Oh, tomorrow is Easter

Tomorrow, April 20, is Easter Sunday, at least for those who follow western strands of Christianity. There's a set of Hollywood films dealing with the biblical tellings of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection that seem to get trotted out every year, one of which is the 1959 sound version of Ben-Hur, which kicks the day off at 6:00 AM.

This version of the story runs something like 3½ hours, depending on how you want to count the overture and intermission. Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) is a reasonably well-off man in Jersualem during the era when Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor and that famous carpenter was roaming around Judea preaching the gospel. He lives with his mom and sister, as well as servant to whose daughter Esther (Haya Harareet) Judah has been betrothed. Judah learns that his childhood friend and Roman citizen Messala (Stephen Boyd) is coming back to Judea. Unfortunately, Messala wants to exploit his friendship with Judah to get Judah to betray rebellious Jews, which Judah refuses to do, knowing fully well this will mean trouble should things go any more sour.

Of course they will, as a good 50 minutes into the movie the Romans are parading past Judah's villa when his sister knocks a roofing tile off, falling just inches from the governor. That's unforgivable, so Messala makes Judah a galley slave and imprisons Mom and sister, who eventually get leprosy, although that story line is at least another 90 minutes away. Judah is put on the ship captained by consul Quintus Arrius (Jack Hawkins), eventually saves Arrius' life, and gets freed and made Arrius' adopted son as a result, enabling him to go back to Judea to look for his family. Esther, rather than telling Judah his mom and sister are lepers, tells him they died, which leads Judah to seek vengeance on Messala.

That desire for vengeance is why Judah finally decides to take part in the famous chariot race, which we know he'll win, and spend the last 50 minutes or so looking for Mom and Sis since Messala tells him the truth. Along the way at several key points, Jesus shows up, filmed only from the back, and has a profound effect on the various characters in the story, including ultimately Judah.

I said at the beginning that this version runs long, and I do mean long. It's a good hour longer than the Ramon Novarro silent, as I mentioned in a brief post in 2013. I stand by the comments I made in that post. The 1959 version of Ben-Hur won a ton of Oscars, and the technical categories it won are probably mostly deserved, since I can't really be bothered to look through the entire list of Oscar nominations to determine whether some other movie had better costume design. The music, art direction, cinematography, and all that stuff are indeed of a very high standard.

But the acting and screenplay? I think they take a back seat to the much tighter Novarro version. A lot of the scenes feel like they go on way too long, notably for me being the time between being sentenced to the galleys to actually winding up rowing a boat. And then there's Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Hugh Griffith playing an Arab sheik and the financial backer of Judah in the chariot race. I'm surprised I didn't come across a bunch of modern reviews arguing he was a bad stereotype.

My criticisms aside, Ben-Hur is considered an epic, and for understandable reasons. Becuase of that, it's one that should definitely be on any film buff's list of "Essentials", even if you only watch it once.