AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE: 100 YEARS … 100 MOVIES
By Brad Gischia
Beacon Columnist
Movies are better with a buddy — especially when that buddy is Todd Sheridan Perry, a visual effects artist whose fingerprints are on films like “Dr. Strange,” “Black Panther” and “For All Mankind.”
Todd is the guy you call when you need to know why a scene works, why a shot matters or why a director used shadow instead of spectacle. He’s also the co-conspirator in an idea we’ve been kicking around with the publisher of this here newspaper: a podcast called “Two Guys, 100 Films.” Until that launches, you’re stuck with me in print.
So here’s the plan: We’re watching our way through the American Film Institute’s Top 100 Films of All Time — from No. 100 all the way to No. 1 — to find out what makes these movies worthy of the list, whether they still hold up and if they deserve their place in film history, or if the AFI was maybe smoking its own popcorn.
No. 100 is “Ben-Hur.”
I’m coming to this film with very few Charlton Heston films under my belt. The ones I’ve seen are well-loved and often annually watched: “The Ten Commandments” from 1956 and “Planet of the Apes” from 1968.
“Ben-Hur” is a far different film than his previous go-round with Cecil B. DeMille. It follows Judah Ben-Hur, a man of wealth who is betrayed by his best friend and sold into slavery. Through his bravery, in dire circumstances, he becomes the adopted son of a Roman, and thus finds his way to the vengeance he seeks against his one-time friend.
Like some of the DeMille epics and other films that were popular during the ’50s, this one has a Christian tone. The first scenes of the movie are dedicated to showing Christ’s birth, and the Son of God makes Forrest Gump–like appearances throughout the film.
It’s rated G, but remember that the current rating system wasn’t in effect until 1968. The “G” stands for General Audience.
It’s enough to allow a ’50s mom to let her son go see the film in the theater, not knowing that the same film is full of sea battles and chariot races and lepers and an honest-to-God crucifixion. But, recall what the 1950s were like. People knew these stories. People knew this story in particular. It had been a popular silent film in 1925 and a stage play before that. The novel itself was written in 1880, so the story had had time to seep into popular culture.
But this film. This film is BIG. The 1959 “Ben-Hur” is 66 years old upon my viewing it for the first time, but, as I’m learning, that time means very little when it comes to a movie as big as “Ben-Hur.”
This film is big in a way that doesn’t happen anymore. It clocks in at an epic 3 hours and 32 minutes, complete with orchestral breaks throughout so you can walk to the lobby and smoke your Lucky Strikes or unfiltered Camels. It’s from an era when television was a new and terrifying technology for the film industry. This film was meant to be an excursion, to get people out of their houses, pull them away from their 16-inch television screens and see a movie with other people.
There’s a story that director William Wyler chose to do the film because he wanted to see if he could direct a DeMille-type picture. DeMille made films on a grand scale. There were big set pieces and musical scores. Epic is the tone he was going for. This feels very much like that, and yet there are aspects of this film that are very different.
Up to this point, Wyler had done significantly smaller, more intimate films, and it shows in the choices he makes in “Ben-Hur,” the DeMille-iest film he could make.
Wyler makes lighting choices that DeMille would not have. Rather than have everything brightly, starkly lit, he lets darkness and shadow play a part, as it would for a smaller film. In the scene where Judah returns to the ruins of his family home, Wyler allows the shadows to create the moodiness of the scene. The music cues can be intimate as well, soft and dramatic when they need to be, but large and loud and boisterous when they must.
Heston is typical Heston. He can be a very large actor, taking up the screen, projecting his voice as a theater-trained actor might do. At the same time, Wyler is able to pry small moments out of him. Some things might not be caught on a smaller screen — the rage in his eyes as he rows in the galley or the desperation as he manhandles four horses and a chariot through a roaring stadium.
It’s the work that went into “Ben-Hur” and why it’s on the Top 100 list.
In an age where digital technology has taken over special effects, “Ben-Hur” is full of huge set pieces and large crowds of real extras who cheer for the chariot race.
The sets are huge, and more than 300 were built. The score was the longest ever composed and held that record until 2021. The budget was the largest ever at $15 million.
Wyler allows the scenes to stretch out. In the galley scene, you learn to hate the Romans, and specifically the man who becomes Judah’s adopted father later on, because you are allowed to see his cruelty as he tries to break Judah. It’s the length of the scene that makes it work and pulls the viewer along for the ride. A shorter scene wouldn’t garner the rage.
The chariot race is bigger than DeMille. Imagine building a full stadium set so that your actor could race a wheeled cart built by your set department and pulled by four horses. Multiply that by nine, because you have to race against someone. Fill the stadium with a couple thousand extras and hope no one dies.
The scene is 16 minutes long. Once the race itself begins, there is no musical score, only the clatter of hooves and the roar of the crowd and the grunting of the charioteers. I don’t know that a modern film would let the scene breathe — or pant in this case — like this was allowed to. Each lap ups the ante, killing people off and crashing chariots into each other.
MGM shot this picture on 65-millimeter film. For reference, that means that each cell is about two and half inches wide. That large format makes all of the details pop on a large screen.
For MGM, “Ben-Hur” was a last-ditch effort to save themselves from bankruptcy. They were on the edge, throwing money into a massive film that, if fortunes had gone the wrong way, would have closed the doors on the company. But they had faith in Wyler and Heston. They knew the power of the movie-making team that was beneath the “Ben-Hur” umbrella.
It garnered 12 Academy Award nominations and won 11, which spawned re-releases of the film in theaters.
The revenge motif is what drives Judah through the story, but there is forgiveness as well, along with speaking truth to power — tropes that are part of any good story.
But the main idea, and the reason that it is on the Top 100 list, is the ripple-like effect that it had on the medium. Writers and musicians, costume and set designers, production assistants and little kids who loved movies were watching it and absorbing the details on their first, second and third viewings.
Minds were opened to the possibility of what a film could be. What a film could do. Later, we would see those ripples showing themselves in the films made by some of the kids who watched “Ben-Hur” — kids with names like Irvin Kershner (“The Empire Strikes Back”), George Lucas (“Star Wars”) and Ridley Scott (“Gladiator”).
Those people and countless others went on to change the film industry in their own way. Because of the hugeness of Wyler’s film it will continue to change the industry, the ripples going ever outward, as people see those later films and are further influenced by them.
I enjoyed the film, but it caused ripples for me as well. It made me look into the history behind this movie, something that I ordinarily don’t do upon casual viewing. Knowing the history makes the impact that much more impressive. Those films that came after it might not be here. But seeing the way that it influenced generations of filmmakers to change their craft or pay homage to this or that part of the film, is a big ripple.
It should be on the list. I don’t know if it should be at No. 100, but we’ll get to that later. If you want to watch “Ben-Hur,” as of this writing it is available to rent or buy from Amazon, YouTube and Apple TV.
This journey down the AFI list has already reminded me why movies matter — not just for what’s on the screen, but for the people they ripple out to, generation after generation.
Todd Sheridan Perry will be popping in as my sounding board as we climb from 100 to 1, and somewhere along the way, we just might hit “record” and turn this into the “Two Guys, 100 Films” podcast. Until then, pass the popcorn — we’re just getting started.