And here I am in 1968, at the age of 8, outside my grandmother’s house in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn:

Not The Robe I Remember!

The Robe is noteworthy for being the first CinemaScope film. When it was finally released on DVD in October 2001, it was presented in its full widescreen CinemaScope aspect ratio. Prior to this DVD release, I had recorded The Robe on a VHS cassette tape when it was shown on AMC, part of their commercial-free lineup of “American Movie Classics”, hosted by the likes of Nick Clooney and Bob Dorian. So, I could not wait to purchase the new disc, which would undoubtedly have sharper images and clearer sound.

Almost from the moment I hit “play” on the DVD unit, I noticed differences. From the opening credits, something was very wrong. At their conclusion, a red curtain rises to reveal an outtake from an arena scene that appeared in Demetrius and the Gladiators. I was flabbergasted.

A scene-by-scene comparison of my VHS tape and that DVD revealed that virtually every scene was not quite the same and it wasn’t just the camera angles. Even the inflections of the actors reciting the same dialogue I had committed to memory were dramatically different. I was both annoyed and mystified. I immediately sat down and wrote a scathing letter to Twentieth Century Fox. Eventually, I received a reply from their marketing department telling me that if I was noticing differences, I had probably seen a ‘pan-and-scan’ version on television, while the DVD offered an aspect ratio that was fully consistent with the original CinemaScope release.

No, I protested! Virtually every line spoken had a different inflection by nearly every actor. What I saw growing up was not the same film that I saw on that DVD. And I had the VHS tape to prove it!

It took years to get to the bottom of this mystery. The IMDb site explains:

Production of [The Robe] had already started when 20th Century-Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck decided that this was to be the first film shot in CinemaScope (2.55:1 aspect ratio). Thereafter, shooting continued in both the new format and “Academy ratio” (1.37:1, non-wide-screen) for use in theaters not yet using wide-screen projection. Each time a shot was completed for the scope version, the actors had to do another take for the “flat” version. The most noticeable differences are the performances of Richard Burton (Marcellus) and Jay Robinson (Caligula) that are quite different in the ‘Flat’ version. Some people even think the ‘flat’ version has the better performances. … For many years, the “standard” screen version was the one usually shown on TV …

In other words, the Fox marketing department was clueless. Indeed, it was not just my familiarity with the flat version that so distressed me. The performances of the actors in the flat version are so infinitely superior to the CinemaScope version that there is, quite simply, no comparison whatsoever. In 2009, when a meticulously restored Blu-Ray of The Robe was released, there was a feature that allowed the viewer to compare and contrast the differently filmed scenes of the two versions, where the flat version could be seen as a box-within-a-box. Sadly, Fox did not include a separate disc with the restored flat version on that Blu-Ray release. It remains unavailable to the public. (And you can bet your bottom dollar that I’ve already transferred my VHS recording of the flat version to several DVD discs for safekeeping!)

Other Jesus Films

“Of all the cinematic depictions of antiquity,” Cyrino writes, “the image of ancient Rome on the big screen has long been the most popular and ubiquitous, as well as the most impressive and meaningful.” [4] More meaningful to me have been those films that have depicted the conflict between Rome and the early Christians. It matters not how historically or liturgically accurate any of these depictions are. What inspired me was the strength of a small, marginalized minority of individuals who stood up for their convictions against the relentless persecution and brutal oppression of an empire. Even from childhood, the libertarian lurking within was nourished by such tales of courage and commitment. As I grew older and embraced a more secular outlook on the world, I was able to appreciate these liberatory themes as far more universal than the religious context in which they were depicted.

It cannot be denied, however, that the sense of hopefulness conveyed by these Biblical epics carried with it the supreme message to “keep the faith” against all odds. That message uplifted me as I struggled against a medical problem that was slowly extinguishing my life. On so many levels, these films encouraged me to fight on.

Partially because of the impact of The Robe and its sequel, I searched out other Biblically themed movies — from D. W. Griffith’s monumental 1916 silent classic, Intolerance and DeMille’s 1927 touching silent version of The King of Kings to Martin Scorsese’s thought-provoking 1988 flick, The Last Temptation of Christ and Mel Gibson’s graphic depiction of The Passion of the Christ. I really like horror movies, but the violence in Gibson’s 2004 film was a bit gratuitous for my tastes. Not as explicit as Passion, Quo Vadis, the 1951 adaptation of the Henryk Sienkiewicz novel, starring Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, and the Oscar-nominated Peter Ustinov as the unhinged Emperor Nero, has its moments of gladiatorial excess, complete with Christians being fed to the lions and burned alive on crosses. But its spectacular sets and robust Miklos Rozsa score remain among its highlights.

Of the countless television movies and miniseries that have aired, the most outstanding, for me, is Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, a four-episode, 6+ hour 1977 production with an all-star cast giving all-star performances. Robert Powell is extraordinary in the title role.

Clearly, my reactions to many of these productions have been mixed. Among the many “Life of Jesus” films, the 1961 Nicholas Ray-directed King of Kings, which starred a very handsome Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus, remains a personal favorite. Hunter’s striking blue eyes and youthful looks led some to dismiss the film as “I Was a Teenage Jesus.” I could certainly sympathize with Oprah Winfrey, who later recalled that when she saw the film as a kid, she thought she’d have to go to confession because she found herself lusting after the Son of God.

I first saw the film when it was a Holy Week staple on WABC-TV starting in 1973. At 13 years of age, I had already witnessed a decade of news broadcasts showing the brutality of the Jim Crow South unleashing its police, with their batons, hoses, and snarling dogs, on civil rights demonstrators. Thousands of boys were being brought home in body bags from the war raging in Vietnam, while antidraft and antiwar protestors were marching in opposition to that war. Cities were aflame with riots and the country seemed to be unraveling. On top of this, from 1963 to 1973, I was fed a steady television diet of brutal political assassinations: John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy shot dead — the tragedies broadcast directly into our living room.

