Scum of the galleys! I will grind you in the dust before all Antioch!

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

(1925)

(SPOILERS) The first adaptation of General Lee Wallace’s 1880 novel (if you ignore the unauthorised 1907 short), and as is often the case retrospectively with the silent era, more of a curiosity than the earth-shattering spectacle it was in the day. Which isn’t to say there’s not spectacle in spades – the $3.9m budget ($55m by today’s standards) assures that, so much so that despite making $9m worldwide ($128m), MGM recorded a financial loss, so not unlike the third version, only even more so in that case – but Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ is as notable, if not more so, for the mannered performances, stylistic quirks and anachronisms as it is for its sets and climactic chariot race.

That chariot race is pretty damn impressive, although it’s very notable how much it loses in tension without the sound effects of its 1959 namesake. Anyone thinking Chuck Heston was miscast as Judah Ben-Hur needs to take a look at Ramon Novarro (securing the plum role after George Walsh got the sack), who fails to quit being the silent screen poseur long enough to seem remotely Hur-ish. Actually, that’s not true; he’s passable when he’s a bedraggled and parched slave.

In contrast, Francis X Bushman is a huge winner as Messala. Not because he’s especially convincing either, but because he’s hamming it up a treat, like a cross between Patrick Warbuton and Mr Incredible (his winged helmet is a hoot, leaving him looking for all the world like he’s off to a frat party). The 1959 Messala’s admonitions seem positively restrained in comparison to Bushman’s every subtitle (“To be a Roman is to rule the world! To be a Jew is to crawl in the desert!”)

The pacing, despite being about 70 minutes shy of Wyler’s version, is all over the shop. There are endless Messiah scenes (the first fifteen minutes are devoted to the birth, and for the most part the Christ-orientated sequences switch to colour, which is a nice touch, as is the angelic light signifying His/Mumsie’s presence). Ben-Hur’s harping on about the Messiah from the off too, although he mischaracterises His intent, naturally. Judah’s hardships (tick the box for galley slave) seem to go by in a flash.

There are also additional interludes en route to confronting Messala entirely absent from the later version, however, such as the very vampish Iras (Carmel Myers), intent on having her way with both Judah and his arch foe. She isn’t exactly backward in beating down the former verbally (“If you are as slow in the race tomorrow as you are in love today, Messala may drive snails and win”). Notably too, as wasn’t uncommon at the time, there are spots of nudity from background characters that would have been unconscionable 34 years later.

Following Messala’s demise (although he ends up broke rather than dead), the desire of Judah’s leper sisters to get some of that good miracle healing seems even more opportunistic than in the remake, structured as a race against time before Jesus is crucified; amazingly, He stops off en route, while carrying the Cross, and lo they are restored (earlier, his presence is laughably discreet, such as practising His carpentry skills from behind a judiciously-placed tree). This being after he resurrects a dead baby. Most inappropriate is Judah whooping for joy at his familial bounty while Jesus staggers on to Calvary (he has just been inadvisably leading a one-man armed insurrection, so a spot of regrouping was in order, but not quite this way).

One of the blessings of the silent era is that they’d often know when to stop. Alas, Ben-Hur outstays its welcome, yet it isn’t without its appealing quirks and incidental pleasures.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

You guys sure like watermelon.

The Irishman aka I Heard You Paint Houses (2019)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps, if Martin Scorsese hadn’t been so opposed to the idea of Marvel movies constituting cinema, The Irishman would have been a better film. It’s a decent film, assuredly. A respectable film, definitely. But it’s very far from being classic. And a significant part of that is down to the usually assured director fumbling the execution. Or rather, the realisation. I don’t know what kind of crazy pills the ranks of revered critics have been taking so as to recite as one the mantra that you quickly get used to the de-aging effects so intrinsic to its telling – as Empire magazine put it, “you soon… fuggadaboutit” – but you don’t. There was no point during The Irishman that I was other than entirely, regrettably conscious that a 75-year-old man was playing the title character. Except when he was playing a 75-year-old man.

So you want me to be half-monk, half-hitman.

Casino Royale (2006)
(SPOILERS) Despite the doubts and trepidation from devotees (too blonde, uncouth etc.) that greeted Daniel Craig’s casting as Bond, and the highly cynical and low-inspiration route taken by Eon in looking to Jason Bourne's example to reboot a series that had reached a nadir with Die Another Day, Casino Royale ends up getting an enormous amount right. If anything, its failure is that it doesn’t push far enough, so successful is it in disarming itself of the overblown set pieces and perfunctory plotting that characterise the series (even at its best), elements that would resurge with unabated gusto in subsequent Craig excursions.

