By patterning his pod race in Star Wars: Episode I after the chariot race from William Wyler's 1959 production of Ben-Hur, George Lucas all but confirmed that the climactic scene has become a part of film lore. Choreographed by legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt, the 15-minute race anchored this grand 212-minute epic that's one of the best ever to come out of Hollywood. Ben-Hur won a record 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director (Wyler), Actor (Charlton Heston as Judah Ben-Hur), Supporting Actor (Hugh Griffith as Sheik Ilderim), Cinematography, Music Score, Costume Design, Film Editing, and Special Effects. Now, freed from the cramped distortion of TV-formatted versions that expanded to widescreen only for the chariot race, it emerges as powerful as ever on DVD. And the special effects are still surprisingly effective.
A More Secular Tale of the Christ
Based on a novel by Gen. Lew Wallace, subtitled "A Tale of the Christ" and shot in Rome, Wyler's adaptation manages to walk a steady line between religious spectacle and secular epic. Even Heston isn't as hammy as usual in his role as a wealthy Judean unjustly sentenced to the galleys by his childhood friend, Messala (Stephen Boyd) — who has returned to command the Roman garrison. But character wins out, and Ben-Hur's heroics in saving the fleet commander (Jack Hawkins) earn him his freedom and a chance for vengeance against Messala in the Jerusalem circus. Though the film begins with the wise men paying tribute to baby Jesus in Bethlehem and ends with the Crucifixion, the entire middle focuses on the Roman world and Ben-Hur's quest to find himself and his imprisoned mother and sister. We learn from the "making of" feature that Wyler, a Jew, wanted to make a film that would appeal to people of all religious faiths, and he seems to have done just that.Epic Extras
Warner Bros. has put together a fantastic full-frame documentary on "Ben-Hur: The Making of an Epic," which, itself, has an epic feel to it. The production staff seems to have left no research stone unturned; and the documentary includes scenes from the 1925 black and white version of Ben-Hur (which, surprisingly, featured frontal nudity), early studio and stage stills, photographs of documents and scripts, and even footage of Heston accepting his Oscar for Best Actor. It's wonderfully edited and tells the complete story of Ben-Hur — from the birth of the novel by the former New Mexico Territory governor, to visuals of early playbills for the first staged production and all of Hollywood's attempts to capture the grandeur of Wallace's novel on film.Twice, we learn, Ben-Hur saved the studio from bankruptcy, and there was a lot riding on the 1959 version. The film used literally a cast of thousands and more than 300 sets — including a 10-square-block set which depicted a Jerusalem that experts said was historically accurate. It was the most expensive motion picture filmed to date, and nervous studio execs flew to Rome to check on the progress almost weekly. Wyler, who was an assistant on the 1925 film, was a stickler for realism and accuracy, and so even the leper colony scenes were shot in an old marble quarry that actually could have been used for the same purpose in 26 AD. Even studio shots were elaborate. For the epic naval battle, Wyler ordered a man-made lake dug so that larger-than-usual miniatures could be used. Years of research preceded the set design, and actors like Heston went to Rome early to learn how to drive chariots. Christopher Plummer handles the narration of this documentary that is so good it will bear frequent rewatching.
No comments:
Post a Comment