It was in this context that I first viewed King of Kings. To me, there was a distinct contrast between Barrabas and Jesus, representations of the zealot’s violent struggle against occupiers and the nonviolent quest for a larger, universal spiritual liberation, respectively. Barabbas thinks that he and Jesus both seek the same freedom, "only our methods differ." But in preparing to take siege on Jerusalem as Jesus enters the city, Barabbas declares that Jesus “speaks only of peace! I am fire! He is water! How can we ever meet? … All dreamers are fools.” This resembled the clash between those who fought for civil rights “by any means necessary,” as Malcolm X had advocated, versus the strategies of nonviolent resistance forged by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nicholas Ray certainly didn’t have a crystal ball in 1961 when the film was released, but once you see that production through the prism of the 1960s and early 1970s, you can’t unsee it. The film is elevated by its sweeping visuals, Ray Bradbury-penned narration delivered by Orson Welles, and spectacular Miklos Rozsa score. (Though, if you want to see the full unedited version of the film, get the DVD or Blu-Ray; for some unknown reason, in recent years, when TCM has aired King of Kings, it always edits out the “Overture”, “Entr’acte”, and "Exit Music", which showcase Rozsa’s themes brilliantly.)

Other “Life of Jesus” films retain moments of solemnity, but some are undermined by distractions that I have never been able to overlook. I’m thinking specifically of The Greatest Story Ever Told, directed by George Stevens, featuring countless all-star cameos, a powerful Alfred Newman score, and a reverent performance by Max von Sydow as Jesus. I can’t help but think that Sydow himself must have died twice on the cross once he’d heard John Wayne’s Centurion delivery of the post-mortem line: “Truly this man was the Son of Gawd!” [YouTube link]

There is an apocryphal backstory to this. Stevens allegedly told Wayne that he needed to deliver his line with more “awe.” In the next take, Wayne delivered the line: “Aw, truly this man was the Son of Gawd.”

Ironically, a still of that scene adorns the cover of Adele Reinhartz’s wonderful 2007 study, Jesus of Hollywood, and yet, the author never mentions the delivery of that line in a way that only John Wayne could!

Fortunately, there is another “Tale of the Christ” that focuses less directly on the life of Jesus and more profoundly on the impact that life has on the characters at the center of its dramatic story. That film is the subject of my next installment, which I’ll post next week!

Part III: The Triumph of the Intimate Epic

Celebrated by critics as “the zenith of the Hollywood epic cycle,” the 1959 version of Ben-Hur is, indeed, as Monica Cyrino puts it, “a cinematic triumph, in the compelling performances of the actors, the stylish simplicity of its script, the refined art direction, and the exceptionally powerful music. The film is both passionate and reserved, with thrilling action sequences and spectacular sets, yet it is distinguished by intelligent, evocative dialogue and radiant visual symbolism.” [5]

The Best Picture of 1959 won 11 Oscars, a record that has been tied by Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, but never beaten, and neither of those films took home any Oscars in the acting categories. Charlton Heston won the Best Actor Oscar in the title role, and Hugh Griffith received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in his role as Sheik Ilderim. Wyler, who was an assistant director on the 1925 silent version of Ben-Hur, won his third Oscar in the Best Director category, and the film was also honored for its cinematography, film editing, art direction, set decoration, sound, special effects, and its glorious score, composed by Miklos Rozsa. It might have won 12 Oscars if Wyler hadn’t launched an ad campaign in Variety in which he publicly praised the script contributions of playwright Christopher Fry, even though Karl Tunberg was given sole screenwriting credit. Even Gore Vidal made a key contribution to the script. These controversies no doubt had a cooling effect on Academy voters, who awarded the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay to Room at the Top.

A Music Score for the Ages

Though every Oscar that the film received was well deserved, in my opinion, I hold a special place in my heart for the Rozsa score. I didn’t get to see Ben-Hur until 1969 when it was re-released in all its 70 mm glory for its tenth anniversary run at the Palace Theatre in New York City. Walking into that immense, majestic theater at the age of 9, seeing that famous wall portrait of Judy Garland, who had recently died, I settled into my seat, not quite realizing the depth of the cinematic moments I was about to experience. But I recognized the first three notes of the Overture instantly. Throughout the 1960s, I had listened countless times to the film’s soundtrack, a staple on our Victrola. I fell in love with every aspect of Rozsa’s score. Finally, I was able to integrate Rozsa’s music with the remarkable images on screen.

I have often wondered if the score penetrated my consciousness even before I was born. Given that my mother saw the film in theaters during its Christmas seasonal debut in 1959, around ten weeks before my birthday, and that she brought that soundtrack home with her and played it regularly, I was probably being serenaded inside the womb with Rozsa’s timeless themes long before I emerged into the “great blooming, buzzing confusion” of a new world. Cyrino captures the magnificence of the score eloquently:

The spare, graceful script is complemented by the elegance of the soundtrack, perhaps the most beautiful film score ever written. Hungarian composer Miklos Rozsa … contributed … [more than] 120 minutes of stunning and eloquent music, [one of] the longest musical score[s] ever composed for a film, and certainly the most influential symphonic score of the epic film genre. Music is the vital soul of this film, enhancing the drama at every turn, and used with particular emphasis to express characters’ emotions in scenes without dialogue. The individual musical themes, each one easily standing alone as an extraordinary orchestral composition, are immediately recognizable as the plot progresses, whether the music conveys Judah’s angry struggle for freedom (the stirring drums of the galley theme), his romantic bond with Esther, or his redemption through Jesus. The absence of music, as in the ten minutes of the chariot race or the scene where Judah and Esther are reunited, becomes “as potent as its presence.” [6]

Cyrino was not alone in her praise of Rozsa’s music. Roger Hickman declared Rozsa’s work as “his defining masterpiece and one of the finest scores in the history of Hollywood filmmaking,” while Jon Solomon praised it as a “marvelously sweeping and full-bodied soundtrack.” [7] Rozsa himself held “[t]he music of Ben-Hur … very close to my heart.” [8]

And yet, it wasn’t all smooth sailing for the composer. He recalled that Wyler had initially suggested using “Adeste Fideles” (“O Come All Ye Faithful”) for the Nativity scene. Rozsa was horrified, telling the director that it was an anachronistic eighteenth-century work completely at odds with the stylistic unity of the score he was composing. In the end, Rozsa’s compositions, “Star of Bethlehem” and “Adoration of the Magi”, are among the loveliest themes in the entire film — and even Wyler would later agree. [9]

This episode aside, Wyler’s directorial brilliance is what made Ben-Hur the cinema’s first “intimate epic.” To appreciate that brilliance, it’s important to revisit the story upon which it was built.

