BEN-HUR -- William Wyler, dir

©1959
studio: Warner home Video
production company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
dir: William Wyler
producer: Sam Zimbalist
cast: Charleton Heston, Jack Hawkins, Haya Harareet, Stephen Boyd, Hugh Griffith, Martha Scott, Cathy O'Donnell, Sam Jaffe
screenplay: Karl Tunberg (and Maxwell Anderson and Christopher Fry and Gore Vidal -- all uncredited)
based on the novel by General Lew Wallace
winner of 11 Academy Awards

When a Jewish prince is betrayed and sent into slavery by a Roman friend, he regains his freedom and comes back for revenge.

I don't know why, perhaps due to the 3-1/2 hour length of the film, but I've never seen this picture from beginning to end, I've only caught bits and pieces. However, because it's the picture of the month on my calendar, I sat down to watch this epic.

While I'm glad to be able to say that I've actually seen this film, it did very little for me. I think that it tried to do a little too much, and yet it still took some incredible leaps in the story (from galley slave to adopted son of a Roman Consul in under five minutes?). And how quickly these people were able to go from Rome to Nazareth and back again!

Visually, it's quite stunning. Great use of the widescreen format. The chariot race really is quite exciting, and I love how they never show the face of the man playing Jesus. The plotline of the mother and daughter as leppers didn't work for me at all. I really felt like that was just one more thing that we had to wade through before the movie could end.

I did enjoy some of the special features on the discs that I watched -- particularly the conversations with Gore Vidal on his contributions to the work. I especially liked his discussion on how the initial reunion scene between Judah Ben-Hur and Massala wasn't working and he (Vidal) treated it like a lover's quarrel, hinting, ever so subtly, that there was more to their history than just friends. That certainly adds to the drama of a scene, and it was done so well that the viewer doesn't catch it!

If you've got a rainy weekend and your looking for a movie to watch, this would make a good choice.