No. 100 - Ben-Hur

What a nice way to start my list. Ben-Hur was a movie that I had heard many people talk about, but had never seen myself. I had not heard much about the overall story of the movie, but mostly of the chariot race that was supposed to be so entertaining. I was curious to see if I would be affected by the movie being made such a long time ago, or if I would consider it a "classic" as many people do.

Finding out that the movie was over 3.5 hours long was a bit of a shock. It may have taken some of the wind out of my sails right away. From the start of the movie, however, I was interested and didn't notice the time. The only time I noticed it was getting long, was when I had to stop the movie, to finish the next day. I don't know, though, what they could have cut out and kept the story line smooth and flowing.

The overall story was quite good, even by today's standards, and I am surprised that no one has attempted to remake it yet. The beginning and end of the movie took a turn towards the religious, or even spiritual, side while the rest of the movie focused solely on the challenging life of Ben-Hur. The ending was somewhat strange and did not seem to follow the recipe of success that the rest of the story did. I felt that it went too far to the religious side and did not have much to do with the rest of the story. The ending aside, Ben-Hur was a great story that was not affected by the age of the movie, and was enhanced by the originality of it. You will not see many movies similar to it.

The acting was intriguing but sometimes hard to take. Charlton Heston won an Academy Award for best actor for his role in Ben-Hur. Watching his performance I saw numerous scenes in which he employed what I would consider over acting. He had very exaggerated emotions, expressions, and body language. This may be common for the time as I have not seen many movies that were made in this era or before. I am curious if it has anything to do with working in theater first. I could see where many of the actors and actresses of this era go their start in plays, and thus were accustomed to these exaggerated moments.

One thing that really amazed me about this movie was the sheer size of it. This had to be considered an "epic" for its time. There were scenes of the Romans marching that had HUNDREDS of soldiers, as well as a parade scene that showed even more Roman citizens lining the streets. The size of the set had to be massive as well, if nothing but for the parade scene. And lets not forget about the chariot race.

The best part of the movie was the chariot race scene that was just as good as everyone had told me. It was both enthralling and exciting to see a scene with that much action that was not enhanced or assisted with computer generated graphics. The crash scenes were really intense. Although you could see that some of the crash victims were clearly just rag dolls, some of them looked like they were just well-timed stunts. This scene alone was worth the time I spent watching the movie.

Ben-Hur was a great movie to start with on the Top 100 movies. I personally enjoyed it, but I am not sure that I would recommend it for everyone. It takes time to get through the whole thing and some people may find it slow moving. However, the story was well thought out and put together, the acting was decent, and the cinematography exceeded my expectations for the time. Erin stayed up the entire time on the first night that saw us reach the halfway point, but was out cold about 20 minutes into the second night. As for my own rating of the movie...I would give this movie a 3.5 out of 5.