There are very few films in history whose legacy is so monumental that it lives to becomes an epic. Amongst those legendary films is a movie known as Ben-Hur. A story love, adventure, torture, slavery, racing, hatred, forgiveness, family but above all else its a story of faith. Judah Ben-Hur is a prince peacefully living in Jerusalem. We open our story on a happy day when Judah's childhood friend comes home from Rome as commander of the Roman garrison. Messala loves his friend but believes in the Roman cause in expanding the empire. Messala seeks out Judah's help when the parade for the new governor comes through Jerusalem. When some shingles accidentally fall off of Judah's house taking out the governor Messala arrests the whole family and sends Judah off to be a slave on a war ship. Over the next several year we travel with Judah as he make his way out of slavery and back to his family, and witness the story of Jesus Christ.
MGM really out did themselves when they made this film. They said that they were going to make this film in 1952 and because of a ton of unforeseen circumstances the film did not begin production until 1958. The production took almost a year, and three months alone for the nine minute long chariot race. When the film was completed there was over I million feet of film that needed to be cut down to three and half hours of film. thousands of animals, extras, and costumes were needed to complete the film, and it all worked to create on of the most memorable and top rated films in history. This film is surrounded many different myths, the most popular being that someone died during the chariot race scene. Other crazy facts were that the actor spent months learning how to chariot race so that they could really be in the race in the movie. All of this worked out because Ben-Hur beat out: Columbia's Anatomy of a Murder; 20th Century Fox's The Diary of Anne Frank; Warner Brothers' The Nun's Story, and Remus Films' Room at the Top to take home Best Picture. Ben-Hur was also selected for preservation by the National Film Institute in 2004.
This is one of the best films I have ever seen. I have seen it a number of times before but there is something new to see or learn about this film every single time that you watch it. I think that learning about how the film was made was the best part of this experience. There was so much that I learned about the actors, writers, directors, and how they did everything in a short amount of time. The massive amount of people and props that it took to make this film I still can not wrap my head around. I will love to watch this film again soon so I can use all of the stuff that I learned about this film and appreciate it in a different way.
No comments:
Post a Comment