A Story for the Ages

Written by General Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur was first published in 1880. It became a remarkable “phenomenon of popular culture,” as Neil Sinyard explains. [10] Indeed, “by the end of the nineteenth century, it had sold more than any other novel ever written.” Stage adaptations followed, as did a one-reeler in 1907, a 1925 silent epic, and the 1959 classic. Its adaptations extend to a 2003 animated flick, a 2010 television miniseries, and a 2016 reboot, which can’t be forgotten swiftly enough! It’s even inspired a few school plays.

The story is well known; I’ve provided a much more extensive summary of the plot in my 25-year-old review essay. Though the film opens with the Nativity, the defining events of Judah Ben-Hur’s life take place roughly in the five-year period between AD 26 and AD 31. Judah is a Jewish prince who lives with his mother Miriam and his sister Tirzah. He is reunited with his childhood friend, Messala, who once saved his life when they were boys. Messala is now a tribune of Rome in command of the garrison in Jerusalem. In their heartfelt reunion, the ambitious Messala seeks an ally in Judah, which would help him to consolidate his growing power. He urges Judah to help him stabilize the unruly Judean province by naming those among his countrymen who are plotting against Rome. But Judah wants no part of any collaboration. Messala views this as a betrayal and their friendship is irreparably damaged.

The entrance into the city of the new governor, Valerius Gratus, is stillborn when Tirzah leans on loose tiles from the roof of their home. The tiles fall and strike the governor. Messala, who discovers that this is an accident, has Judah arrested for the attempted assassination and his mother and sister imprisoned as accomplices. He tells Judah that “by condemning without hesitation an old friend” and his family, he will be feared. But Messala’s stated ambitions cannot hide the vengeful nature of his actions, in the face of what he sees as Judah’s unforgivable disloyalty. Even Judah’s steward, Simonides, is arrested and tortured. In the aftermath, his daughter, Esther, who loves Judah, seeks refuge in the abandoned house of Hur, along with her debilitated father.

Even as he vows revenge for the injustices that Messala has perpetrated, Judah is sentenced to the galleys. Crossing the desert, he is denied water by the Romans. His thirst is quenched by a compassionate carpenter.

Three years later, Judah, now a galley slave, saves the life of the naval commander and consul Quintus Arrius during a violent naval battle against Macedonian pirates, which miraculously results in a Roman victory. With Judah by his side in a victory parade, Arrius pleads with Emperor Tiberius to free Judah. Tiberius offers to release him from the galleys and grants Arrius custody of Judah as his slave. Trained as a champion charioteer, Judah is eventually adopted by Arrius as a son, who stands in the place of the son he lost. Now as the Young Arrius, Judah returns to Judea and confronts Messala, demanding that he release his mother and sister. They are found alive with leprosy in the dungeons and are sent to a leper colony.

Thinking his mother and sister are dead, Judah vows revenge. The chariot race is the inexorable focal point that promises to resolve the conflict between Judah and Messala. Even though Messala is fatally wounded, we soon realize that “the race is not over.” With his dying breath, and in one last act of cruelty, he tells Judah that his mother and sister are alive, and that they can be found in the Valley of the Lepers, “if you can recognize them.”

Leaving Messala’s shattered body behind, Judah re-enters the arena, its sands stained with the blood of his former friend. The scene is framed in such a way that it demonstrates the hollowness of Judah’s victory. As Sinyard observes, Judah is “now a tiny figure in an empty stadium.” In a “conflict fueled by hatred and revenge, … there can be no winners.” [11]

In the aftermath of the chariot race, a new Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, conveys a message from Arrius, telling Judah that he has been made a citizen of Rome. Though Pilate recognizes the injustices done to Judah’s family by Messala, Judah will have none of it. “The deed was not Messala’s. I knew him well, before the cruelty of Rome spread in his blood. Rome destroyed Messala, as surely as Rome has destroyed my family.” Pilate urges Judah “not to crucify yourself on a shadow such as old resentment and impossible loyalty. Perfect freedom has no existence. The grown man knows the world he lives in, and for the present, the world is Rome.” Fearing Judah’s growing influence, Pilate urges him to leave Judea. “If you stay here,” he warns, “you will find yourself part of this tragedy.” But Judah tells Pilate that he is “already part of this tragedy.” He renounces his connections to Rome and even to Arrius. His family devastated, his friend-turned-enemy dead, his chariot victory meaningless, he is on a collision course with the oppressive Roman empire.

Consumed by hatred, Judah laments ever having taken a sip of the stranger’s water in the desert. “I should have done better if I’d poured it into the sand. I’m thirsty still.” His relentless desire for vengeance is the only thing he believes will quench that thirst, as he vows to cleanse the land in blood. His descent into darkness prompts Esther to declare: “It was Judah Ben-Hur I loved. What has become of him? You seem to be now the very thing you set out to destroy, giving evil for evil. Hatred is turning you to stone. It’s as though you had become Messala. I’ve lost you Judah.”

Judah is wounded by the comparison. Helpless and hopeless, he joins Esther to seek out Jesus of Nazareth, who has been known to cure the sick. They take Miriam and Tirzah from the Valley of the Lepers to the deserted streets of Jerusalem, where they discover that Jesus has been sentenced to death. As Jesus carries his cross along the road to Golgotha, Judah recognizes him as the same man who gave him water — and the will to live — in the desert. His own attempts to give water to Jesus are thwarted by Roman soldiers. He travels to Calvary and witnesses Jesus’s brutal crucifixion. As the skies darken and a storm beckons, Miriam, Tirzah, and Esther take cover in a cave. Upon the death of Jesus, Miriam and Tirzah are miraculously cured of leprosy. We see Jesus’s blood being carried by rain waters throughout the countryside, cleansing the land in ways that Judah Ben-Hur could never have imagined.

