April: 1959

The fall and rise of Judah Ben-Hur, MGM, and an uncredited messiah.

Table of Contents

• The Times
• The 1959 Selection
  • A Circular Road

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The Times

1959 Factoids
US President:	Dwight D. Eisenhower
Best Picture:	BEN-HUR1
Avg. Ticket Price:	$0.512
1 Source: oscars.org 2 Source: boxofficemojo.com

For , we head to 1959. This year featured classics like North By Northwest and Some Like It Hot, along with stranger selections like Ed Wood’s cult-classic Plan 9 From Outer Space. Disney released Sleeping Beauty, its first animated feature filmed in 70mm – this was stunningly beautiful but coincidentally marked the end of their expensive, hand-painted backgrounds. And on the darker side, 1959 saw two Oscar nominated crime dramas: the canonical courtroom film Anatomy Of A Murder and the coming of age French drama The 400 Blows. But for our road-trip pick, we went with the absolute king of the Oscars that year…

Figure 1: Source images from IMDB

The 1959 Selection

For our 1959 time-capsule selection, we are watching…

BEN-HUR, Directed by William Wyler, Starring Charlton Heston.

This epic from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) absolutely crushed the Oscars that year. It received 12 nominations and won 11 of those¹: Actor, Supporting Actor, Directing, Best Picture, Art Direction (color), Cinematography (color), Costume Design (color), Film Editing, Music, Sound, and Special Effects, and Writing (adapted screenplay). After 60 years, it still holds the most Academy Awards for a single film, tied with Titanic (1997) and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003)². All three of those are 3h+ epics, but BEN-HUR was the first, the longest (at 212 minutes), and the only one with an intermission.

Figure 2: From IMDB

Figure 3: From IMDB

MGM was struggling financially at the time, and this movie was a huge gamble by the studio, based in part on the success of the biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956) by Paramount (also starring Charlton Heston). The film’s budget began at $7M and eventually grew to over $15M (~$133M today), making it the most expensive film ever produced at the time³. The gamble paid off – it was number one at the box-office for 6 months, rising to become the second highest grossing film of all-time (at the time) and saving MGM from ruin.

A Circular Road

This story chronicles the painful fall and unrelenting rise of Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston). It’s a circular epic that starts with Judah as a wealthy Jewish prince and merchant, has him lose everything to wander for years as a galley slave, and ends with his heroic return to exact revenge on his betrayor and reunite with his family. It’s a road-trip transformation for sure, where years go by on the trail and on the seas as Judah struggles for a way home.

Figure 4: Source images from IMDB

Ben-Hur’s circular path is echoed in the famous chariot race climax, a literal race in circles where he battles his childhood friend Messala (Stephen Boyd). This scene alone cost MGM $1M to film over 5 weeks, but it resulted in 9 minutes of some of the greatest action of cinema history.

Figure 5: From IMDB

BEN-HUR is a story about friendship, betrayal, and a fall from grace; about vengence, hope, redemption, and eventual salvation. It’s a story so epic that Jesus of Nazareth is just a side-plot, with less screen time than Judah’s leprosy stricken sister Miriam (Martha Scott). It’s our most grueling and triumphant road-trip yet!

Figure 6: From IMDB

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1. Oscars 1960↩

2. Wikipedia Academy Award records↩

3. BEN-HUR Wkipedia↩