September 13, 2005 New DVD's By DAVE KEHR Ben-Hur "By far the most stirring and respectable of the Bible-fiction pictures ever made," the New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther wrote of "Ben-Hur" on the occasion of its New York release on Nov. 18, 1959. The key word in Crowther's review is "respectable" - an adjective carefully chosen to characterize this prestigious MGM production, directed by the highly respectable and, by then, two-time Oscar winning director William Wyler. By hiring Wyler, a filmmaker known for his intelligent theatrical adaptations ("The Letter," 1940) and films about social problems ("The Best Years of Our Lives," 1946), MGM hoped to restore some dignity to a genre that had known its greatest triumphs thanks to the enthusiastic vulgarity of Alessandro Blasetti and the inimitable Cecil B. DeMille. The wild orgy sequences, spectacular battles and scanty costumes that had defined DeMille's biblical epics since the great showman made his first "Ten Commandments" in 1923 would be banished from this high-class work of art. Wyler's film would be about human relationships - in particular, the friendship turned to hate between Judah, prince of the Jewish house of Hur (Mr. Heston) and Messala (Stephen Boyd), the boyhood friend who returns to Jerusalem as a Roman tribune and military enforcer. The magnificently produced four-disc version of "Ben-Hur" that Warner Home Video is releasing today ably advances that claim to respectability. It's an exhaustive, almost scholarly textural compendium, with a gorgeous, crisply detailed new two-disc transfer of the 1959 film. (Working from the original 65-milllimeter negative, the engineers have returned the film to its status as one of the widest wide-screen films ever made, with an image almost three times as wide as it is high.) It also has a solid transfer of the 1925 silent "Ben-Hur," directed by Fred Niblo and starring Ramon Novarro. A pair of documentaries - a 2005 production featuring current Hollywood figures like George Lucas paying tribute, and Scott Benson's highly informative 1993 documentary, "Ben-Hur: The Making of an Epic" - round out the fourth disc, which also includes some revealing screen tests (including one hilarious alternate-universe sequence featuring Leslie Nielsen as Messala and Cesare Danova as Ben-Hur) and various trailers used over the years. Whatever your feelings about the film (and mine are certainly mixed), the DVD deserves a place in any library of Hollywood. Wyler's mission was to turn the historical spectacle of the 1925 "Ben-Hur" into something more psychologized and emotionally intimate. To that end he employed the talents of a fledgling scriptwriter, Gore Vidal, whose name does not appear in the final credits but who may have written a majority of the final film, though memories conflict. Mr. Vidal has said that he sought to justify the passionate hatred between Messala and Ben-Hur by implying that the Roman had been romantically involved with his childhood companion, and that his anger was also the anger of a lover spurned. Mr. Vidal says he passed on his idea to both Wyler and Boyd, who apparently agreed to play it that way, but Mr. Heston was kept in the dark. It is true that the characters and relationships are much more plausible and dramatically developed in the 1959 version, but at a cost. One highlight of the 1925 film is Carmel Myers's performance as a Roman courtesan - a highly DeMillean figure decked out in feathers and beads - who is Messala's mistress and part-time spy, sent to seduce Ben-Hur and sap his energies on the eve of the great chariot race. The Wyler film could have used some of her outrageousness and exuberance. The great chariot race between Ben-Hur and Messala - the climax of the 1880 book by Lew Wallace as well as the great set piece of the theatrical adaptations and subsequent films - remains a highlight of Warner's restoration, which now reveals more picture information and background detail. As conceived and staged by the veteran second unit director Andrew Marton and the legendary stunt coordinator Yakima Canutt, it remains a model of action filmmaking, with an adrenaline-pumping sense of speed and danger that never violates spatial coherence. (See, as a counter example, the highway chase in the recent, dismal film "The Island.") The new "Ben-Hur" DVD is almost too good for its own good. High definition or not, digital video is simply not good enough to register all the detail and depth of field of a 65-millimeter image. The crowd scenes that once revealed hundreds of individual faces are now a blur, and shots that once seemed to stretch infinitely into the distance, as when the Roman legions arrive in Jerusalem, now look puny. A little imagination is needed to augment the pixel count - but of course, it always is. $39.92. Rated G.
|
- [MOPO] New DVD BEN HUR Kirby McDaniel
- Re: [MOPO] F/A - OVER 50 ITEMS NOW ON EBAY -... Phil Edwards Cinema Arts