Some have criticized this “deus ex machina” finale, in which a divine Miracle resolves all. But these critics miss the point. The cleansing of Miriam and Tirzah is a physical manifestation of the far more profound spiritual miracle projected on screen: the cleansing of Judah’s soul.

Returning to his household after the crucifixion, Judah whispers to Esther: “Almost the moment he died, I heard him say, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ … And I felt his voice take the sword out of my hand.” When he discovers that his mother and sister have been cured of leprosy, his own healing is complete. The symbolic unity of the physical and the spiritual permeates the whole texture of the film and its climax, as the corrosive power of hate is vanquished by the transformative, redemptive power of love.

I must confess that, having seen this film (no exaggeration) a few hundred times over the past 56 years, there is something about the Hur family unit that resonates very deeply with me. Given that my dad died in 1972, and that I had become the sole male figure in our household, Ben-Hur reflected the close-knit unity that I shared with my own mother and sister. With my mother having died in 1995, and my sister having died in 2022, that special unity remains a blessed memory. It is no small wonder that, to this day, my eyes water at film’s end, every time I see Judah’s reunion with his mother and sister, all miraculously cured of life’s infirmaries.

The very real human conflicts that Ben-Hur depicts on screen are bracketed by two divine events: the first scenes of the Nativity and the final scenes in the shadow of the cross. Jesus makes a few cameo appearances, but we never actually see his face or hear him speak. More than anything, we feel in him the symbolic presence of a call for personal redemption. About the same age as Jesus, Judah is also on trial, and like Jesus, he must triumph over the darkness. The parallels with Jesus are quite explicit; when Judah wins the chariot race, Pilate places the crown of victory upon his head and declares him the cheering crowd’s “one true god, for the moment” — foreboding another who will stand before him, wearing upon his head a crown of thorns.

With this “Tale of the Christ” as context, the film deploys the motifs of birth, death, and rebirth with monumental effectiveness.

Why Wyler Matters

With a script that included contributions from Tunberg, Fry, Vidal, and others, Wyler’s immense skills in drawing out the best performances from his cast were no fluke. He still holds the record for having directed more Academy Award-winning performances among actors than any other director in history (14 in total). Wyler elevates the entire film with his ability to nourish the characters even in the quietest scenes that take place against a spectacular backdrop. [12] He creates “an intimate spiritual journey,” in which the main character struggles “against the political, cultural, and spiritual powers aligned to thwart him.” [13]

But Wyler’s expertise with actors is only one aspect of his contributions to the film’s transcendent qualities. As Sinyard acknowledges, the director employs a “pervasive imagery of water, stone, steps, blood, rings, gifts, and variations of light and dark [that] resonate with cumulative force to take full advantage of the story’s potential for contrast, conflict, ambivalence, and irony.” Wyler illustrates the central themes — “the futility of violence” and the “gradual relinquishing of force in favor of forgiveness” — with superb effectiveness. [14]

Homoerotic Intimacy as Subtext

There are so many other subtexts to this 1959 epic that are of interest. Sinyard reminds us:

The reunion between Ben-Hur and Messala at the beginning of the film is superbly acted by Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd. Both bring emotional intensity to the scene that, judging by the embarrassment and laughter that follows their initial embrace, seems to take both characters by surprise. It is well known that Gore Vidal suggested a homoerotic subtext to this relationship that would help explain Messala’s subsequent vindictiveness toward his dear friend and (possible) lover. The rumor is that Wyler went along with this suggestion, provided that it was implicit rather than explicit, and that no one told Charlton Heston. The subtext works when Messala’s remarks on his supposed view of the political situation takes on erotic subtones, linking the personal and political undercurrents of his relationship to his one-time Jewish friend. [15]

Back in 1969, when I first saw this film at the age of 9, gay though I am, I could not have possibly articulated the homoerotic aspects of the Judah-Messala relationship. But even at that age, seeing the characters embrace, the way they looked into each other’s eyes, their cups of wine intertwined as a reflection of their love, I know that I sensed a kind of romantic bond between them. Once you’ve been made aware of this subtext, it is impossible to deny. When Messala tells Judah that the Roman “emperor is devoted to his empire” and that “he’s particularly fond of Judea,” Judah responds, “and Judea is not fond of the emperor.” Messala laughingly retorts, “Is there anything so sad as unrequited love?” — a question that has far more ironic and tragic implications for the development of the story. The Roman Messala is yearning for a renewed connection with his Jewish friend, which requires that Judah betray his own people. The deep love between Judah and Messala dissolves into a deeper hate, marked by acts of cruelty and an unending, mutual desire for vengeance.

Political Subtexts

There are other subtexts in Ben-Hur that are worthy of analysis. It has long been recognized that many of these Biblical epics filmed in the 1950s and early 1960s were a product of a distinctively post-World War II and Cold War historical context. Explicit parallels between Rome as a stand-in for fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union abound. But the film can also be read as an implicit critique of HUAC and the McCarthy era. It can be seen in Messala’s demands that Judah become an informant against those Jews plotting against Rome. “Either you help me, or you oppose me, you have no other choice. You’re either for me or against me,” Messala warns. But Judah will not be a traitor or a killer for Rome. His rejection of Messala is also a repudiation of Rome itself: “Rome is strangling my people and my country, the whole earth. But not forever. And I tell you, the day Rome falls, there will be a shout of freedom such as the world has never heard before.” In this conflict, the personal and the political are reciprocal implications of one another.

As we’ve seen, a similar dynamic is on display in The Robe, where Tiberius gives an imperial commission to Tribune Marcellus Gallio to unearth the names of those who subscribe to the “treason” of a new fanatical religious sect. It is on display in The Ten Commandments as well, which I’ll explore in the next installment.