For the majority of its first two hours, Casino Royale is top-flight entertainment, with returning director Martin Campbell managing to exceed his excellent work reformatting Bond for the ‘90s. That the weakest sequence (still good, mind) prior to the finale is a traditional “big” (but not too big) action set piece involving an attempt to…

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

You're skipping Christmas! Isn't that against the law?

Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
Ex-coke dealer Tim Allen’s underwhelming box office career is, like Vince Vaughn’s, regularly in need of a boost from an indiscriminate public willing to see any old turkey posing as a prize Christmas comedy. He made three Santa Clauses, and here is joined by Jamie Lee Curtis as a couple planning to forgo the usual neighbourhood festivities for a cruise.

She was addicted to Tums for a while.

Marriage Story (2019)
(SPOILERS) I don’t tend to fall heavily for Noah Baumbach fare. He’s undoubtedly a distinctive voice – even if his collaborations with Wes Anderson are the least of that director’s efforts – but his devotion to an exclusive, rarefied New York bubble becomes ever more off-putting with each new project. And ever more identifiable as being a lesser chronicler of the city’s privileged quirks than his now disinherited forbear Woody Allen, who at his peak mastered a balancing act between the insightful, hilarious and self-effacing. Marriage Story finds Baumbach going yet again where Woody went before, this time brushing up against the director’s Ingmar Bergman fixation.

We’ll bring it out on March 25 and we’ll call it… Christmas II!

Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)
(SPOILERS) Alexander Salkind (alongside son Ilya) inhabited not dissimilar territory to the more prolific Dino De Laurentis, in that his idea of manufacturing a huge blockbuster appeared to be throwing money at it while being stingy with, or failing to appreciate, talent where it counted. Failing to understand the essential ingredients for a quality movie, basically, something various Hollywood moguls of the ‘80s would inherit. Santa Claus: The Movie arrived in the wake of his previously colon-ed big hit, Superman: The Movie, the producer apparently operating under the delusion that flying effects and :The Movie in the title would induce audiences to part with their cash, as if they awarded Saint Nick a must-see superhero mantle. The only surprise was that his final cinematic effort, Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, wasn’t similarly sold, but maybe he’d learned his lesson by then. Or maybe not, given the behind-camera talent he failed to secure.

When primal forces of nature tell you to do something, the prudent thing is not to quibble over details.

Field of Dreams (1989)
(SPOILERS) There’s a near-Frank Darabont quality to Phil Alden Robinson producing such a beloved feature and then subsequently offering not all that much of note. But Darabont, at least, was in the same ballpark as The Shawshank Redemption with The Green Mile. Sneakers is good fun, The Sum of All Our Fears was a decent-sized success, but nothing since has come close to his sophomore directorial effort in terms of quality. You might put that down to the source material, WP Kinsella’s 1982 novel Shoeless Joe, but the captivating magical-realist balance hit by Field of Dreams is a deceptively difficult one to strike, and the biggest compliment you can play Robinson is that he makes it look easy.

On a long enough timeline, the survival of everyone drops to zero.

Fight Club (1999)
(SPOILERS) Still David Fincher’s peak picture, mostly by dint of Fight Club being the only one you can point to and convincingly argue that that the source material is up there with his visual and technical versatility. If Seven is a satisfying little serial-killer-with-a-twist story vastly improved by his involvement (just imagine it directed by Joel Schumacher… or watch 8mm), Fight Club invites him to utilise every trick in the book to tell the story of not-Tyler Durden, whom we encounter at a very peculiar time in his life.

You’re never the same man twice.

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)
(SPOILERS) Roger Moore playing dual roles? It sounds like an unintentionally amusing prospect for audiences accustomed to the actor’s “Raise an eyebrow” method of acting. Consequently, this post-Saint pre-Bond role (in which he does offer some notable eyebrow acting) is more of a curiosity for the quality of Sir Rog’s performance than the out-there premise that can’t quite sustain the picture’s running time. It is telling that the same story was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents 15 years earlier, since the uncanny idea at its core feels like a much better fit for a trim 50 minute anthology series.

Basil Dearden directs, and co-adapted the screenplay from Anthony Armstrong’s novel The Strange Case of Mr Pelham. Dearden started out with Ealing, helming several Will Hay pictures and a segment of Dead of Night (one might imagine a shortened version of this tale ending up there, or in any of the portmanteau horrors that arrived in the year…

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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