Ben-Hur, 1959.
Directed by William Wyler.
Starring Charlton Heston, Jack Hawkins, Haya Harareet, Stephen Boyd, Hugh Griffith, Martha Scott, Cathy O’Donnell, and Sam Jaffe.
SYNOPSIS:
Warner Bros. made the wait for Ben-Hur in 4K worthwhile with a release that blows away previous editions and is certainly one of the best home video releases of this modern era. While the studio didn’t port over all of the legacy bonus features, it did commission a pair of new extras and brought over enough content that any fan should be satisfied after a weekend spent with these discs. Highly recommended.
While I’ll forever be a Spielber-Lucas kid, having grown up in the 70s and 80s, Hollywood’s bold widescreen glory of the 1950s, when studios financed several big-budget films to combat the growing adoption of television, is a close second in my book.
And I don’t think any movie of that era epitomizes that era more than William Wyler’s epic Ben-Hur, which was the most expensive production in Hollywood history at the time of its 1959 release, with every penny spent showing up onscreen. It was a box office smash that won 11 Academy Awards, forever cementing its legacy among film fans.
Charlton Heston plays the title role of Judah Ben-Hur, a wealthy Jewish prince living in Jerusalem with his mother and sister. When his childhood friend Messala (Stephen Boyd) returns to the city as a member of the Roman Empire’s ruling military elite, their warm reunion is torn in two when the family is falsely accused of trying to kill the visiting Judean governor.
Judah’s punishment involves a brutal march through the desert, during which he receives water from a mysterius passer-by. It ends with him forced aboard a Roman warship as one of many slaves manning the oars in the galley belowdecks. He catches the eye of the ship’s commander, Quintus Arrius, and becomes his adopted son when he saves Arrius’s life during a battle.
Judah becomes a renowned chariot racer in Rome and eventually makes his way back to Jerusalem, where his contentious relationship with Messala reaches its climax with a chariot race that’s one of the best action scenes ever filmed. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say that the mysterious stranger Judah previously met turns out to be Jesus Christ, and Judah becomes a witness to the man carrying his cross and the subsequent crucifixion.
There’s so much more to Ben-Hur than I’ve laid out here, so I recommend seeking it out right away if you haven’t seen it. While I’m not a religious person, I do appreciate the sentiment behind many of Christ’s teachings, and I see the movie not as a religious one but as a story about staying true to your ideals in the face of oppression. It’s a message we need now, more than ever.
If you’ve been waiting for this one to arrive on 4K Ultra HD, I can simply say that the wait was worthwhile. This film’s bold Technicolor palette pops off the screen, with plenty of fine details. It’s been nearly 70 years since Ben-Hur’s release, but I’m willing to bet that the presentation found here is comparable to what you would have seen in a theater back then.
The film is spread across a pair of discs, which makes sense given a running time that’s close to four hours; that choice also allowed Warner Bros. to avoid any video compression issues. The original theatrical overture is included here, and disc one ends, appropriately, with the intermission music. Disc two starts with the entr’acte music.
You also get a code for a digital copy, along with a Blu-ray that contains the bulk of the bonus features. The lone extra on the 4K platters is a commentary track featuring Heston and film historian T. Gene Hatcher, which has been carried over from past releases. They were recorded separately and the commentary was stitched together from those sessions, so it’s a little disjointed, but it’s also very illuminating too. Unsurprisingly, you get the scholarly viewpoint from Hatcher and the behind-the-scenes angle from Heston.
In addition, Warner Bros. commissioned a pair of new featurettes that run about 15 minutes tital and feature comments from film critic Pete Hammond, director of photography Autumn Durald Arkapaw, author and film historian Tony Maietta, and Academy Museum of Motion Pictures director K.J. Relth-Miller. They offer a nice look back on this classic film.
Some of the legacy extras are missing here, including the original 1925 silent version of the film and a gallery of vintage newsreels, so you might want to hold onto your older discs, but what’s included is still very much worth the purchase price. You’ll find:
• Charlton Heston & Ben-Hur: A Personal Journey (78:04): The actor’s son, Fraser, hosts this look back on the lengthy location shoot in Rome, complete with him reading from his father’s personal journal and some behind-the-scenes footage shot by his mother, Lydia Clarke.
• Ben-Hur: The Making of an Epic (58:14): Christopher Plummer narrates this documentary, which was created in 1994. It charts the film’s history from the original 1880 novel by Lew Wallace to that aforementioned silent version to the lavish production shot in 1958.
• Ben-Hur: A Journey Through Pictures (5:08): This is a series of still images with music and dialogue from the film playing on top. This extra, along with everything except the two new items and A Personal Journey, was original in standard-definition and has been brought into the high-def world via AI-enabled upsampling, so sometimes the quality isn’t quite as good as it could be.
Finally, we have nearly half an hour of screen tests that showcase what a different movie this could have been, especially if Leslie Nielsen had won the starring role. I realize he was a fine dramatic actor in his day, but I’ll forever associate him with spoofs like Airplane!, so I don’t know if I’d view Ben-Hur the same way in 2026 if he had been cast.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
