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.

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 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…

You can have it. Make the edits.

Little Women (2019)
(SPOILERS) It could be argued, given Little Women’s evergreen popularity, not least as a go-to text for Hollywood adaptations, that Greta Gerwig isn’t exactly stretching herself or giving us a better idea of the kind of directorial career she envisages. Hers is a likeable, intelligent, well-rendered sophomore picture. As such, the awards plaudits are probably no more or less deserving than for your average prestige period piece. Which is to say that Little Women is handsomely mounted and consummately performed (at least, by some of the cast), but it doesn’t absolutely feel like this umpteenth version of Louise May Alcott’s novel demanded to be told, even with the Gerwig’s innovations of experimentation with time frame and metatextual use of its author.

We need somebody to walk the clones.

Jojo Rabbit (2019)
(SPOILERS) Not so much the banality of evil as of taking pot-shots at easy targets, Taika Waititi’s typically insubstantial, broad-brush, sketch-comedy approach isn’t the best of fits for the formulation of this self-styled “anti-hate satire”. The issue isn’t so much that it’s inappropriate or insensitive to broach material of Nazi persecution of the Jews comedically as that the manner in which it has been done here is so obvious as to be redundant. Waititi said his inspiration for making the movie was partly the statistics on those Americans who had never heard of Auschwitz; Jojo Rabbit is as cack-handed a way of going about informing them as Life is Beautiful.

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989)
(SPOILERS) There’s Jaws, there’s Star Wars, and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy, to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “mainly boring”.

Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the system when Burton did it (even…

This popularity of yours. Is there a trick to it?

The Two Popes (2019)
(SPOILERS) Ricky Gervais’ Golden Globes joke, in which he dropped The Two Popes onto a list of the year’s films about paedophiles, rather preceded the picture’s Oscar prospects (three nominations), but also rather encapsulated the conversation currently synonymous with the forever tainted Roman Catholic church; it’s the first thing anyone thinks of. And let’s face it, Jonathan Pryce’s unamused response to the gag could have been similarly reserved for the fate of his respected but neglected film. More people will have heard Ricky’s joke than will surely ever see the movie. Which, aside from a couple of solid lead performances, probably isn’t such an omission.

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

I'm reliable, I'm a very good listener, and I'm extremely funny.

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
(SPOILERS) When I wrote my 23 to see in 2019, I speculated that James Cameron might be purposefully giving his hand-me-downs to lesser talents because he hubristically didn’t want anyone making a movie that was within a spit of the proficiency we’ve come to expect from him. Certainly, Robert Rodriguez and Tim Miller are leagues beneath Kathryn Bigelow, Jimbo’s former spouse and director of his Strange Days screenplay. Miller’s no slouch when it comes to action – which is what these movies are all about, let’s face it – but neither is he a craftsman, so all those reviews attesting that Terminator: Dark Fate is the best in the franchise since Terminator 2: Judgment Day may be right, but there’s a considerable gulf between the first sequel (which I’m not that big a fan of) and this retcon sequel to that sequel.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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