(1959) 5 Bruce Eder William Wyler's Ben-Hur is the quintessential Hollywood biblical epic: a huge story, given a suitably exalted treatment, splashed across a broad canvas, and centered on a pair of well-drawn central characters. It's easy to forget that the film was the culmination of a cycle of religious epics that dated back slightly more than a decade, and closed out the genre as a viable Hollywood phenomenon. Since Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah in 1949, the public had shown a willingness to spend money on screen stories adapted from (or inspired by) the Old or New Testaments; the advent of the Cold War and the threat of thermo-nuclear annihilation likely made filmgoers start thinking about God, heaven, and the hereafter more than usual. Apart from MGM's trouble-plagued Quo Vadis? and 20th Century Fox's The Robe and its sequel, Demetrius and the Gladiators, however, few of the resulting movies did more than modest business at the box office, and none received any serious critical respectability. Ben-Hur proved to be an exception: Wyler's direction is sure and carefully balanced, avoiding any hint of the campiness and awkward line delivery that broke the verisimilitude of many of the other films; Charlton Heston, though far from the first choice for the title role (Paul Newman and Rock Hudson both turned it down), brings a compelling intensity to his performance; and Jack Hawkins' work as father figure Quintus Arrius lent the film a dignity comparable to Finlay Currie's St. Peter and Leo Genn's Petronius in Quo Vadis? Coupled with Yakima Canutt's stunt direction, those virtues proved unbeatable. Ben-Hur was the most expensive movie in MGM's history (perhaps not coincidentally, the 1926 silent version of the story had also been the most expensive non-sound production in the studio's history), but it ended up playing for two years in venues all over the world. The film earned enough money to keep the studio solvent, allowing them to acquire other films of this kind for distribution, most notably Nicholas Ray's King of Kings. Ben-Hur was virtually the last film of its kind made in Hollywood, or by Hollywood -- costs were too high to do too many more, and it also seemed as though audiences had seen most of the religious stories that were worth their moviegoing dollars. With the exception of box-office disasters such as The Greatest Story Ever Told and The Bible, most subsequent examples of the genre would be produced in Europe.

releases for Ben-Hur on AllMovie

Ben-Hur (1959)

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Ben-Hur

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Mild Violence
Suitable for Children

genres

Epic

sub-genres

category

Feature

directed by

William Wyler

countries

USA

released

1959

run time

212 min.

produced by

MGM, Sam Zimbalist

released by

MGM

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	Title/Studio	Release Date
	Ben-Hur [Fiftieth Anniversary] [2 Discs] Warner Home Video More	February 7, 2012

	Ben-Hur [Fiftieth Anniversary] [2 Discs] [Blu-ray] Warner Home Video More	February 7, 2012

	Ben-Hur [Fiftieth Anniversary] [4 Discs] [Blu-ray/DVD] Warner Home Video More	February 7, 2012

	Ben-Hur [50th Anniversary Collector's Edition] [French] Warner Home Video (Canadian) More	September 27, 2011

	Ben-Hur [50th Anniversary: Ultimate Collector's Edition] [French] [Blu-ray] Warner Home Video (Canadian) More	September 27, 2011

	Ben-Hur [Fiftieth Anniversary] [2 Discs] Warner Home Video More	September 27, 2011

	Ben Hur [Special Edition] Warner Bros More	February 13, 2006

	Ben Hur [Special Edition Collector's Box Set] CDA Entertainment More	September 16, 2002

	Ben-Hur [Special Edition Collector's Box] Creative Design Art More	June 11, 2002

	Ben-Hur Warner Bros More	November 5, 2001

	Ben-Hur Warner Home Video More	March 13, 2001

	Ben-Hur [Gold Academy Awards Packaging] Warner Home Video More	March 13, 2001