Ben-Hur also incorporates Wyler’s provocative attempt to bridge the gap between Jews and Arabs, in their joint opposition to the tyranny of Rome. The Arab Sheik Ilderim, whose glorious white horses he hopes Judah will ride to victory, places the (anachronistic) Star of David on Judah before the chariot race. He tells Judah that the star “will shine out for your people and my people together and blind the eyes of Rome.” Jack Shaheen in his wonderful 2001 book, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, notes the importance here of the unity of “fellow Semites” in contesting the oppression of the ruling class. [16] Alas, Middle East politics was not as unified as Wyler’s vision. Some Arab League countries, such as Jordan, banned Ben-Hur, for featuring Israeli actress, Haya Harareet in the role of Esther.

The Chariot Race

No consideration of Ben-Hur would be complete without a brief discussion of the chariot race, one of the greatest action sequences ever filmed. Wyler’s impact on the film can even be felt when he decides not to direct a scene. For the chariot race, Wyler handed over directorial responsibilities to second-unit director Andrew Morton and famed stuntman Yakima Canutt, whose son Joe doubled for Heston, especially at that moment when Judah is flipped over the front of the quadriga. McGee tells us that unlike the 1925 chariot race sequence, in which many stuntmen were injured and several horses were killed, the 1959 production sacrificed neither man nor beast. [17] Aside from the use of remarkable matte paintings that were integrated into the horizon of the arena, there was nothing fake about the sets or the crowds. This was no CGI affair. Populated with over 10,000 extras, the arena that was constructed at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios stood at 18 acres, with 1,500-foot straightaways paved with 40,000 tons of white sand from Mediterranean beaches. Though Stephen Boyd and Charlton Heston did many of their own stunts, all the charioteers were trained stuntman. Heston had commanded a three-horse chariot in The Ten Commandments, but he was, at first, ill-at-ease about controlling the quadriga. Canutt told him: “You just stay in the chariot, Chuck. I guarantee you’re going to win the damn race.” And that damn race, from its cinematography and editing to its sounds and stunts, remains one of the most breathtaking achievements in cinema history.

But the chariot race would not have had an ounce of human drama absent the intimate characterizations that Wyler built. Still, though we are fully invested in the outcome of the race, it becomes clear that Judah’s quest for vengeance is not a quest for justice. The race and the arena within which it takes place illustrate the destructive effects on all those who participate. It becomes a larger metaphor for the savagery of the Roman imperial system that makes victims of both “losers” and “winners” alike.

The Chariot Race

An All-Time Favorite Movie Line

Before concluding this installment, it’s worth mentioning that Ben-Hur provided me with one of my all-time favorite movie lines, which I’ve used to great effect in my professional life. It’s a line that is repeated twice in the film. When the consul, commander Quintus Arrius, boards the ship on which Judah is a galley slave, he tells the chained rowers: “We keep you alive to serve this ship. So, row well and live.” In the wake of the naval battle, Judah rescues Arrius and swims to safety upon a raft of broken wood. The consul asks Judah to let him die, rather than to face the humiliation of what he thinks is a clear naval defeat. Judah’s reply to Arrius is gold: “We keep you alive to serve this ship. Row well and live.”

In later years, anytime I was working with authors, peer readers, and editors who were exhausted in the face of tight deadlines, I have always repeated that mantra. Deadlines were met. It worked every time!

Just as it might be said that Charlton Heston starred in the first intimate epic of the modern cinematic age, it’s also true that he was at the center of the last great costume epic of Old Hollywood—Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 classic, The Ten Commandments, to which I turn in tomorrow’s final installment.

Part IV: Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Lands

I started this series talking about “The Pigeon Debacle” in the making of Cecil B. DeMille’s final film, the 1956 spectacle, The Ten Commandments.

DeMille was no stranger to the Biblical epic. In 1923, his silent version of The Ten Commandments was released, starring Theodore Roberts as Moses. The film began with a truncated 45-minute retelling of the liberation of the Hebrews from Egyptian captivity. The remaining 90+ minutes focused on a contemporary story detailing the consequences of disobeying those Ten Commandments.

Four years later, in 1927, DeMille directed The King of Kings, starring H. B. Warner in the role of Jesus. (Warner later made a cameo in DeMille’s reboot of The Ten Commandments.) This impressive film included a two-color Technicolor resurrection sequence that dazzled audiences. It remains among the most successful films in cinematic history. Beyond its theatrical releases, the film was shown in civic auditoriums and church basements and may have been viewed by more than 800 million people. My mother often reminisced that the family gathered to watch the film every year for the Easter holidays, screened by her father, who was the founding pastor of the Three Hierarchs Church in Brooklyn.

DeMille completed his early Biblical trilogy with The Sign of the Cross in 1932, which takes place during Emperor Nero’s persecution of the Christians. The film has some parallels to Sienkiewicz’s novel, Quo Vadis. But it ran into some trouble in 1934 when the Motion Picture Production Code (otherwise known as the Hays Code) began cracking down on content deemed “unacceptable”. With a naked Claudette Colbert bathing in a tub of milk and a problematic “lesbian” dance scene, the film was recut when it was rereleased in 1938. DeMille’s fascination with the ancient world also included the 1934 film version of Cleopatra, starring Claudette Colbert in the title role, and Samson and Delilah, featuring Victor Mature and Hedy Lamar.

DeMille was keenly aware that the Bible had enough salacious content to satisfy the most prurient interests. His ability to delicately balance the sacred and the profane in the dramatization of timeless Biblical stories was one of the keys to the success of these epics. He often observed: “What else has two thousand years’ advance publicity?” [18]

There is no doubt that The Ten Commandments is DeMille’s shining achievement. Whereas some contemporary writers have criticized the film for its “hokey” and “cringeworthy” dialogue, its “one-dimensional” characters, “melodramatic” performances, and “dated” special effects, it still retains a hold on popular audiences. All the films I’ve mentioned in this series have found their way onto cable channels, where they have been shown multiple times each year. Though The Ten Commandments can be streamed uncut for free on such platforms as YouTube, this beloved film is the only Biblical epic screened once a year, in primetime, on commercial network television. Despite a few exceptions, ABC has made The Ten Commandments a spring staple for more than fifty years.

