Alternative Film Guide

Warner Home Video is releasing a four-disc special edition of Ben-Hur, the 1959 epic that almost broke MGM during its production, but that ended up breaking box-office and Academy Award records instead — winning a total of 11 out of 12 Oscar nominations.

Among the golden statuettes Ben-Hur took home were those for Best Picture, Best Direction (William Wyler), Best Actor (Charlton Heston), and Best Supporting Actor (Hugh Griffith).

Undeservedly so, I might add.

Based on Lew Wallace’s pious novel, Ben-Hur is a ponderous, badly written, and mostly poorly acted historical melodrama that only comes to life during the still electrifying chariot race — which, by the way, was handled by stunt coordinator Yakima Canutt and second unit director Andrew Marton, and was a near shot-by-shot restaging of the even more electrifying race found in the much superior 1925 silent version of the same story.

That Charlton Heston is a wooden Ben-Hur and that hammy Hugh Griffith chews on the cardboard-looking scenery as if he hadn’t eaten for years come as no big surprise. But that William Wyler would sleepwalk through his directorial chores is a major letdown for Wyler could be a brilliant filmmaker — see The Letter and The Little Foxes. Ironically, Ben-Hur remains not only Wyler’s biggest hit, but also his worst film since he became an A-list director in the early 1930s.

The good news is that the 1925 version is also part of the Ben-Hur DVD package. Directed by Fred Niblo, the still impressive epic stars 1920s heartthrob Ramon Novarro, 1910s matinee idol Francis X. Bushman (as Messala), and May McAvoy (Al Jolson’s leading lady in the first part-talkie feature film, The Jazz Singer). The silent film, which was restored in the late 1980s, comes with Carl Davis’s excellent musical accompaniment.

Besides the 1925 epic, which became the biggest worldwide grosser in film history and would remain so until Gone with the Wind 14 years later, the four-disc set boasts a newly remastered and restored print from original 65mm film elements of the 1959 version, and over ten hours worth of extras including the feature-length documentaries Ben-Hur: The Epic That Changed Cinema, Ben-Hur: The Making of an Epic, and Directed by William Wyler. Those promise to be considerably more interesting than the main attraction.

Others in the cast of the 1959 film are the capable Stephen Boyd and Martha Scott, plus Jack Hawkins, Haya Harareet, and Cathy O’Donnell.

And you can decide for yourself whether or not Boyd’s Messala feels more than fraternal love for Heston’s Ben-Hur. Not that it helps matters any, either way.

Scheduled Region 1 DVD (Canada / U.S. / U.S. territories) release date: September 13, 2005

A Warner Home Video release.

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