Ben-Hur

No movie has won more Academy Awards than "Ben Hur," so it and "Titanic" must be the greatest movies of all time, right? Not hardly! Long ago, I designated "Ben Hur" the worst movie from the 1950s to win a "best picture" Academy Award, and it is at least competitive with some 1990s winners to be accorded the designation worst movie ever to win an Academy Award for "best picture."

Some if it—especially the famous chariot race—is well filmed (by the second unit). Much of the rest of it is cheesily shot, especially Rome and the naval battle. The plot is totally unbelievable. The pace is way, way, way too slow. Even the chariot race goes on too long.

The women in it are so much dead space. There are a lot of movies in which women don't matter. What is remarkable about "Ben Hur" is that it was directed by someone with a reputation for directing women (William Wyler's accomplishments included making Audrey Hepburn a star in "Roman Holiday," he was the director Bette Davis most admired, etc.) and that the women occupy some screen time but still are not really there.

If I wrote of the nonentity women before the ostensible best performance by an actor in a 1959 movie, it must mean that I prefer wood to cardboard. In the title role of a Jewish aristocrat in the Roman province of Palestine, Charlton Heston runs the gamut from smoldering with irritation to glowering with contempt. I find it completely unbelievable that Messala (Stephen Boyd) was ever his friend. Perhaps (as one of the script-writers, Gore Vidal, has written) Boyd was playing Messala as a thwarted lover of Ben Hur (with Heston not being let in on the attempt to provide some motivation for Messala's behavior. (BTW, Messala being reposted to Jerusalem is also hard to believe, but a minor camel to swallow in a movie full of plausibility white elephants).

As puzzling as the love-turned-to-hate relationship of Messala and Ben Hur is, I find it completely unbelievable that Ben Hur got out of the galley chains and saved the Roman admiral played by Jack Hawkins. I find the tie-in to the Crucifixion entirely forced, so maybe Charlton Heston is not entirely to blame for not making the part or the movie credible. He was better in Wyler's "The Big Country" and Orson Welles's "Touch of Evil" in the preceding year. Later, playing Cardinal Richlieu very broadly, I think Heston was amusing in Richard Lester's musketeer films.

(I cannot resist second guessing the 1959 actor Oscar. The other nominees for best actor were James Stewart in "Anatomy of a Murder," Jack Lemmon in "Some Like It Hot," Paul Muni in "The Last Angry Man," Laurence Harvey in "Room at the Top. All were better than Heston (I think, I've never seen "The last Angry Man," but Stewart and Lemmon were superb, and I assume Paul Muni must have been better than Heston was as Ben Hur). Then there was Cary Grant un-nominated in "North by Northwest.")

Stephen Boyd, who was far from being a great actor is more interesting and nuanced as Messala than Heston was as Ben Hur (a less than great compliment). Jack Hawkins was unimpressive, not as good as he was in "Bridge on the River Kwai," a better "best picture" from two years earlier. And Hugh Griffith, who won the award for best performance by an actor in a supporting role actually brings the movie to life for a few minutes. (As many as the eight that Judi Dench calculated she was in "Shakespeare in Love"?) His relationship with Ben Hur is pretty hard to believe, too, but his hamming is at least entertaining. (In "Start the Revolution without Me" he was actually touching as a befuddled king, and he was entertainingly gluttonous in another movie Oscared "best picture," Tom Jones.)

Miklos Rozsa's music is overwrought, especially around Jesus. "Spartacus" and even the often ludicrously cast and unintentionally funny "Ten Commandments" are more watchable. (And Heston is better in Cecil B. Demented's conception of Moses.)

Did I mention that "Ben Hur" lasts approximately 47 1/2 hours? I think that it is probably boring even fast-forwarded so that viewer is spared the music and dialogue! I'm pretty sure that I could cut it to be an interesting half hour movie, making sure that Charlton Heston is never onscreen without either Stephen Boyd or Hugh Griffith. No leper colonies, no Roman galleys, no Roman triumphal parade, no Jesus Christ.

In summation, among the aspects that make "Ben Hur" a serious candidate for the designation "worst movie ever to receive a 'best picture' Oscar" are:
(1) the title character makes no sense and is badly played
(2) the plot provided by General Lew Wallace in his 19th-century best-selling historical novel is totally unbelievable, especially the slave galley to adopted-son part and the connection to Jesus Christ to provide an ersatz glow for the ending
(3) the movie is way, way, way, way, way too long
(4) the music is unbearably annoying
(5) the female characters are not merely vapid but black holes