The colossal film is still celebrated for its technical achievements and for DeMille’s extraordinary attention to detail, not to mention Elmer Bernstein’s dynamic score. For Solomon, DeMille’s epic “was to be the magnificent triumph of one of Hollywood’s founders and most memorable directors. In terms of scope, inspiration, color, and biblically (divinely?) inspired special effects, the film has still not met its equal.” [19]

Unlike DeMille’s silent version, the 1956 film is as much a sprawling “Life of Moses” tale as it is a story about the liberation of the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. DeMille draws from extra-Biblical sources to “fill in those missing years” between Moses’s birth and his rise as “God’s messenger” and the “deliverer” of the Hebrew people. Yul Brynner, in the role of Pharaoh Rameses II, is a perfect foil for Charlton Heston, whose portrayal of Moses remains definitive for a generation of viewers. I’ve seen such Oscar-winning actors as Christian Bale, Burt Lancaster, and Ben Kingsley portray Moses, and none exhibits the solemnity and strength of Heston. Indeed, when Chuck outstretches his arms and declares, “Behold His Mighty Hand,” and the Red Sea opens, nobody has matched the majesty of that moment.

And that sequence in The Ten Commandments remains such a singular cinematic achievement that anytime I’ve seen anything on screen remotely suggestive of its mammoth scale, I’ve called it “A Red Sea Moment.”

Moses Parts the Waters of the Red Sea

But there are more intimate moments in the film that are just as impressive, philosophically speaking. One interesting aspect of The Ten Commandments has often been overlooked, and no clue can be found in the credits. Who provided the voice of God? Marc Elliot tells us that DeMille chose deep-voiced actor Delos Jewkes as the voice of God during the sequence in which the Ten Commandments are delivered on Mount Sinai to Moses. But it is now acknowledged that Charlton Heston’s voice was used as the voice of God during the Burning Bush segment, in which God instructs Moses to deliver his people from Egyptian captivity.

Indeed, Heston had expressed interest in giving voice to God, arguing that any person should hear that voice within themselves. In the film, Moses explains to Joshua that God “is not flesh, but spirit, the light of eternal mind and I know that His light is in every man.” Even DeMille reasoned that “God created man in His own image, a physical reflection of His spirit. DeMille believed that using Heston as the voice of God and as the physical Moses connected them in a profoundly ingenious and cinematically affecting way. He had Heston record God’s lines and afterward had his engineer slow down the tape and add a bit of echo.” [20] So, at the Burning Bush, when God utters the phrase, “I am that I am,” Heston is essentially talking to himself, and it is an ironic acknowledgment of the connection between “Self” and “God”. [21]

From the Burning Bush and the stagings of the various plagues, including the ominous, unsettling greenish, glowing cloud of death making its way through Egypt in the Passover sequence, to that Red Sea Moment, the receipt of the tablets of stone on Mount Sinai, and Moses’s subsequent destruction of the Golden Calf, the film delivers a captivating visual and spiritually moving experience. And if you’ve had the pleasure of seeing The Ten Commandments on the big screen as I did back in 1972, that experience is all the more overwhelming.

Cold War Subtext?

Melanie Wright has done a superlative job in rejecting the views of those critics who dismiss Hollywood biblical epics as “superficial and banal.” [22] Her own work engages in “the rehabilitation of DeMille’s Moses as a complex example of innovative biblical interpretation.” Wright understands that text and context “are inseparable. One cannot have a text without a context or context without a text.” Viewing every artwork as a “text” of sorts, it must be understood as an outgrowth of the context in which it was created and the experiences of the audiences it addresses. Still, over the years, artworks will carry different meanings for different audiences, given the circumstances of the particular time and place in which they are engaged.

It’s been commonplace for scholars to view DeMille’s film through the prism of the Cold War battle between the liberal democracies and the communist bloc. In this context, the mighty Egyptian rulers, enslaving the Hebrews, are an ancient symbol of the Soviet totalitarianism of the 1950s. Understood from this vantage point, The Ten Commandments is “very much an anti-Soviet film.” [23] Indeed, DeMille invited the comparison explicitly in his introduction to the movie. “The theme of this picture,” he announces, “is whether men ought to be ruled by God’s law or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator … Are men the property of the state? Or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues throughout the world today.”

Wright expands on these points:

Put simply, Moses, as instigator and guardian of a divinely willed and ordered freedom, became representative of the American nation and the identity of the United States as Israel, in the sense of both promised land and light for the nations. Pharaoh Rameses, whose autocracy attempted to deny the divine order and subjected countless masses to lives of meaningless drudgery enforced by the threat of state backed terror, functioned as his powerful yet eventually defeated Soviet enemy. [24]

But this narrative, Wright argues, is one-dimensional. It’s true that DeMille was a devoted anti-communist in the film industry and “toed the HUAC line,” even assisting “directors in checking the loyalty of potential employees.” But DeMille also showed deep compassion for those who were accused of being communists or fellow travelers. Edward G. Robinson, who plays the duplicitous Dathan in the film, was, in real life, targeted for his anti-fascism, Jewishness, and suspected communist affiliations. Though he continued to work, his casting in The Ten Commandments by DeMille went against studio heads who considered Robinson “unacceptable.” As Wright explains, “Robinson was rehabilitated (by virtue of his appearance), and the right-wing charges against him were evoked by means of his on-screen identification with Dathan, a figure who, as the American Communists were alleged to do, spied and informed on his own people.” [25]

DeMille also had the temerity to challenge racism during an era when Jim Crow was riding high. Aside from the strong anti-slavery message that is central to the film, DeMille offers an early scene in which the defeated Ethiopians are brought before the court of Pharaoh Sethi “not as slaves but as allies,” and among these allies are a strikingly beautiful Princess Tharbis (portrayed by Esther Brown) and her brother, the King of Ethiopia, played by the muscular Woodrow Strode. The Princess offers the gift of a green stone from the Ethiopian mountains to the “kind as well as wise” Moses in such a flirtatious manner that it invites a jealous reaction from Nefretiri. DeMille even includes black African “Nubians” among the chosen people escaping captivity in the Exodus.

