Heston for the role of Judah Ben-Hur, several other actors were offered the role but declined: Burt Lancaster found the script too boring, Paul Newman claimed he didn’t have the legs to wear a tunic, and “a number of muscular, handsome Italian actors (many of whom did not speak English).”
Ellen: Going full Bond girl rules for the titular character would have been a CHOICE.
Shooting for the film began in Rome and lasted for 12-14 hours a day for six days a week. Six months later, the production was getting bogged down, partially due to the unreliability of some of the thousands of extras. Over 85% of them had no telephone or permanent address, so contacting them required word-of-mouth and could sometimes take several days. Overall, the film took nine months to film, with the chariot race sequence taking three months alone.
Speaking of the chariot race, the “pageantry” sequence before the race itself was a shot-for-shot remake of the same sequence from the 1925 film version. Wyler added the parade around the track to contrast the many close-up and medium shots during the actual race and also impress the audience with the arena’s grandeur.
The chariot arena covered eighteen acres and was at the time the largest film set ever built. It cost $1 million and took a thousand workers over a year to carve the oval out of a rock quarry. More than 36,000 tons of sand was brought in from Mediterranean beaches to cover the track itself. A track identical in size was built next to the site to help train the horses and figure out camera shots.
Over 40 miniature ships were built for the sea battle sequence, which was filmed in a giant tank on the backlot at MGM Studios in Culver City, CA. At the time of filming the live-action scenes, the script had no description or dialogue, so one of the screenwriters looked at the miniature footage and wrote scenes based on the action. Two 175-foot, seaworthy Roman galleys were also built.
Ellen: Man, we used to make movies.
A massive marketing campaign was undertaken to help promote Ben-Hur, including more than $20 million in items like candy, tricycles shaped as chariots, and “Ben-Her” and “Ben-His” towels.
Tyler: I hope whoever came up with “Ben-Her” and “Ben-His” got a giant bonus because that is brilliant.
While Ben-Hur received widespread acclaim for everything from the acting to the action to the direction, the negative reviews are funnier to read. For instance, John McCarten of The New Yorker wrote that Charlton Heston “speaks English as if he’d learned it from records.” The film’s length was also a popular critique: British film critic John Pym called it “a four-hour Sunday school lesson,” while fellow critic Dwight Macdonald wrote that he “felt like a motorist trapped at a railroad crossing while a long freight train slowly trundles by.”
Fill In The Blank
How did we really feel about The Academy nominating this?
Ellen: I’d like to let The Academy take my prize horse on one (1) lap around the arena. There’s a lot going on here! It’s like the movie is trying to be part religious epic, part ancient revenge story, and part spectacle of scale. It mostly succeeds at all of them, but it’s also sprawling and kind of disjointed. It may be a case where it’s easier to weave everything together in a book and tougher to achieve on screen. The absolute melodrama of some of the acting, particularly by the Ben-Hur family and associates, made me roll my eyes a few times. All of that being said, there’s a lot to like! As previously mentioned, the big set pieces really hold up and are a delight to watch (even if I think some of the preamble could have been cut), and despite my issues with it, I think the story is really compelling. I liked the slow buildup to Jesus being a bigger part of the story, and it’s interesting to imagine what the popular reaction and word-on-the-street was at the time.
Tyler: I’d like to give The Academy some water because I’m not a monster, but then tell it to keep walking. As evidenced by my comments throughout Plots & Feelings, I had a lot of feelings about the plots of Ben-Hur. The chariot race and overall scale of the movie are remarkable achievements, but it still seemed overstuffed to me, like it was trying to be five different movies at once. I also didn’t find it nearly as watchable as previous “Summer of Sweat” epics Born on the Fourth of July or Lawrence of Arabia, both of which managed to keep my attention and the plot moving despite their extended runtimes. Meanwhile, there were several scenes in Ben-Hur I would’ve trimmed down (or deleted altogether), yet somehow also scenes I thought should’ve been included.
Granted, as a not-particularly-religious-to-put-it-nicely person, maybe this was never going to resonate as much with me. As we discussed in real life, I was under the impression Jesus was more of a background figure for historical context, not someone who (as you put it) Forrest Gump’s their way into the plot and low-key saves the day at the end. Perhaps I should’ve paid more attention to the “A Tale of the Christ” subtitle. I did find it an interesting choice to not show his face at all, a la Michael Jordan in Air8. Religiosity aside, I also found the acting to be just fine and the intra-scene editing to be distractingly choppy at times.
Let The Credits Roll
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Post-Credits Scene
Get a sneak peek at the next ILTBTA installment.
We hope you like movies involving the Roman Empire, because our next installment of ILTBTA’s “Summer of Sweat” will be the 1963 historical drama Cleopatra. Starring Elizabeth Taylor in the title role, Cleopatra follows the young Egyptian queen as she resists the Romans. Cleopatra is available to stream for free with an HBO Max subscription, and can be rented elsewhere.
Until then, have you Ben-Hur’d the Good News??
Shout out to our special readers who recently experienced this in their real lives!
The beginning of Judah’s tiles and tribulations!
Tyler: Yet another movie in which my (relative) lack of upper body strength would absolutely doom me.
Whose brownface makeup is EVIDENT
Sounds like my ex-wife!
Ellen: This is referred to as a Greek chariot in the movie, or as we who’ve lived in Houston know it: a chariot with swangas.
Ellen: Not me realizing just now that Pontius Pilate is a first and last name and not a descriptor and a title 😅
Tyler: Honestly, same. I thought Pontius was a title and Pilate was a last name.
Surely this isn’t the first time MJ was compared to Jesus, right?