Before he is expelled from Egypt for having killed an Egyptian in defense of Joshua, and for being the son of Hebrew slaves, Moses stands before Pharaoh Sethi and swears he is not God’s deliverer. “It would take more than a man to lead the slaves from bondage. It would take a God. But if I could free them, I would.” Moses condemns “the evil that men should turn their brothers into beasts of burden, to slave and suffer in dumb anguish, to be stripped of spirit and hope and faith only because they are of another race, another creed. If there is a God, he did not mean this to be so.” It is his fate, of course, to return to Egypt as God’s messenger and to free the slaves from their masters.

Whatever lens we use to interpret the various historical and cultural subtexts of The Ten Commandments, the film continues to speak to liberatory motifs that are universal in their implications. It is impossible not to be deeply moved by DeMille’s dramatization of such a monumental struggle for human emancipation.

In the film’s final scene, Moses, who was not to cross over into the Promised Land, climbs the mountain of Nebo, declaring: “Go. Proclaim Liberty Throughout all the Lands, unto all the inhabitants thereof.”

Those closing words uttered by Moses, etched into the Liberty Bell, resonated with me when I heard them as a 12-year old kid. [26] They are inspiring to this day. Of all the themes that Sacred Cinema has explored, the quest for human freedom is among the most exalted.

Appendix: A Note on Sources and Other Ancient Genre Films

This series has focused attention on Biblical epics. I have purposely sidestepped other ancient genre films, not because they are unworthy but because they didn’t fit into the “Sacred Cinema” theme.

One of the most comprehensive books on ancient world representations in the cinema is Jon Solomon’s 2001 study, The Ancient World in the Cinema. Solomon discusses over four hundred feature films that are either set in the ancient world or that in some way represent ancient myths, legends, or events in contemporary settings. (I could be wrong, but the only film I could not find any mention of in Solomon’s remarkable volume was the hilarious 1948 comedy, One Touch of Venus, with Ava Gardner in the title role.)

As I have noted from the beginning of this series, my interest here has not been to evaluate films for their authenticity, historically or liturgically. By contrast, Solomon focuses on these films not only for their entertainment value but also for their historical authenticity. His book is the most mind-bogglingly expansive study of the genre I’ve yet encountered. It moves effortlessly from the silent era into the twenty-first century. Virtually no film is left behind, not even Bob Guccione’s 1979 X-rated Caligula (with a maniacal Malcolm McDowell in the title role). I saw that film when it debuted in a mainstream theater that could not have been remotely mistaken for an adult movie house (though, in truth, I thought I’d walked into one). A 2004 re-edited “Ultimate Cut” of Caligula tones down the graphic sex scenes, but it remains a deeply controversial production.

Solomon also touches upon one of my all-time favorite TV miniseries, I, Claudius, which covers the Julio-Claudian period in Roman history, and stars the great Derek Jacobi as Claudius (and a terrific John Hurt in the role of Caligula). He also briefly discusses the 1937 “epic that never was,” directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Charles Laughton as Claudius. That film version of the Robert Graves historical novels was plagued with so many production problems that it was ultimately abandoned.

Solomon surveys other productions set in ancient Greece and Rome, as well as those based on Greek and Roman mythology, including films featuring the cutting-edge stop-motion photography of the great Ray Harryhausen. He also discusses films based on Old Testament and New Testament tales and those taking place in ancient Babylon, Egypt, and Persia. Ancient tragedies and comedies and even “the muscleman epics” are examined. Both “Hercules” and “Hercules Unchained” starring Steve Reeves were among my favorites as a kid, so I really appreciated that section of the book. Solomon also examines films such as The Mummy and its various sequels and adaptations, highlighting their flashbacks to ancient Egypt.

Monica Silveira Cyrino’s 2005 book, Big Screen Rome, focuses attention on many of the films mentioned in this “Sacred Cinema” series, as well as Spartacus (1960) and Cleopatra (1963). The inspiring story of Spartacus was adapted for the screen from Howard Fast’s novel about one of the famed leaders of the slave uprisings against the Roman Republic. Fast was a member of the Communist Party USA, who refused to “name names” before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He began writing the novel while serving a three-month sentence for contempt of Congress. (Let us not forget that Karl Marx himself celebrated Spartacus as one of his heroes.) Actor Kirk Douglas, who played the title role, was an executive producer on the film. He hired Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, to write the script. Listing both Fast and Trumbo in the credits — the first time either man had been publicly acknowledged in thirteen years — marked the unofficial end to the McCarthy era.

Honorable mention must go to Alex North, who composed the scores for both Spartacus and Cleopatra. The lyrical love theme from Spartacus has inspired diverse interpretations from such artists as jazz reed player Yusef Lateef, legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans and, in an Evans transcription, classical pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet [YouTube links].

Cyrino also examines comedic twists on ancient-themed films, including: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966); Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), where she highlights the hilarious scene, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”; and the Roman Empire sequences along with the Ten (Fifteen?) Commandments and Last Supper scenes in Mel Brooks’s 1981 classic, History of the World, Part I. (The Coen brothers’ comedy, Hail Caesar!, didn’t make it into the book for obvious reasons; it was released in 2016.) Cyrino concludes her book with an extended appraisal of Gladiator (2000), which revived the epic genre for the twenty-first century — even if some critics dismissed the Best Picture winner as “Ben-there, done-that.” They were even more critical of its recent sequel.

Cyrino’s book is easily adaptable for the classroom. For every film that it highlights, it provides a plot outline, context on the ancient background of the historical period in which the story is situated, background on the film itself, details on the making of the movie, an exploration of themes and interpretations, and finally a series of questions for the student on “Core Issues” discussed in the chapter. The book also includes many wonderful photos from the films it features.

Cyrino’s discussion of Cleopatra, the Joseph L. Mankiewicz spectacle, starring Elizabeth Taylor in the title role, Rex Harrison as Julius Caesar, and Richard Burton as Marc Antony, reminds us of the international soap opera that engulfed the film’s production due to the then-scandalous affair between Taylor and Burton. At a cost of $44 million, it was the most expensive film ever made at the time, and its production delays inflated its cost many times over.

Solomon points out that Mankiewicz desired to produce two films for Cleopatra, each running nearly two-and-a-half hours. So much was deleted from the final production that even at its current 243-minute length, the plotline is often choppy. Reportedly, the story of Antony was so butchered that most of Richard Burton’s performance was left on the cutting-room floor. Still, Solomon recognizes that the “entry of Cleopatra into Rome might be the most spectacular pageant sequence ever filmed” — and he’ll get no argument from me. Check out an excerpt of it here. Solomon also praises the Battle of Actium sequence, which is presented in “frighteningly realistic” detail. [27]

Katherine Orrison’s richly illustrated 1999 volume, Written in Stone: Making Cecil B. DeMille’s Epic “The Ten Commandments”, features the priceless anecdotes and charming memories of actors, special effects wizards, and film crew members, including: Henry Wilcoxon, who was an associate producer on the film, and also cast in the role of military commander Pentaur; Martha Scott, who played Moses’s mother (and, ironically, Judah Ben-Hur’s mother as well); Yvonne DiCarlo, who played Moses’s wife; Woody Strode, King of Ethiopia; Eugene Mazzola, Pharaoh’s Firstborn Son; and film score composer Elmer Bernstein.

Barbara Ryan and Milette Shamir’s 2016 collection, Bigger than Ben-Hur: The Book, its Adaptations, and Their Audiences, is chockful of information on the various incarnations of Lew Wallace’s novel and how each of these reflected the times in which they appeared. Especially interesting are discussions of the homoeroticism in Ben-Hur, explored in greater depth by Ina Rae Hark in her essay, “The Erotics of the Galley Slave: Male Desire and Christian Sacrifice in the 1959 Film Version of Ben-Hur.” Jon Solomon is also represented in this collection. His essay, “Coda: A Timeline of Ben-Hur Companies, Brands, and Products” discusses the many astounding ways in which the ‘Ben-Hur brand’ has been marketed over the years, from 1886 through 2012.

Adele Reinhartz’s 2007 study, Jesus of Hollywood, examines Jesus films from the silent era to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004). The focus here is on cinematic portraits of Jesus and many key figures in the New Testament, including Mary, Joseph, Mary Magdalene, Judas, The Pharisees, Caiaphas, Pilate, God the Father, and Satan.

It should be noted that each of these books features a lengthy bibliography of works dedicated to this fascinating genre.

Notes

Part I: Fueling the Soul

1. Orrison 1999, 84–89.

2. Mast 1982, 19.

Part II: Robes, Swords, and Sandals

3. Cyrino 2005, 53.

4. Cyrino 2005, 1.

Part III: The Triumph of the Intimate Epic

5. Cyrino 2005, 71.

6. Cyrino 2005, 72.

7. Solomon 2001, 213.

8. Rozsa [1982] 1989, 191

9. Rozsa [1982] 1989, 189–90.

10. Neil Sinyard, “Foreword”, in Ryan and Shamir 2016, xi.

11. Sinyard in Ryan and Shamir 2016, xvi.

12. Arnold 2016, 205.

13. Terry Lindvall, “Ben-Hur”, in Johnston, Detweiler, and Taylor 2012, 4–5).

14. Sinyard in Ryan and Shamir 2016, xvi-xviii.

15. Sinyard in Ryan and Shamir 2016, xv.

16. Shaheen 2001, 94.

17. McGee 2022, 61.

Part IV: Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Lands

18. Cyrino 2005, 1.

19. Solomon 2001, 157–58.

20. Elliot 2017, 112.

21. This theme can be found throughout the literature of mysticism. See Chamy 2022, 104–5, 118.

22. Wright 2003, 5–7.

23. Wright 2003, 105.

24. Wright 2003, 106.

25. Wright 2003, 107–9.

26. I am aware that the word “lands” is pluralized in The Ten Commandments, but that it appears as “land” in the Liberty Bell and in Leviticus 25:10.

27. Solomon 2001, 74–75.

References

Arnold, Jeremy. 2016. 52 Must-See Movies and Why They Matter. Foreword by Robert Osborne. Turner Classic Movies. Philadelphia: Running Press.

Chamy, Philippe. 2022. “Glimpses of the Mystical Dimension of Ayn Rand’s Thought.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 22, no. 1 (July): 93–135.

Cyrino, Monica Silveira. 2005. Big Screen Rome. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell.

Dane, Jeffrey. 2006. A Composer’s Notes: Remembering Miklos Rozsa. A Personal Recollection by Jeffrey Dane. New York: iUniverse.

De Forest, Sloan. 2021. The Essential Directors: The Art and Impact of Cinema’s Most Influential Filmmakers. Turner Classic Movies Series. New York: Running Press.

Elliot, Mark. 2017. Charlton Heston: Hollywood’s Last Icon. New York: HarperCollins.

Hickman, Roger. 2011. Miklos Rozsa’s “Ben-Hur”: A Film Score Guide. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press.

Johnston, Robert K., Craig Detweiler, and Barry Taylor, eds. 2012. Don’t Stop Believin’: Pop Culture and Religion from “Ben-Hur” to Zombies. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press.

Mast, Gerald. 1982. Howard Hawks, Storyteller. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McGee, Scott. 2022. Danger on the Silver Screen: 30 Films Celebrating Cinema’s Greatest Stunts. Turner Classic Movies Series. New York: Running Press.

Orrison, Katherine. 1999. Written in Stone: Making Cecil B. DeMille’s Epic “The Ten Commandments”. Lanham, Maryland: Vestal Press.

Reinhartz, Adele. 2007. Jesus of Hollywood. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rozsa, Miklos. [1982] 1989. Double Life: A Spellbinding Autobiography of Success and Survival in the Golden Age of Hollywood. New York: Wynwood Press.

Ryan, Barbara and Milette Shamir, eds. 2016. Bigger than “Ben-Hur”: The Book, Its Adaptations, and Their Audiences. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press.

Shaheen, Jack G. 2001. Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. New York: Olive Branch Press.

Solomon, Jon. 2001. The Ancient World in the Cinema. Revised and expanded edition. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Wright, Melanie J. 2003. Moses in America: The Cultural Uses of Biblical Narrative. New York: Oxford University Press.